Violent conflict and ‘situations of fragility’ represent significant challenges for aid effectiveness. This CARE International briefing paper argues that applying traditional development approaches in an unchanged fashion in such contexts simply does not work. Aid can have unintended interactions with conflict – both to exacerbate or mitigate violence or the potential for violence. Aid reforms need to place a much greater emphasis on conflict sensitivity and human rights-centred approaches.
The Accra Agenda for Action and follow-up towards the 2010 Beijing review offer opportunities for reform, but only if donors translate policy into action. In recent years, donor debates on conflict and so-called ‘fragile states’ have become increasingly driven by the ‘War on Terror’. This has manifested in a donor preoccupation with what is termed ‘whole-of-government approaches’ to coordination between development, defence and diplomacy. This trend has distracted from more locally-appropriate approaches to aid in conflict-affected countries.
CARE International’s experience in conflict situations shows that:
- Peace processes require a political settlement, typically negotiated at the elite level, to be gradually extended outwards. For this reason, ‘statebuilding’ efforts need to extend beyond a narrow focus on building central state institutions to encompass support for fostering state-society relations;
- The transition from humanitarian relief to recovery and longer-term development has long been characterised by gaps in funding, strategy and capacity. Efforts to review the aid system’s financing of early recovery are welcome;
- NGOs are key actors in early recovery. While the long-term goal for recovery is to build government capacity to deliver services, NGOs can make significant contributions in terms of both government capacity and service delivery in the interim;
- Donor funding for peacebuilding is too often fragmented, ill-targeted and too short-term. Donors often lament that, in post-conflict contexts, everything seems a priority and so nothing is prioritised;
- Mutual accountability is important, but it must be based on wider efforts to promote accountability and rights-based approaches for local populations.
The Kinshasa statement, agreed by donor and partner governments in July 2008, sets out a progressive agenda beyond the Accra Aid Effectiveness summit. In this context, CARE International makes the following recommendations:
- Improving donor accountability in conflict and fragile states – donors should make clear commitments to donor accountability against the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative and the Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States.
- Statebuilding: Recognising the role of citizenship and civil society – donors and partner governments should recognise the important role of citizenship and civil society in statebuilding, and reflect this in the proposed objectives for peacebuilding and statebuilding.
- More and better funding for early recovery – donors should increase funding for early recovery; recognising the need for a mix of aid modalities in such contexts.
- Promoting ‘strategic peacebuilding’ – objectives for peacebuilding and statebuilding should be informed by a concept of ‘strategic peacebuilding’. This would entail that donor funding and NGO programmes are based on solid conflict analysis and foster links between the micro (project) and macro (context) levels.
- Compacts: Strengthening mutual accountability in post-conflict transition – donors and post-conflict governments should negotiate ‘Compacts’ outlining their financial and political obligations in addressing the root causes of violence, promoting recovery and consolidating peace.
