Documento(s) 8 de 11

During the last half century, the international community has developed a system of institutions that has been quite successful in preventing and limiting interstate conflict. Between 1945 and 1995, there were only four military conquests that have endured and two successful wars of secession, and, for the first time in history, small states have been able to live without fear of conquest from larger and more powerful ones. Forced to fit within the straightjacket imposed by the Cold War, the various mechanisms established at the international level — the United Nations and its Security Council, regional political organizations (Organization of American States, Organization of African Unity), political-military alliances (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Warsaw Pact, South East Asia Treaty Organization), regional economic-integration agreements (European Union, European Free Trade Organization), the Bretton Woods institutions, and so on — managed to keep a lid on internal conflicts that threatened to spill across borders and upset the precarious balance characteristic of the East-West confrontation.

To a significant extent, the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of other states — which was adhered to, at least on paper, by both East and West — also helped to contain interstate conflicts during the Cold War. However, with the end of that world order, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, civil wars and other violent conflicts have become more visible. Interventions to maintain international peace and security, as well as humanitarian interventions — usually under the aegis of the United Nations — have become more frequent and acceptable to the international community (Damrosch 1993; Ramón Chornet 1995; Stremlau 1996).

The end of the Cold War removed a filter that coloured our perceptions of internal conflicts, as well as expanding our range of vision to register many confrontations that could not be seen in the shadow of the East-West struggle. The pervasiveness, durability, and complexity of many violent-conflict situations — which often combine historical grievances, ethnic allegiances, political ambitions, religious loyalties, social disparities, and economic deprivation — became plainly visible after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The convergence of ethnic diversity and economic disparities, together with the presence of unrepresentative and repressive governments unwilling or unable to allow sufficient political space to accommodate fears and grievances, can be particularly dangerous and explosive (Reinicke 1996; Bardhan 1997; Sagasti 1998).

The huge costs of violent conflicts, measured both in human lives and in financial resources (which in the cases of El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Somalia reached billions of US dollars), point to the obvious fact that it is much better to prevent than to have to resolve conflicts. The cost-effectiveness of conflict prevention becomes obvious when one considers that about $2 billion was spent in military operations in Somalia, primarily by the United States, to channel less than $100 million of effective emergency relief. However, it is very difficult for the international community to deal with something that has not happened as yet and to pay attention, allocate political capital, and provide financial resources to development activities that just might prevent widespread violence and deadly conflict. Although the outbreak of violent conflict can quickly mobilize international action, especially if it takes place in a sensitive region of the world, the more diffuse and long-term tasks of conflict prevention are seldom able to enlist widespread support from many nations. This is particularly the case at a time when severe cutbacks are occurring in financial resources for development assistance and cooperation.

Nevertheless, the laborious tasks of conflict prevention have prompted several attempts to better understand the nature of violent conflicts and what can be done to avoid them. Mohammed Sahnoun, who was the Special Envoy to Somalia of the United Nations Secretary-General during the early 1990s, has provided a summary of the origins of some recent conflicts, showing the diversity and complexity of their causes, also hinting at the wide range of interventions needed to maintain peace in the troubled regions of the world (Table A1). The OECD’s DAC (DAC 1997a) issued a set of guidelines for development cooperation to deal with violent conflicts taking place within, rather than between states, which mostly occur within developing countries. After providing a framework for analyzing conflicts, the guidelines focus on questions such as coordination within the international community, the transition from humanitarian relief to development interventions, the support to postconflict-recovery efforts, and the importance of good governance and regional approaches to conflict prevention.

The Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict (CCPDC 1997) distinguished between “structural” and “operational” tasks in preventive action. The former address the underlying root causes of conflict and aim at creating an environment that protects fundamental human rights, allows citizens to secure a livelihood, and provides opportunities for growth and development. The latter focus on measures applicable in the face of an immediate crisis to prevent the eruption of violent conflict. Guilmette (1995) suggested that there are six phases in the evolution of conflict situations — malaise, incipient crisis, denied conflict, open conflict, war, and reconciliation and reconstruction — each of which requires a different approach and calls for specific kinds of action. From the perspective of development assistance, these phases can be grouped into four overlapping periods: development interventions, diplomatic activities followed by military action, humanitarian aid, and return to development activities.¹⁹

Figure A1 suggests that during Guilmette’s first three phases, in which malaise turns into crisis and then into denied conflict, there is a relatively long period during which development interventions, which belong to the category of structural prevention tasks, can play a significant role. Operational prevention tasks, which aim at reducing the risk factors and avoiding the escalation of conflict into war, are more appropriate to the shorter phases of denied and open conflict. If the situation deteriorates into war and deadly violence, subsequent efforts are needed to resolve the conflict and embark on postwar reconciliation and reconstruction.

