House of Commons - International Development

Select Committee on International Development Sixth Report

1 Conflict and development

1. There is an increasing recognition that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will not be achieved unless more is done to prevent and resolve violent conflict.[1] Good progress has been achieved in some areas, including a decline in the number of people in poverty, but it has not been evenly spread. Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole continues to be either off-track or making slow progress toward the goals.[2]

2. Over half the countries and 20% of the population of Africa were affected by conflict in 2000. In the 1990s over six million people died and over 20 million were displaced as a direct result of conflict. And six of the top 10 countries on the 2006 Failed States Index published by Foreign Policy[3] are in Africa: Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Côte d'Ivoire, Zimbabwe, Chad and Somalia.[4] Since the end of the Cold War the character of conflicts has changed. In seeking to prevent or resolve conflicts donor governments more and more have to engage with the internal governance and politics of these states.

3. DFID's work in conflict affected countries has increased in recent years — more money has been spent, conflict advisers have been appointed and conflict policy issues have become more prominent. The report of the Commission for Africa focused on the need for peace and security and made a number of concrete recommendations to the Government.[5] In December 2005 the UN agreed to the creation of a Peacebuilding Commission — recognition of the vital role which peacebuilding plays in ensuring that peace, once achieved, can be sustained.

4. The increasing prominence of conflict in national and international donor policies prompted us to launch an inquiry on conflict and development in November 2005. The aim of the inquiry was to examine the effectiveness and external coherence of the UK's peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction policies. We focussed on case studies of a number of conflicts in Africa. The evidence we collected and the conclusions we draw reflect that focus. Although there are doubtless parallels that can be drawn with conflicts elsewhere that could help inform wider peace-building and post conflict reconstruction work, we are conscious that conflicts in different places have different characteristics and often require different responses. We therefore recommend caution in trying to apply "off the shelf theories" when assessing the appropriate responses to conflicts in different parts of the world.

5. We decided to visit three countries at different stages of conflict, and where DFID has significant programmes: Sierra Leone — to explore DFID's efforts at post-conflict reconstruction; Uganda — which has an ongoing conflict in the north, but which in all other respects is a country whose poverty reduction programme is functioning well; and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — which, despite a formal peace agreement, experiences continued low-level fighting in parts of the country and high rates of conflict-related mortality. These visits gave us the opportunity to see first-hand the UK Government's approach to peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction in practice.

Human Security

6. Violent conflict can result from a wide range of social, political and economic conditions.[6] Of particular significance for donors is the link between a rapid decline in national income and the onset of conflict. Research suggests on average a negative economic growth shock of 5% increases civil war risks by about 50%.[7] Conflict also has huge negative implications for economic growth. Paul Collier, Professor of Economics at Oxford University, estimates that for a low income country the average cost of a civil war is about US$54 billion, and that in addition there are global costs, more difficult to quantify, associated with each civil war[8]. This compares with the total global aid budget of US$78.6 billion in 2004.[9] The implications of these findings are that increasing economic growth rates, and income, can significantly reduce the risk of conflict, which in turn potentially saves billions of dollars for these countries. These economic correlations are significant — poor states tend to be weak states and weak states are more vulnerable to conflict.[10]The quests for security and development are integrally related.

7. The concept of human security was first developed as an international policy framework in the 1994 Human Development Report of the UN Development Programme. The report sought to shift the framework for thinking about security away from one with a primary focus on the external security of the state towards one which focused on the security of the individual within a given state. The 1994 Human Development Report defined human security as "safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression, and protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily lives."[11] This represented a significant shift in approach to security, because it inserted what had traditionally been the concerns of the development community into the agendas of military and strategic planners, as well as diplomats, and vice versa.[12] Whereas the pursuit of development is often equated with the goal of poverty reduction, and security with the protection of state sovereignty, the idea of human security involves a recognition that "development goes into reverse if people do not feel secure and lasting security cannot be achieved if people do not see development taking place."[13] This has implications for the possibility of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The efforts that the international community has put into increasing international aid in 2005 could be cancelled out by an increase in conflict and insecurity in the developing world.

