CRISIS PREVENTION and DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION An overview of the workshop held on April 19,2000 Anita Sharma, Rapporteur with Ana Grier Cutter

CRISIS PREVENTION and DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION an overview of the workshop held on April 19,2000 Anita Sharma, Rapporteur with Ana Grier Cutter* * Anita Sharma is a program officer at the Role of American Military Project (RAMP), Association of the U.S. Army. Ana Grier Cutter is the program officer for the Program on Conflict Prevention at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.

Contents Overview ....................................................... 1 Speech Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Federal Republic of Germany....................................... 5 Morning Session Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation:The Role of the State ....... 11 Speech The Future of International Cooperation in Crisis Prevention Shashi Tharoor, Director of Communication and Special Projects, Office of the Secretary-General, United Nations........................ 17 Afternoon Session Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation: The Role of International Organizations ............................... 23 List of Participants ............................................... 29 About the Organizers ............................................. 30

Overview The experience of the international community with such tragedies as famine, genocide, hurricanes, and war over the past decade has resulted in a renewed interest in the relationship between crisis—or conflict—prevention and development cooperation. Many in the field of conflict prevention and resolution believe that properly structured development aid may be the best tool available to the international community for long-term prevention; yet, as critics have pointed out, development cooperation and development aid have also contributed negatively to conflict situations. 1 “The past decade’s tragedies have shaken humanitarians to the core,” writes Thomas G. Weiss, presidential professor of political science at City University of New York, in the 1999 issue of the Carnegie Council’s journal Ethics& International Affairs.“The mere mention of Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia, Afghanistan, or Sierra Leone profoundly disturbs their composure. Traumas in these countries have become synonymous with the dilemmas of humanitarian action, that is, with international attempts to help victims through the provision of relief and the protection of their human rights.” 2 From the origination of the modern international development community and through its evolution over the past 50 years, the development cooperation agencies of the major donor countries have generally kept their distance from the conflict situations of the countries in which they operate. Donors have only recently begun to integrate conflict prevention strategies into development policies and to consider the impact of development aid in preventing conflicts. Recent evaluations, such as the Local Capacities for Peace Project run by Collaboration for Development Action, Inc., 3 suggest that much work needs to be done to further integrate effective prevention strategies into development practices. Still, the efforts are promising. Within the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has made prevention a cornerstone of his tenure as evidenced by his recent Millennium Report 4 ; the Security Council has become more engaged in preventive action; and UN agencies such as the United Nations Development Program(UNDP) are actively seeking ways to develop strategies that prevent crises. Building upon its groundbreaking work conceptualized by Guidelines on Conflict, Peace and Development Cooperation, 5 the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(DAC/OECD) continues to pursue aid strategies that are incentives for peace and disincentives for war. New programs initiated by the German Development Institute(GDI) 6 , the United States Agency for International Development(USAID), the Canadian International Development Agency(CIDA), and the World Bank also illustrate growing efforts within the development community to apply strategies that successfully prevent, mitigate, and resolve conflicts. To explore further the integration of peacebuilding measures and assistance, the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation jointly held a workshop entitled “Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation” on April 19, 2000, in New York City. The expert participants were asked to consider two questions: 1. What has been the experience of your government or organization in connecting crisis prevention to international development cooperation? 2. What is the appropriate role of development cooperation in crisis prevention? The workshop opened with a presentation by Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, federal minister for economic cooperation and development in Germany, on the German government’s strategy for crisis prevention in development cooperation. The presentation was followed by the first session,“Crisis Prevention and 1 See Michael Maren, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity(Free Press, 1997); or Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998). 2 Thomas G. Weiss,“Principles, Politics, and Humanitarian Action,” Ethics& International Affairs 13(1999), p. 1. 3 The book associated with the Local Capacities for Peace Project is Do No Harm by Mary Anderson(Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999). Other evaluations include: K. Bush, A Measure of Peace: Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment(PCIA) of Development Projects in Conflict Zones(Ottawa: The Peacebuilding and Reconstruction Program Initiative, IDRC, Working Paper No. 1); and World Bank, The World Bank Experience with Post-conflict Reconstruction, five volumes(Washington, D.C.: 1998). The U.S. Department of State also recently released a document of interest titled“Interagency Review of U.S. Government Civilian Humanitarian& Transition Programs,” http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB30/index.html(January 2000). 4 http://www.un.org/millennium/ 5 http://www.oecd.org/dac/pdf/eguide.pdf 6 GDI recently published a report by Stephen Klingebiel,“ Impact of Development Cooperation in Conflict Situations”(1999). 1

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation 2 Development Cooperation: The Role of the State.” In this session, participants discussed the roles and strategies of states and international organizations. Between the morning and afternoon sessions, luncheon speaker Shashi Tharoor, director of communications and special projects at the United Nations, gave an engaging address on the UN’s commitment to conflict prevention. During the afternoon session,“Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation: The Role of International Organizations,” participants discussed how their organizations are approaching the issues of crisis prevention in development cooperation. Wieczorek-Zeul suggested that while conflict is an intrinsic component of growth in civil society, development policies could foster peaceful forms of conflict resolution by helping to address the structural causes of conflict.“For those concerned, it often makes no difference whether they lose their livelihoods as a result of violent clashes, a lack of water or soil, or AIDS or natural disaster,” she said. Development cooperation could contribute to the culture of prevention advocated by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan 7 if “funding currently going toward interventions and short-term relief could instead be used to foster balanced, sustainable development in order to reduce further the risk of war and disasters,” she asserted. Noting that the“CNN effect” extends across the Atlantic, Wieczorek-Zeul said long-term prevention strategies and early-warning mechanisms are often faced with the same phenomenon:“the interest of the media and the public—and thus, in many cases the requisite public support—only materializes once the images of refugees, starving children, and victims of war are transported into our living rooms by television—in other words, only when the crisis has turned violent(and thus visible), raising people’s concern and calling for responses.” Although donor assistance may address the structural causes of conflict and contribute toward stable and peaceful progress, she said,“development policy cannot be assumed to have the effect of preventing crisis simply by its very nature.” An evaluation by the German government on the effects of recent aid policies in El Salvador, Ethiopia, Mali, Kenya, Rwanda, and Sri Lanka found that the German government and the entire development community had limited direct influence in acute conflict situations. And while it had a positive impact in many cases, in some instances donor assistance actually exacerbated conflict. The report also suggested that German development cooperation should be used in a more deliberate and targeted manner against the background of a particular conflict situation to address root causes of violence. Reforming the security sector, supporting the democratization process, and limiting military spending in developing countries are examples of potential targets for development cooperation in conflict situations. By “employing development cooperation in a more strategic manner,[we might] better integrate and assess its potential positive influence,” said the minister. Coming from a variety of perspectives such as development, crisis management, law, civil-military relations, economics, democratization, and human rights, workshop participants exchanged information on the strategies by which they are attempting to formulate more effective guiding principals and practices for development assistance, especially with regard to crisis situations. The morning panel,“Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation: The Role of the State,” reflected the view that the international donor community recognizes the need for addressing the root causes of conflict and has devised a series of warning mechanisms for conflict prevention and targeted policies for more sustainable development. Though results are somewhat inconclusive, most participants believed the development community should continue incorporating more holistic approaches. Moderator Shepard Forman, director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, began the morning session by saying that this subject is critically important. A recent scan of countries in jeopardy of descending into conflict, or in which conflict might be renewed, yielded a list of nearly 30, and the international community has no ready solutions at hand. Anwarul Chowdhury, the permanent representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations and chairman of the Group of Least Developed Countries, suggested that poverty reduction should be the primary goal of both 7 In his report to the United Nations General Assembly on the work of the organization, the secretary-general called on the United Nations to develop a“culture of prevention.” He made a similar statement in the Millennium Report:“There is near-universal agreement that prevention is preferable to cure, and that strategies of prevention must address the root causes of conflicts, not simply their violent symptoms.”

3 development assistance and crisis prevention.“It is the most comprehensive aspect of the linkage between conflict prevention and development assistance,” he said. Johanna Mendelson Forman, senior adviser for the Democracy and Governance Program at the United States Agency for International Development, presented the perspective of the U.S. government, which as the “800-pound gorilla” in the UN Security Council, is often a“lightning rod for discontent.” The United States is faced with the same challenges as many other bilateral donors, she continued, including how to support sustainable development practices in light of a number of conceptual challenges. Cognitive dissonance within development agencies, the reluctance to report early-warning signs, and the failure to view local projects from a larger perspective are impediments to successful crisis prevention. Still, serious efforts to create more effective mechanisms and the inclusion of governance and security issues in development thinking are positive steps forward. External support for peacebuilding should supplement, not substitute, local efforts to achieve a sustainable peace, stressed Hunter McGill, director general for Humanitarian Affairs at the Canadian International Development Agency. In many cases development assistance programs are in post-conflict situations where challenges include societal reconciliation, breaking the cycle of conflict, responding to needs of conflict victims—especially children—and attempting to support or revive civil society. To further promote and coordinate Canadian peacebuilding capacities and Canadian participation in international peacebuilding initiatives, the Canadian government recently launched the Canadian Peacebuilding Initiative and CIDA’s Peacebuilding Fund. Beatriz Ramacciotti, the ambassador and permanent representative of Peru to the Organization of American States, illustrated how conflict can provide opportunities for development. Presenting a case study of the Peru-Ecuador peace agreements, she suggested that ripe conditions, such as capable leadership, a war-weary citizenry, and strong international support, helped make the 1998 peace agreement possible. This agreement included a joint strategy for integrating the border region of the two countries and investing in a long-term development process. Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation Reporting on findings from recent reports, 8 Peter Waller, the deputy-director of the GDI said the international donor community has only limited direct influence on conflict situations. The study pointed to several lessons learned: better exchanges of conflict identification, rewards for positive reporting, improved donor coordination, and more transparent policy dialogue and conditionality. According to Waller, success largely depends on the“leading donor’s adoption of a coordinated approach, the avoidance of excessive development cooperation[‘over aiding’], and concrete demands and conditions.” Shashi Tharoor engaged participants in a lively luncheon address about the UN’s fundamental mission of promoting human security and how genuine and lasting prevention is the means to achieve that mission. Soberly reflecting on the failures of prevention in recent years, Tharoor suggested there are three main reasons for this ineffectiveness: reluctance of one or more of the parties in the conflict to accept external intervention of any kind; lack of political will at the highest levels of the international community; and lack of integrated conflict prevention strategies within the UN system and the international community. Of these, mustering the political will to deal with a problem that has not yet happened—or received attention—usually carries a heavy political price. Tharoor cautioned that convincing politicians to get involved in crisis prevention remains difficult. Politicians, especially in democracies, need to place a high emphasis on short-term results in order to get reelected.“So to convince them to invest resources—to expend political will to get resources from their parliaments—for preventive action is rather like persuading a teenager to invest in a pension. The benefit seems so distant and unrelated to one’s immediate concerns that it’s very difficult to actually make a case for that.” Under the leadership of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, UN agencies have made democratization, good governance, foundations of peace, and the promotion of human security the cornerstones of the organization. Within this framework, agencies have developed a series of operational and structural strategies to further the ideals of prevention. However, Tharoor stressed, the policies of prevention—early warning, preventive diplomacy, preventive disarmament, and deployment—“will 8 Klingebiel,“Impact of Development Cooperation in Conflict Situations.”

