Conflict in Angola lasted from 1961 to 2002. During these 40 years there were a few periods of peace (1974-75, 1991-92, 1994-97) during which hopes were high for a lasting peace but in each case these hopes were dashed. The signs are more hopeful that the cease-fire signed in April 2002 will lead to a lasting solution, though there do remain tensions and challenges.

Each phase of war led to its own waves of displaced people and refugees. There are no accurate figures about the numbers of displaced people because

• there are different definitions of displaced people
• data collection is poor
• there is probably some double-counting when the numbers from different time-periods are aggregated.

There are about 1.5 million people dependent on food-aid (mainly classified as internally-displaced people) though there are many more displaced people living in urban areas and not receiving food-aid. There are 450,000 Angolan refugees in neighbouring countries. Peace has allowed access to "newly accessible areas" (areas in which it was unsafe for humanitarian organisations to work previously) which has given access to more vulnerable people. There are 200,000 civilians in family camps next to UNITA quartering areas.

The arrival of humanitarian and development organisations in Angola in the late-1980s coincided with the end of the Cold War, peace-talks with UNITA and the USA (that were to lead to the 1991-92 period of peace and the 1992 elections), Angola joining the World Bank and IMF and reducing ties with Cuba and the eastern bloc. At the same time, legal changes were made that permitted the formation of local NGOs and associations. Local and international aid organisations saw their role at that time as either

• providing humanitarian assistance to displaced people (of which large numbers remained from the 1980s),
• to demobilising soldiers during the 1991-92 peace and to those affected by drought in 1989-90
• assisting in reconstruction programmes as peace was consolidated.

The situation in 2002 is putting considerable strain on aid organisations. The easing of security is revealing new groups of people in need of assistance, as well as soldiers to be demobilised and the civilians accompanying them. This is straining the resources of aid organisations at the same time as they are aware that there is a need to plan for the future when there will be much less need of such assistance. And at the same time the Government is moving rapidly with new initiatives which require a response (and is even asking, in some cases for input from aid organisations: new laws are planned on land tenure, local government, decentralisation, and territorial organisation; increased funding is being provided to local levels of government for reconstruction projects.

The objectives of this case study is to appraise the level participation and the approaches used for that purpose in Afghanistan in the area affected by the recent earthquake, with three objectives :

• Identifying and describe the existing practices;
• Identify the important lessons through an analysis of the emergency programmes that were implemented;
• Transforming these lessons learned into a "capital of knowledge" to be capitalised, used for the preparation of the Practitioner Handbook and the Overview book and disseminated at the "system wide" level".

The team leader will be Paul Robson. He will be assisted by Karla Levy, Research Assistant of the Global Study and by two national consultants

• Prepare draft of Overview of Angola

• Prepare translation of documents about the Global Study in Portuguese

• Participate in Inter-team workshop (September)

• Make contacts with humanitarian actors in Angola (in particular ALNAP and URD members) and provide preliminary information about the Global Study

The overall approach will be to

• distribute relevant information on ALNAP and URD and the Global Study
• review documents made available by agencies
• interview agency staff
• interview (individually or in small groups) "affected populations"
• observe agency practice
• feed-back to "affected populations" and agencies on the findings for their discussion

The Team leader will

a) Preparatory phase

• re-contact ALNAP and URD members

• contact and re-contact other humanitarian actors

• distribute ALNAP and Global Study leaflets and inform humanitarian actors about the study

• carry out rapid update review on the humanitarian situation

• carry out rapid update review on humanitarian actors

• carry out update review on logistics and security issues

• make a typology of different situations in Angola

• recruit a secondee and local consultant

b) Main phase

• organise a small "introductory workshop"

• make field visits, during which there will be meetings with beneficiaries, agency staff, local authorities, and other key informants

• study in-depth at least three constrasting areas of Angola where humanitarian action is in progress

• prepare a draft summary of the findings

• organise a "feed-back meeting"

The Team Leader will

• participate in the inter-team workshop (January 2003)

• prepare a draft of Country Monograph (December 2002)

• finalise Country Monograph (January 2003)

• assist in the preparation of the Practitioners’ Handbook