8. By 2005 human security had become the theme of two important UN reports — the report of the Secretary General's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, and the Secretary General's own report, In Larger Freedom. The latter report led to agreement at the 2005 World Summit on the creation of a Peacebuilding Commission, a new Human Rights Council, and on the existence of the principle of the Responsibility to Protect. All three are potentially important for human security. For example, the report argues that there is a shared responsibility for the provision of global security so that when states commit crimes against their own citizens, or fail to protect them, the international community has a responsibility to protect those citizens. The Responsibility to Protect thus challenges the longstanding principle of non-intervention and gives the international community greater responsibilities to act to protect civilians where states fail to do so.

THE SECURITIZATION OF DEVELOPMENT

9. Although the human security agenda aims to reduce and ultimately eliminate those factors that prevent the attainment of secure living conditions, the idea of human security has more recently been defined as "a set of discursive practices by which the international community of effective states understands and intervenes within ineffective ones." [14] In this understanding failed, fragile or weak states are seen to present a threat to international stability and this threat has to be contained in recognition of an increasingly interconnected world. Indeed, to some, maintaining "international stability" is regarded as synonymous with the security needs of individual states. It is summed up in the following quote from the American journal, Foreign Affairs: "there is a crisis of governance in a large number of weak, impoverished states, and this crisis poses a serious threat to US national security."[15] The new thinking is frequently referred to as 'the securitization of development' and has become prevalent since the 'war on terror' after the 9/11 attack on the US.

10. The relationship between poverty, inequality and the causes of terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere is complex and goes well beyond the focus of this report. In relation to Africa, however, we question the wisdom of simplistically securitizing development issues. Research by the Centre for Global Development, for example, questions the link between poor states and the spread of international terrorism:

"it has become conventional wisdom that poorly performing states generate multiple cross-border 'spillovers', including terrorism, weapons proliferation, organized crime, regional instability, global pandemics, and energy insecurity. What is striking is how little empirical evidence underpins such sweeping assertions. A closer look suggests that the connection between state weakness and global threats is less clear and more variable than typically assumed."[16]

11. The idea of human security — linking the spheres of security and development — should form one of the building blocks for policies towards weak and failing states. However, it is important that "northern" security assumptions should not be allowed to distort or undermine efforts to promote security and poverty reduction in Africa in line with DFID's Public Service Agreement and the MDGs.

The Committee's visits

SIERRA LEONE

12. In February 2006 the Committee visited Sierra Leone and Uganda. In Sierra Leone we found a relatively peaceful post-conflict country which had received significant assistance — initially military and subsequently developmental — from the UK. The UK remains the largest single donor, and given a lack of donor coordination, often the donor of first and last resort.

13. Our visit to Sierra Leone involved meetings with the UN Agencies, visits to alluvial diamond mining areas and to a multinational company undertaking kimberlite mining in Koidu. We held discussions about the future security of Sierra Leone and looked in particular at the way the army and the police were working together under the guidance of the International Military Advisory and Training Team (IMATT). We met the Anti-corruption Commissioner and visited the Special Court.

14. We were impressed by the progress that Sierra Leone has made in the three years since the end of its last conflict. This progress has been aided significantly by the efforts of donors, amongst whom DFID has played a leading role. Progress remains fragile however. Many of the factors identified to us as causes of the conflict remain present in Sierra Leone, including: high levels of unemployment (particularly among young men); the concentration of power (social and political) in the hands of a small, corrupt, elite; and, the country's wealth of alluvial diamonds.

15. DFID's programme in Sierra Leone has grown since the end of the war in 2002, and the UK Government now has a ten year partnership agreement with the Government of Sierra Leone, fulfilling its commitment to long-term predictability of aid flows. DFID's programme is undergoing a shift in emphasis; from its immediate post-conflict focus on security sector reform and infrastructure rebuilding towards a greater investment in building accountability and good governance, and encouraging private sector development. Our meetings with local community leaders in Koidu demonstrated that this shift, from highly visible assistance to largely invisible support, is likely to have a significant impact on the ways in which DFID's contribution is perceived. DFID may need to give more thought to the wider 'public relations' impact of the shift away from highly visible support to less visible assistance in post-conflict countries, especially in those where it is the largest bilateral donor. If peace is to be viable, it is important that people perceive both immediate and sustained benefits from it.

