A fundamental principle of development today is that the governments of partner countries should lead and guide planning and prioritisation exercises, rather than the donor country. However, countries in transition face particular challenges that limit government-led planning and prioritisation. This chapter asks how stricter and more realistic prioritisation can be achieved during transition in order to enable countries to move from crisis to peace more effectively. The emphasis is on: i) supporting national transition strategies while allowing governments to take gradual leadership of the prioritisation and planning exercise; ii) keeping objectives and planning processes simple; iii) ensuring a collaborative approach; and iv) creating coherence between international and national planning approaches.
Key Findings:
- Effective support during transition requires a focus on a limited set of jointly agreed priorities that brings together the need for continued humanitarian efforts with more targeted support to peacebuilding and statebuilding. An international agreement on transition objectives is important to allow more targeted attention and financial support to transition from across the international system.
- Effective support during transition requires delivering rapid and lifesaving support in parallel with the more targeted efforts towards peacebuilding and statebuilding. International support via humanitarian, development, political and security channels can broadly be divided into three priority areas: delivering basic services and addressing urgent needs; fostering inclusive political settlements and processes; and strengthening state functions.
Recommendations:
- Use national transition strategies as the basis for prioritisation where they exist — if not, find ways to prioritise. Keep priorities simple. Ensure national governments lead the strategic process, even where they might lack the legitimacy to undertake more detailed planning on behalf of entire populations. Weak capacity and legitimacy cannot be an excuse for internationally driven (and written) development strategies. Develop transition strategies collaboratively. Use planning processes as critical vehicles for engagement and capacity development.
- Prioritise annually to ensure that transition strategies target the most critical areas. During transition, annual prioritisation should be the norm. This allows frequent reassessment of progress and risks, thus preventing strategic failure and keeping the priorities relevant. Alter international approaches to enable annual/rolling prioritisation from year to year. Increase the flexibility of funding allocations by increasing contingencies in budgets so that strategies can be adjusted as new risks and opportunities emerge.
- Ensure coherence between existing planning frameworks. Development, diplomatic, humanitarian and security-related activities must complement and reinforce each other. This requires integrated planning. Support reforms for integrating and aligning strategic and sector planning tools and processes with transition strategies. Ensure stronger accountability in the development of sector plans. Each sector group should operate based on clearly defined accountability and responsibility structures, building on the positive lessons learned from humanitarian clusters. Clarify how the international community can best support a gradual shift to national planning and government leadership. Cost the strategy and link it to specific funding sources to avoid fragmentation.
