Memorandum submitted by International
Alert
Key points:
- Although it is a laudable goal,
poverty reduction per se is the wrong primary objective
in conflict-prone and conflict-affected states. In these contexts,
the simple pursuit of poverty reduction targets can be destabilising
and is often self-defeating.
- Peace-building needs to be the number
one priority for all assistance in conflict contexts. This requires
the elaboration of a coherent and context-specific over-arching
strategic framework that guides engagement in conflict prone/affected
countries.
- This primary focus on peace, and
on how to lay the proper foundations for long-term stability and
development, will demand significant behaviour change within the
International Community. This must go beyond technical measures,
such as adding a "conflict prevention" component to
an already-formulated strategy.
- Much more attention needs to be
given to understanding the implications that the existence or
threat of widespread violence has for external actors in conflict
settings. Realities on the ground require fundamentally different
techniques and channels of assistance.
- The UK should provide the lead in
ensuring that there is the will, knowledge and capacity to prevent
violent conflict. Given the thousands of deaths and widespread
suffering that continue to result from conflict, it shares the
responsibility to ensure that peace is built more effectively.
The context
- The current international aid framework
is overwhelmingly focussed on poverty reduction. Development is
conceived largely in terms of economic progress and is measured
in terms of statistical targets. This is epitomised by the Millennium
Development Goals which set targets on reducing poverty and hunger,
protecting the environment, improving health and sanitation and
tackling illiteracy and discrimination against women. DFID's strategic
aim for its disbursement of UK development assistance is the halving
of world poverty by 2015.
- Yet assistance[64]
very often takes place in extremely unstable environments, many
of which are characterised by the continuation or threat of widespread
violence and a total absence of trust among sections of society
and/or between society and its government. Moreover, where violent
conflict exists, it is rarely the traditional type in which the
professional armies of sovereign states confront each other. It
is, rather, driven and prolonged by a myriad of factors where
motives, interests and fighting forces span borders and connect
into international flows (both legal and illegal) of finance,
arms and commodities.
- It needs to be more fully recognised that multi-billion
pound flows of development assistance are highly political. They
have, in themselves, profound impacts on societal relations and
wealth distribution in the countries that they are intended to
help. Aid, like diamonds, involves the introduction of a valuable
commodity into weakly governed environment, and so depending on
who benefits and who does not, it can inadvertently fuel existing
conflicts or be factor driving (renewed) outbreaks of violence.
- Assistance can be undermined by competing, incoherent
and even contradictory strategies and activities. In determining
how to provide assistance, for example, the straight-forward poverty
reduction objectives of donors may not be coherent with a declared
intention to focus on state-building. Moreover, national security
interests (notably prominent in the "War on Terror")
and declared commitments to human rights can complicate the picture
further.
- Fundamental changes are needed to the policy
frameworks and geographic strategies that determine the way assistance
is conceived, offered and given by national governments as well
as international organisations.
Changing the development paradigm
- In conflict prone and conflict affected
contexts, assistance often remains, despite some recent UK initiatives,
alarmingly detached from realities on the ground. In these settings,
the objective of all assistance must become, first and foremost,
the laying of the foundations of long-term peace and stability.
- Our central message, therefore, is that the UK
should lead on international efforts to change the way assistance
is planned and implemented. Peace-building must be made the highest
overarching priority, squarely placed at the centre of all international
engagement. This has implications for the design of macro international
frameworks as well as regional and country assistance strategies
comprising a range of programmes and projects. Within donor governments
and multilateral organisations, it requires, within and across
departments, a much fuller understanding of what peace-building
involves and how to engage in it effectively over the short, medium
and long term.
- Some progress has already been made to strengthen
the UK's ability to prevent the outbreak and recurrence of violent
conflict. The Conflict Prevention Pools show a willingness to
share funding between government departments; cross-Whitehall
committees exist to try to co-ordinate strategies; a Post-conflict
Reconstruction Unit has been set up; and "conflict-sensitivity"
has begun to feature in policy discourse. At the local level,
peace-building tools have begun to be used, such as Do No Harm
criteria and Peace and Conflict Impact Assessments.
