The Better Programming Initiative (BPI) is a tool developed by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) with the aim of facilitating analysis of aid program impacts in a post-conflict area.
The Better Programming Initiative Process
In the 1990s aid practitioners and donors started to feel that their efforts and resources where being exploited for political and military purposes in conflict situations and there was a need felt that there was needed more knowledge of secondary impacts of aid in conflict settings. To accomplish this the Local Capacities for Peace Project (LCPP) was launched in 1994 which set out to answer the question: “How can humanitarian or development assistance be given in conflict situations in ways that, rather than feeding into and exacerbating the conflict, help local people to disengage and establish alternative systems for dealing with the problems that underlie the conflict?”. After conducting a number of field-based case studies with a number of NGOs in conflict situations, the LCPP revealed clear patterns in how aid interacts with local tensions which lead to the development of a methodology of how to apply the findings in a practical manner. Testing of the methodology lead to a revision of the LCPP and the creation of BPI by the IFRC where BPI was developed primary as a tool to be used by the IFRC and Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies.
Some of the main differences between LCPP and BPI is that while LCPP was designed to be used by organisations in live-conflict situations, BPI is a tool for post-conflict recovery programming. BPI has a narrower focus than the LCPP and focuses on improving the analytical capacities of the Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies staff and delegates providing them with a tool to analyse the context in which they are operating.
