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Contributions from
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InWEnt Forum
Global warming: Andean glaciers are melting away
Fragile states: Priorities …
Peacekeeping: End to illusions
01/2007 |
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[ Fragile states ]
Priorities …
Donors often expect more from crisis-torn countries than the countries’ weak institutions can deliver. At the same time, it does not make much sense to emphasise a state’s sovereignty when its conflicts threaten its neighbours.
[ By Hans Dembowski ]
The donor community has no coherent concept for dealing with fragile states and post-conflict countries. As Ajay Chhibber, the director of the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), reports, the official development assistance (ODA) received by such countries differs from case to case. Of the fragile states identified in a current IEG study, Timor Leste received the most money per head of population – around $ 200 in the years 2002 to 2004. The Democratic Republic of Congo, meanwhile, had to make do with less than $ 50 per person, and still ranked above average among the 25 states the World Bank regards as fragile.
Chhibber is bothered by the fact that donors often “impose a massive agenda” on the countries concerned. In spite of their weak institutions, he says, these countries are repeatedly required to introduce sweeping reforms. As an example, the Indian economist from the World Bank cites Liberia, which was expected by donors to pass 120 new pieces of legislation. At the end of November, Chhibber spoke at a “Development Policy Forum”, which was hosted by InWEnt and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation in Bonn under the headline: “Stay Engaged – Weak Governance and Fragile States: A Development Policy Challenge”.
The event was attended by 60 experts from poor and rich countries, none of whom challenged Chhibbers’ view that donors should confine themselves to essentials. On the contrary, other shortcomings of widespread donor practices were quickly highlighted as well: the tendency of donors to set up their own institutions parallel to local administrations, for example, seeking to speed up the implementation of programmes with no regard for the fact that such institutions further undermine a fragile state’s capacities. Complaints were also voiced that while lots of money is made available in an acute crisis, the flow of funds soon peters out. Therefore, the prospect of a donor conference often prompts a reaction of “Let’s spend it all fast so we get fresh money”.
“Do away with holy cows”
Such criticism, however, is not new. Marina Ottaway of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace therefore believes it is high time to “do away with a few holy cows”. As it is impossible to implement everything desirable, she says, priorities need to be set.
For donors, that is a tough challenge. Their ideas do not simply stem from fixed ideologies, they are derived from what well-performing states are normally like. Nevertheless, Oxford professor Paul Collier is ready to reach for the sacrificial knife. He believes the donor community over-estimates the importance of elections in crisis countries, unaware of democracy depending just as much on “checks and balances”. According to Collier, post-conflict countries may indeed be temporarily stabilised by the prospect of elections, but risks of violence quickly re-emerge once the votes are counted (see article next page).
Collier also warns against over-emphasising the sovereignty of crisis countries. Since their problems affect neighbours, he claims, it makes sense to think in terms of shared sovereignty, as has long been practised in Europe, where rich nations have pooled sovereignty in the EU. So, on paper, the fragile state of Burundi has more rights to self-determination than Germany.
Marguerite Yoli-Bi of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, an independent organisation, agrees that domestic conflicts tend to leak across national borders, and she has also had bad experiences with elections. Dissatisfaction with electoral results, she says, took Côte d’Ivoire, her country, to the brink of civil war. Jean-Marc Chataigner of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) similarly finds the case of Côte d’Ivoire instructive. But he analyses that country’s problems differently – as a consequence of the failure of a Western-inspired drive to fight corruption. The Ivorian state had operated quite well, he argues, until the patronage networks that spread social burdens more evenly were destroyed. Chataigner suggests, therefore, that while action should be taken to combat corruption in international relations, the issue should not be made a priority in crisis countries.
In Bonn, that idea met with stiff resistance. Isaac Aluko-Olokun insisted that Nigeria, his home country, which is classified as “fragile” by the World Bank, is suffering from the “cancer of corruption”. The diplomat pins his hopes on the trend of democratisation that has created new spaces of action for the media and non-governmental organisations in much of Africa. He argues that regional institutions like the African Peer Review Mechanism, which is about governments assessing each other’s standards of governance, will reinforce that trend.
Meanwhile, Karin Kortmann, parliamentary state secretary at the German Development Ministry, is annoyed that expensive military missions are not evaluated according to the same strict criteria that are applied in her own field of policy. Accordingly, she sees a “glaring discrepancy” on the effectiveness front.
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