Figure A1. The evolution of violent conflict. Source: Adapted from Guilmette (1995).

It is clear that at every stage of the conflict cycle, there are opportunities for international organizations in general and for development-cooperation agencies in particular to play important roles. This is clearest during the postconflict reconstruction phase. Once peace has been restored, either through military victory or a negotiated settlement, the surviving governmental authorities are typically eager for international assistance. Outside powers usually support the involvement of bilateral agencies and multilateral institutions to ensure the consolidation of peace and to avoid the temptation to resume violence.

The mistakes of the harsh settlement of World War I were not repeated in 1945, and the international financial institutions can claim a share of the credit for the hugely successful reconstruction of the Axis powers and their reintegration into the global economy as full democratic partners of the United States and its European allies. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the aftermath of the Cold War the UNDP, bilateral aid agencies, and multilateral development banks have been under increasing pressure to assist reconciliation and reconstruction in Africa, the Balkans, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere.

In his first speech to the 1995 joint annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, James Wolfensohn, the President of the World Bank, stated that his immediate priorities for the coming months included anticipating and being organized for “post-conflict economic development programs, when war is replaced by peace” (Wolfensohn 1995, p. 13). The World Bank has been deeply involved in postwar reconstruction since the mid-1980s and begun to establish a comprehensive set of policies in this field (Holtzman 1995). The DAC (1997a, pp. 53–72) developed a series of recommendations for bilateral aid agencies, in which it argued that “the objective of post-conflict reconstruction is not to return to pre-crisis situations but to lay the foundations for peace and sustainable development.” The range of suggested interventions cover questions such as restoring a working capacity for economic management, restoring internal security and the rule of law, fostering the reemergence of civil society, reintegrating uprooted populations, demobilization and social reintegration of former combatants, and clearing land mines.

However, during armed conflict, international development agencies must generally keep to the sidelines. In situations in which the United Nations has mandated sanctions, bilateral agencies and multilateral institutions may have an important role to play in helping to alleviate the economic disruption that these measures cause to neighbouring states or the traditional trading partners of the target state. Such assistance, when coordinated effectively with the United Nations, serves a humanitarian purpose while helping to strengthen the sanctions regime by reducing incentives to break sanctions and by signaling the international resolve to render them effective (Stremlau 1996).

Once the parties to a dispute indicate a willingness to enter into negotiations and a peace process gets under way, development assistance can contribute more directly to helping to resolve the crisis through conflict resolution and peacebuilding (Ball and Halevy 1996). To help in conflict resolution, international actors focus on identifying the common ground between the parties in the conflict, apply diplomatic pressures to reach a settlement, and offer technical assistance in specific areas under negotiation, such as the separation of forces. Following the cessation of hostilities, diplomacy, financial support, and technical assistance focus on strengthening political institutions, reforming internal and external security arrangements, and revitalizing the economy and the nation’s social fabric. All of this should lead to the establishment of a government with sufficient domestic and international legitimacy to operate effectively and to put the peace agreements into practice.

During the peacebuilding phase, development-cooperation programs should aim at strengthening political institutions, consolidating external and internal security, and promoting economic and social revitalization. Ideally, all of this should facilitate the development of a new political culture by fostering tolerance, respect for the views of others, habits of compromise, and collaborative modes of behaviour. The design and delivery of such programs requires financial flexibility, contingency planning, sensitivity to local conditions, and a keen awareness of the possibilities and limitations of external interventions, attributes which have not been particularly characteristic of multilateral financial institutions and their staff. Considering that the World Bank and the regional development banks must play a crucial financial-intermediation role — which requires them to be highly attuned to the requirements and perceptions of international capital markets for their regular lending programs and to the reactions of taxpayers in donor countries for their concessional aid funds — it may be too much to expect them to also excel in the highly political tasks of conflict prevention. Similar considerations apply to bilateral assistance agencies, even though they can be more flexible and responsive when the national interest of one or more donor country may be at stake in resolving conflicts in particular developing regions.

