How donors take account of the World Development Report
In earlier blog posts I have referred to the challenges for international organisations including donors working in conflict affected contexts, and how well these were articulated in the 2011 World Development Report. It is good to see at least one donor taking this seriously: DFID included the following text as part of a recent procurement tender. A good step, and an example for others to follow, perhaps?
“Key lessons from 2011 World Development Report
- Donors need to be realistic about what their support to peacebuilding and governance can achieve.
- Change takes time. Creating legitimate institutions that can prevent repeated violence is a slow process which takes at least a generation.
- Asking fragile states to move forward too quickly, even with very desirable steps, risks creating pressures that collapse what little capability has been created.
- Reforms need to be carefully sequenced and carried out through systematic and gradual action.
- When trying to influence institutional transformation in complex conflict settings, perfection should not be the enemy of progress—pragmatic, “best-fit” approaches adapted to local conditions should be used to address immediate challenges.
- A focus on developing legitimate institutions does not mean converging on Western institutions.
- Governments and donors should keep an open mind on how institutions will develop, and be ready to respond flexibly to opportunities for reform as they arise.
- The absence of easily recognisable formal state institutions should not be equated with an absence of institutions altogether. Coexistence and interaction between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ institutions have been key in balancing internal and external demands for legitimacy [….] and represent significant progress in governance.Innovative approaches managing and assessing risk need to be adopted; which allow for flexibility, failure and amendments within a transparent reporting framework.
- Goals, number of priorities and timeframes need to be more realistic.
- Donors should adopt targeted approaches which focus on two or three rapid results to build confidence and on narrowly and realistically defined institution-building.
- A stronger focus needs to be placed on addressing external stresses (such as economic shocks and the infiltration of organised crime and trafficking networks)
- It is critical to support strong leadership – committed to security, justice and equity.
- It is critical to establish lines of accountability.”
Regime Change in Libya
So now the end of the Gaddafi regime seems more or less a fact, after several months of bombing by NATO forces, on behalf of the UN Security Council, to “protect civilians”.
I am happy to celebrate the end of his rule; though I remain anxious that what comes next may be difficult. National unity may be hard to achieve.
Questions remain however about the way this has been achieved, and only a fool would agree that NATO’s hundreds of sorties, supported by special forces on the ground, were genuinely flown to protect civilians. This was – and was early on declared by the most active NATO members – to be about regime change.
Does this make a mockery of the rule of international law, or is it simply a pragmatic way to use the international instruments available to achieve an outcome which offers an opportunity for Libyans to begin to construct a new polity?
I just spent a week in Juba, and was struck by two apparently opposing views of the future I heard from South Sudanese people. On the one hand, a fairly predictable pessimism – or perhaps it would be better described as realism. From this perspective, South Sudan faces a troubled near- and medium-term future, beset by problems with its neighbour to the north, and by a host of internal difficulties so vast, they seem beyond the capacity of a new nation to resolve. Meanwhile others expressed their view of the future in terms of what seemed at first to be cautious optimism, along the lines of “if the government gets it right over the next few months, we should be OK”.
This apparent dichotomy is reflected more broadly. At one extreme we find views such as that expressed by Dennis Blair, former head of US national intelligence, who told US Congress last year that among countries at risk of outbreaks of mass violence, “a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in Southern Sudan”. While at the other extreme we find the delirious enthusiasm which greeted South Sudan’s independence last month, after decades of civil war and dashed expectations, and a feeling that it’s now full steam ahead for a brighter future; accompanied by a genuine sense of goodwill within the international community, and a desire to support the world’s newest nation in its first few years of independent existence.
The reality presumably lies somewhere in between. If one examines the “optimism” camp more carefully, it tends to be conditioned by qualifiers such as “if the government gets it right”, and “if Khartoum doesn’t interfere” – neither of which inspires massive optimism based on recent history. Indeed, President Kiir’s 8th August speech to the Legislative Assembly in Juba was sobering, setting out the need to build a new nation by putting the people’s well-being and needs first, through service delivery in education and health, infrastructure development, justice and the rule of law, peace and security, underpinned by a culture of transparency and honesty. He ended with the exhortation to “start work right away”.
President Kiir’s speech was interesting for the balance he sought between what one might call a technical, problem solving approach – providing services, building police posts, fixing the things which new countries need to fix, etc. – and the more inspirational idea of re-creating South Sudan in a new image, characterised by honesty, altruism and putting an end to corruption. I am not sure he got that balance quite right.
Development as a technical challenge
Looking at the challenge of building a prosperous and peaceful South Sudan – starting from a low baseline – I am reminded of the origins of the international agreement (or at least intention) by rich countries to spend 0.7% of their GDP on overseas aid. The source of this figure is clouded by various myths of origin, but one of the more credible is that it was calculated back in the 1960s, based on the need to invest in infrastructure in poor countries. The idea was that, once the infrastructure was in place, development would surely follow; and 0.7% of OECD annual income was approximately what was needed, over a decade or so, to meet this investment deficit in what was then known as the Third World, and bring poorer countries up to par.
It is tempting to apply this model now to South Sudan, which lacks even the most basic all-weather infrastructure of intra- and inter-city roads (it is often said there are less than 100km of paved road in the country), let alone the secondary and tertiary feeder roads needed for the reliable transport of inputs and produce in an agro-pastoral economy. Given the complexities of the political economy in South Sudan, a simplistic formula like this would surely be a welcome relief to government, civil society, businesses and international donors trying to chart a way forward.
Of course one would need to add the human dimension, and invest also in health and education services: clinics, schools, training, educational and health materials, and so on. Quite a challenge in the vast and under-served territory of South Sudan.
Problem solving
Meanwhile the new country’s leaders have some pressing problems to solve. Negotiations with Khartoum over their mutual border, over the cost of exporting southern oil through northern pipelines, over separating the two countries’ currencies, over sharing the national debt, and over the rights and responsibilities of and towards each other’s citizens, to name but a few. Fighting on both sides of the border appears to have been stimulated by secession, and the disputed territory of Abyei remains a potential flashpoint, whence thousands of people have been displaced by violence in recent months.
