Public services can only be fully and efficiently delivered through solid and reliable governance mechanisms. The OECD develops tools to help citizens hold their governments to account in meeting their development goals. It also helps the Development Assistance Committee’s Governance Network (GOVNET) to support countries’ efforts to curb inequalities and exclusion, to respond to challenges such as rising authoritarianism and threats to democracy and human rights, and to benefit from the digital transition.
Governance and peace for development
The OECD works to help middle- and low-income countries strengthen their governance mechanisms, to improve the delivery of public services, meet their development goals and achieve the overall aim of poverty reduction. The OECD also promotes policies focused on preventing the outbreak of conflict and sustaining local and regional peace tracks.
Key messages
The OECD supports the work of the International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF), which brings together Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members and multilateral agencies searching for sustainable responses to the needs of populations in countries exposed to high levels of fragility or affected by a conflict.
The Organisation tracks and measures development, peace and humanitarian financing to ensure that funds flow when, where and how they are most needed. It supports stronger co-ordination, financing and programming by all development partners, notably through the implementation of the DAC Recommendation on the Humanitarian, Development and Peace Nexus.
The OECD’s innovative tools and spatial analyses help policy makers to better understand regional security challenges in North and West Africa. Its Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi) maps the geographical evolution of conflicts over time, including in border regions and across urban and rural areas. Combined with detailed analysis of stakeholders, this multi-dimensional, visual tool helps decision makers to better take into account spatial and political contexts
Context
Conflict trends in North and West Africa
The Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi) leverages over 60,000 violent events over 1997-2023 from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) project, across 21 countries in North and West Africa. Conflict is classified in each 50 X 50 km cell by combining intensity and concentration. Dark blue cells indicate major hotspots: Nigeria accounts for 45% of all fatalities between 2021-23; in the Central Sahel, community conflicts, coups d’état and terrorist violence are overlapping, with violence subsuming borderlands and spreading to coastal countries including Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea and Togo. High-intensity violence also affects the Lake Chad region.
Official development assistance (ODA) to peace
ODA dedicated to peace has been decreasing in terms of volume and percentage: in 2023, this figure fell to less than 10% of ODA to countries exposed to the highest levels of fragility – its second lowest since 2004. These historically low levels of financing do not appear to be commensurate with mounting peacebuilding needs, with 2023 witnessing the largest number of violent conflicts since 1946. Peace ODA investments that are appropriately tailored to the context can positively shape pathways towards peace. Empirical research finds that post-conflict countries that have not relapsed received a significantly higher percentage of peace ODA than ones that did relapse.
Official development assistance (ODA) for refugee situations in low- and middle-income countries
ODA provided for refugee situations in low- and middle-income countries has been relatively stable at less than 5% of total ODA, despite an important increase in aid from 2020 to 2023. By contrast, aid provided to refugees hosted in donor countries has almost tripled between 2021 and 2022 as a proportion and volume of ODA.
