What is the best way forward for post-conflict reconstruction? How can it become a foundation for sustainable development? This paper by the World Bank discusses the role that community-driven reconstruction (CDR) projects play in promoting local involvement. It looks at the experience of Timor-Leste and Rwanda and suggests that CDR is an instrument of choice for post-conflict reconstruction.
The impact of violent conflict on a country’s economy and society is profound and multiple. It can be as highly visible as smashed buildings, maimed civilians, and burst water mains. But the impact can also be invisible, such as happens with the collapse of state institutions, the spread of mistrust in government and pervasive fear. In both cases, needs are immense and urgent. However, only if both types of effects are addressed adequately and simultaneously can post-conflict reconstruction lay the foundation for a return to normalcy.
CDR has two principal objectives: (i) speedy and cost-effective delivery of reconstruction assistance on the ground and (ii) building a governance structure that stresses local choice and accountability. Community-driven reconstruction applies the methodology of community-driven development (CDD) to a post-conflict setting. Local populations and local institutions are the key players in project planning, execution and monitoring. CDR approaches thereby provide one key foundation for sustainable development in the longer-term.
- The basic premise for demand-led approaches such as CDR is that local communities are in a better position to identify their needs and corresponding actions than higher administrative echelons, higher societal structures or outside partners.
- CDR also supposes that for a large number of short-term reconstruction needs, local communities possess the core skills, incentives, and unity to implement a large range of projects provided they are given the resources and a management support system.
- Empowering communities to identify their needs, decide on projects to address these needs, manage resources and contracts, monitor implementation, and evaluate outcomes from the outset is a more robust model for sustainable growth.
- CDR involves two policy choices: decentralisation and participation, which aims to build a partnership between the population and the administration around local planning and project implementation.
- CDR projects have two key design elements: they support the democratic selection of local community councils and they provide resources in the form of block grants directly to community councils such that they can plan and manage their own reconstruction priorities.
In order to move from CDR to CDD, the elements outlined below need to be in place when the reconstruction phase nears completion.
- Local development structures that partner the population with the administration need to have become a going concern. But, rather than remaining outside of the government’s formal structure, local development councils should be an integral part of local government responsible for community development.
- They would also need to collaborate closely with local institutions charged with political and administrative affairs. Capacities need to have been strengthened beyond the community councils.
- Broad-based capacity building that is tailored to local development needs has the added benefit of providing community members with skills that enhance their own development potential.
- To sustain a community driven approach in the longer-term requires fiscal decentralisation.
- Annual block allocations should be made from the government’s budget to the communities’ development budget (in addition to any possible donor funding.
- Decentralised entities should also be entitled to levy taxes to ensure a steadier stream of funds to finance community development plans.
