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Memorandum submitted by Robert Picciotto, King's College, London[1]
The Department for International Development has been a policy pioneer at the intersection of security and development. But global insecurities have escalated and in order to deal with emerging threats to peace and prosperity, the United Kingdom should put human security at the top of its development cooperation agenda. This means adoption of coherent global poverty reduction policies that are also designed to tame direct violence, address its cultural antecedents and deal with its structural causes through: (i) new operational emphases; (ii) 'whole of government' country engagement strategies; (iii) global policy adjustments; and (iv) support for Millennium Security Goals.
Background The United Kingdom has provided strong leadership in the design of security and development policies. An explicit connection between conflict and poverty reduction was made in the 2000 White Paper (Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalization Work for the Poor). Detailed policy guidelines have been completed on small arms, security sector reform, conflict assessment and fragile states. Public service agreements (PSAs) provide incentives for "joined up" approaches between the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and DFID.
The new integrated Post Conflict Reconstruction Unit confirms a readiness to stress policy coherence in tackling evolving security and development challenges. The Global Conflict Prevention and Africa Conflict Prevention pools have provided further fillips to interdepartmental cooperation. They have encouraged creativity and innovation with special emphasis on reconciliation activities, involvement of NGOs, support to regional organizations and participation of UN agencies. For example, they have allowed funding of a peace-building framework for Sri Lanka; joint approaches to peace settlement in DRC and Burundi, conflict resolution in Sudan, Somalia and Uganda; capacity building programs directed to ECOWAS; etc. Partnership agreements have helped to leverage the UK contribution. .
Of course, inter-departmental cooperation does not always work smoothly. Re-packaging of "legacy" projects to access pool funds has been a problem. The perception that the pools are "pots of additional money" that can be tapped to pursue departmental objectives is not uncommon. There is still no comprehensive programming system for "joined up" country strategies. The "project by project" approach of the pools is not ideally adapted to the chronic and deep problems of conflict prevention and peace making. The schemes funded by the pools are small (GBP 6-7m on average) and up-scaling strategies are weak. The involvement of departments outside the inner circle of the 3 Ds (e.g. DTI, Home Affairs, etc.) is not automatic.
While considerable efforts have been devoted to the improvement of post conflict operations, the main weakness of the current DFID approach has to do with conflict prevention. This is not unusual: conflict prevention has been given short shrift in the aid programs of most development assistance agencies. To be sure, conflict assessment methodologies have been adopted to take account of security risks in country assistance plans. But, as previous witnesses have noted, their use has not be been systematic and, all too often, they have been treated as an 'add on' to country assistance plans geared to economic growth and improved access to social services.
The human security challenge Globalization has increased economic opportunities but it has also made the world less secure. Problems without passports (illicit trade, international terrorism, weapons proliferation, infectious diseases and environmental problems) have proliferated. Yet, aid priorities remain shaped by development doctrines that neglect downside risks and security threats. The development consensus is dominated by Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that do not address security issues even though the Millennium Declaration approved by all heads of state at the turn of the century highlighted them.
The primary responsibility for poverty reduction lies with developing countries. However, MDG8 (that deals with the obligations of rich countries to reduce global poverty) lacks specificity and progress towards a level playing field in the global economy has been halting. Nor has it been tracked with the same rigor as the poverty reduction goals and performance indicators that poor countries have undertaken to meet. This too is contributing to the asymmetries and insecurities of globalization.
Priority to economic growth and poverty reduction can be justified on security as well as development grounds: there is a strong statistical association between low levels of GDP per capita and violent conflict. Specifically, the risk of war is three times higher for countries with per capita incomes of $1,000 compared to countries with per capita incomes of $4,000. Equally, growth is inversely correlated with the risk of conflict: it is twice as high for a growth rate of -6% compared with a growth rate of +6%. However, the international community will not 'make poverty history' without 'making war history'.