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation succeed only if the root causes of conflict are also addressed with the same will and wisdom that we try to bring into conflicts after they happen.” Tharoor said that addressing the root causes of conflicts takes stamina, resources, the support of the international community, and an understanding that new conceptions of human security are beginning to alter our definitions of sovereignty. Whether conflict prevention activities are undertaken by the UN or by regional or subregional organizations that have greater proximity to the conflict and historical experience,“all member states facing situations of conflict must recognize, something that many in Washington fail to recognize: our involvement in these situations is not an infringement on sovereignty. Rather, early warning and preventive diplomacy seek to support and restore order and peace, precisely to safeguard the sovereignty of those countries that are about to be consumed in crisis.” The afternoon panel,“Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation: The Role of International Organizations,” featured different perspectives on the effectiveness of donor-assistance policies and how development, prevention, and security theories are being redefined. Although participants seemingly reached a consensus on the need to incorporate good governance and security reforms and build local capacities, they cautioned against using prevention rhetoric so broadly as to render the term“prevention” meaningless. Afternoon moderator Danilo Türk, assistant secretary-general of the UN Department of Political Affairs, reminded the audience that the very notion of prevention carries an“optimistic tinge,” which may be misunderstood by some as the silver bullet to every problem. “Financial institutions such as the World Bank are beginning to realize that sound development projects must incorporate structural issues such as security and governance if they are to be successful,” said Patricia Cleves, senior adviser of the Post-conflict Reconstruction Unit at the World Bank. The bank hopes to incorporate this new operational policy soon, but it must also continue to strengthen local capacity and coordination among donors. Bernard Wood, former director of development cooperation with the Development Assistance Committee at the OECD, argued that the emerging policy consensus is promising.“Never have so many 4 international organizations and governments been talking so clearly and along such common lines about the need to help prevent crises in developing countries and regions, and the broad approaches to doing so. In addition, multilateral financial institutions have rightly focused their attention upstream,” he said,“to focus more on the governance and participation needs that underpin sound policy and sustainable development.” Lauren Lovelace, special assistant to Nancy Soderberg, alternative representative for Special Political Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said:“Increasing instances of peacekeeping missions and fewer vetoes in the Security Council are promising examples of cooperation, yet the UN is not a panacea for all violent conflicts.” While the UN engages well in peace maintenance missions, it cannot carry out peace enforcement missions, nor can the UN always defend U.S. interests when they are directly threatened, she maintained. Implementing new development strategies for systemic approaches to governance challenges in crisis or post-conflict situations, and to the issues of human security and social cohesion, has made the UNDP more responsive to the challenges of effective crisis prevention and recovery, according to Frank O’Donnell, principal adviser on governance in crisis countries at the Management Development and Governance Division of the United Nations Development Program. Recent studies suggest, said O’Donnell, that capacity building, reforming and restructuring key institutions and economic regimes, and promoting good governance programs could help countries and communities“better mediate their internal tensions, resolve their disputes peacefully, and arbitrate and essentially prevent violent conflict.” The focus of the workshop was the nexus between crisis prevention and development conflict. According to Jamal Benomar, senior adviser on prevention and governance issues at the Emergency Response Division of UNDP, this subject is so new that we“are still inventing the wheel.” Still, there is increasing consensus that effective development practices that address root causes of violence, improve local capacities to organize and act collectively, and strengthen governance and human security can do much to prevent violent conflict. O

Speech “Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century” Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Federal Republic of Germany The invitation to this workshop said that my contribution would be about“Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation in the Twenty-first Century.” To me, it is more than just semantics that “crisis prevention” in English—unlike the German word Krisenpravention—refers to the immediate averting of violent conflict, or strategies that a fire department might employ to prevent a fire when the match has already been struck. In German, we also talk about crisis prevention when we refer to the long-term prevention of violent attempts to settle conflicts, and we consider conflict(in the sense of disagreement) as a phenomenon inherent to civil society resulting from conflicting interests. Not only is it legitimate for conflicts to arise—which must then be settled by civil means—it is even necessary if a society is to develop further. This is precisely where our development policy becomes active by fostering peaceful forms of conflict resolution and helping to address the structural causes of conflict. Another aspect in this debate on concepts and political objectives is that of natural disaster, which may also result in crisis—as could be witnessed recently in Mozambique—that is, in severe suffering for large sections of the population, including consequences of a violent nature such as displacement, famine, and disease. If we focus our deliberations on the concept of“human security”—as the UN has done since 1994—we will not be able to evade the need for limiting natural disasters. What are typical patterns of crises, if we define “crisis” as a tragic combination of conflict and the use of violence to settle it? For those concerned, it often makes no difference whether they lose their livelihoods as a result of violent clashes, a lack of water or soil, or AIDS or natural disaster. And there are indeed linkages between these issues—for instance, it is only as a result of human action that the hazards posed by our natural environment become what should really be termed“unnatural” disasters. Poverty and population pressure force a growing number of people to settle in places where these hazards are manifest: in floodplains, in earthquake-prone regions, and on slopes at risk from mud slides. It is not by chance that more than 90 percent of the victims of disasters worldwide live in developing countries. It is also a fact that in the past few years poor countries have had a far greater chance of experiencing armed conflict than rich countries. However, it poverty itself does not seem to be the causative agent; the majority of poor countries are experiencing peace most of the time. It is disparate economic development along regional, ethnic, or religious dividing lines that leads to tension. The same goes for unequal access to political power—for instance, for members of different ethnic groups—which often leads to strife if interested forces manipulate the differences. And crises are also closely linked to economic downturn—not least because politics tends to be inherently more conflict-prone in a recession than in periods of economic growth. To describe a final scenario, there are fights for control over economic resources. A number of internal wars today are being fought over diamonds, drugs, logging concessions, and other valuable resources. Individual nonorganized groups, or the elites of countries, thus derive personal gain while others suffer, and these elites cooperate with business interests in the developed countries. In some cases, these efforts are undertaken in collaboration with uncontrolled, illegitimate security forces. Another example is conflict over the use of water resources. The number of people living in countries experiencing water deficits is expected to grow sevenfold over the next 25 years. This means that conflict, for instance over access to Euphrates and Tigris water in the border region of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, is likely to emerge unless an integrated regional approach to water use is applied on a permanent basis. What responses does development cooperation have to offer as part of a culture of prevention of the kind advocated by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan? Effective prevention strategies could save not just enormous amounts of money, undoubtedly in the range of tens of billions of dollars every year, but also thou5

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation sands of human lives. Funding currently going toward interventions and short-term relief could instead be used to foster balanced, sustainable development in order to reduce further the risk of war and disasters. Long-term prevention strategies are intended to prevent conflicts from even beginning to escalate, by addressing the underlying causes. The idea is to apply a constructive approach in order to resolve the conflict and prevent it from escalating into violent crisis. However, both long-term prevention and early warning related to disasters are often faced with the same phenomenon: the interest of the media and the public— and thus in many cases the requisite public support— only materializes once the images of refugees, starving children, and victims of war are transported into our living rooms by television—in other words, only when the crisis has turned violent(and thus, visible), raising people’s concern and calling for responses. Long-term prevention, on the other hand, is generally invisible by nature. Moreover, its cost accrues now, whereas its benefit is far into the future. And this benefit is not always tangible, because it consists of wars and disasters that never take place. So it should not be surprising that prevention measures often come with more lip service than practical support. Let me address as examples the disasters of Hurricane Mitch in Central America, the hurricanes in Venezuela last year, and the current major floods in Mozambique, but also the famine at the Horn of Africa. It must be assumed that these phenomena are related, not least, to changes in the global climate. Not only do these disasters destroy decades of development efforts within a very short period, they also demonstrate very clearly the need for disaster prevention and early warning. As regards prevention, the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions has been an international priority task since the UNCED Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It has been possible to make progress on that. The Kyoto Protocol of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in 1997, laid down the first binding obligations for the reduction of industrialized countries’ greenhouse-gas emissions. Now we need to spell out the Kyoto Protocol in more concrete terms and to give it such a design that all contracting states are able to ratify and implement it. I would like to make a point of stating that the United States of America, too, has to make a contribution to 6 this. Moreover, reduction commitments for greenhouse-gas emissions can also be met through investments in developing countries. This gives the developing countries a chance to rely on the latest technology, in particular for developing their energy supply. This means that today’s investments can help prevent climate disasters in future years. We will not be discouraged as we pursue this path. Complex questions require comprehensive answers. This is why I made crisis prevention a focal area of my work as the minister in charge of this policy area. This means to me that we do not just take preventive measures within the scope of development policy but also strive for coherence with other policy fields that also have an impact on developing countries within the framework of an“extended security approach,” a broader definition of what security means. With a view to achieving coherent overall policies, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development has been made a member of the Federal Security Council, the German government’s body for coordinating German security policy. We are currently actively involved in applying a new approach to arms exports. There is an undisputed link between the ready availability of large numbers of military weapons, especially small arms, and forms of violent conflict, as can be seen, for instance, in Africa in the Great Lakes region. This problem is compounded by excessive military spending. So a new German policy on arms exports can help both to reduce arms exports to crisis regions and to form a model for(restrictive) export policies in other countries. When we recently reformulated our principles on arms export, we were able to require that respect for human rights, the domestic situation, and efforts for sustainable development in the recipient country will all be taken into account as export decisions are made. This includes examinations of the level of military spending, but also of whether the police and military forces operate on the basis of the rule of law in our partner countries. I support the initiative taken by Nobel laureate Oscar Arias Sanchez to adopt an international code of conduct for demilitarization and arms control. It is not only developing countries that waste valuable resources on expensive armaments rather than building schools and health facilities for the children of this world.

