Memorandum submitted by UNDP
1. HOW CAN
THE UK MAKE
ITS POLICIES
MORE CONFLICT-SENSITIVE?
1. UNDP has been supporting the design and
implementation of development planning frameworks and programs
in a manner that does not further exacerbate conflict and helps
alleviate existing tensions: in other words, "mainstreaming"
conflict prevention, which includes both heightening conflict-sensitivity
and injecting specific conflict prevention/transformation elements
into development programs. Efforts at mainstreaming conflict prevention
into development programming have been undertaken globally, as
well as at the country level, on the basis of the UNDP-wide approach
to conflict analysis that was piloted in 2002-03 and culminated
with the development of the Conflict-related Development Analysis
(CDA).
2. The CDA has been integrated into the
post-conflict needs assessment methodology (PCNA), which has been
jointly applied with the World Bank in various countries, such
as Sudan, Somalia and Haiti. PCNA processes are nationally led
processes that have helped national stakeholders understand the
causes and implications of conflict as well as agree on joint
priorities for peacebuilding.
3. The CDA has been applied in various national
contexts. While some of the analytical processes primarily focused
on program review, others involved a broader participatory and
consensus-building process. For instance, in Nigeria, UNDP, the
UK, the World Bank and USAID undertook a multi-stakeholder conflict
analysis and strategic planning exercise with the government of
Nigeria. In Indonesia, in partnership with the government, DFID
and local research organizations, UNDP initiated a Peace and Development
Analysis (PDA) in three provinces of Indonesia in order to identify
common priorities for future programming. The PDA also provided
a critical forum for multi-stakeholder dialogue (especially between
government and civil society), in settings traditionally characterised
by polarisation and distrust.
4. Experience has showed that a multi-stakeholder
and joint approach (eg, with government, civil society, key donors,
etc) to conflict sensitive approaches has served to improve coherence
and coordination between agency strategies and actual interventions.
In this sense, UNDP's approach to conflict analysis has therefore
proved a critical entry point to build and/or strengthen partnerships.
5. UNDP has also learned that successful
"mainstreaming" of conflict prevention takes places
when conflict prevention/analysis forms part of the regular tools
and approaches for program and strategy development. Strategic
entry points include: the Common Country Assessment (CCA), the
United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF), the National
Human Development Reports (NHDR), Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers
(PRSP), MDGs and national planning frameworks.
6. UNDP encourages the UK to actively participate
in future joint country analysis and post-conflict joint needs
assessments. As was done in Nigeria and Indonesia, UNDP hopes
that the UK will continue promoting multi-stakeholder conflict
analysis and strategic planning with key national partners.
2. HOW CAN
THE UK IMPROVE
ITS PEACEBUILDING
AND POST-CONFLICT
RECONSTRUCTION POLICIES?
How to approach peacebuilding
7. The link between sustainable development
and peace-building is increasingly recognized as vital, given
the prerequisites for lasting peace rooted in longer-term issues
such as social reconciliation, institutional development and economic
recovery. In his 2005 report, "In Larger Freedom", the
United Nations Secretary-General articulated a vision of peacebuilding
focusing on the interlinkages between development, security and
human rights. Reflecting this vision, development partners are
increasingly looking for ways to ensure that development assistance
strengthens these foundations.
8. Definitions of what constitutes peacebuilding
vary. The Brahimi report of 2000[147]
asserts that while peacekeepers work to maintain a secure local
environment, peacebuilders work to make that environment sustainable.
In current UN practice, peace building is primarily defined by
a range of activities, from DDR to paying the salaries of transitional
governments to support for "truth and reconciliation commissions,"
that build on, and extend, peace-making or peace-keeping to consolidate
peace and security, address root causes of conflict, and establish
the basis for longer-term improvements in human well-being, economic
conditions and effective state institutions.
9. UNDP has learned that providing effective
peacebuilding support requires a holistic and integrated strategy
which recognizes the interdependence between a range of political,
security, humanitarian, social and developmental processes, and
provides a framework for prioritizing potential thematic sectors
and levels of interventions over the short and longer-term. UNDP
encourages key development partners, including the UK, to approach
peacebuilding in a similar fashion. While there is no standard
prescription for peacebuilding, from UNDP's perspective, relevant
areas include justice and reconciliation, governance and participation,
social and economic wellbeing, and security and public order.
UNDP's decades of experience working in crisis and post-crisis
settings however has shown that peacebuilding cannot be understood
as the sum of these components, but rather as an integrated strategy
requiring careful sequencing and targeting of activities on the
basis of a shared vision of peacebuilding objectives and the underlying
causes of the conflict. Therefore, for UNDP, peacebuilding can
be described as an approach applied to a range of activities and
development initiatives.
