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Background
The complexity of Sudan’s security
enhancement and socio-economic recovery
and development challenges calls for
strategic planning tools that help to
clearly identify and adequately display
the multiplicity of key security threats
and socio-economic recovery risks facing
the country. Effective mechanisms are
needed to identify the inter-linkages
between these threats and risks, while
supporting the process of prioritizing,
in terms of selecting responses and
interventions, undertaken through multi-stakeholder
consultations, in a conflict-sensitive
manner.
The on-going process of National
and State-level strategic planning
has underlined this lack of appropriate
planning support tools, for both governmental
and non-governmental actors to effectively
address the complexity of crisis and
conflict, co-existing with conflict
resolution processes and post-conflict
recovery and development challenges
in Sudan.
Based on the initial experience of
UNDP in the field of security threat
analysis, and on international best
practices, a geo-referenced state-by-state
mapping and analysis of the key security
threats and socio-economic risks was
carried out, in consultation with
key actors, both at the state and
local levels. The conflict mapping
analysis was identified as a potentially
useful tool in assisting UNDP and
its key national counterparts, including
UN agencies and NGOs, in facing the
challenges of the strategic selection
of priority areas of intervention,
and the efficient planning of properly
focused and sequenced interventions.
Such a tool was also considered to
be a potential facilitator of effective
coordination, by helping to identify
both gaps and overlaps among ongoing
and newly planned interventions, thereby
supporting both more coherent UN and
NGO programming and delivery, and
an improved linkage between these
efforts and the priorities, plans
and interventions of the National
and State government. Finally, a regularly
updated mapping and analysis process
would effectively support improved
monitoring and assessment of the impact
of selected interventions.
In January 2007, in view of the urgent
need for such a tool, UNDP launched
the Conflict Mapping Analysis and Advisory
Group project.
Objectives
The main objective of this project is
to build the capacity of state localities
in human security, recovery, and development
fields, to better identify national
needs and priorities, to analyze their
causal relationship, and better plan
and design interventions to address
them, in a conflict-sensitive manner.
The project’s specific objectives
are:
• To support state localities
in their own process of data collection
and validation, providing them with
information management tools to analyze
this information and define the appropriate,
prioritized, responses. This will
be done by directly involving these
actors in the process of data collection/verification
and analysis from the start, working
with them in the development of the
standard methodology, and setting
up two counterpart focal points in
each State, one in the State government
and one in support of the coordination
work of the Resident Coordinator’s
Office, providing services for both
the UN agencies and the NGOs.
• To provide support to the
focal points including the supply
of basic equipment (computers, printer,
GPS markers/phones and related supplies)
together with the required software
and the related training. These focal
points will then be able to operate
the full State database, and provide
the required layouts to the various
actors for their work.
• Develop a web-based system
(databases, maps, surveys and assessments)
that will function as a common information-sharing
platform for all key actors, where
the various information resources,
developed and maintained by these
actors, can be accessed directly and
correlated to each other, based on
the development of agreed protocols.
Snapshots of the project's major achievements
• Completed the conflict mapping
process for South Kordofan State.
• Organized a consultation workshop
in Khartoum identifying the common issues
and priorities that will serve as a
basis for the strategic planning and
programming process.
• Prepared and collected initial
data in order to carry out the same
mapping process in East Sudan and Darfur.
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