7 The fact that 16 other Nobel laureates joined Arias Sanchez in his appeal shows that there is growing public support for a code of conduct on arms shipments. The Federal Republic of Germany is committed to preventing violence in the interest of worldwide peace. So current initiatives focus on restricting exports of, and the trade in, small arms, as these weapons in particular are put to use in a“global migratory movement” from one crisis area to the next. We advocate, for instance, the formulation of effective controls and export regulations at the international level as well—even if we are well aware that it will be hard to reach agreement at this level. We therefore pin our hopes on the United Nations conference scheduled for next year to deal with global restrictions on the use of such arms. We advocate improved transparency with regard to existing depots, the registration and marking of small arms, but also demand-side measures such as collecting small arms or preventing the emergence of demand are all relevant efforts. We also initiated pertinent resolutions at the European level so as to place more force behind our demands. At the European level, we continue to pursue efforts toward nonmilitary crisis management. The broad range of global crises and disasters requires a holistic approach to prevention, which comprises everything from the underlying structural causes of conflict to the securing of peace after a conflict has taken place. So it must be our goal to unify the European Union and its members—which together are the largest donor of official development assistance— in such a way that we are able to make congruent use of the many instruments in a coordinated manner. This means that we must not leave it to chance—or to the famous“CNN effect”—to trigger European responses only after visible violence has broken out. We are currently setting up a new European Union crisis-management committee, which is intended to give us a chance for concerted responses in the immediate context of crises and disasters. Instruments include both the combination of member states’ transport capacities for humanitarian assistance and joint reconstruction programs. Efforts also include close cooperation with nongovernmental organizations and international financial institutions such as the World Bank, regional banks, and so forth, in order to arrive at congruent Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation responses—responses that lead to the development of peace and prevent renewed violence after crises. The changed definition of peace and human security— including within a given country—has given a new role to German development policy: it can make an essential contribution toward stable and peaceful development and thus toward crisis prevention and conflict management. However, our development policy cannot be assumed to have the effect of preventing crisis simply by its very nature. This suspicion was confirmed by a serial evaluation we carried out in El Salvador, Ethiopia, Mali, Kenya, Rwanda, and Sri Lanka. The study did not produce a uniform picture. Regarding the question of the overall impact of our development cooperation on potential conflict situations, we found that in many cases development cooperation had a positive impact, but in some cases it also exacerbated conflict. Positive effects at the macro level included: • the long-term reduction of causes of conflict such as regional disparity; • opportunities for employment and measures against underdevelopment; • the defusing of conflicts over resources such as water and land; • countries becoming politically more open including, participation, democratization, and strengthened conflict awareness; and • the reduction of openings for personal gain and nepotism by means of economic reform programs and structural adjustment. Problems included: • governments being directly supported and stabilized all the while they were parties to the conflict or exacerbated the crisis by their actions; • regional disparities being compounded as specific regions received support in the interest of governing elites; • governments being under less pressure to take action on the causes of conflict as development cooperation aided them, for instance through externally funded social programs.

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation This list is by no means exhaustive. Peter Waller, who supervised the project on behalf of the German Development Institute, will give you more specific information in the panel that follows. In the past, too little attention has been given to impacts of development cooperation that are relevant to conflict. These impacts are complex. However, the study also highlighted that considerable impact was achieved in those cases where development cooperation had been applied in a targeted manner to defuse conflicts. Thus we must employ development cooperation more consciously in a strategic manner, not least so as to be better able to integrate and assess its potential positive influence. Also, the background of the conflict in the country in question must be given greater attention. In situations where governments are one of the conflicting parties and pursue policies that exacerbate the crisis, we should think about changing our instruments or even terminating our development cooperation. Targeted conditionality can make a difference. If a sufficient number of relevant donors are willing to engage in conflict-related action, development cooperation has a chance to influence crisis potentials and situations for the better. We must also expect that it is not only our own development cooperation programs but also those of many other donors and of the development banks that are potentially relevant to conflict. The impact of our development cooperation, as demonstrated in the evaluation, highlights our responsibility. This means that as we plan future projects, we must also look at the causes of conflict, for instance so as to avoid, or help offset, one-sided advantages and privileges(gains from war or conflict). Imbalances have the potential to give rise to new strife. And all those involved must foster peaceful mechanisms for conflict resolution. Violent patterns of conflict resolution are, by their very nature, hard to analyze and overcome. Social behavior and thus the laws governing the emergence or prevention of violent clashes are particularly complex. We undertook another study to develop a set of indicators pointing to changes in the potential for conflict and peace within a given society. The development of an early-warning system is of course no purely German or new invention. A number of inter8 national organizations and research institutions have been developing models these past few years that are hoped to ensure the continuity of early warning and early preventive action. However, what is new is the development of indicators to forecast societal lines of conflict or potential for violence. Since we want to gear our instruments toward prevention, such forecasts will imply consequences for the development and expansion of capacities needed to address emerging political tensions peacefully. Also, the development of a prevention strategy is needed in order to integrate the various policy fields as well as the many players involved—for example, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Applying the indicators will produce information on structural disparities but also on the degree to which state institutions are able to function, and on their legitimacy. The study also examines external influences. The purpose is to identify potentials for escalation. The areas given attention include: clichéd concepts existing in society and analysis of collective perceptions of threats; social climate and trends towards polarization within society; changes in the forms of conflict settlement; the strategies of individual players; and increasing use of force and violence. The highly complex interaction of the various indicators and the way in which they are weighted require that there are sufficient basis data. There is a need for continuous updating, as well as for other international early-warning systems—take, for instance, the Conflict Prevention and Reaction Network. The idea is to focus our development cooperation in a more targeted way on crisis prevention. We intend to arrive at country strategies that consciously address crisis potentials and factors giving rise to crisis. Another element is support to regional associations—not least in the interest of developing peaceful mechanisms for conflict resolution within a community that has shared interests and values. Regional cooperation toward the peaceful resolution of cross-border conflicts—for instance over rights to the use of water—would be one example. The joint use of water offers an opportunity for intensive global and regional cooperation between countries. One example would be the integrated management of international river systems. Water as

9 a strategic resource becomes particularly relevant to conflict if scarcity is encountered in combination with other causes of conflict such as population growth and land degradation. Germany is currently supporting water projects in developing countries with an amount of more than DM 7 billion. The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe for sustainable reconstruction and stabilization in the region also has the purpose of crisis management through regional cooperation. Unless the structural, political, ethnic, and economic causes of the violent conflict are resolved, new clashes are inevitable. In the context of the pact, the countries concerned are offered the prospect of integration into Euro-Atlantic structures. Moreover, regional cooperation is intended to strengthen the private sector by uniting fragmented markets and reducing barriers to trade and investment. The Stability Pact is intended to provide a framework for regional development and also include neighboring countries such as Albania and Romania in the future. The German government will provide an annual DM 300 million for the pact over the next four years. In order to promote civil forms of conflict resolution, we established the Civil Peace Service, which has the following tasks: • strengthening the potential for peace together with local partners, relying on(among other things) confidence-building measures; • mediating in conflicts between members of different interest groups, ethnic groups, or religions; • contributing to reconciliation and reconstruction. This personnel-providing service is to be used in close concert with peace-oriented measures taken by other players. The first activities have been launched. Another contribution toward fostering nonviolent forms of conflict resolution is the reform of the security sector in developing countries. Demilitarization and demobilization of soldiers is already part of our German bilateral development cooperation. However, as a new aspect, our cooperation programs must also respond to the insight that the security sector has an influential role. That sector comprises the military and police, but also—for instance—private mercenary troops, all of whom often do not safeguard internal and external security Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation based on the monopoly on force exercised by legitimate democratic and civilian governments, but rather are themselves the origin of violent conflict. One reason the emphasis on the importance of the security sector is new is that until recently, official development cooperation, just as other players, related mainly to“sovereign” states within safe borders. However, if there are human rights violations on a major scale, if minorities are cruelly persecuted to the verge of extinction, if the state’s failure to protect human security seizes our attention, the sovereignty of states loses its legitimacy. So the security sector, too, one of the core areas of the domain of the state, is“demystified.” For instance, some“states”—lacking in many cases democratic legitimacy and serving the good and interests of elites—exploit the security forces for their economic activity and deny their people the requisite protection. There are two ways in which we try to attain the objective of integrating security forces and putting them under the control of civil, democratically elected state organs. The first is for development policy to support democratization processes. This comprises a strategy that includes constitutional advice on how to integrate military security forces into democratic structures and put them under civil control, combined with advice on transparent planning and budgeting procedures. Nongovernmental organizations such as the churches and our political foundations also play an important role with a view to access to various groups within society in the interest of getting authoritarian systems to open up politically. A second way is to limit military spending in developing countries. It is unacceptable that many developing countries faced with persistent poverty spend large amounts on the military sector, amounts that are urgently needed for social development. The share of military spending in GNP but also as compared to a country’s social expenditure is therefore an important factor in our development policy—and, incidentally, in our decision making on arms exports. Undoubtedly, we must take into account any current threats facing the country in question as we assess what should be considered a“legitimate level of security.” If the population and the security of the country lack protection, there can be no sustainable development.

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation However, in order to determine the legitimate level of security, there must be an open and transparent budget procedure which operates on the basis of democracy—that is, with the involvement of a parliament—tolerating only the level of security spending that is absolutely vital. In such a procedure, the security sector must enter into open competition, for instance, with the social sector, so that the requirements of each side can be verified in a fair manner. In this context, we require, in particular, close coordination and support from the World Bank. Within the context of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers that are 10 now being drawn up in many developing countries as a result of the Cologne debt-relief initiative, public expenditure is increasingly oriented to the goal of poverty reduction within the framework of a consistent strategy. Since“nonproductive military expenditure” can only be assessed within the context of an overall budget, it is our aim to work together with the developing countries and the World Bank on this issue. I welcome the fact that the World Bank is addressing this problem as it draws up its new guidelines on development cooperation and conflict. I would like to be sure that I have your support in that. Thank you very much for your attention. O

Morning Session “Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation: The Role of the State” Moderator: Shepard Forman Director, Center on International Cooperation, New York University Panelists: Anwarul Chowdhury Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations and Chairman, Group of Least Developed Countries Johanna Mendelson Forman Senior Adviser, Democracy and Governance, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Hunter McGill Director General, Humanitarian Affairs, Canadian International Development Agency(CIDA) Beatriz Ramacciotti Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Peru to the Organization of American States Peter Waller Deputy-Director, German Development Institute Shepard Forman prefaced the panel discussion with a four-point illustration of the complexity of the subject. • The concept of crisis prevention and development cooperation is broad and elastic. • External donors should assist recipient governments by focusing attention, heightening sensitivity, and deepening the commitment to conflict prevention reflected in national development plans. • Transparency and accountability with regard to both external aid and domestic economic, social ,and political policies are essential. In this regard, the role of nongovernmental organizations is to hold donors and recipient governments accountable. Declining levels of international aid complicate the problem. Furthermore, discussions about targeted development aid have shifted from humanitarian assistance and emergency relief to post-conflict reconstruction aid and to the current discussion of conflict prevention. “Development assistance, currently thought of as two facets of a whole, needs to be seen in totality,” said Anwarul Chowdhury.“The first facet includes more traditional concepts such as economic and social assistance and sustainable development, while the second incorporates themes of governance, rule of law, democracy, and democratization. The linkage is seen in three areas: poverty; human security issues such as small arms proliferation; violence against women; trafficking of women and children; drug trafficking and terrorism; and democracy and governance.” Meaningful development relationships and partnerships must address the subject of governance in both the recipient and donor countries. By supporting emerging democracies and prioritizing development assistance so that donor countries ask donor recipients serious questions about their military expenditures, the development community may begin taking a “futuristic look” into development assistance. In addition,“We must build up a continuum of post-conflict reconstruction to development,” Chowdhury said, giving as an example the recent UN Security Council statement on the Mozambique floods adopted during Bangladesh’s presidency of the Security Council in March.“We wanted to raise awareness of the fact that the government had done a good job mapping mine locations, but with the floods, all that was lost,” Chowdury said.“Mozambique will be pushed back eight years to when it first started its post-conflict re c o n s t r u c t i o n.” “The international development community is at a crossroads,” said Johanna Mendelson Forman. Echoing Chowdhury’s comments, Mendelson Forman spoke of two camps in the development cooperation community; those who continue to see development solely in terms of economic and social assistance and sustainable development activities, and“those who have moved beyond into the post–Cold War period to understand that sustainability and development under the crisis and conflict positions that we see today are very hard concepts to reconcile.” Drawing attention to the German Development Institute report[fn.6], Mendelson Forman noted that bilateral donors share 11

