Making sense of turbulent contexts: Local perspectives on large-scale conflict

A troubling participation gap exists within conflict analysis as currently practised. Understanding conflict is critical to aid planning, yet large-scope analyses are dominated all too often by external ‘experts’. Local voices and local knowledge, which are essential to understanding the true causes of conflict, are not adequately reflected in the far-reaching policies and strategies that define what aid agencies do and how they do it in conflict- affected settings.

In response, the Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts (MSTC) framework is designed to bring local actors and participatory methodology into country-level conflict analysis. In this book World Vision offers MSTC to the inter-agency aid community with the aim of advocating participation as a standard pillar of macro-conflict analysis and of encouraging collaboration amongst aid and civil society organisations that seek to understand and influence their turbulent contexts.