Violence the biggest barrier to development, says World Bank
One-and-a-half billion people live in areas affected by conflict, fragility and large-scale organised criminal violence. While poverty is declining for much of the world, populations affected by violence are lagging behind: no low-income fragile or conflict-affected country has achieved a single United Nations Millennium Development Goal. Crucial to breaking these cycles of violence is the strengthening of legitimate institutions and governance to provide security, justice, and jobs to citizens – but this requires determined national leadership and an international system ‘refitted’ to address such challenges, according to the World Bank.
“In 2008… I outlined the challenge: bringing security and development together to put down roots to break the cycles of fragility and conflict”, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said.
In its World Development Report 2011, the bank warns that insecurity perpetuated by the cycles of criminal and political violence is one of the biggest threats to development in the 21st Century and is urging a new approach to development.
The report asks, “How is it that, almost a decade after renewed international engagement with Afghanistan, the prospects of peace seems distant? How is it that entire urban communities can be terrorized by drug traffickers? How is it that countries in the Middle East and North Africa could face explosions of popular grievances despite, in some cases, sustained high growth and improvement in social indicators?”
Featuring groundbreaking new data, the report makes a series of innovative policy recommendations for breaking cycles of violence and preventing their recurrence through international support. These include:
- focus international assistance on job creation, not just growth promotion;
- invest in measures to increase the pool of police and criminal justice personnel available for overseas deployment, including in their specialised training;
- recognise that donors’ low tolerance for risk often obstructs results, and that ‘best fit’ approaches designed for the local context can produce better outcomes than ‘ideal-type’ assistance;
- end the stop-go pattern of assistance by lengthening its duration;
- take seriously the potential advantages of pooled regional public goods, such as trade and transit infrastructure, cross-border development programming, regional security support, and shared regional technical and administrative capacity;
- stem the trafficking and illicit financial flows that fuel violence, including through global financial centres to make information more transparent;
protect fragile states from food insecurity and resource shocks, including through early waning schemes, international trade initiatives such as the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, and encouraging private sector self-regulation.
Massive contractor waste undermines US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, says Inquiry
More than US$30 billion has been lost to contract waste and fraud in US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan – and much of it could have been avoided, according to the report of the Commission on Wartime Contracting.
While fraud and abuse pose ongoing problems, the Commission says the biggest challenge is waste, caused by poor planning, weak management and inadequate oversight within government.
Contractors perform vital tasks, but they do so at a high cost. While contracting is often presented as a cost-effective solution to capacity gaps, the Commission found that the level of the misuse of resources has undermined joint defence, diplomatic and development missions in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Further, commissioners found that the prevalence of unsustainable projects casts a shadow well into the future, warning that ‘at least as much additional waste may develop if host countries cannot or will not sustain US-funded projects and programs’ after transition.
Contract spending in these two operations will exceed US$206 billion by the end of September 2011. Yet the Commission found that the US Government ‘is still unable to provide effective management and oversight of contract spending’. With some 260,000 employees in Iraq and Afghanistan, contractors account for more than half of the total US presence. Despite a vast increase in contracting activity over the past two decades, specialist contract managers within the US Government rose by only three per cent between 1992-2009.
The commissioners make 15 recommendations for institutional and practical reform. Of note are recommendations for better coordination among agencies to address the absence of whole-of-government efforts for contract management and oversight, including through the creation of a permanent office of inspector general for contingency operations.
Global peacekeeping still overstretched, under resourced
The number of troops, military observers and police deployed in peacekeeping operations grew by over 32 per cent in 2010, reaching 256 000 compared with nearly 194,000 in 2009. The result, says the Annual Review, is a troubling tension between intense operational, political and financial pressures to reduce the size of operations, on the one hand, and the continued reliance on peacekeeping to address threats to international peace and security, on the other.
This extensive survey presents a detailed collection of data on peace operations, covering both UN and non-UN peace operations during 2010. Now in its sixth edition, the Review includes analysis and data on United Nations, African Union, NATO, European Union, and ad hoc peacekeeping missions. The Peacekeeping Best Practices Section of the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the African Union Peace and Security Department support the project.
The 2012 review will be out in February 2012.
Rule of law crucial to post-conflict growth
Intervening forces – whether officially ‘occupiers’ or not – have a duty to create or support existing rule of law institutions in post-conflict states, according to Brock Dahl, a former US Treasury Department official who worked in Baghdad and on the Afghanistan Interagency Operations Group.
Dahl’s paper, Closing the Transition Gap: The Rule of Law Imperative in Stabilization Environments argues that for economies to grow and attract investment there needs to be “…immediate action on rule of law…to establish the institutional foundations that are necessary for stabilization and economic growth”.
In Afghanistan, for example, the reluctance or inability to provide robust law enforcement has allowed criminal activities to flourish, which in turn threaten state institutions and governance.
Dahl’s paper is the fourth in the Kauffman Foundation’s series on Expeditionary Economics, an emerging area of economic inquiry focusing on the reconstruction of economies in post-conflict countries. According to the Kauffman Foundation, the main thesis of expeditionary economics is that the most effective method of economic growth in conflict areas is to form firms that can experience rapid growth in revenue and employment; and a focal point is whether the military and civilian agencies can organise such a task, rather than outsourcing to private-sector contractors.
Successes in a Civil-Military Collaborative Effort in Haiti
A civilian medical relief team working in Haiti believe co-operation with the US military proved integral to the success of their mission and that the civil-military collaborative efforts could serve to inform policies and procedures for future disasters.
The team faced ‘apocalyptic’ conditions in post-earthquake Haiti, requiring ‘continuous battlefield medicine’, with uncontrolled numbers of people in the hospital compound and minimal local law enforcement. The game-changer came three days later with the arrival of 80 US soldiers, including five medics. When these soldiers left, another 130 soldiers, including 10 medics, took their place.
The military established security immediately on arrival, providing the medical team better access to patients. Military medics assisted with the evaluation and treatment of patients, carrying stretchers and supplies. Further support came with a US navy hospital ship containing more than 300 medical personnel, operating rooms, and 500 beds.
The authors recommend this collaborative approach in future disaster response, but sound one important note of caution: there was always the possibility the soldiers could be reassigned on a moment’s notice. While this scenario was avoided, the key lesson is that emergency medical response needs assistance from troops whose primary responsibility is to protect and support the medical mission.
Ten Reads on Libya
- A History of Modern Libya, Cambridge University Press
- After Gaddafi, Let’s Hope for the Best in Libya, The Guardian
- Three Questions on Libya, Al Jazeera
- Libya Crisis Map Deployment 2011 Report, Standby Task Force
- Tremors from Libya Contribute to Oil Price Cycles, New York Times
- Exclusion of Women in new Libya must end, Irish Times
- After 1973: Planning for Stabilization in Libya, NYU
- Muslim Peacekeeping in Libya: Brothers in Arms?, The National
- Libya and the European Union: shared interests?, Taylor and Francis
- Libya after Gaddafi, Taylor and Francis
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