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation common problems. The problems outlined in that report, such as cognitive dissonance within development agencies and the reluctance to relay information about potential conflicts or escalating tensions in the field, affect development cooperation responses to conflict situations. She mentioned a recent U.S. government report based on two fact-finding missions in an unnamed country that neglected to mention that increasing percentages of territory were under guerrilla control and failed to discuss how this might affect development assistance. Mendelson Forman stressed that shielding projects from conflict may have disastrous consequences, as evidenced by the U.S. government’s failure to take into account the issue of ethnic conflict as it reformed the Rwandan coffee and tea industries. Rwanda’s dependence on coffee exports made the economy vulnerable to coffee-price fluctuations. Consequently, the collapse in the world price of coffee in 1989 had a devastating impact on the economy and exacerbated ethnic tensions. Incorporating conflict prevention strategies into development programs, while increasingly possible, is still hampered by several barriers and constraints such as: bureaucratic barriers; communication gaps among state and nonstate actors; and lack of policy cohesion between traditional development objectives and the changing climate of international assistance. In the United States, where peacebuilding policies have been traditionally the domain of the State Department, new approaches to development assistance incorporate numerous government agencies such the departments of Defense and Commerce, the U.S. Trade Representative, and the branches of military services. Interestingly, the USAID merger into the State Department has begun to build a bridge between geopolitical objectives and basic human security needs, Mendelson Forman asserted. But understanding that the donor community is not a“unified, coherent apparatus” and that it is difficult to impose policy coherence on such a disparate group of actors has been a challenge and will continue to be so until the development community puts forth a coherent policy framework for both preventing crises and dealing with the violence that comes with those crises. Mendelson Forman closed by presenting some challenges to the group: given the numerous loci of activity and insufficient resources, how do you create 12 coherent frameworks? How do you assign valueadded for each part of the U.S. government? And finally, how do you get appropriate cooperation with bilateral and multilateral actors so that you can move forward? In her opinion, the U.S. relationship with the UN is improving, and further education of the U.S. public will improve this understanding. This learning is not restricted to the United States, but a “world community concerned with poverty and justice and development also has to educate its own constituencies,” she said. “Humanitarian crises demand immediate responses and focus attention on operational concerns and this workshop affords a welcome opportunity to step back and think about policy and programming implications and priorities,” said Hunter McGill. He focused his remarks on CIDA’s experiences with issues related to conflict prevention, crisis response and peacebuilding and lessons learned. The Canadian experience is somewhat different because Canada has not encountered resistance to the idea that“development is an inherently destabilizing process. It generates tensions within societies which can easily lead to crisis and violent conflict,” noted McGill. To mitigate conflict-inducing tensions, CIDA is working with recipient countries, such as Haiti, to reduce excessive military expenditure in favor of social sector disbursements; advocating civilian control of the military and respect for the rule of law; creating viable institutions to resolve conflict; and developing administration capacities; and encouraging democratic processes. Agreeing with the importance Chowdhury placed on the elimination of poverty, McGill noted that “improving the security of individuals in developing countries is fundamental to the achievement of sustainable peace and security for people in developing countries. If people lack confidence in society’s ability to protect them, they have little incentive to invest in the future, little willingness to forgo potential gains from conflict in favor of growth and stability in the long-term.” Human security spans a variety of interventions, including social, economic, health, and environmental considerations. As such, CIDA’s programs must incorporate increasingly multifaceted strategies that provide incentives for peace and disincentives for violent conflict.

13 McGill noted that CIDA is constantly searching for ways to improve the delivery and effectiveness of development assistance. For example, the Canadian peace-building initiative, with units within CIDA and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has special peacebuilding funds, while an interministerial consultative mechanism brings together diverse players who are responsible for defense, election support, and policing. Such initiatives create the capacity and knowledge to respond flexibly and quickly to opportunities for conflict prevention. Though there have been set-backs, McGill said these new initiatives have made CIDA better prepared to support more innovative and higher risk activities with“significant catalytic potential.” In addition, several lessons are vital to the success and sustainability of development cooperation in crisis prevention, McGill said. First, you must have local ownership coupled with coherent donor policies. Britain’s recent attempt to mitigate conflict in Zimbabwe while it continued to export military equipment arms is an example of confused policy. Second, donors must understand that conflict prevention is a process, not a series of events, and thus requires long-term commitment. Third, an explicit gender perspective that recognizes women as actors in the process, rather than as victims, is essential. Building on this, incentives for peacebuilding must include all actors in society. Fourth, donor coordination, globally and locally, is important in order to “share knowledge and to ensure transparency.” Finally, early warning is important for early action and support for local peacebuilders is critical. Following up on the minister’s comments, McGill said a sense of frustration exists in the crisis prevention and peacebuilding communities because of the difficulties in determining when conflict was prevented and to what extent the efforts of this community had an impact. The issue of assigning value to preventive action needs to be studied comprehensively because“it will inform our future actions with respect to conflict prevention and it will give us a sense of achievement and contribution to global peace and security and human security.” Beatriz Ramacciotti exemplified the importance of local actors with a presentation of the recent peace agreements between Peru and Ecuador.“In some cases, conflict situations can provide opportunities for Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation development and development can provide an environment of solidarity and integration that can play an important role in preventing further conflict.” More than 150 years of borderline disputes and three serious war encounters(1941, 1981, and 1995) had taken a heavy toll on the two countries. Faced with the constant deterioration of the quality of life, the diversion of economic resources to weapons acquisition, the continual degradation of the natural environment, and lost economic opportunities, the two countries entered into negotiations. After three and a half years, the presidents of Peru and Ecuador signed the Presidential Act of Brasilia on October 26, 1998. The Presidential Act of Brasilia incorporates elements of trade, integration, navigation, protection of the environment, security and confidence-building measures, and respect for the rights of indigenous peoples. As a result, the maintenance of peace continues to be a priority for the people in the region, and political instability in the region has not led to violence. In addition, the frontier is fully demarcated and demilitarized, with both countries’ armed forces showing self-restraint in weapons acquisitions. This illustrates the“changing strategic picture and balance of South America from one of tension to one of cooperation.” Ramacciotti said that the two national militaries are now working with the Organization of American States to demine that area and have been able to shift priorities to military operations other than war. Peace has been further consolidated through development programs working to ameliorate living conditions of people living along the borders. While the two countries and their peoples have contributed immensely to this peace process, international development cooperation is still required, stated the ambassador.“The continued support of the international community for social, environmental, and economic projects to provide relief and improve the standard to living of the affected populations will create an‘engine’ of integration, cooperation, and mutual responsiveness will ensure that this peace will last,” concluded Ramacciotti. “A recent evaluation of German development cooperation in six countries illustrated the limited direct influence of the international donor community on conflict situations,” said Peter Waller. The major findings of the study were related to three

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation issues: conflict identification, conditionality, and impacts on the macro- and microlevels. Though there is no lack of information, the report found that there is a tendency to suppress bad news and create a“cognitive dissonance” whereby people portray a positive image of their environment, lest they lose funding or appear unsuccessful. At the national level, negative reporting may cause diplomatic trouble, and at the local level, project teams may endanger their own assignments if they relay the gravity of the situation. An extreme case of such dissonance occurred in Rwanda, where most donors continued isolated development programs even when news about the impending crisis abounded. To improve the information and reporting system, the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development(BMZ) has commissioned a study to identify crisis indicators and to look at ways in which it can incorporate a positive incentive system for reporting conflict situations. The GDI report found that tracking crisis indicators can provide useful information in pre-conflict situations, and, in certain cases, conditionality can influence structures that are already there.“Tipping the balance” through the provision of aid to specific projects in a country can alter the democratic process toward more openness. But for conditionality to work, it must be in places where aid assistance is prevalent and major donors act with a higher degree of coordination.“If it is true that good projects may have unintended negative impacts(in the short run) what can you do to minimize this negative impact?” Waller gave the example of Kenya, where democratic reforms tied to conditionality increased regional violence in the short term, but eventually opened the society toward more democratic governance. The report found that there are a variety of unintended impacts resulting from German development cooperation. Projects or programs contributing to long-term reduction or removal of factors that exacerbated conflict, such as those protecting natural resources or favorable population policies, generally succeeded. Yet along with these positive results, there were also unintended negative consequences of these projects, including: increased disparities among ethnic groups due to resettlement—which enabled governments to develop monitoring structures and potentially repressive mechanisms; increased poten14 tial for the establishment of clientelist structures; and resource-related measures that could disturb the ethnic balance and/or create new ethnic conflicts. The German report might contribute to a larger “lessons learned” study in which various aid agencies can share experiences, Waller suggested.“This meeting is a first stage, and the study is at the beginning of the methodological discussion in collecting experiences.” Mendelson Forman suggested that creating this dialogue between other donor countries on these issues could be the subject of a future meeting sponsored by the United States. From the floor, Tapio Kanninen, chief of the Policy Planning Unit at the UN Department of Political Affairs, said he and his colleagues are devising new concepts of positive conditionality, such as creating conditionality aspects of peace agreements that do not infringe on sovereignty issues but do encourage peaceful changes. Stating that everyone likes positives instead of negatives, Waller maintained that policy brainstorming has moved from conditionality to the new concept of selectivity. Instead of linking development cooperation to certain reforms or actions, the selectivity concept means releasing development aid only after certain conditions have been met. Thus positive action is the result, but it occurs much later. Responding to questions from the floor, Ramacciotti said the success of the peace agreement and further sustainability were due primarily to the democratization of the societies, new priorities, and the role of civil society. Improving civil-military relations and reorganizing the armed forces away from border control further ripened conditions for peace. The political will and leadership of Peru and Ecuador and of guarantor countries such as the United States, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, which were involved in the mediation and negotiation process for the three and a half years, proved invaluable. In addition, all those involved in the negotiations were sensitive to other factors, such as the persistence of narco-traffickers and concerns about indigenous people living along the borders. Most important, the sustainability of peace is due to the active participation of civil society, the ambassador stressed.“They have to know that they are the owners of their destiny, of their future, and they have to be involved in the project.”

