Wider Angle: August 1999

World Institute for Development Economics Research August 1999 No. 1/99 Ending Africas Conflicts WIDER Lessons on Emergencies by Tony Addison onflict is directly related to inequality between social groups, state failure, economic decline and ar has destroyed the lives and hopes of millions economicC shocks according to UNU/WIDER Policy W of Africans. It poses major challenges to the Brief No.2, Social and Economic Policies to Prevent United Nations system and to the wider development com- Complex Humanitarian Emergencies. The report was munity. Why conflict occurs, why some countries avoid it, launched on 22-23 March at the United Nations how we end it, and how we reconstruct afterwards are the Headquarters in New York, and delivered to the UNs key issues facing Africa today. ECOSOC meeting on 13 July in Geneva by Professor Rebuilding Africas war-damaged economies involves Frances Stewart (Oxford University). reconstructing communities, revitalising private sectors, UNHCR /B.Press photo and building state capacities. This is a demanding set of tasks given the scarcity of financial resources and skills. By failing to deliver broad-based growth, the economic strategies of conflict countries contributed to the onset of war. Reconstruction, if it is to be successful, must avoid recreating the past. Past strategies must be rethought, and policies, public expenditures and institutions must be changed. Consequently, there is common ground between the agenda of reconstruction and the agenda of economic reform (or transition). Indeed, since both aim to raise living standards, their design and implementation should be one and the same process. This is seldom the case, however, mainly because of the variety of donor agencies involved - each with its own responsibilities - together with weak national capacities. For example, communities are being helped to reconstruct but their needs are not adequately incorporated into either Refugees from Burundi in Rwanda the design of privatization programmes or fiscal frameworks. Hence, possibilities for poverty reduction are To prevent conflict, the international community missed. should give more priority to appropriate development policies, meaningful forms of foreign aid, and stronger The uneasy relationship between reconstruction and state and civil society institutions. These, and other reform is a core issue in the UNU/WIDER project on findings, were widely reported in the international press Underdevelopment, Transition and Reconstruction (UTR) and media, including CNN and the International Press in Sub-Saharan Africa. This project focuses on Angola, Service. The policy brief, authored by Jeni Klugman, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and summarises the results of the UNU/WIDER project Somalia. These countries share a common history; The Wave of Emergencies of the Last Decade, a Marxism-Leninism underpinned their early development project led by Wayne Nafziger, Frances Stewart, and strategies, and economic failure together with the Cold Raimo Väyrynen. The report is posted on the War led to intense, and often recurring, conflict. War has Institutes website (www.wider.unu.edu). Further killed at least 4 million people, mostly civilians, in these details of how to obtain this and other UNU/WIDER countries. publications are provided on page 11 of this (continued on page 2) newsletter. The United Nations University Eritrea is creating the institutions faced by the UTR countries: Problems encountered necessary for a new state. Somalia overcoming underdevelopment and in the economic transi- never completed economic transition the political instability associated tions of Eastern Europe and the state itself collapsed. with it, completing the transition from state socialism, and reconstruction and the Former Soviet Problems encountered in the from conflict so that peace endures. Union are evident in economic transitions of Eastern Africa as well. Europe and the FSU are evident in Africa as well. These include institutional failure (especially in property rights), non-transparent Three Key For Angola the peace agreement of privatization, the neglect of Challenges 1994 proved to be yet another appropriate regulation (especially in temporary cease-fire, and war has banking), chronic fiscal imbalance, now resumed. Eritrea and Ethiopia and a sharp and socially destabilizing Reconstruct communi- began reconstruction after the Dergs rise in inequality (especially in ties to achieve broad- overthrow in 1991 and Eritreas Angola). independence, but began an based growth unexpected war in 1998. In Guinea- With the exception of Mozambique, Bissau a promising recovery was set economic reconstruction and back by a military revolt in 1998. transition have been reversed by Facilitate the creation of