The FINANCIAL — WASHINGTON. Some 1.5 billion people live in countries affected by repeated cycles of political and criminal violence, and no low-income fragile or conflict-affected country has yet to achieve a single Millennium Development Goal.
Fixing the economic, political, and security problems that disrupt development and trap fragile states in cycles of violence requires strengthening national institutions and improving governance in ways that prioritize citizen security, justice, and jobs, according to a new report from the World Bank.
“If we are to break the cycles of violence and lessen the stresses that drive them, countries must develop more legitimate, accountable and capable national institutions that provide for citizen security, justice and jobs.” said World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick. “Children living in fragile states are twice as likely to be undernourished and three times as likely to be out of school. And the effects of violence in one area can spread to neighboring states and to other parts of the world, hurting development prospects of others and impeding economic prospects for entire regions.”
The World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security and Development follows a speech delivered by Zoellick in 2008 to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, entitled “Fragile States: Securing Development”. Noting that military and development disciplines too often worked on separate paths, Zoellick called for bringing security and development together to break the cycles of fragility and violence affecting more than one billion people.
The report notes that at least 1.5 billion people are still affected by current violence or its legacies. The report shows how 21st century organized violence appears to be spurred by a range of domestic and international stresses, such as youth unemployment, income shocks, tensions among ethnic, religious or social groups, and trafficking networks. In citizen surveys done for the report, unemployment was overwhelmingly the most important factor cited for recruitment into gangs and rebel movements. Risks of violence are greater when high stresses combine with weak capacity or lack of legitimacy in key national institutions, as shown by the recent turbulence in the Middle East and North Africa.
Capable, legitimate institutions are crucial because they are able to mediate the stresses that otherwise lead to repeated waves of violence and instability: more than 90 percent of civil wars in the 2000s occurred in countries that already had a civil war in the previous 30 years. Elsewhere, gains made through peace processes are often undermined by high levels of organized crime. And countries where violence takes root fall far behind in development, with poverty rates more than 20 percentage points higher, on average, in countries where violence is protracted than in other countries.
“While much of the world has made rapid progress in reducing poverty over the past 60 years, areas suffering from political instability and criminal violence are being left far behind and face stagnation, both in terms of economic growth and disappointing human development indicators,” said Justin Lin, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President, Development Economics.
Stopping repetitive cycles of violence requires fostering more capable and legitimate institutions and better governance, the report argues. In situations of violence and fragility, deliberate efforts are needed to build political coalitions that are “inclusive enough” to generate broad national support for change.
Building confidence is essential to reducing risks of conflict, and involves signaling positive intent — through credible early results and measures that convincingly lock-in commitments to change. A key lesson from country experiences is that two or three tangible early results are generally sufficient to begin the restoration of confidence.
True institutional transformations, require time. It typically takes 15 to 30 years for weak or illegitimate national institutions to become resilient to violence and instability, according to new research commissioned for the report. Societies that have succeeded in moving away from violence have gone through a sequence of transitions to transform their political, security and economic institutions. Successful early reform efforts have generally focused on providing citizens with improved security, justice and jobs, and understanding the positive and negative inter-relationships between them. Where one of these elements is missing, transitions have faltered.
Insights from national experience
The report provides a set of tools that have been valuable in countries making successful transitions, to rebuild confidence between citizens and the state. These include transparency measures, special budget allocations for disadvantaged groups, new appointments, removal of discriminatory laws as well as credible commitments to realistic timelines for longer-term reform. The report also outlines five practical programs at the national level to link rapid confidence-building to longer-term institutional transformation:
Support for community-based programs for preventing violence, creating employment and delivering service, and offering access to local justice and dispute resolution systems in insecure areas.
Programs to transform security and justice institutions in ways that focus on basic functions and recognize the linkages among policing, civilian justice and public finances.
Basic job creation schemes, including large scale public and community-based works that do not crowd out the private sector, access to finance to bring producers and markets together, and the expansion of access to assets, skills, work experience and finance.
Involving women in security, justice and economic empowerment programs.
Focused anti-corruption actions that demonstrate how new initiatives can be well governed, drawing on external and community capacity for monitoring.
“National and global leaders need better ways to respond to people’s calls for jobs and justice, from North Africa to Cote D’Ivoire to Haiti. The international system needs to refocus assistance on citizen security, justice and jobs in the most fragile situations. This will require reforming the procedures of international agencies, responding at a regional level, and renewing cooperative efforts among lower, middle, and higher income countries to support global advances in justice and economic prosperity,” said Sarah Cliffe, WDR co-Director and Special Representative.
Adapting international assistance
The report recommends enhanced international support in the following areas:
Providing more, and more integrated, assistance for citizen security, justice and jobs, including greater assistance for job creation and to build well-governed police forces and justice systems.
Reforming internal agency systems to support rapid action to restore confidence and long-term institution-building. This requires changing international agencies’ budgeting, staffing, and fiduciary management procedures to provide faster assistance and end stop-go patterns of aid.
Acting at the regional and global levels on external stresses such as the impact on fragile states of international corruption, trafficking and food insecurity.
Forging new international consensus on the norms of responsible leadership and encouraging exchange of knowledge that draws on the experience of middle-income countries.
“This report draws on the analysis of researchers and the experience of policy-makers in the development community, the United Nations system and the world's regional institutions. Together they provide an extraordinary wealth of insight on the political, security and economic dimensions of conflict reduction. In addition, though, the WDR has sought out the experience of countries and national leaders who have managed successful transitions away from repetitive cycles of violence: this, we feel, is the report's real contribution. The priority now is to translate these findings into practical policies and programs, “said Nigel Roberts, WDR co-Director and Special Representative.
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