How can Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSs) in fragile and conflict-affected countries be made effective? How can the World Bank and other international bodies assist this process? This World Bank working paper argues that well-designed PRSs offer the best hope for many countries to move from poverty and conflict to development and stability. Outsiders can promote effective PRSs by supporting five guiding principles: promote a conflict perspective, perform relevant analysis, provide policy support, strengthen national capacities and share examples of effective PRSs.
The promise of poverty reduction can evaporate in a conflict-affected country for several reasons. Violence may create poverty faster than a PRS can reduce it. The credibility of a PRS may suffer because conflict issues are not taken into account. Violence-induced poverty may not be recognised as different. Violence may invalidate previous data and analysis by transforming economic, political and social structures.
To meet these challenges, PRSs in fragile and conflict-affected countries should be initially modest, focused and manageable. Besides constant attention to conflict factors, effective strategies will adhere to five guiding principles:
- Realism: Goals must be matched to resources: natural resources, financial resources, knowledge, organisational capacity and political tolerability. An overstretched development strategy will damage credibility and trust.
- Prioritisation: Transparent prioritisation can highlight common goals, clarify issues, improve the chances of successful implementation and reduce the risk of dashed expectations.
- Context specificity: Pressure to conform to international standards for PRSs and produce strategies which can be “objectively” evaluated should not preclude attention to each country’s unique environment and condition.
- Flexibility: Strategies which have flexibility built into their design will find less resistance and delay when circumstances change. This includes the assumption of mid-course corrections and procedures for re-examination.
- Concreteness: The more specific a PRS can be about its initial statement of policy actions – the more it is able to shift from defining objectives to designing actions – the more likely it is to be effective.
Outsiders can best help countries to produce PRSs and to take ownership of them by lending support according to the following principles:
- Promote a conflict perspective: As a minimum, donors should encourage initial caution in PRSs, undertake conflict screening and treat violence and coercion as components of poverty.
- Perform relevant analysis: This includes research into structural poverty and conflict-induced poverty, regional analysis of poverty and conflict, refinement of conflict analysis tools and conflict-sensitive poverty assessments.
- Provide policy support: This may be policy design for a specific sector such as the security sector or encouragement for policy directions that are highly advisable for conflict-affected countries.
- Strengthen national capacities: The goal is to build, not supplement, capacity. Many countries lack governmental expertise to articulate priorities, mediate complex conflicts and structure detailed development plans.
- Share examples of success: The World Bank is ideally suited to monitoring the results of implementation, distilling lessons and sharing those lessons with less experienced countries with less.