- It remains vital, however, to make more and faster
progress towards a strategic peace-building framework within which
international actors would operate to prevent the outbreak and
recurrence of violent conflict in any given context. Governments,
and the parliamentarians that oversee them, must ensure that all
activities undertaken in that setting adhere to a defined, coherent
and integrated strategy. It is essential, also, to harness the
strengths and energies of the private sector and civil society
to the same purpose. Great care is also needed to ensure that
efforts to counter terrorism and organised crime do not undermine
the long-range objectives.
Macro-level policy frameworks
The Millennium Development Goals
- In 2000, the members and agencies
of the United Nations system committed themselves to meeting eight
Millennium Goals by 2015. At the 2005 Millennium Review Summit,
a massive increase in funding was agreed in order to propel further
efforts towards meeting those targets. Although laudable, such
commitments have no chance of being met unless violent conflict
is more effectively prevented.
- Where conflict exists or re-emerges, it has obvious
and profound impacts on efforts to provide development assistance.
Just as importantly and lesser known, though, are the significant
negative effects that the pursuit of the generic, externally defined
MDG targets can have on conflict dynamics. Poverty reduction activities
per se are
often inappropriate or even damaging in such contexts. Yet this
international policy framework, and a lack of political will and
funding to change the overarching approach, creates perverse incentives
to continue with the wrong priorities.
- The example of education is revealing. Billions
of dollars are aimed at increasing the absolute numbers of children
in primary education, irrespective of the flaws, faults, biases
and prejudices that may be inherent in the existing systems. Yet,
for long-term progress, the prevailing strategy needs to target
better
education. In conflict-prone or affected contexts, this generally
means paying far greater attention to education that does not
impose religio-cultural or linguistic domination over oppressed
minorities. Too often, the curriculum perpetuates a historical
interpretation designed primarily to reinforce the power and assumptions
of the dominant elite. Too often education systems reserve teaching
and curriculum-development positions for the ethnic group that
benefited from the inequalities and prejudices of the system when
they were themselves students.
Aid effectiveness objectives in Fragile States
- All development assistance efforts
are stated to be guided by principles of donor harmonisation,
alignment with partner country priorities and orientation to development
results. The 2005 European Consensus on Development[65],
for example, states that "the EU will support partner country's
poverty reduction, development and reform strategies, which focus
on the MDG, and will align with partner countries' systems and
procedures."
- The reality suggests that quite a different approach
is required in between 40 and 50 of the world's states, dubbed
as being "fragile". Drawing on World Bank statistics,
a recent DFID paper, for example, indicated the scale of the problem.
It suggested that 46 states, containing 870 million people or
14% of the world's population, are "fragile - countries where
the government cannot or will not deliver core functions to the
majority of its people, including the poor.[66]
"
- Driven by DFID's Policy Division and the World
Bank LICUS unit, the DAC Draft
Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States
recognise this challenge. They stress that international engagement
in "state-building" should maintain a tight focus on
improving governance and capacity in the most basic security,
justice, economic and service delivery functions. They also emphasise
that, where alignment behind government-led strategies is not
possible due to particularly weak governance, international actors
should nevertheless consult with a range of national stakeholders
in the partner country. They aim to establish a long-term, and
sensible, objective to increase a state's capacities to provide
basic services to its people.
- In these contexts, however, efforts to meet "state-building"
and "alignment" objectives may be inappropriate and
even counter-productive. The vast majority of "fragile states"
are either conflict-prone or conflict affected. They are also
often characterised, to varying degrees, by unjust power structures,
economic domination of an 'ethnic' or religious elite, or the
exclusion and oppression of marginalised peoples. In these states,
the poor often have no voice and no influence over decision-making
and the use of national revenues and receipts. In other words,
where government authorities are not prepared to make a political
commitment to genuinely develop and implement pro-poor policies,
the state (which is the "partner" in standard approaches
to development) becomes part of the problem.
