What progress has the UK Government made on conflict reduction and conflict prevention strategies since 1997? This paper, commissioned by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), provides an overview of the UK Government’s approach to peacebuilding. It aims to provide implementation guidelines for what works and what does not work in peacebuilding. It summarises government conflict reduction and prevention strategy since 1997, and describes underlying principles and the main strategies and mechanisms in use.
The UK’s approach to conflict prevention appears to be based on the following underlying principles:
- There is a negative correlation between violent conflict and sustainable development.
- Personal safety is a precursor to development.
- Democratic and representative systems of government and a rights based society are necessary conditions for conflict prevention.
- Coordinated interventions are required at multiple levels – from intergovernmental to grass roots – and with a key role for the United Nations (UN).
- Delivery of UK conflict prevention goals relies on partnership with a variety of institutions.
- Front-loading of post-conflict investments reduces the chances of conflict recurring.
Although the UK recognises a wide variety of security, political and social initiatives that can contribute to conflict prevention, in practice UK interventions are governed by a limited set of strategies. The three main strategies include:
- Improving governance, which is seen as an overarching issue.
- Related security sector reform initiatives; demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration; defence diplomacy; small arms and light weapons reductions; and humanitarian mine action.
- Peace processes.
- Secondary strategies include establishing independent media, making the international system more effective at improving conflicts, improving the role of international business and international financial institutions and addressing wars of abundance fuelled by the illegal exploitation of resources.
The paper highlights the following points about UK peacebuilding efforts:
- The Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Department was established in 1997 and has spearheaded DFID’s conflict related strategy and programming. Conflict analyses is now being mainstreamed into DFID geographic departments and country programmes.
- The UK government recognises that each conflict is unique and DFID has developed a Conflict Assessment Methodology, which has now been applied to ten conflict situations.
- The Conflict Prevention Unit was expanded in 2002 in order to enhance conflict prevention resource management and to assist in the mainstreaming of conflict prevention into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
- The Africa Conflict Unit in DFID has doubled its personnel over the past three years, partly in order to support activities under the Africa Conflict Prevention Pool (ACPP).
- Security and reconciliation activities make clear links to peacebuilding. However, investments in post-conflict socio-economic and reconstruction projects typically record no peacebuilding intent. As a result, they are unlikely to be evaluated for their peacebuilding effects.
- The emphasis placed by the UK on coordination between actors and giving the UN a central role indicates that the UK is striving to achieve horizontal consistency between actors.
- The Global Conflict Prevention Pool and ACPP have allowed the development of more focussed thematic and geographical conflict prevention strategies, and have fostered a degree of interdepartmental coordination that would not otherwise have been achieved.