Rural development in Swat, Pakistan: Understanding food and livelihood security in post-conflict contexts

In Pakistan, the Norwegian Embassy is supporting several international and local NGOs as well as several UN agencies in humanitarian and development activities in Kyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) including Swat.

The aim of this initial study is to explore the livelihood strategies of women and men in selected post-conflict/flood areas of Swat, and relate these to current development policy and programmes. The study is limited in scope and the findings preliminary. However preliminary findings incude:

• international and government authorities cope poorly with the vast differences, or non-uniform impacts of the conflict and flood of 2010
• the current institutional landscape of development assistance hinders efforts of addressing the diversity of needs in a more integrated, effective manner
• there is strong evidence in the development community of a lack of understanding and consideration of local, gendered responses to the conflict and flood
• narrow definitions of security as purely an issue of insurgents ignore other important ways in which the conflict and the flood have affected women and men’s security. Purely military responses have limited impact on the need for other types of responses, particularly to support the interests and needs of women.

Based on the preliminary findings the authors recommend that:

• the Embassy take a critical stance in relation to multilateral assistance to KP to promote a shift in assistance procedures (assessment, analysis, planning, implementation and evaluation) which better ensures real participation by local organizations, district officials and communities in defining their own development
• the Embassy strengthens its focus on women, human security and development in all aspects of its support to KP. This can be done through facilitating synergies between its programs to be able to address the interrelatedness of development in the region
• the Embassy put particular emphasis on competence building of local authorities (district) and organizations (district and community) in participatory assessment and analysis to strengthen their relative power in defining development priorities vis à vis external organizations.