A recent study identifies war and civil strife as the single most important factor that explains slow growth. It accounts for an income loss of about 40% while poor policies, slow reforms, democracy promotion, education and health attainments display limited or negligible effects. If economic growth matters to security, the quality of growth matters even more. Aid strategies dominated by growth considerations and insensitive to conflict have had unintended effects. Unwittingly, aid can inflame social tensions, increase horizontal inequalities and provide resources to rebel groups in conflict states.
Competent conflict assessments can minimize such risks. But 'doing no harm' is not enough. In this age of insecurity, development cooperation policies should also contribute positively to conflict prevention and management. This means that development cooperation should be reconsidered to (i) tame direct violence; (ii) tackle the culture within which it is embedded; and (iii) address its structural causes. A brief overview of these interrelated challenges follows.
Taming direct violence Taming violence in poor countries is a clear cut prerequisite of sustainable development. All nineteen major violent conflicts currently underway today are intra-state wars. They are extraordinarily destructive: civilians are its main victims - a million deaths in Rwanda; 2 million each in the Sudan and the DRC. Intra-state wars divide society, cripple investment, destroy savings, increase unemployment, induce refugee flows, spread disease and generate hunger and malnutrition.
While increased poverty is a direct consequence of violent conflict, poorly administered aid in conflict zones can do more harm than good. Studies of aid 'under fire' have shown that aid resources poorly deployed and inadequately controlled can generate social tensions and even facilitate repression when aid resources are captured or diverted by one of the warring factions. On the other hand, properly administered aid can enhance sound economic management and improve access to social services even in war circumstances.
Indeed, experience suggests that good policies can help sustain economic activities, protect government revenues and redirect social services to mitigate human suffering, even during hostilities. Therefore, it is not desirable to suspend development activities in conflict zones. Of course, development assistance needs to be managed with great care. Managing risks for peace is a better approach than the current practice of putting development activities in abeyance until conflicts have been resolved.
Thus, humanitarian organizations as well as development agencies should participate in conflict management and peacekeeping. But this raises delicate issues in the relationship between defence and development establishments. When they refuse to participate, development agencies forgo the opportunity to relieve the human costs of war to civilians. But when they join the effort, they risk abrogating the principles of impartiality and neutrality on which their credibility depends: most security agendas are heavily contested and politicized and the current trend is towards greater military oversight of development organizations in insecure environments.
At stake is the fundamental question of whether the integration of security and development serves one goal at the expense of the other. New protocols, new operating practices, and new institutional arrangements need to be forged to resolve the tension constructively and ensure that, at the very least aid retains its human security credentials and does no harm. Towards this end, mixed military-civilian intervention forces need to be created to avoid over-reliance on coercion in insurgency situations and to combine 'soft' and 'hard' power so as to win 'hearts and minds' in secured zones.
Given the above, a priority task for the newly established United Nations Peacebuilding Commission is the design of generally accepted norms for the participation of humanitarian agencies and international organizations in conflict management and peacekeeping. The lessons of experience (e.g. in Afghanistan and Sierra Leone) should be taken on board. In this context, the UK could play a useful role in pioneering and cataloguing more effective approaches to conflict management for adoption by the European Union and NATO.
Tackling the culture of violence A large number of non-governmental organizations focused on conflict management, mediation and resolution now operate in the developing world. They specialize in dialogue, facilitation and negotiation techniques successfully pioneered in domestic industrial disputes. Such work has had a good track record in de-legitimising the belief widely prevalent in fragile societies that violence is an acceptable way of resolving disputes. Accordingly, conflict sensitivity is often equated with aid funding for peace making activities managed by voluntary organizations.
But the beneficial impact of activities that address the culture of violence may be short lived without parallel creation of institutional capacity. Specifically, peace is not likely to be sustained unless a culture of peace becomes gradually embedded in domestic governance structures. This calls for the development of legitimate, well functioning and socially accepted institutional mechanisms for resolving conflict. Conflict sensitivity is not conflict avoidance: resolving social conflicts in a peaceful manner is the acid test of a functioning democracy.