The police service needs a complete overhaul, and massive investment in training and new police posts. The army needs to be rationalised as a single force and brought under proper civilian control, and ghost soldiers removed from the payroll. New contracts need to be agreed with oil companies. Internal borders need to be clarified. A massive decentralisation process is foreseen – redefining the roles and competencies at different levels of government. Corruption needs to be stamped out…. And so the list goes on.
Setting out a more complex idea of progress
One can look at this long list of challenges and problems (the actual list is far, far longer), and see it as a set of technical accomplishments to be ticked off on a long checklist: perhaps starting with infrastructure and continuing from there. In so doing one can imagine the government and the international community – donors, United Nations agencies, etc. – planning a programme of fund transfers and technical “capacity building” until the list is exhausted. Overall, I’d say this is how President Kiir’s speech sounded: although he started with an exhortation to nation-building, and later made excursions into issues like values, his speech in the end seemed mainly to be about “getting things done”, and was laced through with words like delivery, deliverables, services, etc.
Such things are clearly critical, but they don’t fully describe the challenge facing the South Sudanese, any more than the challenges faced by poor countries in the 1960s could be met by the simple injection of 0.7% of rich country GDP to meet their “investment deficit”. Solving the problems which present themselves – the phenomena of fragility and poverty – is not the same thing as building peace and harnessing South Sudan’s and the South Sudanese people’s development potential. Based on some of the ideas I heard from South Sudanese in Juba last week, I had the impression that the challenge can partly be defined along the following kinds of lines.
Creating a vision and sense of nation. South Sudan has been defined in public discourse as much by what it is not – the Sudan from which it has now seceded – as what it is and can become. A great deal of leadership time and effort at all levels will be needed to create a shared long-term vision, towards which South Sudanese can aspire, and to which they can hold their leaders for making progress. There are many ways to do this, and the process is probably never-ending, but the comments I heard last week in Juba suggest that a great deal of dialogue and debate is needed, focused loosely on the question “what kind of nation do we want to build, and how to get there?”
An evolution in the culture of power. Many of the conflicts in the country are defined around access to political and economic power. The length of time President Kiir is taking over his cabinet reshuffle is a good indicator of how tricky a subject this is: exclusion from the halls of power may push some disaffected members of the elite back to the bush, and the threat or use of the gun. This has already happened.
But it is not just at national level that violence is intertwined with politics: young men in cattle-herding tribes traditionally raid cattle from neighbouring clans or tribes as a way of increasing their economic standing and power in the community. Ethnicity and identity, rather than policy differences, are major factors in determining political alliances locally, and at state and national level. South Sudan has in any case emerged from Sudan, and thus reflects the Sudanese culture of power, characterised by violence, patronage and exclusion, among other factors. As Ugandan Professor Mahmoud Mamdani asked recently “Will the South establish a new political order, or will it reproduce a version of the old political order, such as the old state we know as Sudan?” Perhaps this is what Salva Kiir had in mind when he exhorted members of the Legislative Assembly:
“Let us recreate ourselves, let us find new ways, new thinking and be ready to learn in order to adequately meet new challenges.”
And a nation which is born of violence – civil war with Khartoum, as well as between various southern factions over the years – has a culture of power which is bound up with notions of violence as a means of political expression.
Like it or not, culture expresses the values held in society. It is difficult to change, and there are no blueprints. Indeed, it is particularly difficult for those who have only or mainly known a culture of power tied to violence, to take the lead in changing it; what practical models do they have to draw on, especially locally where people have been less exposed to outside influences and have neither seen nor experienced other cultures of power? But difficult or not, it seems critical for South Sudanese leaders (at all levels, in government, in civil society, and in business) to focus on this issue from now on, and identify ways to begin promoting and instilling a culture of inclusive power, and more functional non-violent relationships between people and peoples.
These measures do not in themselves have to be deeply structural, or huge: many small steps can add up to a decent distance covered. There are many ways to increase the level of popular participation: e.g. when negotiating new contracts with oil companies, involving civil society and local representatives from the different groups in the oil areas, and paying attention to their concerns about pollution, jobs, revenue sharing and infrastructure development; or including opposition politicians in the reshuffled cabinet. There is a lively debate going on about the decentralisation of governance to be as close as possible to the grassroots, and the concept of subsidiarity seems highly relevant, i.e. that decisions should be taken at the lowest appropriate level. This offers the best opportunity for transparent and responsive governance.
Livelihoods. One of the great challenges is the need for decent livelihood opportunities across the country, so that as many South Sudanese as possible benefit sustainably from the peace dividend. This means figuring out – through participatory processes – what kind of economy will best promote peaceful development.
Currently the country is too highly dependent on oil, which accounts for 98% of government revenue, and other extractive sectors like gold mining also beckon. It is of course crucial to obtain government revenues, but an economy dominated by oil and mining supports a political economy which tends towards violence. It creates vast disparities in wealth, yet few jobs, thus fuels a sense of exclusion. It is vulnerable to corruption, skewing political choices towards the self-interest of the elite, ignoring the interests of the majority, and thus undermining moves towards democracy. Meanwhile there are many stories of large tracts of land being bought up by outside investors – perhaps unlawfully sold to them by those who have no right to do so – which risks alienating rural people from the land, and from both its livelihood and its cultural value.
In the short term, there is likely to be a rise in agricultural production provided there is enough stability, as an automatic peace dividend. Infrastructure projects can be designed to be as labour intensive as possible, as a way to create paid work for as many hand as possible. It’s also critical for infrastructure investments to be chosen with an eye on their contribution to peace: e.g. it is important to avoid giving the impression that certain geographic areas linked to particular individuals or groups are more favoured than others, so as to avoid entrenching exclusion or the perception thereof. Outside investors need to be required to take their time, so their plans can be subject to full, informed scrutiny by all those likely to be affected, and mitigation measures put in place where there is a risk of social or economic disruption. Contracts with oil and mining companies will need to be negotiated firmly, to ensure they pay adequate attention to their corporate responsibilities – and some existing contracts will need renegotiating.