UGANDA

16. In Uganda there has been a 20 year conflict in the north of the country involving in the main, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The conflict has resulted in the displacement of approximately 1.7 million people, who now live in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, which are maintained largely by UN agencies. We visited two camps in Gulu district. The accommodation is basic — mud huts with thatched roofs, built close together, which frequently catch fire. There are schools but insufficient teachers and health centres but few doctors. The police presence is minimal and wholly inadequate. The water supply is erratic, and the public health statistics are among the worst in the world. A 2005 survey by the World Health Organisation (WHO) found that the crude and under-five mortality rates among children were well above expected emergency rates. Malaria, AIDS and violence are the three main causes of death in under-fives, but there are also high levels of water-borne and transmittable diseases, as well as malnutrition.[17] In recent months there have been outbreaks of cholera in a number of the camps.

17. According to the Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda, the conflict causes up to 130 deaths per day.[18] WHO estimates that 12,000 children have been abducted by the LRA since June 2002.[19] The boys are trained to become soldiers and the girls are taken as wives and/or slaves. Girls are also made to fight and commit atrocities. During our visit we met some returned abducted children and heard their harrowing tales. These children were being reintegrated into their families and communities despite the likelihood of their having participated in atrocities against their own people.

18. We were told that the security situation has improved over the last year. In particular, the LRA has lost its safe haven in southern Sudan since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement brought the civil war there to a formal end. Unfortunately, this has led the LRA to seek refuge in northern DRC, itself a conflict affected area. The Government of Uganda and the UN are overseeing the voluntary decampment of some IDPs to smaller camps which are nearer to the IDPs' original villages. The process is not without its problems and camps in Teso had to be disbanded following attacks by the LRA. In the past six months improved security has enabled IDPs to reach land further away from the camps and around the satellite camps, and to cultivate crops and livestock.

19. The level of fear brought about by the conflict has also created the phenomenon of 'night commuters' — children who leave their homes at nightfall to sleep, together with other children, sometimes up to a hundred in a large room, in order that they may be protected from abduction by the LRA. Improved security has dramatically reduced the numbers of night commuters although some children still do so for social reasons.

20. The cost of running the IDP camps in northern Uganda is largely borne by UN agencies. We were told that the cost of running the camps was US$200 million a year. Although the camps clearly meet a need, their continued existence brings with it the risk of institutionalising those who live in them. Northern Ugandans are at risk of losing their agricultural skills and other livelihood strategies as they have become more dependent on the international community to provide for them. In addition, with the international community continuing to provide resources for the camps, the pressure is taken off the Government of Uganda to provide for its own citizens. In effect the international community is paying US$200 million per year to provide services which the Government of Uganda should either be providing or for which there would be no demand if the IDPs could go about their normal daily lives.

21. In Uganda DFID is supporting a government which is making reasonable progress in poverty reduction, education and health in the south of the country, but which is not able to exercise effectively key governance functions in the north of the country. In addition we were concerned about the attitude of some Ugandan Government officials towards the DRC. Uganda also has a history of involvement in the conflict in the DRC. A senior Foreign Ministry official expressed to us, in strong words, the view that the DRC was a failed state and that it had effectively forfeited its sovereignty. Another member of the Government of Uganda said that hot pursuit of the LRA into the DRC was permissible.

