Development Workshop has identified the need for a more systematic collection, in a number of Provinces, of information from a variety of sources that will permit a deeper understanding of the dynamics in those Provinces and subsequently the monitoring of changes there. DW intends to pilot this approach in Zaire Province, in the north of Angola. Zaire Province is one of the Provinces that has been included in the assessment carried out during 2004, and is an area for which there the most serious lack of information. The World Food Programme’s Vulnerability Assessments, for example, do not cover the Province and the Provincial Profile for Zaire lacks information available for other Provinces.
It is a Province that is receiving returning refugees but has been slowest to improved services and infrastructure. It is a Province with some underlying conflicts (between the developed coastal areas and the interior, between returning refugees with an identity marked by the time spent in the DRC and “residents” and between small-scale fishing and foreign trawlers that come close to the shore). It is moreover an Province in which DW intends to develop activities in the near future, because of its pressing needs. DW’s approach in the area will be one of “conflict sensitivity”: it will attempt to work in the Province in a way that does not exacerbate existing tensions and that tries to reduce them; it will attempt to influence other actors to reduce inequalities and latent conflicts in the Province; to this end it will make available to other actors its experience in a number of areas (peace-building, micro-credit, small-scale construction, water and sanitation, information management and mapping).
DW therefore intends to test an approach to information gathering, analysis, archiving and dissemination in Zaire Province that might be used subsequently in other Provinces and that supports this approach.
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