Security and justice. In President Kiir’s speech he highlighted the need for improved security and justice. His focus was on improving the professionalism of police and security institutions, and on building police stations and prisons. He did not mention the plans – which are quite well developed – to work at a very local Payam level, to find ways to enhance the security of people in their communities.
In the discussions I had, people were keen to look beyond the formal justice and security services: recognising the importance of the “traditional” and less formal mechanisms on which South Sudanese often rely, while also aware that such mechanisms are often quite unfair, and can also entrench dysfunctional relationships between communities.
Last week there were relatively large scale armed clashes between Murle and Lou-Nuer, in which many people died, continuing a recent trend. The authorities and communities have to find ways to reduce the likelihood and intensity of these kinds of “tribal” conflicts, and prevent them from being manipulated and escalated by militia leaders; this is not just about forcible disarmament, since new weapons will easily become available to replace the ones taken away.
The window of opportunity, and how to seize rather than squander it
One way to see the situation in South Sudan is as a window of opportunity: new nation, enthusiastic people, plenty of international support and goodwill. It is of tremendous importance not only to seize this opportunity now, but also to define carefully and accurately what the opportunity actually represents, as this time will not come round again.
The lesson for me, from listening to discussions among South Sudanese in Juba last week, is that it seems essential to broaden the discourse – frame the opportunity – to include not just what I have called technical challenges and problem solving, but to embrace a genuine and honest vision of what a peaceful South Sudan might look and feel like in the future, and then start to map out the pathways towards that vision. There is no lack of ideas, but they need framing in a way which creates useful clues about what progress will look like, so that it can be measured not just by technical jobs done, and practical challenges met, but also by incremental movement towards that vision.
How to re-think international aid agencies to fit the findings of the 2011 World Development Report?
The 2011 WDR is a radical document. It’s well-packaged in the politics and jargon of international aid, and so just about palatable to those individuals who have invested their careers in a now-faded approach to development; to donor governments who have invested their billions in both the Washington Consensus and the post-Washington Consensus consensus; to borrowing governments who prefer their grants and low-interest loans linked to soft, technical conditions; and to the many organisations – NGOs, IGOs and private companies – which benefit from and have helped define the way aid has been dispersed over these past couple of decades.
Within this clever wrapping, the WDR has a hard, core message: that in countries experiencing or threatened by violence, where 1.5 billion people live, one of the main “development” challenges is how to foster the emergence of the right kinds of institutions; and among these the most important are those which mediate a functional relationship between a responsive state and responsible citizens.
The World Bank and other development agencies are now considering the implications of the WDR for the way they define and implement their role. This will be difficult, as it is always hard for institutions – especially large, well-established ones – to imagine a radically different role and thus genuinely to radically restructure themselves. Simply put, the question should not be “how can we adapt our existing institutions to the revised terms of reference implied by the WDR?”, but rather “what kind of institution would best be able to foster the emergence of institutions which reduce the fragility of fragile states and societies?” In other words, don’t take the institution you are sitting in as the starting point, as it will get in the way of clear thinking. Instead, take a zero-based approach.
This implies first of all an attempt to define, generically, what kind of tasks this new development assistance role implies. Here are just a few suggestions.
1. Defining the strategic approach
Thinking strategically on a continuous basis, and adapting accordingly, is as or more important than having a perfect strategic plan. Nevertheless, organisations need strategy documents for planning and reference, so it’s important to invest in the right kind of strategic analysis every few years. Some people are recommending that outside agencies – the WB, DFID and so on – conduct their strategic analysis entirely in concert with the host government of the aid-recipient country. This is a seductive idea, in keeping with the Paris Declaration, but – like so much connected with the Paris Declaration – it’s a mistake.
It woud be immensely difficult for the staff of – say – the World Bank to discuss issues of legitimacy and citizen-state relations completely truthfully with the representatives of relatively undemocratic regimes, whose own political survival often depends on untransparent and inequitable policies and practices; and even on a dysfunctional relationship with the populations they are meant to represent. Any joint analysis of such issues would therefore be conducted without complete honesty, would therefore be be based on half-expressed diagnoses, and would therefore recommend incomplete or just plain wrong approaches. This is one of the things which was wrong with the PRSP model, so let’s not make that mistake again.
So while the strategic analysis should obviously be based on wide-ranging conversations with different stakeholders, inlcuding the host governnment, local civil society, businesses, other internationals, etc., it nevertheless needs to be done by the international institution itself, so as to preserve the integrity of the analaysis. It also needs to be based on the right conceptual model. There is no perfect prescription for this, and a thousand methodological flowers should be allowed to blooom, but those conducting the analysis should aim to understand as well as possible:
- How does the political economy actually function, where is it positive for peaceful outcomes, where does it obstruct them, where are the potential opportunities for improvement, and how can those in positions of economic/political power be persuaded to allow or support changes?
- What institutions currently exist in society, what function do they/could they play?
- What is a realistic vision for transformation over the next 25 or more years, in tems of reducing fragility and fostering the emergence of institutions which ensure that people are safe and justly treated, and that they have a voice in decisions which affect them?
- Who are the likely leaders of such changes?
- What people or factors might stand in the way of progress, and can they be prevented from doing so?
- Finally: can we envisage any role for our (international) organisation, which would help enable the kinds of changes we have in mind? (The potential for a “no” answer to this question should be taken seriously).
2. Recognise the difference between humanitarian and development aid
Humanitarian aid is often just a synonym for emergency aid – like the support currently being provided to millions of people in the Horn of Africa in dire need. But it may be that a lot of so-called “development aid” is really just humanitarian aid dressed up in a more intellectual, less sentimental construct.
