The links between disaster risk reduction and conflict prevention is explored in this report and the focus is specifically on Kenya. Mainly, it aims to develop a livelihoods approach to understanding and reducing the risk of households and communities who have been, or are likely to be, affected by disasters. Conflict is linked to livelihoods through both cause and effect pathways, but the linkages between conflict mitigation and disaster risk reduction at the level of policy and program are limited. The research was organized around three questions. The first question seeks to understand why conflict management or conflict mitigation tends to be institutionally separate from (natural) disaster risk reduction and livelihoods protection more broadly. This question was addressed in the specific context of Kenya, but also more globally. The second question seeks to understand the institutional form that much of the peace-building or conflict resolution work has taken in Kenya—that of the local peace committee (LPC), or similar kinds of interventions at the local level, often growing out of civil society activism, but which has now been adopted by government in the form of District Peace Committees (DPCs). The third question seeks to understand the extent to which “peace-building” measures of a number of different types can actually be shown to have reduced the risk of conflict, or increase the capacity of affected communities to manage, resolve and transform conflict—and, critically, to understand how reducing these risks impacts people’s lives and livelihoods