22. We consider that insufficient international pressure has been put on the Government of Uganda to work towards either a negotiated or a military solution to the conflict. In January 2006 the UK Government withheld £15 million of its 2005-6 Poverty Reduction Budget Support (PRBS) to the Government of Uganda, because of concerns about the way in which the first multiparty elections were being handled, and diverted £10 million of this to assist with the humanitarian crisis in the north. Following our visit, in July 2006, the UK Government announced that budget support for 2006-7 to the Government of Uganda would be kept at £35 million, the 2005-6 level.[20]

23. We accept that the continuing conflict in northern Uganda is not the fault of the Government of Uganda. Nevertheless the Government of Uganda has responsibilities to its population in the north which hitherto it has failed to fulfil. Instead of meeting its responsibilities, the Government of Uganda has been relying on donors to provide core functions such as health and education. This is costing donors US$200 million per year — money which could make a huge development impact if the conflict was resolved and the resources were spent on post-war reconstruction and on resettling displaced people in their villages.

24. Since the Committee's visit in February there have been peace negotiations brokered by the Government of South Sudan taking place in Juba. Peace talks have failed before but for a number of reasons these appear more promising than at any time since the LRA started its campaign 20 years ago. There is a general belief that peace will allow security to be re-established more comprehensively than a military solution. If security is re-established in northern Uganda we understand that the population would prefer to return to the land rather than to decongestion camps as previously proposed by the Government of Uganda. These would only find favour if peace was not fully established.

25. Peace in northern Uganda would require the current aid budget to be diverted to development as people re-establish their livelihoods on the land. Aid would be needed for clean water, tools, seeds and re-establishing livestock on a well-watered and fertile part of Uganda that has the capacity to feed itself and export cash crops to the benefit of the whole of Uganda, which faces a population explosion.

26. Rivalry between the north which supports the opposition and the south would require the donor community to ensure that development aid is concentrated on building livelihoods in the north and not diverted for political favours in the south.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

27. During our visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), only two months before the delayed elections, we experienced a country, larger than Western Europe, with an ineffective Transitional Government. We spent two days in Kinshasa before flying east to Bukavu in South Kivu district. It was clear that the Transitional Government was unable to control large parts of the country, particularly the east, where militia groups still operate. DRC is host to the largest ever UN peacekeeping mission, MONUC, with a force of 17,000. Unfortunately, and despite some good efforts, MONUC has been plagued by accusations of improper conduct.

28. The DFID programme in the DRC has grown from £7 million in 2001-02 to £55 million with a projected increase to £70 million in 2007-08. DFID is now the largest bilateral donor in the DRC. Nearly half of the DFID programme is directed at humanitarian assistance, reflecting severe and ongoing needs in this sector. Most of the remainder of DFID funding currently goes on attempts to establish security, the rule of law, and a functioning state. Support for preparations for the July 2006 elections falls into the latter category. After the elections DFID is planning to produce a full Country Assistance Plan which will include more emphasis on post-conflict reconstruction and the management of natural resources.

29. The Government has announced its intention to develop a conflict policy and this report sets out many of the key issues which we think should be considered in the writing of this policy. Chapter Two looks at DFID's current policies and its approach towards conflict-prone and conflict-affected (CPCA) states. In Chapter Three we ask the question how can the UK Government make its development policies more conflict-sensitive and contribute towards sustainable peace in CPCA states? We are aware that no matter how conflict-sensitive the UK Government's policies, they will not have an impact unless they form part of a global effort. Coherence within the international community, including multilateral donors, is a prerequisite for successful peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction. This is the subject of Chapter Four. Chapter Five focuses on the role of the newly-formed UN Peacebuilding Commission.

1 Ev 151 (SaferWorld) Back

2 Jeffrey Sachs, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan To Achieve The Development Goals, 17 January 2005, pp 28-29. Back

3 A US magazine published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC Back

4 Lord Triesman, Democracy and Security in Africa, Speech at Chatham House, June 21, 2006. Back

5 Commission for Africa, Our Common Interest: Report of the Commission for Africa, March 2005, Chapter 5 Back

6 Ev 151 (Saferworld) Back

7 Memorandum submitted by Professor Robert Picciotto, printed in International Development Committee, Conflict and Development, HC 464- i, 15 March 2005. See also Collier, P and Hoffler, A , On Economic causes of civil war, Oxford Economic Papers 50:563-73, 1998. Back

8 Paul Collier, ibid. Back