Take international support for capital investment and recurrent costs in the education or health services of states whose economies will take decades to reach the levels at which they could pay for such services themselves from tax revenues, and where the institutions of power are so flawed that the schools and clinics built and staffed with aid may quietly crumble away or be destroyed due to social violence. Is that really an example of development aid – i.e. supporting the establishment of an enabling environment for societal progress – or is it more like humanitarian aid – i.e. sending money and technologies to fill a gap in service provision? If the task is to help shape a society which is more likely to both want and be in a position to provide schools, clinics, and universal health care and education to its members, is the best way to achieve this to send them money and ideas about schooling and health care? Or should that more properly be described as fulfilling a numanitarian impulse along the lines that “it seems wrong for children to be denied the opportunity to go to school, so we fund school programmes in countries far away”…
It’s obviously a lot more complicated than that. But to me it does seem clear that the test for any “development” investment ought to be whether it is likely to contribute to a change in the likely outcome for society several years hence, and whether that change is likely to contribute to the emergence of effective institutions, and a reduction in fragility. Anything else is a humanitarian transfer of resources. I am not arguing against this kind of humanitarianism, simply for clarity of purpose. But it is also true that humanitarian investments should be undertaken with great care, lest they inadvertently make things worse.
An obvious example of the latter would be a programme which inadvertently reinforces inequalities in society – as for example happened in eastern Zaire where international programmes designed to improve livestock management benefited herders over farmers, hence skewed the terms of trade between cattle and land, and contributed to conflicts which have yet to be brought under control in a quintessentially fragile environment. It was particularly unfortunate that herding and farming were, as so often, linked to different ethnicities, so the livestock improvement programmes may inadvertently have fuelled inter-ethnic tensions.
3. Seek out and support change agents – wherever they may be found
Change comes largely from within society, and is often led by inspired and inspiring individuals, at local level or on a wider scale. It stands to reason therefore that international agencies looking for ways to support transformation need to find ways to identify such individuals and support them.
The support doesn’t only have to be in the form of funds: it might equally be in the form of solidarity, the provision of opportunities to broaden horizons and explore ideas with others, or may take other forms, depending on circumstances.
As to identifying leaders: that is clearly a task fraught with risk. We need to accept that, as in the old European fairy tale, we may have to kiss a lot of frogs before we catch our prince. Above all, it’s very labour-intensive: looking for and getting to know leaders and potential leaders, and isn’t something which many international civil servants spend much time doing, as of now.
4. Provide long-term economic subventions to provide decent job opportunities
One of the core findings of the WDR is the need, in fragile and conflict affected contexts, for jobs. Young people, especially young men, are vulnerable to being recruited to violence by political leaders, in inverse proportion to their access to decent economic opportunities. Meanwhile, societies which exclude young women from decent economic opportunities are holding themselves back in terms of their ability to harness the potential for progress. Ergo, an economy in which jobs and other economic opportunities are in short supply is one which remains vulnerable to instability…
… Ergo, one might think, donors and other international agences would invest large amounts in job creation in conflict-affected contexts. But they don’t, at least not on the scale which one might expect. Take Sierra Leone, for example: it’s commonly accepted that one of the main factors underlying the civil war was the lack of opportunities for young men. Indeed, post-war elections have been marked by the mobilisation of violent youth militants representing both the main parties. The analysis of the UN, World Bank and other donors – and the government itself – all make a big issue of the need for jobs. But none of these agencies appear to have plans to invest in a way which will create the tens of thousands of jobs which are needed to build peace in Sierra Leone. Instead the international agences fall back on the mantra of “sustainable economic growth”, and the main investment focus is on mining and oil, neither of which are likely to create large numbers of jobs per GDP percentage point of growth – and which are associated in other contexts with instability.
Surely the problem here is that the agencies are failing to develop a strategy to match their own analysis. Rather than support peacebuilding, by subsidising job creation on a massive scale – e.g. through large scale, labour-intensive public works – they prefer to stick to the economic development orthodoxy that says it is wrong to distort the economy by creating jobs with external transfers. But it will take years, decades, for a country like Sierra Leone to create sufficient jobs in its own economy to absorb enough of its young people to reduce its vulnerability to destabilisation. Surely the orthodoxy is standing in the way of what the agencies’ own analysis tells them is needed? Which is worse: artificially subsidising jobs which thus reduce the risk of violence, but which may have unintended consequences for endogenous economic growth; or taking the longer-term, orthodox approach, stimulating FDI and local entreprenership – but enhancing the risk of more cycles of violence?
So one of the most important questions facing large international development agencies, post-WDR, is how to fast-track the creation of jobs and other economic opportunities in a careful way, so that the short-term gain of getting young people active in the economy – laying the foundations for peace – is not achieved at the expense of laying the foundations for healthy economic development which will in time, perhaps 15 years or more, replace the international transfers.
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These are only a few of the things which international agencies need to consider in their programmes in fragile and conflict-prone contexts. What they imply is that the agencies – the World Bank, DFID, the EU, and so on – need to have a capacity for disinterested strategic analyis and planning, within a clear conceptual framework of how societies changes over the medium term; for the identification and support of change agents; and for implementing and supporting very different kinds of programmes, designed to fit the local context, and which at times seem to go against the orthodoxy of both the Washington Consensus and the post-Washington consensus. That’s quite a challenge.
Land grabs in Africa are much in the news. For example we read in a recent Oakland Institute report that up to 60 million hectares (an area the size of France) were bought or leased in Africa by outside investors in 2009 alone. It’s widely reported as an iniquitous state of affairs and so it is, when African governments take advantage of low levels of transparency and citizen accountability to sell or lease off large parcels of land at prices and terms and conditions which disadvantage their nation and their people, and especially people local to the land in question. In that sense it has much in common, as a phenomenon, with the way some mining and oil companies have long dealt with African governments, and vice versa.
This seems completely wrong. But, taking a closer and dispassionate look, are there at least two possible silver linings to this cloud?
First, this kind of behaviour by governments and international agribusiness creates just the kind of situation around which civil society activists in Africa can mobilise, and demand a higher level of transparency and accountability of their leaders. Because it touches on land – something dear to the heart of many people at a very cultural level – it is an issue around which it’s possible to mobilise a wide constituency of opinion, including influential civil society in capital cities, as well as in rural communities more closely affected. Governance improvements emerge, it seems to me, when citizens pull together in support of a real common interest, rather than when they get together to “improve governance” for its own sake in the abstract.
