Capacity building
Aid reform: addressing conflict and situations of fragility
Aid reform: the need for a conflict-sensitive approach
Authors:
Publisher:
CARE International, 2009
Violent conflict and ‘situations of fragility’ represent significant challenges for aid effectiveness. Applying traditional development approaches in an unchanged fashion in such contexts simply does not work. Aid can have unintended interactions with conflict both to exacerbate or mitigate violence or the potential for violence. This document argues that working in or on conflict requires a different approach.
The authors argue that aid reforms need to place a much greater emphasis on conflict sensitivity and human rights-centred approaches to aid. In recent years, donor debates on conflict and so-called ‘fragile states’ have become increasingly driven by the ‘War on Terror’. This has manifested in a donor preoccupation with what is termed ‘whole-of-government approaches’ to coordination between development, defence and diplomacy. It is argued that this trend has distracted from more locally-appropriate approaches to aid in conflict-affected countries.
The document welcomes and details current donor efforts to review policy and funding for early recovery, stabilisation, peacebuilding and statebuilding. The Kinshasa statement is detailed, which was agreed by donor and partner governments in July 2008. It sets out a progressive agenda for these efforts beyond the Accra Aid Effectiveness summit. In this context the following recommendations are made:
- donors should make clear commitments to donor accountability against the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative and the Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States
- donors and partner governments should recognise the important role of citizenship and civil society in state-building, and reflect this in the proposed objectives for peacebuilding and statebuilding
- donors should increase funding for early recovery; recognising the need for a mix of aid modalities in such contexts
- donors and post-conflict governments should negotiate ‘Compacts’ outlining their financial and political obligations in addressing the root causes of violence, promoting recovery and consolidating peace.
