The number of people affected bydisasters around the world continues to rise, and countriesface recurrent disasters in contexts of conflict andfragility.In 2016 more countries experienced violentconflict than at any time over the past three decades. Muchof the recent violence has targeted urban areas and publicspaces, and the civilian death toll due to this kind ofviolent conflict doubled between 2010 and 2016. Extremepoverty is rising in fragile and conflict-affectedsituations (FCS), and over half of the world’s poor areexpected to live in FCS by 2030. Culture plays an importantrole in building and shaping institutions, and it can do soin both positive and negative ways. Additionally, cultureand forms of cultural expression can aid institutions inmanaging competing interests among different groups insociety, including creating spaces for inter-group dialogueand opportunities for inter-group social interaction, orestablishing education systems that recognize minoritylanguages of instruction or a plurality of historicalnarratives. In the pages that follow, this paper willpresent the case for moving culturally-informed approachesfrom the margins to the forefront of planning andimplementation of post-conflict and post-disaster responses,and offer concrete operational guidance for doing so.Section 2 builds on the case for pursuing aculturally-informed approach in FCS. Section 3 offersguidance for policymakers and operational teams on acquiringand applying a culturally-informed approach in verychallenging contexts. Section 4 summarizes severalreal-world examples in which stakeholders have successfullyoperationalized a culturally-informed perspective to achievepeace-building and reconstruction objectives. Finally,Section 5 offers some concluding remarks.
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