|
Full publication containing the ground-breaking 1997 guidelines and the 2001 supplement
is available in PDF format and in a user-friendly hyperlinked version.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The DAC Guidelines Helping Prevent Violent Conflict were published in 2001. The publication contains the ground-breaking 1997 guidlines on Conflict, Peace and Development Co-operation on the Threshold of the 21st Century as well as the 2001 supplement to that work. Together they explore ways for donor governments to honour their commitment to help prevent conflict and promote peace. The 2001 supplement looks primarily at collective conflict - conflict among groups within or across nations. It also covers, to some extent, state violence against groups and individuals.
Violent conflict and its ruinous impact on people's lives demands that the development co-operation community renew its commitment to peace and prevention. To prevent violent conflict, societies must build voluntary co-operation that results in peaceful co-existence among diverse communities within and between nations. Conflict prevention is central to poverty reduction and sustainable development. Development agencies now accept the need to work in and on conflicts rather than around them, and make peacebuilding the main focus when dealing with conflict situations. This is a significant step toward long-term engagement and away from an earlier short-term concentration on post-conflict recovery and reconstruction efforts.
To work effectively toward peace, development agencies need to work alongside partners in developing countries before, during and after conflict. Promoting peacebuilding and conflict prevention require that donor agencies work with other relevant branches of their governments and other actors in the international community. With a "culture of prevention"? and in-depth analysis such as peace and conflict impact assessments and scenario building, donors can work better together to achieve sustainable peace. Policies also need to be clear, coherent, comprehensive and co-ordinated in order to improve effectiveness in conflict prevention and management. Relevant policy areas involve trade, finance and investment, foreign affairs, defence, and development co-operation. Responding to this imperative, development agencies are accepting the risks of moving more deeply into this sensitive political terrain.
Economic well being, social development and environmental sustainability and regeneration are major goals of development co-operation that require structural stability. Structural stability embraces the mutually reinforcing goals of social peace, respect for the rule of law and human rights, and social and economic development. It is supported by dynamic and representative political structures, including accountable security systems capable of managing change and resolving disputes through peaceful means. Experience and research point to some basic principles for preventing conflict that are enumerated in more detail in this Supplement to the 1997 DAC guidelines. These principles call on the development community to:
- Recognise the potential -- and limits -- of the international community to take actions that favour peace and discourage violence.
- Use constructive engagement and creative approaches that provide incentives to peace.
- Act on the costly lessons learned on the importance of consistent, coherent policies and comprehensive tools in order to do maximum good and avoid unintended harm.
- Be transparent, communicate intentions, and widen and deepen dialogue with partners at all levels in order to ensure ownership.
- Actively engage women, men and youth in peacebuilding and policy-making processes. All actors need to take better account of the pervasive linkages between gender differences and violent conflicts and their prevention and resolution.
- Work in a flexible and timely manner, guided by long-term perspectives and political and socio-economic analyses of regional, national and local situations, even for short-term actions.
- Reinforce local capacities to influence public policy, and tackle social and political exclusion.
Engaging long term and using a conflict prevention "lens"
"Moving upstream" to help prevent violent conflict at its source is a shared goal of the development co-operation community. Donors are learning to apply a conflict prevention "lens" to policies in many departments to make them coherent and comprehensive. The "lens" is a metaphor for looking at how conflict prevention can be incorporated into all arenas of policy, e.g. from development to trade, investment and foreign policy. This can also be referred to as building a culture of prevention. Concrete actions such as analysing and monitoring developments in conflict-prone situations are steps toward detecting and curbing conflict early on. Growing evidence suggests that early preventive action that works is far less costly than coming in later to stop violence and repair damage. Working with a human rights focus as part of a conflict prevention lens is important and helps minimise potential negative side effects of development co-operation in conflict situations.
Donors recognise that all aid can influence conflict situations and create incentives or disincentives for peace. They are taking steps to better understand, monitor and foresee how development programmes affect divided societies by dealing with peacebuilding both at the national/regional and project level. In looking at the national level, donors address democracy, security and better governance as major issues. To do so, they need to:
- Disentangle and analyse factors of grievance and greed at play as conflict situations evolve.