10. UNDP encourages the UK to support comprehensive
national peacebuilding strategies that (1) are nationally owned,
that (2) prioritise sectoral activities in a conflict sensitive
manner and that (3) ensure sustainable and resilient capacity-building
institutional processes.
Ensuring sustainable post-conflict reconstruction
11. Drawing from its extensive country experience,
UNDP recommends further attention at a number of key areas that
are instrumental in making peacebuilding work:
(a) Including a conflict sensitive/prevention
lens in programmes to reduce the risk of relapse into violent
conflict over the short to medium term.
(b) Translating international support into
sustainable national capacities for peace.
(c) Supporting the emergence of national
stakeholders in highly divided post conflict societies where,
in many cases, institutional corruption is high and civil society
weak.
(d) Creating basic tools for economic and
political governance that are conflict sensitive and that can
enable national institutions to function in a sustainable manner
over the long-term.
12. The issue of economic and political
governance in the aftermath of prolonged violent conflict remains
one of the most serious challenges of development. Some countries
have emerged from prolonged conflict and succeeded within a few
years to position themselves on a reasonably robust development
trajectory.[148]
Others, perhaps a larger number have had great difficulty jumpstarting
the economy. For example, Sierra Leone, a once viable economy,
is still largely dependent on international assistance after the
expenditure of nearly three billion dollars in six years of UN
peacekeeping. Haiti presents another example. Instability fuelled
in part by a failure to catalyze economic recovery has meant that
over the past ten years the international community has been called
in ten times to assist in peace-keeping operations. While a degree
of political stability seems to have been achieved in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Timor Leste and Kosovo, they have not yet successfully established
themselves as viable self-sustaining economies.
13. It is now widely recognised that countries
recovering from violent conflict urgently need to mobilise domestic
and external financial resources for relief, recovery and economic
reconstruction in the face of exceptional constraints. Often critically
short of almost all expertise, newly established authorities have
to deal simultaneously with preserving peace and stability, rehabilitating
essential infrastructure, reforming public institutions, jump-starting
the economy, creating employment opportunities, and eliciting
or restoring private investors' confidence.
14. Experience has showed that success will
depend on an appropriate overall strategy that recognizes the
distinct but overlapping phases of post conflict transition, provides
for the continuing transfer of effective decision making to national
actors, and ensures effective coordination among the external
players. The relative abundance of external resources carries
a risk of eliciting dependency that must be resolutely resisted.
Indeed, perhaps the highest service that international assistance
can provide to a post conflict country is to help reconstitute
national capacities as quickly as possible.[149]
This process of capacity building should begin as early as possible
and certainly once it seems that hostilities are likely to end.
Several concrete steps can be taken to ensure that a viable decision-making
framework for sustained economic recovery measures emerges. UNDP
encourages the UK to take the following components into account
when designing post-conflict recovery policies.
15. Supporting National Dialogue Processes:
Irrespective of the genesis of a conflict, an immediate challenge
within a post-conflict situation is to create the space for, and
to facilitate, a process of national dialogue.[150]
The challenge is to build consensus on the parameters of a new
system of governance,[151]
either through a new constitution or through a broader agreement
than an initial pact or a truce among the warring parties. Such
a process can take many forms, both modern and traditional. South
Africa's national constitutional dialogue and the Afghan constitutional
loya jirga that led to the first elected government in decades
are good examples.
16. Letting National Actors Lead, Even
in the Short Term: While a "national constituting process"
is being facilitated, national actors should play a central role
and lead where feasible, even the short-to-medium-term "needs
assessments" and transition plans that lead to donor pledging
conferences.
17. Supporting "Facilitation"
Skills: The reality of drawn out violence is the protagonists
acquire a tendency to address issues in an aggressive, exclusionary,
and authoritarian manner. It would be unrealistic to expect them
to abandon these tendencies immediately after a conflict ends.
Accordingly, former antagonists have to learn new process skills:
negotiation, mediation, reaching consensus. The success of South
Africa's Mont Fleurs scenario exercise in the early 1990s, of
the national dialogue processes in Panama and Guatemala in Latin
America, and the recent efforts among participants in the Burundi
peace process to reacquire skills of constructive engagement provide
pointers towards addressing this gap.