Conversely, helping individuals and groups negotiate conflicting claims without resort to violence is a social learning process. This is why aid operations should work 'in' and 'on' conflict rather than simply 'around' conflict. But for violence to be forsaken as a routine means of dispute settlement, governments should be equipped to deploy their coercive means against improper uses of violence. Therefore, building the core capacities of the state to nurture individual safety, protect human rights and enforce the rule of law should be a central priority of development cooperation.
Accordingly, security system reform (aiming at effective security institutions operating under democratic control) should become a privileged objective of conflict sensitive development cooperation. Progress in this direction has been made but the time has come to mainstream security sector reform within Poverty Reduction Strategies and World Bank sponsored development assistance programs.
Addressing structural violence Next, it is necessary to deal with the structural antecedents of violence. This requires an understanding of the ways in which poverty causes violent conflict. A burgeoning policy research literature offers diverse explanations. They are not mutually exclusive: several of them may be at work simultaneously in individual country contexts: · Failures of the state: weakened states are conflict prone. They are vulnerable to civil strife; unable to deliver basic social services and cannot guarantee the human rights of their citizens. They also lack the institutions to resolve domestic conflict through peaceful means. · Horizontal inequality: social grievances may escalate into violent conflict due to worsening 'horizontal inequalities' or exclusion of ethnic or religious groups from economic opportunities. · The youth bulge: taking up arms may be perceived as a rational choice by disaffected young men in stagnant economies, especially where a youth bulge (i.e. a high population share within a 15-25 age bracket) prevails. · Green wars: population pressures on scarce land and water resources may exacerbate tensions among groups and lead to civil strife and violence. · Natural resource dependence: competition for access to natural resources (oil, mining, timber, diamonds, etc.) may contribute to conflict while illicit resource extraction provides warlords with resources to purchase arms and recruit combatants. · Conflict spillover: violence is rarely contained within borders given ethnic solidarity, large scale displacement of populations, economically motivated military incursions by neighbours and the growing influence of international criminal and terrorist networks.
To address the root causes of violent conflict, UK policies should heed the above risks and: (i) give greater weight to human security in its operational emphases; (ii) address the full range of policy instruments (aid and beyond) in country engagement strategies; and (iii) advocate coherent adjustments in global policies in support of human security.
New operational emphases Standard human development strategies have downplayed downside risks. While the Washington consensus no longer occupies the commanding heights of development policy, blueprint approaches remain influential whereas the policy research literature confirms that tailor-made, conflict-sensitive country strategies are critical to address structural obstacles to human security. Eight policy directions are of special significance: · Poverty reduction strategies should give more weight to social safety nets, social protection arrangements and the reduction of horizontal inequalities. · Human resource policies should be designed to accelerate the demographic transition (girls' education, women's rights, etc.) and to promote youth employment (small and medium enterprises, job training, social funds and community-based initiatives). · Food security: agricultural and rural development need more support since the share of food emergencies attributable to human causes (violent conflict, sub-standard economic performance) has doubled over the past two decades. · Access to education: displaced populations, refugees, and disabled people are especially at risk of reaching adulthood without learning to read and write; gender inequality is another major development constraint: 60 percent of out-of-school children are girls. So is literacy: in the least developed countries, almost half the adults are illiterate. · Access to health services: traditional diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera, and malaria have spread while devastating new threats have emerged, including HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, etc. · Sound natural resource management: Competition over scarce natural resources fuels discord especially when the structure of ownership is skewed, rights to land are contested, and the claimants belong to different ethnic groups. · Effective public expenditures management: Development cooperation should ensure that the taxes and royalties derived from natural resource extraction are effectively used for development: paradoxically, abundant natural resources in fragile states can be a curse where the proceeds derived from their extraction are diverted to enrich corrupt elites and local communities bear the costs of environmental damage and social disruption. · Natural disaster prevention is an integral part of the human security agenda. Lack of adequate responses to natural disasters can lead to violent conflict. Adaptive capacity must be built to reduce the human cost of disasters.
'Whole of government' country strategies The advent of policy coherence for development (PCD) reflects disappointment with country engagement strategies exclusively reliant on aid. Given globalization, aid is no longer enough: non aid policies must also be harnessed. Developing countries' exports generate 26 times more revenue per capita than aid. Remittances from migrants ($117 billion in 2003) are 70% larger than aid flows and growing rapidly. Direct foreign investment in developing countries stands at USD 233 billion (2004) almost three times the estimated aid flows (USD 80 billion).
