Potentials and limits of community-based service delivery in post-conflict situations

In countries emerging from conflict, there is often urgent need to provide health, education, water and sanitation services. In the absence of a strong and effective state, aid agencies increasingly rely on community-based approaches (CBA). However it is necessary to recognise the limits of CBA in the larger context of state building objectives. It is important to ensure that the wider policy and institutional frameworks are also addressed.

The potential and limits of CBA and other challenges of delivering aid in fragile states are analysed in a report from the Overseas Development Institute, UK. The authors draw lessons from international experience to contribute to discussions on how community-driven development might help rebuild war-torn Sudan.

The report considers whether it is possible to strike a balance between the need to rebuild institutions quickly and reforming them to ensure longer-term sustainability. Building responsive institutions takes time. If the objective of strengthening local governance is to be realised, the international community needs to move towards gradual and conditional distribution of funds. Beneficiaries must be given time to learn how to defend their rights and to hold leaders and service providers to account.

Sudan exemplifies the challenges of working in difficult political environments:

• Conflict and underdevelopment have produced dramatic developmental disparities between regions.
• Decentralisation of service delivery has taken place without ensuring whether local authorities have the skills, resources and revenue to carry them out.
• There is widespread insecurity, caused by a breakdown in the rule of law, proliferation of small arms and unexploded bombs, and difficulty in demobilising armed groups.
• Statistics are poor, but available data suggest worsening human development trends.
• There is discrimination – on grounds of ethnicity, religion and gender – and great difficulties in providing services to a huge population of internally displaced people.
• Those with power are not always willing or able to work in partnership with the aid community.

CBA is increasingly being promoted in post-conflict settings as a mechanism for early rehabilitation and provision of basic goods and services. CBA can help provide services, but there must be greater clarity about the objectives it is being used to achieve.

It is important to:

• recognise the limits of CBA in the context of wider state-building objectives and the importance of addressing wider policy and institutional frameworks
• differentiate between adopting a community-based approach and simply implementing projects at community level
• avoid having too many objectives: key objectives should be prioritised
• acknowledge that technical support is needed to find solutions to problems identified by the community, in order to help informed decision-making
• realise that community level priorities may not be consistent with broader goals of equity, efficiency and sustainability
• build on existing systems and ensure programmes can adapt to rapidly changing circumstances.

Source(s):
‘Community-based approaches and service delivery: Issues and options in difficult environments and partnerships’, Unpublished report by Overseas Development Instiute, by Tom Slaymaker and Karin Christiansen with Isabel Hemming, February 2005

Funded by: UK Department for International Development

id21 Research Highlight: 17 February 2006

Further Information:
Tom Slaymaker
Water Policy Programme
Overseas Development Institute
11 Westminster Bridge Road London SE1 7JD, UK

Tel: +44 (0) 207 9220323
Fax: +44 (0) 207 9220399
Contact the contributor: t.slaymaker@odi.org.uk

Overseas Development Institute, UK

Other related links:
'Hunger crisis: learning from southern Africa'

'Conflict management and environmental change in Papua New Guinea'

'Community priorities for water rights: rethinking assumptions, principles, and programmes'

'Water access in Ethiopia – can conflict be avoided?'

Alternative Approaches to Managing Conflict Over Natural Resources, IDRC News Report

Peacebuilding Programme at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, South Africa