The latest cycle of violence in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the brief occupation of Goma by the 'M23' rebels call for a re-examination of how UN peacekeepers have approached the physical protection of civilians in the DRC over the past 13 years. This article examines how lessons from early protection crises led the UN missions in the DRC to develop a ...» more
Library
This e-library contains more than 4500 external publications on governance, social development, conflict and humanitarian issues. It includes academic and grey literature selected for its basis in good quality research and coverage of a range of perspectives. Policy-oriented summaries of each document are provided, plus links to the full text.
Funds for Peace? Examining the Transformative Potential of Social Funds
Social funds and large-scale community driven development (CDD) programmes are a popular policy instrument in post-conflict situations. This is partly because they are seen to alleviate pressure on governments to deliver development and reconstruction outcomes by transferring resources and responsibilities to community actors. However, part of their popularity can also be ...» more
Piracy in the greater Gulf of Aden: Myths, Misconceptions and Remedies
This report explores several of the most commonly stated causes of Somali piracy, as well as the history and structure of Somali piracy, showing that piracy is rather a spatiotemporal and geographically constrained phenomenon than a general Somali phenomenon, which started after the collapse of Somalia in 1991. Solutions must take this into consideration, focus on local ...» more
Managing donor perceptions: Contextualising Uganda’s 2007 intervention in Somalia
This article explores Uganda’s decision to send peacekeeping troops to Somalia in 2007 as part of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and argues that the intervention has as much to do with Uganda’s relationship with its donors as it has with maintaining regional stability – the official justification for intervention. Museveni’s decision to intervene in Somalia is ...» more
Into the Mogadishu Maelstrom: The African Union Mission in Somalia
The African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM) endured a difficult first 30 months of operations. Deployed into an active war-zone, it was not long before an international debate began to revolve around how the mission should be brought to an end. This article analyses the main challenges as well as the most important local and international dynamics that affected the operation. ...» more
Working out of chronic poverty: a policy guide
Chronically poor people are poor over extended periods of time, often over a lifetime and may pass their poverty onto their children. Frequently lacking material assets including land, livestock or the equipment for a microbusiness, the main asset of chronically poor people is their labour. The majority of chronically poor people are economically active but the poor quality of ...» more
Regaining a future? Lessons learned from education of young people in fragile situations
This report examines experiences in providing educational aid to young people in fragile situations. The study analyses experiences with three different, yet overlapping forms of education supported by a variety of multilateral and bilateral donors and agencies, as well as NGOs: secondary schooling, accelerated learning/second chance education, and vocational/technical skills ...» more
Property rights and development briefing: Property rights and economic growth
This Briefing Paper presents the debate on the impact of formalised land rights on economic growth through the vectors of increased investment, credit and efficiency. At the request of DfID, the paper also considers the impact of titling on the distribution of control of property and of growth. Drawing on this debate, it identifies key research questions and weighs up the ...» more
Gender Equality and Food Security: Women’s Empowerment as a Tool against Hunger
Women and girls worldwide face many inequities and constraints, often embedded in norms and practices and encoded in legal provisions. Some laws, such as those governing access to land, include inequitable and exclusionary provisions, thus institutionalizing discrimination. Where such legislative measures are not in place, customary rules and practices often have restrictive ...» more
Do They Work? Assessing the Impact of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives in Service Delivery
Transparency and accountability initiatives (TAIs) have emerged as a key strategy for improving public services, but the links between transparency and accountability and their impact on service delivery are often largely assumed. This article reviews several TAIs to assess their impact. It finds evidence suggesting that a range of accountability initiatives have been effective ...» more
A New Agenda for Education in Fragile States
This report provides a broad review of the field of education in fragile states and charts a new agenda for maximizing education’s contribution to the development and well-being of people living in these contexts. Recommendations made are based on evidence developed both from the analysis and synthesis of the latest available data as well as primary research. Its key findings ...» more
Dividing lines: Grazing and conflict along the Sudan-South Sudan border
The emergence of a national border into a complex environment containing many groups with different histories and narratives has deeply affected all of the communities in the area. This working paper explores these dynamics through five case studies: the Northern Bahr el Ghazal-East Darfur border; Abyei; the Unity-South Kordofan border; the Upper Nile-South Kordofan border; and ...» more
Behavioural Economics and Public Sector Reform: An Accidental Experiment and Lessons from Cameroon
This paper explores how behavioural change (and thus institutional change) might be better motivated in the public sector. The study is based on an 'accidental experiment' – two projects in Cameroon, supported by the World Bank, of different scale, scope and design in the same governance environment. The paper argues for the value of using ideas from behavioural economics to ...» more
Rethinking social accountability in Africa: lessons from the Mwananchi Programme
How can social accountability projects enhance citizen engagement to deliver pro-poor policy and practice changes in Africa? This report draws on five years' of lessons and case studies from implementing the Mwananchi Governance and Transparency Programme in six African countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zambia. It argues that there are three major ...» more
Shifting Sands: Changing gender roles among refugees in Lebanon
This report, based on a rapid gender situation and vulnerability assessment, finds that many refugee men are experiencing severe stress and feelings of powerlessness because they are unable to fulfil their traditional role as family provider and protector. Many refugee women and girls no longer have access to the resources and services they used to have in Syria before the ...» more
Getting smart and scaling up: responding to the impact of organized crime on governance in developing countries
This report highlights the importance of separating organised crime from politics while enhancing legitimate governance and service delivery. Based on a literature review and six country case studies, it offers detailed recommendations in five core areas: protecting the political process; modernising and strengthening law enforcement and the judiciary; supporting ...» more
Financing Disaster Risk Reduction: A 20-year story of international aid
This report analyses financing for Disaster Risk Reduction over the past 20 years. It finds that overall volumes spent on disasters are a fraction of development aid, and within that the amount committed to reduce the risk of disasters is an even smaller proportion. Financing is heavily concentrated in a relatively small number of projects and in relatively few countries, with ...» more
The impact of adult civic education programmes in developing democracies
This paper, based on four USAID-sponsored impact evaluations conducted since the late 1990s, finds that civic education programmes can have meaningful and relatively long-lasting effects in increasing political information and feelings of empowerment, and in mobilising individuals to engage in political participation. But they are much less likely to affect more ‘deep-seated’ ...» more
New Technology and the Prevention of Violence and Conflict
This report explores the ways in which new technologies can help international actors, governments, and civil society organisations to more effectively prevent violence and conflict. It examines the contributions that cell phones, social media, crowdsourcing, crisis mapping, blogging, and big data analytics can make to short-term efforts to forestall crises and to long-term ...» more
Localizing Development: Does Participation Work?
Can participation be induced through the type of large-scale government and donor-funded participatory programs that have become a recurrent theme of development policy? This report reviews almost 500 studies on participatory development and decentralisation. Three key lessons emerge from distilling the evidence and thinking about the broader challenges in inducing ...» more