Second, and no doubt more controversially, perhaps this is just the kind of opportunity through which the rural sector of some poor African economies can begin to be modernised, making agriculture more efficient. This might in its turn mean that more people would move to the cities, which would certainly create new social and political challenges. But there are also far greater opportunities in cities than in the countryside for women and men, young and old, to engage in civil society in pursuit of their interests. In this way, a secondary impact of the change could be a reinforcement of the kind of citizen-state relationship which is needed for governance to improve, and which is often so lacking in rural parts of the continent.
It’s dangerous to generalise, and I don’t mean to claim that land grabs are an inherently good thing. But nor would I want to be the one trying to make the argument that peasant agriculture in marginal parts of Africa is a sustainable basis for a growing economy. Something has to give.
World Development Report 2011 – will it make a difference?
The World Bank released its latest World Development Report (WDR) this week. It does this every year and few people usually pay much attention, unless their job requires it, and/or they are development nerds. Often the best thing about WDRs is that they are just the right thickness to place under the leg of a wobbly table; otherwise, they tend to gather dust on the book shelf.
But WDR 2011 is different, and it is well worth paying attention to. Indeed, given the subject matter and quality of the document, which contains a great deal of primary research and analysis, it should become a seminal text guiding development thinking and practice for years. The focus this year is Conflict and Security, and the report does a good job of explaining, using a lot of data and analysis, why the development community has to find better ways to work in conflict-affected and fragile contexts. According to the report 1.5 billion people’s lives are affected by conflict, and it provides plenty of evidence to back up what’s obvious anyway, that violent conflict is a huge drag on development. For example the average civil war sets back GDP growth by about 30 years, while countries lose about 0.7% of GDP growth per year while their neighbours are in conflict.
The 2011 WDR makes a convincing case that international development institutions are failing the people who live in countries affected by conflict. Not a single low income fragile or conflict affected country has achieved a single one of the Millennium Development Goals. And the report provides new data about recurrent conflict, showing that 90% of new violence onsets in the decade after 2000 occurred in countries with a history of previous conflicts, even as the total number of violence onsets declined, indicating how hard it is to break the cycle of violence that keeps people poor.
There’s nothing particularly new about the link between violent conflict, insecurity and lack of development. It’s not only intuitive but has been written about for years. What’s of interest about the WDR is that it’s the World Bank – perhaps the leading development institution, by size and influence – which is saying it; and that the report offers some intriguing lessons drawn from conflict affected countries suggesting how the problem can perhaps be overcome. The report is full of these, and International Alert has produced a more thorough review of the report but I pick six of them to highlight here.
1. It’s the institutions, stupid
As Deborrah Baksh and I argued in our paper last year one of the keys to development progress is the presence of effective institutions within society. These are formal institutions like parliaments, governments, courts, stock exchanges etc., and informal institutions which are harder to see, and which have been called “the rules of the game” – the norms and values which guide and govern how people live together. The WDR argues convincingly that violent conflict occurs when a society’s institutions are inadequate to deal with the internal and external stresses placed upon them. An obvious example of this is in Côte d’Ivoire, where the organisation of elections unsupported by the institutionalisation of democracy within society led to a breakdown of law and order and civil war.
So what comes across very clearly in the report is that if international development institutions – WB, UN, donors, NGOs, and so on – are to contribute more effectively to development in fragile and conflict-affected countries, they need to learn how to promote and enable the emergence, strengthening and transformation of institutions. This is far easier said than done, and it certainly is not what most such institutions are well versed in. They may be good at putting into place the formal mechanisms, in ministries, courts, parliaments and commissions, etc. But the role of transforming institutions, encouraging the emergence and internalisation of democratic values, and of allowing innovative and context-derived institutions to evolve, is not yet the stuff of World Bank training courses or how-to manuals.
2. Security and justice for citizens, not subjects
The WDR uses the word “citizen” a great deal, as a way to stress repeatedly the importance of responsive states for peaceful development, where people have a voice, and live securely within the rule of law. Insecurity holds society back in so many ways. It creates a climate of fear, which can easily be exploited by those with the capacity to protect themselves and to either provide or withhold protection from others. The Mungiki gangs of Kenya have shown this – running protection rackets in Nairobi for years. All too often the mechanisms of the state are intertangled with such rackets: in Kenya the protection rackets run by the Mungiki for matutu taxi operators have now been officialised and legalised under the cover of compulsory Savings and Loans schemes. But they are still protection rackets, still run by the same gangs.
Insecurity also holds back economic development because those who feel insecure tend to be risk averse, unwilling to take business risks, seeing their assets as savings, rather than investment capital; and obviously when people lose their assets, due to criminality or political violence, they have to start again at zero.
Again, if the international development organisations wish to make a difference, they need to find ways to create and improve confidence by improving security and fair access to justice. This too must be viewed through the institution-building lens, and represents a huge challenge. This is all the more true in many African countries, where one of the legacies of colonial and post-colonial history is frequently a repressive and corrupt security culture, whose transformation into policing by consent within the rule of law is not a project for the faint-hearted.
3. Jobs (not growth)
GDP growth remains central to international development orthodoxy, even after years of counter-argument, and evidence of the importance of factors such as remittances. Of course economic growth is essential to provide for the needs of growing populations, and ultimately it’s got to be at a rate which exceeds demographic growth if per capita income is to rise. But the WDR comes out firmly in favour of choosing the right kind of growth. This means for example that in Sierra Leone, where the role of under-employed youth in the genesis of civil war is well-known, it is not enough to rely on boosting GDP through mining and mechanised agriculture, since neither of these sectors will provide enough jobs or self-employment opportunities to go round. Goodness knows that the Niger Delta provides sufficient examples of how oil – or for that matter mining – can contribute to long-term unrest as much as it does to GDP.
Another part of orthodoxy of the past few years has been that economic development must be “sustainable”. Yes, that’s important, but what’s the point of developing “sustainable” economies which will be torn apart by civil war or undermined by the shadowy and violent narcotics trade? The international institutions have got to accept that long-term subsidies for labour-intensive public sector work can be a good investment in the sustainability of the polity itself, and thus a “good”, rather than an unorthodox skewing of the economy and thus a “bad”.
