DDG focuses on armed violence reduction in the following three types of conflict affected areas:

• Areas with existing low-level conflicts
• Post-conflict societies which often suffer from widespread psychological trauma, high proliferation of weapons and high levels of normalised violence, hence being susceptible to war recurrence
• Areas suffering from spill-over effects from conflicts in their proximity in terms of for example illicit arms trade, massive displacement, transnational criminal networks and cross border clashes 

In determining when and where to intervene we always guided by needs, analysing if needs are sufficient to warrant the costs of setting up and developing an operational presence and whether there is a potential to utilize DDG’s core competencies in a manner that adds value to assistance provision as a whole.

Considerations of whether a strong basis exists for a cross-boundary approach to analysis, strategy development, implementation, management, and networking may also affect decisions on whether to establish an armed violence reduction programme.