- Devise appropriate ways to evaluate, monitor and assess their action and its impact in close collaboration with developing country partners, particularly since this type of development co-operation work does not always fit a general framework for "results-based management".
- Extend this concern for the impact of aid on conflict to the design of policies aimed at
macroeconomic stability and structural adjustment in order to encourage growth in incomes, employment and public services.
- Target assistance to help strengthen democratic systems toward the structural stability that allows for the non-violent resolution of conflicts, taking account of the distribution and the transfer of power, as well as the protection and inclusion of minorities and marginalised groups.
- Recognise how important it is for countries to form political parties and support this step as part of a democratic process and as a way to promote the transformation from violent conflict to peace. The perspective of democratic, inclusive governance is an important aspect of this dynamic process.
- Maximise opportunities to help strengthen state capacity to respond appropriately to conflict, including support to a range of state functions and activities as well as partnerships with civil society organisations (CSOs).
- Promote multiculturalism and pluralism by reinforcing activities that have a high degree of cross-ethnic group involvement and support partners working toward this goal.
Setting up monitoring and evaluation systems presents a challenge in these complex new areas of development co-operation. Sharing results, establishing benchmarks and evaluating lessons are vital to improving approaches and co-ordination.
Ensuring peace through security and development
Security, including "human security", is a critical foundation for sustainable development. This implies protection from systematic human rights abuses, physical threats, violence and extreme economic, social and environmental risks, and territorial and sovereignty threats. It is a primary pre-condition and goal for poor people to make lasting improvements in their lives. The Draft DAC Guidelines on Poverty Reduction, and consultations with the poor in all regions, have underlined how critical basic security is for them.
Poverty and insecurity systematically reinforce each other. The requirement for security in this context has to go beyond the classic requisites of defence from military attack and extend to the well-being and the protection of persons and property. Actors in international, national and local government and civil society have thus come together around a changing concept of security aimed at freeing people from pervasive threats to their lives, safety or rights. This is especially critical for the poor.
Helping developing countries build legitimate and accountable systems of security - in defence, police, judicial and penal systems - has become a high priority, including for external partners, even though there are risks involved. Security system reform should be treated as a normal part of work on good governance. Though this is a vital area for donors, not all development agencies are equally ready or have the mandate to engage in activities directly related to improving security systems. Development agencies are working together to define agreed uses of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in such activities.
Donor assistance can help improve the capacity of relevant civilian bodies in government to manage the security forces more effectively. Within developing countries, there is growing recognition of the need to use the same principles of good public sector management in the security sector as apply to all public sectors. These principles include transparency, accountability and informed debate and participation and are key to getting military expenditure and other security-related spending planned and implemented right. Reinforcing legislative capacity to conduct effective oversight of security forces, in particular the role of relevant parliamentary committees, is one such area for assistance.
Supporting regional co-operation
Even with the predominance of intra-state conflicts, there are cross-border and regional linkages in conflicts. Strategies for prevention, peacekeeping, and recovery can be regionally designed. Many national conflicts can only be dealt with effectively in their regional contexts, taking account of cross-border influences. Regional co-operation and integration - through economic, environmental and other measures - can contribute to peacebuilding, particularly around scarce common goods such as water. Donor support should focus on strengthening the capacity of relevant regional institutions.
Co-ordinated foreign policy actions are needed to support regional and sub-regional co-operation in combating drug trafficking, organised crime and terrorism, and controlling illicit or irregular arms trade, as well as the flow of arms generally. Such co-ordinated action can also underpin peace negotiations and regional peacekeeping capabilities, help build regional networks for the protection of human rights, refugees, peace initiatives, and democratisation, and establish security reform processes. The business sector, including foreign investors, also has a role to play in regional co-operation.
While pursuing "regional solutions for regional problems" is a good principle, there are situations -- like those in East Timor, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, the Great Lakes and central African regions and others --- which call for a response by the whole international community to support regional actors.