Meanwhile, the same institutions need to find creative ways to support the emergence of a less corrupt political economy, where mining and oil are less likely to lead to criminality and violent conflict.
4. Rome was not built in a decade…
We’ve known it for years, but the WDR says it loud and clear. It takes at least two generations to establish the foundations of the kinds of institutions that allow progress to be made peacefully. Even the “fastest” countries to do this are claimed in the report to have taken over 40 years to establish the basic rule of law. So we’ve got to come terms with a longer time frame, using a vision-based approach, and measuring progress towards that vision, rather than trying to create perfect institutions in five or ten years. It means we’ve got to learn to do what works in the context, rather than trying to fit the context to international project planning cycles. That will allow space for innovation, for the right processes and institutions to emerge, if the right incentives and support are provided.
This also means that we have to resist the over-simplification in which Burundi, after decades of troubles, is now seen by its government and by the international institutions as having “graduated from peacebuilding to development”. The difference between peacebuilding and development a false dichotomy, since without peace you can’t have much development. But by any sensible measure estimation, it is unlikely that a country in like Burundi can become stable and democratic, ready for economic take-off, after a couple of elections. All those interested in Burundi’s continued development, wether Burundians or outsiders, need to see the context for what it is, and act accordingly, rather than determine their strategy and approach according to a categorisation based on a combination of bueaucratic and political compromise.
5. … and was built by the Romans
The Romans built their state, and then expanded it to be their empire. The international community just has to accept that the establishment and emergence of institutions and values is almost entirely an endogenous one – unless it plans to build an empire, that is. The role of international institutions is one of supporting, incentivising, advising and promoting. It cannot make institutions happen, only do what it can to enable them to happen. A major part of this is to avoid getting in their way, by purposely or inadvertently reinforcing the institutions which block them. It’s easy to see how the international community has done this in North Africa over the past few decades, for example strengthening the role of an Egyptian state which denied the opportunity of citizenship – as understood in the WDR – to Egyptians for years.
6. Creating an enabling international environment
Lastly, but far from least, what the international institutions can indisputably do more of is create a better enabling environment both regionally and more broadly. The elements of this have been well-rehearsed, and they include issues such as free movement of people within regional economic blocs, a fairer playing field for trade, a greater effort to stamp out cross-border flows of illegally-obtained money, and a more thoughtful and strategic international approach to narcotics. A particularly important element of this is to strengthen the regional institutions themselves: formal institutions such as ECOWAS and the AU, as well as informal institutions – the rules of the game – which have allowed people like ex-president Gbabgo to be protected and treated with impunity by fellow heads of state over the years.
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Challenging our assumptions
Those who know the international development institutions well will see straight away that the messages of the WDR represent a major challenge. If taken seriously, this report changes the very nature of how international development is conceived and delivered, at least in conflict affected and fragile contexts and thus in much of Africa. It raises as many questions as it answers. Indeed, if taken seriously it undermines some of the comfortable assumptions which have underpinned most international development thinking and action for the past fifteen years. For example:
- That legitimate development progress is based on a partnership between the international community and the government in power in a fragile state – which in practice can exclude the people whom the government is supposed to represent, but seldom does
- That institution building can be limited to formal institutions, without including informal institutions and values; and without recognising that this a task of transformation, not just incremental improvement
- That domestic institutions are built through technical assistance in making their mechanisms work better, without also improving their legitimacy and levels of participation
- That it is OK to focus on only some aspects of reform, such as fiscal systems, while ignoring more difficult issues such as land tenure, which has huge implications for conflict in rural economies
- That economic growth, rather than broad participation in a growing economy, is the key to progress
- That working on the symptoms of underdevelopment (hunger, sickness, etc., i.e. the MDGs) will somehow address the causes
- That change can be accomplished at a pace defined by the international community’s need to show results, rather than at a pace defined by local factors and which recognises the historical reality that building a new relationship between citizen and state takes many decades – probably at least half a century to be confident it is sustainable.
Unlike some of the institutions in fragile contexts, the institutions of the development sector are highly resilient. When under pressure they heal as quickly as a wound in the mouth. I mean both the formal institutions – look how hard it was for Wolfensohn to change the World Bank – and the “rules of the game”. While it would be entirely wrong to say that international aid instutitions are doing nothing right in conflict-affected countries, it is nevertheless true to say, as does the WDR, that they need to do much better and that this means a complete rethink in their approach.
But institutions don’t readlily rethink their own approach. It’s just not what most institutions do. So it is of tremendous importance that over the coming months, those who believe that this WDR contains important truths about doing development in the conflict-affected and fragile contexts where 1.5 billion people live, take every opportunity to keep this discussion alive. Read the report and check out the live webcast on thursday this week. And if you see this WDR being used to stop a table from wobbling, put it back up on the table in full view, where it belongs.
The UN Security Council has put itself and others in a difficult spot over Libya. This is because it has mandated those of its Member States who are operational in and around Libya to take all necessary measures to protect civilians, when the avowed policy intention of so many of them is in fact regime change. France, the UK and the USA to name three of the governments most involved in military action, have all in different ways said so. Just to be clear, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Channel 4 News last night that he saw no future in a partitioned Libya, and did not expect others at today’s international summit in London to see it as a desirable outcome. So what we are witnessing and many are celebrating is surely a UN-mandated operation expressly designed by those planning and implementing it (whatever the actual intentions of those who voted for it), to help lever Gaddafi from power. This may well result in a political vacuum, in a fragile state whose political institutions are inadequate to deal with this kind of massive change, and thus the distinct possibility of further conflict in the months and years after he’s gone.
Of course, it looks clear that proportionally more violence against civilians is being conducted by Gaddafi’s forces than by the opposition. So, for now at least, it’s easy for NATO and its members to justify a military action which so far is entirely targeting one side in Libya’s civil war, in terms of UN SCR 1973. I’ve limited knowledge or understanding of the nature of the Libyans and Libyan groups taking part in the uprising, so no way to know how likely they are (whether now, fighting against Gaddafi, or later in a possible future fight among themselves) to commit atrocities against civilians. On the basis of the news currently emerging, they seem to be conducting themselves more decently than Gaddafi’s people. So intervening on their side seems virtuous. But it’s important to look at this on a longer-term and a wider canvas.