There is as yet no end in sight for new conflicts. Indeed, Eritreas a new private sector Somalias conflict. Much of the introduction of a new currency country remains insecure, while (marking the end of its monetary Somaliland (in the Northeast) has union with Ethiopia) was one of the Build a development seceded. Only Mozambique has triggers of the present war. The state to implement managed to maintain the momentum difficulties encountered by UTR of peace, and considerable - countries highlight the close broad-based growth although very uneven - reconstruc- relationship between economic- tion has been achieved since the end policy decisions and the prospects of the war in 1992. for peaceful development. Country strategies do not adequately Photo by A. Hollmann/UNHCR Tony Addison, from the University of Warwick (UK), is a UNU/ WIDER research fellow, and the director of the project on Under- development, Transition and Reconstruction in Sub-Saharan Africa. For further discussion see Tony Addison Underdevelopment, Transition and Reconstruction in Sub-Saharan Africa UNU/WIDER Research for Action 45 and Rebuilding Post-Conflict Africa: Reconstruction and Reform Research in Progress 18. Somali refugee camp in Ethiopia Under state socialism, enterprises address these issues, and thus UNU/WIDER gratefully acknowl- and natural resources were reconstruction and transition are edges the financial contributions nationalized (land in particular), often in tension with each other. of the Governments of Italy, market controls were imposed, and Meanwhile, old causes of conflict - Sweden and the United Kingdom Soviet-style planning was attempted. contests over the state (Guinea- to the project. But these strategies failed to Bissau) and natural resource wealth conquer underdevelopment, and (Angola) - continue to fester. For information on this and other economic transition- as in the Former projects please visit our website Soviet Union (FSU) itself - became Thus, the title of the UNU/WIDER at: www.wider.unu.edu. urgent. project reflects the three challenges 2 BY INVITATION Aid and Conflict in Rwanda by Stephen Browne very conflict country is a of development. What seems programme and benefited in 1999 special case. What distin- extraordinary now is that none of the from a new programme loan from the guishesE Rwanda is the intensity of donors appeared to be aware of the World Bank. The profile of aid is human destruction to which the Governments careful preparations again changing in favour of country succumbed in 1994. One for one of the worst massacres in development assistance. seventh of the population, mostly human history. Yet information was from the Tutsi minority, was available from which the cataclysm But donors need to learn from massacred in the space of three could have been predicted. Rwandas recent history, if tragedy months. The academic, commercial, is not to be repeated. This is and professional elite was Indeed, some observers have argued especially true in circumstances decimated. Nine-tenths of the that aid, in supporting the (applicable to many African population was displaced, and basic Governments policies and countries) in which political, infrastructure was destroyed. programmes, may have contributed commercial and academic power and to the conditions that incubated influence are again concentrated in Prior to the genocide, Rwanda genocide. Rwandan society has a few hands, since aid inevitably received large amounts of aid. From suffered from high levels of constitutes a contentious, and 1988 to 1991, total official structural violence - inequality, contested, prize. development assistance (ODA) rose marginalisation and ethnic bias - from almost $250 million per year to which were often rooted in, and First, all bilateral and multilateral over $350 million (approximately $50 exacerbated by, state action. The donors need to agree on the per capita). This aid was recently completed UNU/WIDER economic, political and social norms supplemented by humanitarian project on complex humanitarian that are currently most likely to assistance, which increased in 1992 emergencies highlights the role of promote stable, open, and inclusive and 1993 as the civil war between unbalanced development as a cause governance in Rwanda. Currently, the Government, and the Tutsi- of conflict in Rwanda, and other donors are divided in their dominated rebels intensified and countries. willingness to assist. Some donors, displaced large numbers of people historically close to the previous (refugees from massacres in Burundi The tragic impotence of the donor Hutu regime, are reluctant to become also fled to Rwanda during this time). community in the face of the engaged with a Tutsi-dominated These levels of aid were maintained

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