Definition:

Conflict assessment is the first stage in the process of conflict management and resolution. Participants map the conflict including background, participants, and possible solutions. Then participants decide on a plan of action.

Users:

Anyone involved in a conflict-both disputants and potential intervenors (third parties).

Description:

Assessment clarifies each party's interests, needs, and positions, and helps them understand each other's interests, needs, and positions. After mapping the dispute, participants can decide whether there it is possible to manage or resolve the conflict and which intervention is most likely to succeed. Participants can then design a work plan, should intervention be initiated.

Assessments help disputants reveal, often through self-discovery, the issues that are really important to them, as well as to understand the beliefs and actions of the other stakeholders. The assessment can be helpful in building relationships among disputants themselves and between the disputants and the assessor (if the assessment is done by an outsider). When stakeholders come together as a group, they can compile a common information base. Moreover, as issues that had previously been submerged come to the forefront, this informational stage can lead to the identification of other stakeholders.

In difficult conflicts especially, the issues in contention are likely to be deeply intertwined with interests, stereotypes, or political agendas. Furthermore, since many conflicts are geographically bounded, the parties may have encountered each other before in other disputes. In this case, the conflict may be complicated by a backlog of mistrust. If intervention is to be initiated, all parties must understand these complex relationships.

Assessments may be carried out by the parties themselves or with the help of an outside (third) party. Often an assessment team works with the parties to first assess the conflict and then make process recommendations for a dispute resolution process.

In an assessment, participants probe such topics as:

• Stakeholders' perceptions of themselves and other parties
• The important issues for each group
• Obstacles to a successful intervention
• The stakeholders' conditions for negotiation
• Who is to represent each party at the negotiation table

Conflict assessments generally include the following phases:

• Introduction: Assessors prepare open-ended interview questions designed to obtain information about the conflict.
• Information gathering: Assessors study the background of the conflict through research and personal interviews with the stakeholders. This should help the assessors understand the different viewpoints of stakeholders, the key issues in the conflict, different parties' interests, possible solutions, negotiable and non-negotiable points, issues for future discussion, reactions to the process, and barriers to intervention.
• Analysis: Assessors summarize findings, mapping areas of agreement and disagreement.
• Process design: If requested, assessors may suggest a suitable conflict resolution process, describing goals, agendas, possible structures, and time frame.
• Report writing: The assessor writes a report which is reviewed by the parties. They may then decide to follow the process recommendations of the assessment report, or pursue the conflict in a different way

Benefits of Conflict Assessment

Benefits of conflict assessment include:

• It offers a reflective tool which clarifies participants' interests, positions, and issues and reveals those of other stakeholders
• It builds a shared body of information and knowledge
• It reframes relationships
• It elicits stakeholder participation
• It helps participants decide which type of intervention likely to succeed, if any
• It helps participants design a work plan, should intervention be initiated

Examples:

Resolve, a public policy consensus-building firm, conducted an assessment of the potential for a productive dialogue in California among advocates for and against legalizing physician-assisted suicide. After identifying all the concerned parties, and assessing the views of (among others) health care providers, medical ethicists, right-to-die advocates, pro-life advocates, hospice providers and government officials, they recommended a dialogue process be undertaken with these groups. This was done, resulting in a joint statement about ways of improving end of life care.

Applications:

Conflict assessment is needed in any complex conflict where it is not immediately apparent who is involved and/or what the issues are.

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