The difficulties involved in postconflict transitions were clearly pointed out by Ball and Halevy:

Because of the profound mistrust and animosity generated by civil wars, the extreme institutional weakness characteristic of post-conflict countries, and the destruction visited on society and the economy by armed conflict, repairing the ravages of war is an arduous, complex and lengthy process. For countries moving simultaneously from highly exclusionary political systems to more open and participatory forms of government and from centralized economic systems to economies responsive to market forces, the process is even more complicated. It is unrealistic to expect that peace in these countries will be consolidated in less than a generation. What is more, it is by no means inevitable that, once set in motion, the peace process will succeed.

(Ball and Halevy 1996, pp. 65–66)

These considerations led Ball and Halevy to suggest that “donors should maintain the maximum flexibility in how they define the programs they will support. Based on its institutional comparative advantage, in discussion with the broadest possible range of local actors, and in close coordination with other members of the international development community, each donor should devise a long-term plan for building peace” (Ball and Halevy 1996, p. 66). For example, it is reasonable to argue that multilateral development banks should circumscribe their direct involvement in the postconflict transitions to the provision of technical and financial assistance for the rehabilitation of economic, social, and government infrastructure, allowing other institutions — United Nations agencies, regional bodies, bilateral aid agencies, NGOs — to assist in damage and needs assessment, building confidence, clearing mines, demobilization, resettlement, and other related activities of a more political nature.

Building peace is a fragile undertaking that may experience setbacks that reignite deadly violence. Grant-making institutions, such as the United Nations agencies, bilateral development-assistance agencies, private foundations, and some NGOs, can take greater risks and be flexible with the use of the resources at their disposal, but international financial institutions must be quite conservative to preserve the integrity of their financial-intermediation role. This argues for limiting the involvement of multilateral financial institutions to situations in which there is a relatively high degree of certainty that there will be no relapse into violent conflict and leaving involvement in more uncertain situations to organizations that can afford to take greater risks. In particular, a more appropriate interinstitutional division of labour would seek an enhanced role for the UNDP, as well as closer partnerships between this United Nations agency and the multilateral development banks (UNDP n.d.)

In advancing the cause of conflict prevention bilateral aid agencies and multilateral institutions will have to confront other politically sensitive issues that lie beyond the failed or failing state. For example, arms merchants, supported in many cases by governments that are also influential donors and members of the boards of international financial institutions, are taking advantage of the highly profitable arms trade to put modern weapons in the hands of parties involved in civil wars and violent ethnic conflicts throughout the world. Automatic rifles, mines, guided missiles, and grenades, among other weapons, are providing the means for indiscriminate killing in contexts in which self-restraint appears to have all but vanished.

A comprehensive approach to conflict prevention should also consider how to combine diplomatic initiatives with the support of local propeace organizations in the field and the eventual use of military force to defuse potential deadly conflicts. Moreover, it should incorporate issues such as the need to limit the spread of nuclear and other unconventional weapons, as well as to take into account the connections between drug traffic, organized crime, and illegal weapons trade, on the one hand, and the spread of deadly conflicts, on the other. The military dimension of conflict prevention has been clearly articulated in a report written by Gustav Daniker for the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research:

With all due respect for the benevolent activities of the Red Cross and its succour to war victims, for other humanitarian organizations and individual initiatives, it is time now to shift the emphasis of efforts for peace and the well-being of as many people as possible clearly towards prevention. The following future work sharing is conceivable: trouble spots have to be contained and crises have to be controlled — a matter for the bodies of collective security and a flexible, but sufficient apparatus of power that has to be placed at their disposal; wars and open conflicts have to be possibly prevented — a task for the political leadership of all nations concerned, of the U.N. [United Nations], of military alliances and regional groupings. If the worst comes to the worst, open aggression has to be countered by means of a skilful operational conduct, a well-controlled use of force and long-term strategic goals in such a way that a minimum loss of lives and material damage is caused — a matter for those who are responsible on the spot, i.e. the generals. If prevention has failed, the military intervention should at least be conducive to the restoration of a state of peace which is acceptable to all.

(Daniker 1995, p. 124, his emphasis)

These considerations highlight the rather complex nature of conflict prevention, one of the several new demands placed on the system of institutions involved in international financing and development cooperation.

Documento(s) 8 de 11