An independent consultant specializing in conflict, security and humanitarian affairs in Burma has warned that international NGOs coming into Burma with Do No Harm (DNH) slogans, without proper use of its analysis tool, can still do more of the negative than positive impacts on the country’s ongoing conflict.

“Aid can change conflict,” Kim Joliffe told researchers of the newly-established Pyidaungsu Institute (PI) for Peace and Dialogue in
Chiangmai yesterday. “We can use aid to either reduce or escalate it.”

The Do No Harm (DNH) approach was developed by Mary Anderson following the Cold War. It provides a 7 step process which aid actors are implored to undertake to ensure that their programs do no harm:

“The problem is people only take the buzz words and some of the ideas and go on doing as they had done previously,” he explained. “Most NGOs, to my knowledge, haven’t even done the first step. As a result, they only have limited idea of the conflict in Burma.”

He gave an example of the core grievances in ethnic areas least known by outsiders. “A Karen internally displaced person explained during consultations I held last June,” he said. “‘We don’t need the Bamar (government) to build us new houses or anything else – we just need them to stop burning down the ones we already built.’”

Joliffe suggested that the ideal solution would be convergence of state and non-state structures under an ethos of equality, whereby egalitarian partnerships are formed in aid of common goals. “Aid can then be provided through these joint state-and-non-state structures,” he said.