15 Commenting on Ramacciotti’s talk about what triggers the initiative to resolve a crisis, Chowdhury brought up the example of the resolution of the 25year conflict in Bangladesh between the government forces and the rebel guerrilla band known as Shanti Bahini, over autonomy of an area in the southeastern part of the country known as the“Chittagong Hills Tract.” The Chittagong Hills Tract Accord was signed by Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina with Shantu Larma, the leader of the Parbattya Chattagram Janasanghati Samity(PCJSS), the political wing of the separatist rebels in 1997. In Chowdhury’s opinion, the conflict was resolved because of the will of the governmental leadership to seize the initiative and to control the interests of those involved in the crisis. The military, which had a vested stake in a continuing crisis, lost interest when money was removed from the equation. The end of the conflict brought opportunities formerly unavailable to the donor community and interestingly,“the moment agreement was reached, there was tremendous interest on the part of the international community, the development partners, to achieve development assistance levels on par with the rest of the country,” said Chowdury. Referring to a question about North-South relations, Chowdhury said there needs to be self-governance for both the donor and recipients:“If assistance is to be meaningful, responsible, and contribute to sustainable development, then this type of dialogue for both societies is necessary.” Understanding that in some conflicts conditions exist that prevent international donors from acting despite the presence of reliable indicators, Forman injected the issue of political will into the discussion. He gave the example of East Timor, where a 25-yearold policy of crisis prevention by member states was obfuscated in deference to Indonesia.“Unless the international community is willing to address international law and give it equal weight to international politics, we might never do a successful job, even though the indicators are in place,” he said. Responding to a question from the floor, McGill said the Canadian government has extensive consultation processes with NGOs about peacebuilding. In addition, CIDA places a great emphasis on capacity development with civil society in developing counCrisis Prevention and Development Cooperation tries. CIDA challenges project proponents and incorporates the knowledge of what works and will enhance sustainability and positively affect local situations.“It is one reason why we have supported the Burundi peace process so extensively. The Nyerere Foundation, out of Arusha, is supporting it. It’s not external parties creating machinery, it is the Nyerere Foundation with the leaders of the five countries of the region,” he said. In answer to a question about U.S. foreign policy and development assistance, Mendelson Forman suggested that while geopolitical realities affect its strategic interests, U.S. National Security Strategy statements emphasize the importance of building democracy and supporting human rights. The lack of articulated policy“gives us more room for dialogue,” she suggested. Mendelson Forman also criticized U.S. citizenry for allowing discussions about international aid to rest with congressional appropriations committee instead of with authorizing committees that have jurisdiction over the substance of foreign policy. Unfortunately, discussions are then“reduced to nickel-and-diming” instead of identifying U.S. interests in a particular area. From the floor, David Malone, president of the International Peace Academy(IPA), stressed the importance of the state and the understanding that many internal conflicts arise because of misbehavior by states. He suggested that the international donor community become more critical of its policies because“if we are actually going to prevent situations that will lead to conflict 15 or 20 years down the line, we have to be prepared to be fairly judgmental early on. Otherwise, we will be politically correct but very ineffective in the long-term structural prevention efforts that we’re interested in, and we’ll be saddled with last minute preventive diplomacy.” Mary Anderson, president of the Collaborative for Development Action, suggested focusing on certain systemic destabilizing issues, such as global warming and the spread of small arms, from a local perspective. In addition, impending crises pose a more difficult situation, she said, because it is“less often the case that we don’t know[about the crisis], because the indicators are there, but the problem is rather that we don’t know what to do.” Understanding which development“assistance”

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation mechanism tools are available in the geopolitical landscape may be a solution for the immediate crisis, and, by using conditionality, the international community might hold itself accountable for its behavior in relation to longer-term conflict prevention strategies. In response to a question about the practicality of crisis indicators raised by Ana Cutter, program officer at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, Klaus Ohme from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development said they incorporated indicators to make development assistance cooperation more sensitive to crisis-prone countries. The German government also uses the indicators as a training tool and to raise sensitivity for personnel within the ministry. 16 The ministry will attempt to refine these indicators further from the country perspective and engage in dialogue with other agencies that have their own set of indicators, such as the German Ministry of Defense. In concluding remarks, McGill juxtaposed comments raised by Malone and Anderson and gave the example of the conflict in the Horn of Africa. In this case the international community was unable to stop the fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea, even though there were numerous indicators that the conflict was escalating and many attempts were made to mitigate the conflict. Further clarifying that point, Mendelson Forman suggested:“War is an industry and has to be treated as a corporate entity as opposed to a state of the absence of peace.” O

Speech “The Future of International Crisis Prevention” Shashi Tharoor Director of Communications and Special Projects, Office of the Secretary-General, United Nations. Note: This is an edited transcript. It is a pleasure for me to address you today on the occasion of this valuable workshop on Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation. In an era where violent conflicts too often are ignored and too readily accepted, where people look away rather than look ahead, the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs has rightly reminded us that prevention is always better than cure. One of the problems of looking at the future is that the future is never quite what it used to be; and the uncertainties of that span mean that inevitably one will be saying much more about the present than about the future. Now while actual figures might vary from year to year, it is clear that most violent conflicts today occur within states rather than between them. So when we talk about international cooperation, we are often talking about international cooperation in relation to other people’s domestic problems. It is also true that the overwhelming majority of the world’s wars are taking place in what used to be called the Third World. Despite the global media’s preoccupation in recent years with tragic events(in the Balkans in particular), it is a fact that more ordnance is being expended, and more lives being lost, on any typical day, in Asia or Africa than in the more mediagenic North. Also, studies looking at the incidence of conflict show that if one were to list all the wars begun since 1945, fully a quarter are still active. In other words, ours is an age of blazing civil conflict. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that the foreseeable future will be any different, unless we take serious and sustained preventive action. Two years ago, the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict made three central observations. The first is that deadly conflict—the kinds of crisis that we are here to talk about to prevent—is not inevitable; second, the need to prevent crisis and conflict is increasingly urgent; and third, prevention is possible. This presented a challenge to the international community to create a“culture of prevention.” The world can and must meet this challenge. For the UN, there is no higher goal, no higher commitment, and no greater ambition than promoting international cooperation to prevent armed conflict. The prevention of conflict begins and ends with the protection of human life and the promotion of human development. Minister Wieczorek-Zeul also spoke to you this morning about human security. Ensuring human security is, in the broadest sense, the UN’s cardinal mission. Genuine and lasting prevention is the means to achieve that mission. Throughout the world today, particularly in Africa and the South, intrastate wars are the face of modern conflict. The destruction of not just armies, but of civilians and entire ethnic groups, is increasingly the aim of the parties to conflict, rather than just the by-product of their actions. Preventing these wars is no longer a matter of defending interests or promoting allies; it is a matter of defending humanity itself. And yet we never seem to learn. Time and again differences are allowed to develop into disputes, disputes are allowed to develop into deadly conflicts. Time and again, warning signs are ignored, pleas for help overlooked. Only after the deaths and destruction do we intervene, at a far higher human and material cost and with far fewer lives that we can save. Only after it is too late do we value prevention. The secretary-general of the UN has suggested that there are three main reasons for the failure of prevention, when prevention so clearly is possible: first, the reluctance of one or more of the parties to the conflict to accept external intervention of any kind; second, the lack of political will at the highest levels of the international community(and I will come back to this later, for I believe it is key in many ways); and third, a lack of integrated conflict prevention strategies within the UN system and the international community. Of all these, the will to act is the most important because without the political will to act when action is needed, without the will to answer the call that must be heeded, no amount of improved coordination or early warning will translate awareness into action. Fortunately, the UN’s work in con17

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation flict prevention is as old as the Charter itself. And that is why I will focus on that third objective of coordination, as that is really our investment in the future, and talk about political will later. In every diplomatic mission and development project that we pursue, the UN is doing the work of prevention. The secretary-general’s own good offices in preventive diplomacy have been exercised, with more success than is generally realized, over the years. And though this practice is long established, the potential for progress is clearly still great. The secretary-general has in recent years renewed UN peacemaking efforts, involving both resolution and prevention, in a number of places: Cyprus, East Timor, Western Sahara, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and the Great Lakes region of Africa. All these are situations in which he has either initiated efforts of preventive and/or resolution diplomacy, or revived moribund peace processes. These are, of course, longstanding disputes with hard and bitter roots. East Timor is, thankfully, a peacemaking success, though peacekeeping and peacemaking continue. With the others, we are seeking new ways to narrow the divide in each case and promote a durable peace that can provide security and prosperity for all sides. Throughout the entire UN system a more systematic and integrated framework for intervention is being developed. I say,“being,” though in fact it has been a couple of years since steps have been taken to establish a more positive system, a prevention-oriented one. Joined from within by our Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Department of Political Affairs(DPA) is now taking the lead in early-warning and preventive efforts at the UN. This includes a specific mandate to identify potential and actual conflicts in whose resolution the UN could play a useful role. With modern communications technology and online database services, there are increasing amounts of information available to UN officials monitoring events with a view to preventive action. Yet, I think the DPA itself would acknowledge the need to develop further its information resources and analysis capabilities before it can fulfill the aspirations that we all have for it in this field. Nevertheless, a number of interesting steps have been taken. The DPA Prevention Team has been creat18 ed to identify the situations that may have the potential to develop into a critical emergency, violent conflict, or any other circumstance where there might be a case for UN action or peacemaking involvement. There is an interagency framework team for coordinating early warning, prevention, and preparedness, which has been established to ensure that the pertinent departments of the Secretariat, and also UNDP and other UN agencies, can coordinate their activities through sharing information, consulting, and taking joint action. The focus of this particular interagency team is mainly on prevention and early-warning preparedness, especially in relation to potential complex emergencies. Major efforts to improve training for early warning and to improve prevention capacity have also been launched under the auspices of the UN Staff College in Turin. And the idea is, again, to train enough staff across the system to change the culture from the reactive UN of old to a more proactive mode. And finally, just in case this seems to reduce international action to a purely UN exercise, I should state that in July 1998, Secretary-General Kofi Annan convened his first meeting with heads of regional organizations outside the UN, in New York, and focused on early warning and conflict prevention. A high-level meeting identified 13 modalities of cooperation in the areas of early warning and conflict prevention. A follow-up meeting at the working level then took place, which developed those modalities further, in particular on issues like better coordination and consultations between these respective organizations. Here is an example of international cooperation in an institutional sense: a better flow of information, visits between respective headquarters of staff at the working level, and joint training of staff in early warning and conflict prevention. It is clear, however, that we will need to do more to strengthen cooperation with the NGO community and improve collaboration with the UN Security Council members, focusing their roles in early warning and prevention. I know that my outline of these measures might sound bureaucratic, but these measures are indispensable organizational steps to increase the international community’s preparedness to cooperate in the area of prevention. That is why it is vital, as we look at the future of international cooperation in this field, to acknowledge what is already being done and what