- It is essential that the UK provides the lead
amongst donors and within the EU and IFIs to adapt assistance
to these types of more challenging situations. Stability in state-to-state
relations in the short term is no substitute for a long-term strategy
to help transform the inequitable structures of power and wealth
within society that can make it vulnerable to conflict.
National strategies
- At a national level, Poverty Reduction
Strategy Papers are regarded as being the framework in which development
assistance should be provided because they are the product of
the IMF and World Bank's negotiations with national authorities
and stakeholders. As the name shows, the focus is squarely on
poverty reduction. The 2005 Millennium Project called for all
such strategies to be MDG-based.
- The problem with this approach in conflict-prone
and conflict-affected settings is two-fold. Firstly, as with the
international MDG-based framework, the primary focus on poverty
is misguided. Currently, at best, issues of peace and security
and of governance are understood as merely one component of the
"strategy". Secondly, the consultations that take place
to define these strategy papers are too narrow. Very rarely do
the PRSP consultations actually manage to consult with the range
of societal groups required in order truly to get a sense of national
needs and concerns. All too often, the poorest remain marginalised,
without access to (or even interest in) these processes. Such
development strategies at the national level are exposed, therefore,
not only to the risks of targeting only the most accessible sections
of the population (and raising their expectations) but also of
perpetuating domination by a political and business elite.
- Likewise, where development assistance focuses
too quickly on supporting elections and a loosely defined idea
of "democracy", it is likely to be ineffective, at best.
At worst, such approaches fuel instability and violence. Though
democracy is a political system that strives to deal peacefully
with conflicting interests in society, democratisation processes
can themselves have a negative impact on dynamics of conflict
and peace. Early multi-party elections in a post-conflict situation
and in weak states, for example, can drive conflict, due to the
risk of premature closure of the democratisation process and entrenchment
of existing power structures. There is plenty of evidence to suggest
that too much attention is often placed on particular democratic
political structures, rather than on key norms and principles
of democracy. Too little attention is paid to the time necessary
for democracy to "bed down".
- Similar issues arise in respect of economic models
used by external actors in their development activities. At the
macro level, the impact of economic reform packages, such as privatisation,
can destabilise peacebuilding efforts. At the micro-level, although
a moderate but sustainable livelihood may be a largely universal
value, introducing the type of capitalist economics that is the
foundation of micro-credit into communal or essentially socialist
societies risks dangerously fuelling tensions in potentially violent
and destructive ways.
- The bottom line is that external actors must
really know and understand the context in which they are working.
On the one hand, the actions of external actors of all types challenge
existing power structures and impact on societal relations at
multiple and overlapping levels. On the other, the democratic
and economic processes that they trigger are themselves shaped
by an array of context-specific factors which are linked to formal
and actual power structures as well as societal relations, cultures
and values. The importance of a thorough analysis of the conflict
(including its power structures and relations, formal as well
as actual) cannot, therefore, be emphasised enough.
- Conflict sensitivity
- In partial recognition of some of these challenges,
conflict sensitivity has emerged as a conceptual and methodological
counter. The growing awareness, at least at a project level, that
development assistance can itself create or exacerbate conflict,
has led to a proliferation of tools and methodologies such as
Do No Harm, Peace and Conflict Impact Assessments (PCIA) and more
recently, the broader conflict sensitivity agenda. Although the
increasingly widespread adoption of the principles of conflict
sensitivity and its expansion beyond traditional development projects
into the wider domain of development assistance should be welcomed,
there is a danger that it too is becoming distorted and misunderstood
as a result of this overwhelming focus on poverty reduction. Conflict
sensitivity risks being perceived as a means of continuing with
the same fundamental objectives, effectively 'engineering' development
space', rather than as a means of rethinking the nature and objectives
of development in conflict-prone or affected regions. The fate
of Do No Harm is instructive. While Do No Harm has served an important
function in raising awareness about the unintended negative consequences
of humanitarian and emergency assistance, it has not been understood
as a means of contributing to the overall peace-building imperatives.
In this sense, its original intentions have been effectively hijacked
and undermined by the donor community. The UK should take the
lead in ensuring that the same will not be said of conflict sensitivity.