I’m personally an agnostic on the question of whether the international military intervention is the right thing to do, simply because I have insufficient knowledge of Libya to be able to estimate the most likely results of such an action over the medium and longer term. And after the revelations of Coalition ignorance about the Iraq they decided to invade, and the lack of forethought about what to do about the crockery they were about to break, I’m somewhat afraid that the UN and its Member State governments also lack the detailed intelligence to enable them to make an informed assessment of what might happen next in Libya. But I certainly back the principle of the international community intervening militarily under its Responsibility to Protect, provided the justification for doing so is based on solid intelligence that allows it to fulfil the requirements of a just war.
A Just War – jus ad bellum – paraphrasing St Thomas Aquinas and others, is one which is waged with legitimate authority, with just cause and “right intention”. It must be likely to result in the restoration of law and order and the conditions for the fulfilment of human rights; it must be a last resort; and it must be fought proportionally. Finally, it must have a high probability of success: be winnable in the shortest possible time causing the minimum amount of harm.
We can of course be wary of a set of rules drawn up by the mediaeval Catholic Church to provide its secular co-establishment – the kings and princes of mediaeval Europe – with a religious justification for their military exploits. Nevertheless, jus ad bellum was not entirely cynical in its origins, has evolved over the intervening centuries, and continues to provide a basis on which to consider the ethical dimensions of something – waging war – which will always be a predominantly political enterprise.
The difficulty in the case of the international engagement in Libya is obvious. Its legitimacy is in doubt, since it appears to be premised on a confusion: on the one hand, the UNSC – the supreme authority – has mandated operations to protect civilians; on the other, the governments with authority over NATO forces have declared that their policy goal is Gaddafi relinquishing power. Sophistry aside, it’s hard to separate the one goal from the other.
The actual political goal of the action therefore seems to be regime change. Can this be considered Right Intention? I’d say yes, given the Gaddafi regime’s record of poor governance and abuse of rights – and its own flagrant abuse of the rules for waging war, jus in bello : proportionality, distinction between military and civilians, and military necessity. But with one caveat: will the regime that replaces Gaddafi be significantly better than his regime, and will that improvement be worth the death, suffering and damage incurred? On balance, the answer seems likely to be yes.
However, it also behooves us to look at this on a wider canvas. Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is still very new. It says that:
“Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it…
“… The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity…”
R2P was adopted as a text by the UN General Assembly in 2005, which may well be seen by historians in the future as a critical point in the evolution of global governance to rival St Thomas and his Just War ideas. But it will take time for this principle to become a genuine part of international doctrine. For that, the R2P needs to be cited in important decisions, and a body of precedence in its use needs to be accumulated, so that decision makers in the future – be they heads of state making decisions about how to treat their citizens, or internationals deciding whether to intervene on behalf of those whose governments fail to protect them – have an operational framework to go by.
Libya is perhaps the first time R2P has been invoked so publicly, on such a scale, and used within the UNSC to justify a major military action. So the way it is framed and the way it plays out take on an importance even greater than the well-being of Libyans; affecting the well-being of future populations whose governments fail to live up to their responsibility. Getting it wrong may mean years of delay in turning R2P into a doctrine that’s widely accepted and provides legitimacy to protect civilians elsewhere, and in the future.
I understand that it’s naïve to think we can divorce weighty decisions like suspending the sovereignty of a UN Member State, from issues of realpolitik. Nor is this blog an argument against the international action in Libya. But we must be wary of the kind of dishonesty inherent in the international system, which allows powerful Member States to lead the way in persuading the UN-SC to mandate violent action against a regime which those same States have already declared needs changing, using the language of R2P.
In Iraq, the arguments about invasion hung mainly on two hinges: getting the UN’s blessing, and the presumed existence of WMD. What was too often missing in public discourse was a frank discussion about the real objectives and plans. This would have allowed people to make an informed political and ethical judgement. The righs and wrongs got lost in the fog of sophistry. In the future, if we are to evaluate the rights and wrongs of international intervention being proposed under R2P, it is of utmost importance that the language used to frame and justify the intervention is as honest and frank as possible, both at the UN and in the parliaments and public discourse of those doing the proposing. It seems a pity that this lesson hasn’t yet been learned; or that the system and culture of international governance still makes frankness such a rare commodity.
From the technical to the political
Over the past few days I’ve been spending time with a Kenyan organisation which has an important role in peacebuilding. They are helping heal some of the wounds in Kenyan society caused by violence after the last presidential election, and by other actual and perceived injustices.
Meanwhile, there’s a massive amount of change going on in Kenya, with the coming into force of a new constitution which implies no less than a radical shake-up of the systems and culture of governance. Some of these changes will be very hard to implement, because they strike at the heart of the political economy, threatening vested interests and injecting a degree of uncertainty into the political calculus. They include new levels of government with new powers, new constituencies, new land laws, and so on. Ironically therefore, the new constitution which heralds a more equitable and more transparent governance – surely a major ingredient of peace – may create new conflicts in Kenyan political society as it beds down, a process likely to take some years.
And Kenyan political society has a habit and a history of manipulating elements of the population to act on its behalf, sometimes violently, to protect its interests (surely the opposite of what politicians are supposed to do?). To some degree that’s what seems to have happened in 2007-08 when violence broke out in some areas after the election results were announced. Therefore any conflicts due to the coming into force of the new constitution over the next few months and years will need to be carefully managed so they don’t become violent, and this too is one of the things which the organisation I’ve been spending time with is trying to cope with: for example anticipating where flare-ups may occur, and supporting local efforts to avoid them.
I was impressed – humbled – when I met one of the local groups working on this last week. This is a group of local leaders who have come together to help build and keep the peace, in an area with a history of conflict over land, and where some ethnic groups regard themselves as indigenous, and others as interlopers; and in a country where politics and ethnicity have long been intertwined. They explained how they had taken active steps to minimise violence, working across ethnic and religious lines; and how they had made it possible, once the post-election violence died down, for people who had been displaced to return safely home. I met a man who’d fled the violence, and who bore witness that he’d have been unable to return home without their intervention.