19 has been done. Of course, international cooperation is often fraught with pitfalls, and one of the great pitfalls is to assume that everybody tackles the same problems with the same sets of assumptions. There are different assumptions on the part of the parties that might be about to create a crisis; on the part of those that are seeking to prevent that crisis from taking place; and on the part of those whose member states are on the Security Council; and on the part of others, whose involvement, resources, support, and will are essential before we can actually have effective prevention. I think it is an important task of the UN to try to ensure that everyone shares, or at least understands, the same assumptions, and that we work together from the same premises and toward the same objectives. Going back to the work of the Carnegie Commission, they identified a valuable distinction between operational prevention and actual prevention. The UN’s operational strategy involves four fundamental activities: early warning, preventive diplomacy, preventive deployment, and early humanitarian action, all of which, of course, we are going to focus on in the future as well. The UN’s structural prevention strategy involves three additional activities: preventive disarmament, development, and peacebuilding. The guiding and infusing of all these efforts is the promotion of human rights(which Kofi Annan has made a major theme of his secretary-generalship), democratization, and good governance, which are the foundations of peace. Going through these very quickly, preventive deployment has already had a marvelous effect in the explosive region of the Balkans. Though UNPREDEP(UN Preventive Deployment Force in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia) is now a closed chapter, it provided for years a sort of thin blue line, and demonstrated that preventive deployment, adequately mandated and supported, can make the difference between war and peace. Preventive disarmament is another measure whose importance needs to be recognized and advanced. The UN had disarmed combatants in the context of peacekeeping operations from Nicaragua to Mozambique. In other cases, destroying yesterday’s weapons prevents them from being used tomorrow. I loved the symbolism in Nicaragua, when the Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation weapons we destroyed were then melted and used to create prostheses for the victims of that war, a powerful metaphor for what we are trying to achieve here. This is of course what the UN has been attempting to do in Iraq, where before they came to a grinding halt, the inspections did succeed in destroying more weapons of mass destruction than did the entire Gulf War. Urgent action is also needed to curtail conventional weapons. In particular, we’ve got to do more to halt the proliferation of small arms, with which most wars are fought today. That is why as part of his reform agenda, the secretary-general reestablished in 1998 a Department of Disarmament Affairs, which had been abolished some years previously, with a range of new tasks. High on the agenda for this department is the challenge of micro-disarmament, that is, work with governments on halting the illegal trade of small arms. We cannot do it alone, obviously. The work of prevention, if it is to be lasting, must be supported by all sides and carried to success by the peoples and parties themselves. Their role and responsibility is fundamental; so are the roles of both arms producing countries and those that permit the transit of arms. Long-term prevention is facilitated by many elements of the international community. There are cases in which the UN, mandated with unique universal legitimacy, must lead. There will be other cases where a regional or subregional organization with greater proximity to, and historical experience with, a conflict might be most able to prevent the crisis. In all cases the UN is poised to support their efforts and provide multilateral assistance programs. All member states facing situations of conflict must recognize, however, something that many in Washington fail to recognize: our involvement in these situations is not an infringement on sovereignty; but rather, early warning and preventive diplomacy seek to support and restore order and peace, precisely to safeguard the sovereignty of those countries that are about to be consumed in crisis. This means that the membership of the UN as a whole must accept that, and provide the mandate and resources available for preventive activities. But I have to underscore again that both mandate and resources are a reflection of a third factor: political will. Political will on the part of member states is absolutely essential to any discussion we have about

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation international cooperation in this context. It is true that discussing conflict prevention inside the Security Council has historically been rather sensitive, but the Security Council in a Presidential Statement recently initiated a more forward-looking approach. Presidential statements are not resolutions, but are agreed upon by all members of the council, so they are unanimous. The key paragraph from a Presidential Statement of November 13, 1999 reads: The council wishes to express its readiness to consider appropriate preventive action in response to the matters brought to its attention by states or the secretary-general, and which seem to threaten international peace and security. It invites the secretary-general to submit periodic reports on such disputes and including, as appropriate, early warnings and proposals for effective measures. This is obviously very laudable and a major step forward in comparison with the council’s willingness to contemplate preventive action in the past. And yet the actual implementation of this statement remains a complicated issue. If the secretary-general starts sending briefings about member states before they have problems, he will have problems with those member states. Governments are not particularly happy to be told that they are about to generate a crisis that will impinge upon the rest of the world. Indeed, there are also practical reasons why one shouldn’t do this. I remember that during my days with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees there was a great institutional reluctance to have stockpiles of assistance right outside the border in anticipation of a refugee crisis, because the stockpile could help generate such a refugee crisis! The refugees might cross the border knowing that aid was waiting for them. A similar concern exists within political crisisprevention circles: there could be all sorts of unwanted side effects. If the world thought a war was about to begin within a country, its credit ratings might decline, and suddenly the secretary-general is blamed for having affected an economically vulnerable country. Even the more important question,“You have warning, what are you prepared to do with it?” poses problems. I doubt very much that there was a lack of early-warning signs when the Iraqis invaded Kuwait. A lot of the movements were tracked from the ground and the air. You have to decide whether you are going to react, how you are going to react, and 20 whether, indeed, the circumstances justify reaction until what you fear actually happens. And this, again, becomes a great conundrum of prevention. And there is the basic problem that political will and resources are always difficult to find for crises that have not yet erupted. For most governments, dealing with day-to-day challenges that are already in the headlines is difficult enough. Actually dealing with a problem that hasn’t yet occurred, that no one is writing about in the papers, that no one is showing on the television screens, usually carries a political price that isn’t worth paying. Politicians, particularly in democracies, by definition have to think in the short term; they rarely think beyond the next election. To convince them to invest resources—to expend political will to get resources from their parliaments—for preventive action is rather like persuading a teenager to invest in a pension. The logic is sound: if you want to have a comfortable retirement, you had better start saving young. But the benefit seems so distant and unrelated to one’s immediate concerns that it is very difficult actually to make a case for it today. The same applies to the media. Kofi Annan once floated, very informally and casually, the thought that maybe we need something like preventive journalism, that instead of sending the cameras after a conflagration, the media should start thinking about where trouble may be brewing, and go and cover it before it happens. Of course we immediately hedge that by saying,“It’s not for us and the UN to prescribe to the media what they should do.” But I have had occasion to discuss this idea in various gatherings of news people. In principle they like the thought, but in practice, what news editor is going to send a correspondent off to a place where there isn’t yet a“newsworthy” problem? These are some of the issues that we have to grapple with in a broader sense. In a speech at the Security Council’s open debate on prevention at the end of November 1999, the secretarygeneral suggested that the council establish a subsidiary organ, or working group, for conflict prevention matters. This has not yet happened; and for it to happen there would need to be a lot of preparatory work, both inside the Security Council and in the Secretariat. I should add that the policies of prevention that I’ve outlined so far—early warning, preventive diplomacy, preventive disarmament, and deployment—

21 will succeed only if the root causes of conflict are also addressed with the same will and wisdom that we try to bring into conflicts after they happen. This is a major challenge for the international community. In our increasingly multiethnic, interdependent, globalizing world, how can issues of identity and ethnicity within countries be dealt with so that they do not manifest themselves in violent conflict? What structures might prevent the processes of division within states, and the demonization of others within communities? And don’t forget that the root causes are often economic and social: poverty, endemic underdevelopment, and weak or nonexistent institutions inhibit dialogue and invite the resort to violence. A long, quiet process of sustainable economic development, based on the respect for human rights, legitimate government, and good governance, is obviously essential. But those are challenges in and of themselves, whether or not we relate them to prevention. It is also worth thinking briefly about the domestic arrangements within societies that might be conducive to preventing conflict, because there is no better place to stop a crisis before it erupts than within the country itself. I’m venturing on dangerous ground here, but it is no accident that pluralist democracies have dealt better with conflict than other societies. The proposition that pluralist democracy is the best antidote to the risk of infection of civil conflict seems to me an unexceptionable one. This does not mean that democracy, all by itself, will satisfy every single extremist minority group, as some Basques have proven in Spain, and some Tamils in Sri Lanka. But democracy in any case, as both precept and practice, has never sought to assume the mantle of perfection. I raise this because instead of looking at post-conflict military interventions, for which the mandate or the resources required may never be available commensurate with the challenge, should the international community not be devoting more attention to the promotion of democracy and pluralism across the globe? There are obvious political dangers to such a course. Many countries in the UN General Assembly will not like it.[And of course there’s no doubt that democracy, like love, must come from within; it cannot be instilled from outside.] But encouraging democracy for all the peoples of the world, it seems Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation to me, could be an eminently worthwhile objective when we talk about prevention and international cooperation, provided we do it with sufficient respect for the conditions and circumstances in each country. This last century, for all its drawbacks, has given us a world, in Woodrow Wilson’s famous phrase, that is “safe for democracy.” Let us work in the next century to establish a world that is safe for diversity. But to return to international cooperation, the secretary-general is determined that the UN of the twenty-first century must become a global center for visionary and preventive action. We at the UN are grateful that a number of member states are showing the way. Norway, for instance, established the Fund for Preventive Action in 1996 to increase the secretary-general’s capacity to undertake various preventive measures, particularly preventive diplomacy. Japan, Korea, and others(I may be leaving out a number of contributors) have also contributed to this fund. An ancient proverb that we often like to quote at the UN, going back to Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s days, holds that it’s always difficult to find money for medicine to treat an ailing person, but very easy to raise money for a coffin once he’s actually died. The last decade’s crises and conflicts have made this proverb all too real for our time. Have we not seen enough coffins, from Rwanda to Bosnia and Herzegovina to Cambodia, to pay the price for prevention? Have we not learned the lesson too painfully and too often, that we can prevent conflict only if we act in time and if we really want to? Have we not heard Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire, who has just retired from the Canadian armed forces a broken man, say that if he’d had just 5,000 peacekeepers he could have saved 500,000 lives in Rwanda? Indeed, we have no excuses anymore. We have no excuses for inaction, and no alibis for ignorance. Often we know even before the very victims of conflict that they will be victimized. We know because our world now is one, in pain and in prosperity. How many Srebenicas and Rwandas must we have before we decide that prevention is vital? No longer must the promise of prevention be a promise deferred. Too much is at stake; but equally, too much is possible for us to ignore this. If we look beyond prevention to the challenge of international cooperation more generally, the prob-