18. Supporting innovative dispute resolution
mechanisms: The erosion of skills for constructive mutual
engagement also applies to society at large. Given residual tensions,
post-conflict countries require, at all levels, an infrastructure
of mechanisms, systems and processes for the resolution of day-to-day
disputes before violent conflict re-emerges. Appropriately equipped,
religious and civic leaders, local authorities, and traditional
leaders can all play constructive roles in creating a resilient
environment for the peaceful settlement of disputes and longer-term
reconciliation.
19. Supporting skills for planning and
economic management: The importance of competency in economic
policy design, management and implementation is also obvious.
The "donor coordination office" in Afghanistan in the
immediate post-conflict period is an example of such support.
Created under the leadership of the transitional authorities,
and staffed by qualified international and national professionals
(including from the Diaspora because of the specific circumstances
of Afghanistan) and led by a national, this office established
implementation benchmarks for short-term assistance and fostered
the acquisition of the required capacity by other departments.
It also harmonized guidelines for the submission of requests,
and reporting on implementation, among donors. As a start in other
post-conflict countries, such an entity could constitute the core
of an autonomous, national policy planning and implementation
capacity once the international presence is drawn down.
3. WHERE DOES
THE UK FIT
IN WITH
A "GLOBAL"
PEACEBUILDING EFFORT?
The United Nations peacebuilding reforms
20. The Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) could
play an important role in ensuring that peace-building strategies
are comprehensive and include a long-term perspective, especially
in the context of peace missions, whose short term mandates vary
from six to 12 months. The PBC could also advocate for more predictable
and consistent funding, aligned with the timeline of longer-term
peacebuilding strategies (five to 10 years). Since the UK is a
member of the PBC, it can play a key role in promoting the importance
of long-term comprehensive national strategies and the need to
sustain the attention of the international community on the countries
considered by the PBC.
21. The Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO)
should play the role of a convener and facilitator for coordinated
UN planning in support of integrated peacebuilding strategies.
The leadership around the definition of strategic priorities and
options should be country based. The coordination role for the
design and implementation of such comprehensive national peacebuilding
strategies should lie with the UN representative in the field,
either the Special Representative of the Secretary General if
a peacekeeping mission has been deployed in the country, or the
United Nations Resident Coordinator in the rest of the cases.
The PBSO should be staffed with expert planners and process facilitators
who can assist in the consolidation of inputs from all relevant
actors.
22. The Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) could serve
as the provider of immediate funding after a crisis to cover the
costs of early recovery activities. This would help fill an existing
gap in funding. In order for the PBF to play this role, however,
the decision-making process for allocating funds will have to
be transparent and driven by priorities established by actors
in the field, especially national actors. Once allocated, funding
will have to be transmitted to the countries in a transparent
and rapid manner. Should the situation warrant it, the PBF may
need to ensure the availability of funds in a reliable manner
over a period of time.
23. The European Union, the international
financial institutions and the regional organizations all have
an important role to play within the context of the peacebuilding
reforms. The PBC represents an opportunity for the international
community to elaborate, in a coordinated fashion, national peacebuilding
strategies that serve the interests of countries as a whole. The
various financial mechanisms currently or soon to be available
(UN trust funds, EU Stability Instrument, World Bank Post-Conflict
Fund, CERF, PBF…) would need to serve the agreed national
strategy and be coordinated in a manner that maximizes the chances
of a country to get on the road to sustainable peace.
February 2006
147 http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/subjindx/143peac2.htm
Back
148
A "normal development situation" does not mean that
all development challenges have been overcome. Rather, it is a
return to so-called "normal state", where a country
has re-established the capability to make and implement economic
decisions and priorities as part of a largely self-sustaining
process of economic governance. Back
149
A study by the UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs,
drawn from the deliberations of an "expert group" meeting
in Yaounde, Cameroon, in 2003, highlights the centrality of reconstructing
governance and public administration as the key to sustaining
peace and development in the aftermath of violent conflict. See
"Reconstructing Governance and Public Administration for
Peaceful, Sustainable Development" (DESA, New York, 2004). Back
150
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in
Washington DC has used the term "national constituting processes"
to describe post-conflict efforts to build multi-stakeholder consensus.
CSIS white paper "Meeting the Challenges of Governance and
Participation in Post-Conflict Settings," August 2002. Also
see, Orr, Robert, "Governing When Chaos Rules: Enhancing
Governance and Participation," The Washington Quarterly-Volume
25, Number 4, Autumn 2002, pp 139-152. Back
151
OECD's DAC Guidelines on "Helping Prevent Violent Conflict"
(OECD, Paris 2001) lay emphasis on the strengthening pf peace
processes, including through the building of partnerships between
donors, the state, and civil society actors. Back
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