Sitting in a small room in a small rural town with members of this local group, our discussions were almost entirely political in nature. We talked about political manipulation; about which politicians from which parties would be likely to form coalitions in next year’s elections; about ways that the impending prosecution of six Kenyans by the International Criminal Court might affect local and national politics and conflict dynamics; and so on. It was fascinating, even though I am quite sure that as an outsider I only understood 10% of it all.
The intensely political nature of the discussion made me reflect on other discussions I’ve had as a development worker with local groups in a dozen or more countries in Africa over the past quarter-century, and how the nature of those conversations has changed. In Sudan in the 1980s I must have worked and talked with thousands of villagers, figuring out with them how to grow tree seedlings and plant or replant forests and gum arabic orchards. Land use and access to land were clearly issues, but I don’t remember discussing the politics of it in any significant way with the farmers involved.
Looking back at the intervening years, I can see that little by little, politics did become more prominent in the “development work” I was engaged in. Whether it was about access to land in Rwanda, governance of public resources in Mali, the management of forests and schools in Ghana, the voice of civil society in Benin, the rights and protection of civilians in northern Uganda, or the ability of local women to stand up to armed groups in Congo; the conversations I have had with those involved at the sharp end have become less and less technical (how to plant trees) and more and more political (who has power on this issue? Can the balance of power be altered for better outcomes?)
So that makes me ask a question. Is this simply the journey of an individual (me) through time, becoming slightly less naive as the years go by; or perhaps becoming more interested in the political, and therefore seeing it where he had not seen it before? Certainly that’s part of the explanation.
I’d like to think that a more important part of the explanation is that the “development community” – the UN, the World Bank, local and international NGOs, donors, politicians and civil servants, etc. – has been making this journey too, and probably much faster than I: understanding more and more that the process of development is at least as much about political change as about technical change; understanding more and more that progress is measured as much by how much political voice people have, as about the kind of crops they grow.
If I’m right, and this evolution of understanding is something affecting wide swathes of the development sector, then we face a great challenge in figuring out what to do with this knowledge. Back in 1985, when I understood my role as helping to grow and nurture tree seedlings in arid parts of Sudan, it was relatively simple to see what to do and how to go about it. But when the challenge expresses itself in terms of a transformation of the way people govern and are governed, how does one begin?
The Kenyan organisation I have been visiting for the past week or so seems to have part of the answer to this: identify local leaders with vision and values and support them as they work through the issues confronting them; and thus by precedent establish ways to live together peacefully and productively as they and their fellow Kenyans continue on a political journey towards a future where the values underlying the new constitution – transparency, equity, unity, integrity, dignity, justice, democracy, non-discrimination – are no longer an aspiration but a lived reality.
Last year a colleague and I at International Alert published a report called Working with the Grain to Change the Grain: Moving Beyond the MDGs, a critique of the prevailing development paradigm as often applied to poor countries, and especially of the Millennium Development Goals. We found the development paradigm to be full of far too much lazy group-think. And we found the MDGs to be too narrow, too technical, top-down, and unstrategic. A particular flaw lies in the way the MDGs confuse ends with means.
As we approach 2015, the target date for achieving the MDGs, it will become increasingly clear not only that they won’t be met, but also that the goals themselves paint a very incomplete picture of what human progress means. Don’t get me wrong: I completely agree with the idea of eradicating hunger and economic poverty, getting children of both sexes into school, improving health outcomes and reducing child and maternal mortality, etc. But I also know that if we were to write the history of more developed countries it wouldn’t be written in such narrow and apolitical terms. It would also include difficult processes such as agrarian and industrial revolution, land reforms, labour unrest, revolutions and so on. Critically, it would include the strange and largely unpredictable evolution of institutions and organisations in society, and of values which gave rise to and were in turn nurtured and strengthened by democracy.
We proposed an alternative model to the MDGs, for incentivising and holding leaders accountable for investing in development progress. Rather than applying a narrow set of largely technical pre-ordained goals to all developing countries, we suggested a vision-based approach. This took as its basis the idea that a “more developed” society is recognisable by five key characteristics:
- Equal access to political voice, and the legitimate and accountable use of power.
- Equal participation in a vibrant and sustainable economy.
- Equal access to justice, and equality before the law.
- Freedom from insecurity.
- The ability of people to maintain their mental and physical well-being, to have aspirations and make progress towards them…
…. and that these are all underpinned by a sixth feature: the self-reinforcing presence of institutions and values that support and enable equitable progress and peace.
We saw this as a quite broadly accepted vision, while recognising that there may be many different pathways towards it, and that development strategies should be based on an analysis of how to move closer towards the vision, tailored to each specific context. Our title – working with the grain to change the grain – was intended to illustrate the idea that the transformation of society is most likely to happen when it is in the interests of the elite (who would otherwise successfully resist it). Just to be clear, we made no claim that any country has yet reached – or even come very close to – the vision. But I do claim that the USA, Korea or France for example are closer to the vision than the DRC or Côte d’Ivoire.
A fellow blogger has written an interesting piece, drawing on our report, an article in Mother Jones Magazine, Andy Sumner’s excellent recent report and other sources, in which she takes our six-point vision and applies it to her own USA, pointing out how far away the USA is from the vision. She looks in particular at the trend of increasing income inequality there, and points out that the USA ranks near the bottom of rich countries for access to justice and access to health care (coming behind Botswana for immunization coverage and 23rd in the world for infant mortality, despite its great wealth).
2015 is a few years off, but already discussions are starting about whether or how to replace the MDGs with something more fit for purpose. As part of those discussions the Beyond 2015 Group held a consultation at the recent World Social Forum in Senegal. One of the questions they posed was whether the “post-2015 MDGs” should apply only to less developed countries or if they should be universal. Interesting that the unanimous response was that they should be universal, applied to rich countries as well as poor, based on the notion that all societies are all embarked on the long journey of human progress, and none have yet attained the vision. Saundra Schimmelpfennig’s Good Intentions Are Not Enough Blog quoted above seems to support that view.
Phil Vernon 