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation lems of the next millennium are certainly going to be what Kofi Annan has called“problems without passports,” or problems that cross all frontiers—problems of environment, drug-trafficking, international crime and terrorism, human rights, global trade— problems that no one country, however powerful, can solve on its own. These problems without passports will need solutions without visas, blueprints without borders. We must move beyond narrow concerns of national security or national interest, to a broader vision of human security, of a world where everyone has food, clothing, and shelter; where democracy reigns; where people’s creative and entrepreneurial energies are freed; where human rights are upheld. This is a world in which all of us are involved, where international cooperation is not a slogan, but a necessity. This is the world that is reflected in the vision of Kofi Annan’s Millennium Report, which is the basis for the summit that is being convened in September of heads of state and government, and is very much a vision of the world in which the future of international cooperation is assured. I should stress, of course, that international cooperation is something that governments have got to find the will to want to work for, and the resources to support. The achievement of human security, in all its aspects—economic, political, and social—will 22 require effective prevention. As Kofi Annan has himself said, it will be our testament to succeeding generations that ours had the will to save them from the scourge of war. And, as I’ve spent so much time in these remarks talking about the UN, I’ll end with one thought: How can we meaningfully speak of the future of international cooperation without giving its due place to the United Nations? When I hear people in that capital not very far from here saying things like,“Let’s get the U.S. out of the UN and the UN out of the U.S.,” I’m reminded of that wonderful old anecdote about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: when Adam finds that Eve is becoming indifferent to him, he asks,“Eve, is there someone else?” Think about that for a minute, because you could ask the same thing about the United Nations. Is there anyone else that can actually pull together the will, the resources, the commitment, and the interest of 189 countries, toward common objectives that will help the weakest among them, using the resources and the will and the support of the strongest? There isn’t. This is the only UN we have, and I hope that we can, together, with your support and understanding, help it to work better to find the way forward to international cooperation and the prevention of future crises. O

Afternoon Session Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation: The Role of International Organizations Moderator: Danilo Türk Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, United Nations Panelists: Patricia Cleves Senior Administrative Adviser, Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit, The World Bank Bernard Wood Former Director, Development Cooperation Development Assistance Committee(DAC), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD) Lauren Lovelace Special Assistant to Nancy Soderberg, Alternative Representative for Special Political Affairs, United States Mission to the United Nations Frank O’Donnell Principal Adviser, Management Development and Governance Division, United Nations Development Program(UNDP) Patricia Cleves began by noting that the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit of the World Bank was created in 1998 to support activities in countries emerging from conflict. Although the bank originally dealt with straightforward post-conflict issues, recent experiences have led it to address not only poverty concerns but also the structural and root causes of violence. “Development is a multidimensional mission,” Cleves said, drawing attention to four key indicators to help the World Bank better address peacebuilding: security issues, governance, economic recovery, and social stability and cohesion. This conception is reflected in a new operational policy that, once approved, will be incorporated into the bank’s policies. Beginning with the idea that the bank can do certain types of interventions in countries that are in conflict or post-conflict situations, the operational policy establishes guidelines in three main areas. In countries with a bank portfolio, for example, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Guatemala, bank policy advocates that the social and political context of those counties must be taken into account. Development, while necessary, should not exacerbate conflict, and perhaps can even mitigate or assist in peacebuilding. In countries where the bank either suspended operations or is not present because of security conditions, for example, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Sudan, the bank develops a watching brief in collaboration with other organizations. Here it attempts to identify opportunities for future involvement and supports the transition toward peacebuilding. Countries in transition that have reached political agreements and are moving toward peacebuilding, such as Burundi, East Timor, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone, offer a unique opportunity for the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit. In these cases, the bank, in conjunction with agencies working on the ground, has developed an internal set of guidelines called“Transitional Support Strategy” for short- to medium-term bank policies. These strategies incorporate ideas not traditionally addressed by the bank, such as reconciliation, working with refugees, reintegrating soldiers, and addressing the needs of war-affected populations, in particular, women and children. A trust fund set up with UN agencies also enables the bank to fund projects in the short term. This operational policy, though not fully approved, has been incorporated into certain aspects of the bank’s policy toward Sri Lanka, Cleves noted. After numerous consultations and workshops with local actors in the affected areas, the bank learned that it is impossible to provide relief and rehabilitation if certain security issues are not addressed. Incorporating human rights and international humanitarian law issues into the policies was“groundbreaking because the bank in its projects has not really acknowledged security and political situations in the countries.” In addition, the bank believes that even though the Sri Lankan conflict has not been resolved, it can begin to promote reconciliation at the community level, and thus have certain mechanisms already in place once peace is reached. 23

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation Bernard Wood said,“It is member countries who ultimately dictate the potential and the limits for international organizations to act.” Addressing two broad themes of changing thinking and changing action, Wood began his presentation by remarking on the contributions of his former organization, the OECD, in terms of its guidelines on conflict, peace, and development cooperation. Pointing to a synthesis report of the OECD/DAC taskforce that examines the influence of aid in situations of violent conflict, he said the report includes attempts to get beyond the“simplistic and unrealistic expectations” of conditionality. As stressed by the DAC guidelines, the most effective contribution development cooperation can make is to strengthening a society’s own capacities to manage conflicts before they spiral out of control and into violence. Strategies linking crisis prevention to development and prioritizing poverty-reduction schemes have now extended to supporting security-sector reform. Such forward thinking, as illustrated by the interest shown by German minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul , he said, is a“clear response to the voices of the poor themselves, who have testified that their lack of everyday security is one of the worst and most imprisoning parts of their d e p r iva t i o n.” In terms of action, Wood said it was too early to see many enduring examples of crisis prevention through development cooperation. The DAC guidelines developed in 1997, however, did lay out a series of ten key actions needed for development cooperation to respond better in the future. Offering a rough estimate of progress, Wood scored six of the ten guidelines from A for excellent to F for failure: • recognize structural stability as a foundation for sustainable development and help advance public understanding of peacebuilding and conflict-prevention objectives and strategies as explicit parts of cooperation programs. By Wood’s calculations, about 15 donor agencies have come out with clear statements about prevention, though not all have propagated it as well as they might. He averaged this group of actions at C, though he noted that a small portion earned a B; • strengthen our agencies’ means to analyze risks and causes of violent conflicts in partner countries at an early stage, and identify opportunities for aid 24 efforts to help address these root causes. Some countries get a D, the average is a B, and the multilaterals earned a B; • work with colleagues within our governments to ensure that all our policies— including areas of security, political and economic relations, human rights, environment, and development co-operation—are coherent in fostering structural stability and the prevention of violent conflict. This includes support for the provisions of cease-fire agreements, UN arms embargoes, and work to help prevent illegal arms supplies from fueling conflicts. He gave this a B; • strive for greater coherence and transparency in conflict prevention initiatives and responses to conflict and complex emergencies by the international community. This involves early warning that is more closely linked to decision making and better organized and coordinated among the various multilateral, regional, bilateral, and nongovernmental actors. Here Wood confessed that he didn’t dare venture an overall grade, though the principle of“do no harm,” as articulated first by the medical community, has been heard and increasingly heeded; • encourage and support initiatives by countries from regions or subregions where conflicts or tensions are emerging; ranked this at C+; • seek to reduce institutional, budgetary, and functional barriers between relief assistance, rehabilitation, and development-cooperation planning, which can produce contradictions, gaps, and obstacles to well-coordinated assistance. Wood said he was not up-to-date on the progress that has actually been achieved, and solicited views from the group; • work in the appropriate forums for internationally agreed and adhered to performance standards and principles for humanitarian and rehabilitation activities that govern the operating methods of implementing agencies(intergovernmental, governmental, and nongovernmental). No grade possible yet; • act on the need for responsive procedures for resource mobilization and delivery in crisis situations while maintaining essential accountability. No grade possible yet;

25 • encourage efforts to promote open and participatory dialogue and strengthened capacity to meet security needs at reduced levels of military expenditures, including strengthened capacity for the effective exercise of civil authority over military forces. Some donors have really gotten serious about this, he said and get a B, as do the international financial institutions, which have taken on the subject and worked quietly to incorporate it into their thinking; • monitor and evaluate performance in the areas of assistance for peacebuilding and conflict prevention, and continue our work, including the DAC and others, to refine and amplify the best practices in these fields. The work on humanitarian assistance and the synthesis of aid as an incentive and disincentive is promising and gets a B. Today, when conflicts exist in almost every corner of the world, deciding how and when to get involved is a difficult challenge. Lauren Lovelace discussed the increasingly complex nature of conflict, more often within states, and the direct impact this has had on the role of the UN Security Council.“Now over the years we’ve often learned the hard way what the UN can and cannot do,” said Lovelace.“As Mr. Wood just said, we need to develop realistic guidelines.” Recent peace enforcement engagements such as those in Kosovo, East Timor, and Sierra Leone illustrate that the use of regional forces is an emerging practice in security missions. Regional forces are often better equipped, have greater situational knowledge, and can respond much faster than operations directed from the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. According to Lovelace, the best role for the UN is in preventive actions, which means more monitors, more international pressure for compliance with international statutes, and full support for international courts. The United States continues to refine its position on peacekeeping initiatives. In May 1994, President Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive 25 on multilateral peace operations. Through this directive, Lovelace said, the United States encourages the Security Council to ask tough questions about the cost, size, risk, mandate, and the duration of the mission before it can be begun or extended. As such, the Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation United States will work with the UN and other international organizations because:“It is in our interest to help make UN peacekeeping as efficient and effective as possible. We fully support the UN’s peacekeeping reform efforts, and we will do our best to advance those and make the UN realize its full potential in conflict prevention.” Responding to the two questions raised by the conference organizers, Frank O’Donnell said UNDP’s experience with connecting political/systemic crisis prevention to international development cooperation has been somewhat problematic, conceptually and operationally, but not without“occasional success.” From a UNDP perspective, the appropriate role of development cooperation in crisis prevention is strengthening governance, human security, and social cohesion through sustainable human development, creating policy dialogue, and facilitating coordination among the various agencies of the UN system. UNDP is undergoing a series of changes in regard to preventive strategy and has recently published several studies: the first reviews UNDP’s experience with governance programs in crisis and post-conflict situations, and the second is a conceptual study on promoting conflict prevention and resolution through effective governance.(Both documents are available on the UNDP’s governance Web site at http://magnet.undp.org.) Several themes have emerged from these studies. O’Donnell first discussed capacity building, reform and restructuring of key institutions, and economic regimes as central activities to lasting solutions. Second, development considerations and governance issues must figure into the political discussions about conflict resolution. Third, governance programs must be central to supporting prevention and post-conflict transition. The UNDP study on prevention illustrated that the nexus between poverty, conflict, and governance from a development perspective is not fully understood, he said.“There is a dearth of adequate synthesis to draw policy implications from lessons that should be widely learned at this stage.” Returning to the question of early warning, O’Donnell spoke of the framework team coordination mechanism for early warning and prevention within the UN Secretariat. The mechanism involves a wide array of agencies in the United Nations system:

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs within the Secretariat, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization, and the Food and Agricultural Organization, among others. This wide variety of perspectives enables the UN to move away from a“narrow parochial institutional perspective” toward a“more holistic appreciation of the problem,” and to work toward more effective responses to problems. For example, he said that in January 2000, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke brought concerns about the HIV/AIDS epidemic to the Security Council, showing an“opening out” of the council to broader human security and stability issues. In an attempt to overcome the divergent humanitarian, peacekeeping, political, and development agendas that emerged from failed peacekeeping missions such as UNISOM in Somalia, the UN developed its own strategic framework approach for postconflict peacebuilding. Consistent in some measure with the concept articulated in the DAC guidelines, the framework was first applied in Afghanistan – probably the most difficult country in which to pilot the new approach—and is now being piloted in Sierra Leone, an equally problematic environment. Having just returned from East Timor, where he had led the development of a new programme for foundations for governance and public administration, in partnership with East Timorese leaders and UNTAET, O’Donnell suggested that the concept“to be strategic, to have a framework, to develop a vision, to try and support a consensus-building process that gets everyone involved as stakeholders and in the collective analysis of the problem and the prescriptions of solutions” should be demystified and applied in more cases, being simple common sense. In conclusion, O’Donnell called for a broadbased multidonor, multiagency assessment of national and subnational conflict prevention and resolution machinery in the least developed countries and those states in transitions.“I don’t believe we have a good enough picture of the strengths and weaknesses and where we can be useful from the 26 point of view of capacity building,” he said. By working to build capacity, UNDP and other agencies and organizations could help countries and communities“better mediate their internal tensions, resolve their disputes peacefully, arbitrate, and essentially prevent violent conflict.” Danilo Türk said the notion of prevention carries with it an“optimistic tinge” and could be easily misunderstood as a claim that there are solutions for all conflicts. He called attention to the wide-ranging and complex issues addressed by the panel and again advised caution in considering prevention as a universal remedy. In response to O’Donnell’s statement about the Security Council’s discussion of the AIDS epidemic, Türk said this illustrated the open-endedness of many of these problems. He predicted that discussion of such problems would lead to a redefinition of the concepts of security. “Does the UN Security Council in the post-Cold War world display an‘ersatz unity?’” asked Umej Singh Bhatia. Referring to Lovelace’s comment that there is a growing recognition among the international community that Chapter VII resolutions regarding peace enforcement do not work, Bhatia suggested that there was an understanding that these missions must be done“practically and when the situation calls for it.” He asked if regional peacekeeping forces could observe the same aims and ideals of the UN, and noted that regions lacking resources, such as Africa, might be hard-pressed to organize effective responses. While some regional organizations such as NATO undeniably have better capabilities than others, Lovelace responded, there are ongoing efforts to address these deficits. The Africa Crisis Response Initiative has trained more than 4,000 African peacekeepers from six countries. She stressed that it is necessary to work with regional organizations to make sure they reflect shared values and interests. In response to a comment about a civilian police force within the UN, Lovelace replied that peacekeeping missions need multidisciplinary specialists from a variety of nations. She said she was optimistic about the possibility of working with local populations to infuse preventive measures and address root causes of conflict. Responding to a question posed by Jason Forrester of the Brookings Institution as to whether

27 the Clinton administration’s foreign policy changed after the debacle in Mogadishu, Lovelace noted that although Somalia was a devastating failure of multilateral UN action, the United States continues to support multilateral efforts, having contributed more than$2.4 billion last year to the UN. The problem is one of capacity, and she suggested that the UN must look realistically at the type of peacekeeping operations it can undertake.“What we’re finding is that there is a doubling of needs for peacekeeping and that is not being met by capacity,” Lovelace said. From the floor, Manfred Bardeleben, director of the New York Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, returned to a point raised by Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul’s morning address about cooperation. Given that the past ten years have brought considerable increases in coordination amongst agencies, he asked: What can be done to foster further cooperation? Peter Uvin of Brown University suggested that the lack of coordination is often due to differing perspectives of problems, possible solutions, and objectives. If this is the case, he posited, then the“solution is not so much coordination as more thinking about processes by which a variety of solutions could emerge and thinking about who decide all these issues.” Replying to Uvin’s remark, Wood suggested that greater transparency of assessments might be useful because,“if we’ve learned nothing else from the horrible mistakes of the relatively recent past, we recognize the potential for being franker, earlier.” In response to a question about external agencies working in a variety of conflict situations, Cleves said the World Bank increasingly acknowledges areas where it does have a mandate to act and is forging close relationships with agencies that are dealing with those specific issues. She speculated that in this complex environment, coordination is difficult and mandates become lost:“everybody is doing everything.” Better communication between agencies to determine who has comparative advantages in certain areas or subjects might dissipate competition for resources in the field, she recommended. O’Donnell responded that generally in the past, UNDP worked exclusively with other states, yet in recent years it has made a great effort to include NGOs in its processes and build up potential for collaborations. For instance, the Management Development and Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation Governance Division incorporates external relations with other experts in a variety of strategic partnerships. Its programs—often concerned with parliamentary and judicial strengthening and capacity building for electoral processes, reforming the public and civil service sectors, and promoting accountability and transparency—attempt to take the diversities and wealth of the program’s interventions and capacities and promote them in a preventive way. According to Jamal Benomar, senior adviser on prevention and governance issues at the Emergency Response Division of the UNDP, development agencies have traditionally believed“we do prevention because we do development,” and it has been only recently that those ideas have been clarified. Another myth is that development is neutral, Benomar continued.“Development cooperation brings in external support to support processes of change, processes where you have constituencies and winners and losers,” he said. Because we provide incentives and disincentives for war and peace, we support a particular type of change and consequences, and thus are not neutral, he added. Finally, he restated the importance of remembering that conflict of a dynamic nature is created and that the various stages of conflict require different forms of responses and interventions. Thinking about the various factors of particular conflict, its circumstances, root causes, and life cycle, and then applying a specific set of tools or political or development intervention may yield positive results. In response to Benomar’s comments, O’Donnell stated there is an ongoing debate within UNDP as to what prevention means, because there are those who would say,‘if UNDP works for human sustainable development, and if it is truly sustainable, then it is inherently preventive.’ However, he cautioned, while such a concept may be conflict preventive, it may also be conflict generative.“For conflict prevention, or preventive-development activities to be truly meaningful, they should have as a very primary goal the creation of capacities in development countries that help them to mediate their differences and mediate them peacefully.” In response to Wood, O’Donnell said UNDP is working to become more results oriented by creating a strategic framework that identifies successful indicators, such as good governance programs and processes reports.

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation Raising the subject of effectiveness, Anderson asked from the floor how we should think about UNDP’s criteria.“Too often when we’re saying we’re looking for realistic expectations, what we’re really doing is lowering our expectations so that we can’t fail,” she cautioned. The expectation, she added, that those involved in war are ready to declare peace and simply need support from the international community may be true for the majority of the population, but that is rarely the perception of those in power. Such circumstances require that the donor community apply its mechanisms more effectively and with greater resolve. Based on his experience of surveying donor action for the DAC guidelines, Wood said it is more difficult to identify cases of“pure prevention” as opposed to post-conflict prevention. Still he commented that many instances are cross-cutting, such as river-basin cooperation, income for refugees, support for the West African moratorium, and rebuilding the justice system in Cambodia. Acknowledging that his scorecard was based on input measures, Wood responded that the development community should begin with efforts to clarify objectives.“It is certainly new that the Security Council is looking at the political economy of enforcing sanctions in Angola and calling some of the spades that they turn up, the bloody shovels that they are,” he said. The introduction of other instruments of foreign policy, such as 28 trade and politics, poses a challenge to development workers, who may think that they have been left to cover the field. Still, he added, in order to be effective, coordination must be implemented at all levels. Noting that the development cooperation community is adapting a more holistic view of its role, Wood cautioned against“sloganeering” and said the biggest challenge would be to keep the idea of conflict prevention from fragmenting“into a thousand pieces as it moves forward.” At the conclusion of the workshop, Cutter said this discussion would continue in follow-up meetings with donor and NGO communities. She added that the Carnegie Council’s Program on Conflict Prevention would continue to focus on this issue from a variety of regional contexts, including Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia. Manfred Bardeleben of co-sponsor Friedrich Ebert Stiftung thanked all the participants for their contributions. He said this workshop made very clear that the interplay of development activities and crisis prevention are of a highly complex nature and of key importance for the formulation of sustainable development policies in the future. More research and especially more forums like this one—allowing for an open exchange of experiences between donors—will be necessary to better incorporate the dimension of crisis prevention into our thinking about development. O

Mary B. Anderson, The Collaborative for Development Action Manfred Bardeleben, Friedrich Ebert Foundation Umej Singh Bhatia, Permanent Mission of the Republic of Singapore to the United Nations Jamal Benomar, United Nations Development Program Rainer Braun, Friedrich Ebert Foundation Anwarul Karim Chowdhury, Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the United Nations Patricia Cleves, World Bank Elizabeth M. Cousens, International Peace Academy Ana Grier Cutter, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs Shepard Forman, Center on International Cooperation Jason William Forrester, The Brookings Institution Martina Huber, Delegation of the European Commission to the United Nations Tapio Kanninen, United Nations Department of Political Affairs Andrew J. Loomis, Search for Common Ground in Macedonia Lauren Lovelace, United States Mission to the United Nations David Malone, International Peace Academy Johanna Mendelson Forman, U.S. Agency for International Development Hunter McGill, Canadian International Development Agency Bhaskar Menon, UN Diplomatic Times Frank O’Donnell, United Nations Development Programme Stephan Klaus Ohme, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development Jack Patterson, Quaker United Nations Office Beatriz M. Ramacciotti, Permanent Mission of Peru to the Organization of American States Joel H. Rosenthal, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs Anita Sharma, Role of American Military Power Shashi Tharoor, United Nations Andrea Trento, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs Danilo Türk, United Nations Department of Political Affairs Peter Uvin, Brown University Peter Waller, German Development Institute Thomas G. Weiss, The Graduate School of the City University of New York Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development Bernard Wood, Bernard Wood and Associates 29

Crisis Prevention and Development Cooperation 30 List of Participants

About the Organizers The Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs is a nonpartisan, nonsectarian organization dedicated to research and education at the intersection of ethics and international affairs. The Council’s Program on Conflict Prevention critically explores the concept of prevention as it is evolving in international affairs. Launched in the spring of 2000, the program seeks to create, inform, and respond to an international learning community on prevention through the development of a three-part, multiyear program illuminating the ethical dilemmas present in the theory, tools, and practice of conflict prevention. The objectives of the program are threefold: first, theoretical and practical exploration of the concept of conflict prevention as it is evolving in international affairs; second, ethical consideration of the various tools available to actors seeking to prevent deadly conflict and the potential differences between how outsiders and insiders to conflict perceive and employ these tools; and, third, contribution to an increased understanding of the constructive role that the international community, and the United States in particular, can play in the prevention of deadly conflict The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung is a nonprofit, public interest organization committed to the principles and basic values of social democracy in its educational and policy-oriented work. The Foundation holds seminars and conferences on a wide range of political, economic, social and historical issues. The issue of international cooperation and development is one of the main fields of activity for the foundation. To pursue its worldwide activities, the Foundation has branch offices in more than 70 countries and carries out activities in more than 100 countries. More than half of the annual budget is devoted to development projects, ranging from training programs to applied research and expert consulting services. In the interest of peace and international cooperation, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation acts as a platform for dialogue in the spirit of the reduction of political tension at the international level. The Foundation also seeks to raise awareness of development issues among political decision-makers in the North and to promote cooperation among countries in the South. 31