Community Health Volunteer's Training Manual - Population Council

Module 1 The CHPS Concept
Topic 1 Definition of conflict
68
What is conflict
Whenever two people or a group of people do not agree about an issue and are unable
to resolve it amicably such that the two parties are satisfied with the solution, a conflict
situation can result. For example, two volunteers may be in conflict over the use of funds for
the construction of a CHPS compound. Two communities may disagree on where to house
a health facility.
Therefore any situation where there is disagreement that prevents two groups from
communicating all together, or communicating ineffectively which retards individual and
group progress is a conflict situation. Anecdotal evidence shows that most conflicts start
without people knowing how it started. Rumours – ‘Yεsi! Yεsi!, Akεε! Akεε!, Wobe! Wobe!;
Bawi!, Bawi!; They say…They say ‘ – has caused many conflicts. Watch out for rumours in
your teams and quench them the right way!
Exercise 1.5.1 Conflicts
Objective
1. To identify personal and community conflicts
and how they affect community health work
Time 15 minutes
Questions
1. What was the conflict and how did it come
about?
2. Which groups or persons were involved?
3. How did it affect the groups in conflict?
4. How did it affect the health situation/work in
the community?
5. How did they resolve the conflict?
Instructions to the facilitator
1. Help the groups to identify
and discus personal and
community conflicts that
have affected communities
2. List them and use the
questions on the left as
guide.
3. Guide them to list all the
methods they used to
resolve the conflicts.
So what is conflict and how do we view it? Below are some definitions of conflicts.
1. Organisational conflict is a disagreement between two or more groups or organisational
members who must work with each other, two groups who have differing goals, values,
perceptions or status.
2. Conflict means to disagree over something: a fight or an argument between two people,
group or countries (paraphrased from Longman’s Pocket English dictionary, 2001)
At the mention of ‘conflict’ everyone thinks of the negative aspects of it. We think of it
as synonymous with violence, destruction and irrationality. Many of us think conflicts
are caused by trouble makers, people who want to change the current situation, or by
disgruntled people in a group.