EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
War and conflict increasingly effect the very poor.
Twenty of the 34 poorest countries are either in conflict or are
just emerging from conflict. Conflict can undo years of development
and render the population destitute. Hundreds of millions of pounds
are spent on humanitarian relief and reconstructing devastated
communities which could instead be spent on long-term development.
Every development policy must have as an integral part of its
strategy conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction.
Recent events in Kosovo have focussed international
attention on the horrors and inhumanities of conflict. There has
also been a welcome realisation that any response to the conflict
must give adequate funds both for humanitarian relief and for
reconstruction. There is, however, a worrying discrepancy between
the significant resources already made available to Kosovo and
the neglect of larger-scale conflicts in other less strategically
important parts of the world. This is not to resent the funds
committed to Kosovo, merely to demand that the conflicts of the
developing world, and sub-Saharan Africa in particular, receive
as much international attention, compassion, generosity and political
resolve.
Rwanda is the most shameful example of recent failure
by the international community. When the 1994 genocide took place
and up to one million people were murdered, the world did nothing.
When humanitarian assistance finally arrived, it was to refugee
camps with ineffective security. This meant that the aid fell
into the hands of perpetrators of genocide, thereby allowing them
to regroup and continue the cycle of conflict. The Committee visited
Rwanda in 1998. What we saw further convinced us of the need for
all governments to make conflict prevention and post-conflict
reconstruction a priority of their foreign, development and trade
policies.
Our Report contains the following conclusions and
recommendations:
Arms Proliferation
The Committee concludes that the determined and principled
control of arms exports is a litmus test of this Government's
concern to prevent conflict and inject an ethical dimension into
foreign policy.
The lack of proportion between the expenditure of
developing countries on arms and their expenditure on social sectors
is a scandal, and one in which many developed arms-exporting countries
are implicated.
The United Kingdom is of course the second largest
exporter of arms in the world. The Government must, as a priority,
ensure coherence across all departments so that its policy is
credible. Other policies must not conflict with development policy.
The Committee:
- calls for more work to be done both within Whitehall
and internationally to agree shared assessments of the security
needs of developing countries;
- congratulates the Secretary of State for her
openness in providing information on those export licence applications
which DFID has questioned and considers this an important precedent
for Government transparency in arms export policy and practice;
- criticises the Department for Trade and Industry
for failing to apply the human rights and conflict concerns which
are at the heart of development policy, for example approving
the export of arms to Eritrea and Indonesia despite the protests
of DFID
- calls for legislation to control the activities
of arms brokers;
- recommends that EU member-states agree a common
system of end-use controls for arms exports to end illegal transfers
and the selling-on of arms to third countries and other groups.
The example of sanctions-busting in Angola is a scandalous instance
of the failure of the international community to monitor the final
destination of arms exports;
- notes that the proliferation of small arms is
a significant cause of conflict and facilitates the increasing
use of child soldiers. The Committee recommends initiatives in
the EU and the Council of Europe to control small arms stockpiles,
and support for properly controlled buy-back programmes in developing
countries.
United Kingdom Government Policy
The Report welcomes the greater attention being paid
by DFID to conflict issues, but criticises other government departments,
including the DTI, for failing to include consideration of development
issues in their key policy documents. In particular the Report:
- considers the best form of conflict prevention
to be sustainable development, welcomes the increases in the DFID's
budget and requests an assessment from DFID of the increases in
development assistance necessary both globally and from the United
Kingdom in order to meet the international development targets;
- welcomes the support given by DFID to institution-building,
in particular to the provision of justice in post-conflict situations,
security sector reform and the development of an impartial media;
- recommends that the Government introduce in the
next session of Parliament a bill to ratify the Statute of the
International Criminal Court. The Committee believes that Truth
Commissions, ad hoc Tribunals and other mechanisms of justice
should be supported as appropriate; and
- considers the increasing use of child soldiers
to be one of the most deplorable aspects of modern warfare, urges
support for projects to reintegrate child soldiers into the community
where the projects are locally organised and run, and recommends
that the United Kingdom lead by example and ensure that no soldier
under the age of eighteen is deployed in a conflict situation,
be it in a war zone or a peacekeeping operation.
International Organisations
The Report examines the work of the European Union,
the United Nations, the World Bank and the IMF. It concludes that:
- the European Union has failed to integrate conflict
sensitivity into its trade policy. The trade proposals of the
Commission in the negotiation of the new Lomé Convention
have been devised without any research into the effects on poverty
and conflict in developing countries. We recommend that the EU
make it mandatory for all trade policy proposals to include an
assessment of their impact on poverty and conflict in the relevant
developing countries;
- the UN has yet to establish an effective conflict
early warning system. The international community is also failing
to coordinate assistance effectively after conflict. The UN should
agree coordinated objectives and strategies with the World Bank,
IMF and other donors in any post-conflict situation. We welcome
the initiative taken by the British Government to bring donors
together to ensure adequate and longer-term funding for the reconstruction
of Rwanda. This should be a model for other post-conflict situations;
- the IMF and the World Bank must undertake conflict
impact assessments before the introduction of any structural adjustment
programme and adopt detailed conflict-prevention strategies; and
- the IMF and the World Bank do not place enough
emphasis on good governance and human rights in their relations
with governments. This must change. There can be no sustainable
economic development without good governance and respect for human
rights. We ask them to explain, for example, what protests they
made to the then Rwandan Government about the discrimination against
and intimidation of Tutsis during the years immediately preceding
the genocide.
The Private Sector
The private sector can have a significant impact
on developing countries, whether in promoting development through
responsible investment or destabilising communities through insensitive
policies. The Report:
- calls for legislation at the earliest opportunity
to make the bribing of foreign public officials a criminal offence;
- recommends that the FCO and DTI include advice
on risks of conflict and how to minimise them in their advice
to businesses, that the private sector include in Codes of Conduct
advice on practice in conflict situations, and calls on the World
Trade Organisation to establish a research unit to investigate
how conflicts are being funded;
- recommends that private security firms be brought
under some form of legislative control and criticises the decision
of the United States to use a private security firm to fulfil
part of its international obligations in Bosnia;
- examines BP's operations in Colombia, criticises
the direct provision by BP of equipment to a Colombian army brigade
accused of human rights violations (a practice BP has since ended)
and recommends that any Code of Conduct for the private sector
include a commitment not to purchase or provide arms, security
equipment or advice to state security forces
Humanitarian Assistance
Modern conflict no longer tends to observe humanitarian
principles - civilians are now 90 per cent of war casualties,
and most of these casualties are women and children.
Humanitarian action should never be used as a substitute
for political action.
There has been a traditional emphasis on the impartiality,
independence and neutrality of humanitarian assistance. The Committee
considers such principles to remain important and welcomes the
recommitment to impartiality in DFID's new humanitarian principles.
The dilemma facing all donors is how to reconcile the principle
of neutrality with the acknowledgement that humanitarian assistance
always changes the nature of a conflict, becoming a further factor
in the webs of cause and effect, of strategy and counter-strategy.
The Committee:
- considered the decision by DFID to suspend humanitarian
assistance following the coup in Sierra Leone against President
Kabbah. The Committee respects the assertion of the Secretary
of State that the decision was made on principled grounds rather
than for political reasons but agrees with Actionaid that it would
have been better to continue to provide humanitarian relief; and
- welcomes the Red Cross/NGO Code of Conduct for
Disaster relief, and recommends that it be internationally applied
and monitored. The Committee also recommends the establishment
of a Humanitarian Ombudsman to hear complaints concerning the
activities of NGOs, multilateral agencies and donors in such complex
emergencies.