- This is particularly important as the concept
of conflict sensitivity spreads beyond the traditional development
community to encompass, amongst others, the role of the private
sector. In the absence of more thorough understandings of the
contexts in which investment takes place, companies can inadvertently
fuel or exacerbate structural causes of conflict - through the
range of their business activities. Thus, greater awareness on
the part of UK companies investing in fragile states should be
promoted - ensuring that they build conflict risk and impact assessments
into due diligence procedures. This is the subject of increasing
NGO attention with tools and methodologies now widely available
(see, for example, International Alert's 'Conflict-Sensitive Business
Practice: guidance for the extractive industry). At present, however,
the UK government's engagement with industry on this issue is
limited - despite the lead and promise shown through the Voluntary
Principles on Security and Human Rights and Extractive Industries
Transparency Initiative - both remain underfunded and broader
dialogue and follow-up with UK companies to capitalise on progress
made, and to engage relevant HMG departments, is lacking.
- Meanwhile, development policy interventions in
the economies of fragile states remain to a large extent conflict-blind.
Although progress has been made to prioritise better natural resource
governance in fragile states, promotion of privatisation and macro
level economic reforms, and support to local private sectors,
fails to understand the complex links that business and conflict
can have. Competition for access to economic opportunities can
mirror conflict lines, business elites can have interests that
threaten peace and stability, and at the macro level, the impact
of economic reform packages can destabilise peacebuilding efforts.
At the same time, the local private sector in conflict-affected
countries can have a positive role to play in reconstruction,
confidence-building, and peace advocacy. The UK should take the
lead internationally in developing higher levels of conflict awareness
and conflict-sensitivity best practice in this area.
-
- Recommendations
- There is no question that progress towards greater
equity and better governance needs to be driven from within
that society. Yet the primary focus of international actors (whether
bilateral or multilateral) must be to support actions at the local
and national level that act to reconcile communities and establish
principles of accountability and responsiveness between those
that govern and the people they serve. For the UK Government,
this means leading international efforts to:
Establish peace-building as the primary focus
of all assistance in conflict-prone and conflict-affected contexts
- International engagement in these
contexts must be guided by an overriding commitment and priority
to laying the foundations of peace and stability.
Elaborate and adhere to a strategic framework
for peace-building
- For all activities in conflict-prone
and conflict affected societies, Parliament and Government must
demand that all relevant ministries (for the UK, primarily the
FCO, DFID and MOD) adhere to a joint and coherent peace-building
strategy. This needs to be informed by a contextual analysis conducted
upstream of the delivery of assistance, with all programmes
and projects implemented within this overarching strategic framework.
Monitor and evaluation on an ongoing basis how
well institutions and officials adhere to this process
- A baseline study, the establishment
of organisational indicators and the systematic rigorous monitoring
and evaluation of those indicators against the baseline will help
organisations measure their progress on integrating conflict analysis
and other aspects of conflict into their procedures. A training
programme implemented across government and encouraged among international
partners will help increase the necessary skills of staff in capital
and in the field.
Widen involvement in peace-building:
- The conflict-sensitivity concept
and best practices need to be taken beyond the level of individual
development projects and applied in other sectors and spheres
of activity. These include the private sector where greater awareness
on the part of companies investing in conflict-prone and conflict-affected
states should be promoted - ensuring that they, and the project
finance institutions that support them, build conflict risk and
impact assessments into due diligence procedures. The UK should
take the lead internationally in harnessing positive roles that
the local private sector can have to play in economic recovery
and growth, confidence-building, and peace advocacy.
-
- January 2006
64 Assistance is taken to
include activities in and across the development, foreign affairs
and defence spheres. It may also involve certain parts of finance,
interior and trade ministries as well as export credit agencies. Back
65
The European Consensus on Development is a joint statement agreed
by European Council and the Representatives of the governments
of Member States meeting within the council, the European Parliament
and the Commission. Back
66
Why we need to work more effectively in Fragile States (2005). Back
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