This means first and foremost that country engagement strategies currently focused on aid should be made comprehensive and address all policy areas on a 'whole of government' basis. The development footprint of UK engagement with developing countries would be much improved if all policy instruments were coherently deployed to achieve human security and poverty reduction.
Second, aid gains increased leverage for development when deliberately focused on improving the development footprint of non aid policies. Thus, aid geared towards trade facilitation, improved development impact of migrants' remittances, corporate social responsibility (environmentally and socially sustainable FDI); extractive industry revenue management, etc. would yield larger security benefits than aid targeted towards targeted poverty reduction projects, especially if they have little chance of being up-scaled.
Third, development cooperation can be used intentionally for peace. In conflict prone situations, well managed aid may reduce social tension by influencing the behaviour of authorities, protecting human rights, strengthening the position of peace advocates, improving general socio-economic conditions and reforming security institutions. Conversely, used judiciously, a threat of aid suspension by all major donors acting in concert may be a useful disincentive to repression and violence.
Fourth, the aid allocation system urgently needs reform so that it does not short-change fragile states. Current aid allocation protocols in the development community have created 'aid darlings' and 'aid orphans'. The assumptions on which they are based have been discredited. Recent policy research shows that: (i) aid gives better results in the most vulnerable countries, (ii) conflict prevention benefits can be very large; (iii) directing aid to good performers (as measured by such indicators as the CPIA) does not improve aid effectiveness.
Adjusting global policies At the global level, policies need to be adjusted so as to make the world safer and more prosperous: global problems require global solutions. Since the 1990s, illicit trade has boomed. Greatly strengthened international cooperation is needed in law making, enforcement, policing, and intelligence gathering. In this as other human security areas, policy coherence within and across governments, the private sector and the civil society are essential, as is the direct involvement of citizens.
Furthermore, serious efforts towards making the global market a level playing field (and strengthening MDG8) would help alleviate the intense economic and social pressures that developing countries must contend with in their quest for peace, prosperity, and equity:
· Aid reform: OECD aid, a privileged tool of poverty reduction, needs to grow but it must also be reformed. A large share of aid has been misdirected, fragmented, and burdened by prohibitive transaction costs. About half the volume of aid is saddled with rules on reserved procurement that sharply reduce its value. · Trade reform is critical. Rich countries impose trade restrictions on poor countries that are much more serious than those they impose on each other. Average tariffs on agricultural commodities are twice as high as those on manufactures. Tariff peaks are imposed on labour-intensive products that poor countries can produce competitively. Non-tariff barriers and onerous rules of origin almost double the protection afforded to rich countries' producers. Rich countries' agricultural subsidies support uneconomic production of food commodities that developing countries can produce at a fraction of the cost. · The global financial architecture should be strengthened to avoid financial crises that are especially cruel to the poor. Changes are also needed in intellectual property rights rules so that are more development friendly. · Migration policies need review. Greater labour mobility would generate a much wider dispersion of the gains from international economic exchange. Coherent policies regarding labour mobility, family reunification, brain drain, brain gain, and remittances need to be agreed among OECD countries. More international cooperation and policy harmonization would help to combat illegal human trafficking and deal humanely with refugees and internally displaced people. · Rich countries bear a special responsibility for protecting the global commons. Evidence of global warming-an existential threat- is accumulating. Fisheries, biodiversity and other environmental resources require enhanced protection. · Corporate social responsibility needs to be encouraged. Foreign direct investment yields limited benefits to host countries when associated with corrupt use of royalties, limited links to the local economy, negative environmental impacts, and deleterious social consequences for local communities. · Trade in arms and weapons should be regulated. As recommended by the Commission for Africa, key priorities for the international community are to reduce the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, by filling gaps in current control agreements, and carrying out independent verification of the implementation of existing and future agreements
Towards Millennium Security Goals Freedom from fear, freedom from want and freedom to live in dignity must be pursued together to achieve policy coherence for development. Security and development policies need to converge because current threats to international stability demand it. First, intra-state warfare at the periphery has supplanted the ideological confrontation between East and West. Second, the growing interconnectedness of nations has led to the globalization of violence. Third, a proliferation of frail and failed states is causing international insecurity.