Peace, justice and reconciliation
The international community, including donor agencies, can assist peacebuilding before violence erupts, support peace processes and opportunities, help societies grapple with the complexities of justice and reconciliation in the wake of violent conflict, and encourage fundamental principles of democracy. There are no easy formulas, but there are ways to support national solutions that respect basic international legal norms.
Once the peace is deemed won, donors tend to focus their support more on the state, away from civil society. This happens even when donors have channelled support exclusively to civil society during the conflict. But donor support to civil society peacebuilding initiatives should begin early and continue. Further efforts are required to include marginalised or weakened segments of society in peace processes and to recognise women's abilities to manage survival and negotiate and implement peace at the local and informal levels. More can be done to involve women in national level peace negotiations.
A cardinal rule in post-conflict justice and reconciliation is to promote open and continuing communication as a key potential antidote to lingering grievances and recriminations, and to avoid relapses into violent conflict. Support for non-partisan and peacebuilding media is important here.
To avoid the recurrence of conflict, long and short-term peace rely in part on:
- Demobilisation and disarmament of ex-combatants, including women and child soldiers.
- Reintegration of all people uprooted and affected by conflict -- women, men, youth, children and ex-combatants.
In supporting peace processes donors, the international community and developing countries need to realise that the challenge of reintegration depends on jobs and growth, but can only be fully achieved with reconciliation.
Partnerships for peace
Peacebuilding hinges on trust and co-operation among groups and is reinforced by wider and deeper partnerships. A legitimate state authority and a healthy civil society ultimately need each other. However, a crisis of legitimacy exists in many states, not only in "failed" or "failing" ones. Signs of this can be seen when the state takes on an oppressive and predatory role in relation to society, foments internal conflict and abrogates its core functions as "protector". Donor engagement with oppressive regimes can be problematic. At the same time complete withdrawal of donor involvement may have negative impacts and be read as a signal of external indifference. Normal partnerships are difficult or impossible to maintain in some conflict situations. But experience and realism now suggest that external partners, including multilateral institutions, can play key roles in encouraging partnership between government and civil society organisations, including with those who are excluded or in opposition. The extent and types of partnership must be gauged by the country situation.
For donors to enter into effective partnerships for conflict prevention with developing countries, a pivotal requirement is greater coherence and co-ordination among donors themselves. The recent pursuit of better co-ordinated partnership among development co-operation actors offers an important opportunity to address conflict issues and co-ordinate more effectively (e.g. Comprehensive Development Frameworks, country-produced poverty reduction strategies and the UN Development Assistance Frameworks).
It has become clearer that a constructive relationship between humanitarian assistance and development co-operation entities requires shared objectives, common approaches to planning processes, and co-ordination mechanisms. In harmonising these efforts, donor and humanitarian assistance agencies entrusted with these responsibilities cannot escape the need to work together better through quite long transition periods.
Working with business
Another widening space for stronger partnerships is with business - local, national and international - to help maximise its positive economic and social contributions and to ensure against feeding into the negative dynamics of conflict. At times this involves dialogue between external partner governments and firms that are taking actions that worsen violent conflict.
Virtually all developing countries are now convinced they need the vitality, know-how and efficiency of a vigorous private sector to generate strong enough economic growth for sustainable development. Fostering private sector-led growth in jobs and incomes within a rights and rules-based approach is a basic long-term component of conflict prevention.
A widening community of business actors internationally is already moving to adopt new approaches to corporate social responsibility, and pursuing a "triple bottom line" of profitability, social responsibility and good environmental practices. Enlightened economic self-interest of firms can lead them to engage as corporate citizens working to help solve local problems, including the threats of violent conflict. Donors should support these trends by taking steps such as raising awareness of conflict prevention issues among national and international business communities.
Countering negative economic forces
However, external partners - public and private - need to help combat illicit trafficking, rent-seeking and corrupt resource deals that fuel and thrive on conflict. This can be done through G8 and UN embargoes such as those on conflict diamonds and be supported by other international instruments. Donors must take account of the political economy of violent conflict in which powerful groups and networks, using violent and non-violent means, develop a vested interest in their perpetuation, as well as the corrupt and ethnically biased economic practices that can help start them.
|