Neither security nor development can be secured by focusing development cooperation on states that perform well while neglecting the special needs of those that are fragile. The increased role of non-state actors, the emergence of asymmetric warfare and the strategic risks posed by state fragility mean that development must be designed so that it enhances security. Conversely, development priorities must now extend beyond global economic integration, if only because the spread of intra-state violence associated with state failure hinders global poverty reduction.
The Millennium Development Goals have been a very valuable asset for the international community. However, they do not respond adequately to the legitimate security aspirations that are expressed by people worldwide-even though the Millennium Declaration in which they are embedded advocated action against international terrorism, organized crime, and traffic in small arms and light weapons. Such a broad conception ought to be translated into agreed security goals for the international community.
The report of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change opens up an opportunity to bridge the divide between security and development concerns. It is time to broaden the policy coherence for development initiative to include Millennium Security Goals. Some would argue that the Millennium Development Goals should be achieved first. But given the heavy weight of conflict-prone states among least developed countries, and considering the vast waste of resources currently taking place in the security arena, it seems illogical not to seek agreement on Millennium Security Goals (MSGs).
The MSGs should be grounded in people's-and especially poor people's-own interpretation of their vulnerabilities; a human security orientation would provide a useful test of relevance for state-centred approaches to collective security. A useful first step towards a human security consensus would be to prioritize the 101 recommendations of the UN High-level Panel and translate them into action. These recommendations are consistent with the Millennium Declaration and they complement the Millennium Development Goals. If agreed by member country governments, they would contribute to the construction of comprehensive system of collective security, with capable and responsible states as its lynchpin.
The eight major security goals embedded in the High-level Panel report are: (i) Reduce the number, length, and intensity of conflicts between and within states. (ii) Reduce the number and severity of terrorist attacks. (iii) Reduce the number of refugees and displaced persons. (iv) Regulate the arms trade. (v) Reduce the extent and severity of core human rights violations. (vi) Protect civilians and reduce women's and children's participation and victimization in war. (vii) Reverse weapons proliferation and achieve progress towards nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological disarmament. (viii) Combat trans-national crime and illegal trafficking.
To achieve human security, endorsement of these goals and of related progress indicators would have to be backed by agreements to enforce effective sanctions to protect human security; to prevent genocide; to authorize the use of force based on explicit criteria; to strengthen peace enforcement, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding; to protect civilians; to accelerate reform the United Nations; and to strengthen regional organizations so that they can help meet the challenges of human security. The United Kingdom has the intellectual assets, the experience and the credibility to promote such goals in the international community.
References Duffield, Mark, 2001, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security, London: Zed Books Ltd. Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko, forthcoming, 'International Cooperation for Human Security: A Coherent Agenda for Development and Conflict Prevention' in Kokuren Kenkyu Journal, Tokyo, Japan. Galtung, J. (1969), 'Violence, Peace, and Peace Research', Journal of Peace Research, vol. 6 no. 3: 167-191 Roodman, David, 2004a, The Anarchy of Numbers: Aid, Development and Cross-country Empirics.CGD Working Paper 32. July. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development United Nations, 2000, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations. New York: United Nations. <http://www.un.org/peace/reports/peace_operations/docs> ________, 2003, Human Security Now: Protecting and Empowering People. Report of the Commission on Human Security. New York: United Nations. ________, 2004, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility. Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change. New York: United Nations, A/59/565, 2 December 2004. <http://www.un.org/secureworld/report2.pdf>
[1] This submission draws on a forthcoming book ('Global Development and Human Security', to be published by Transaction). While the review was commissioned by the Expert Group on Development Issues of Sweden's Ministry for Foreign Affairs it does not seek to convey Swedish Government views. |