Development and Cooperation


	Contributions from the Column Facts and trends World Bank Board endorses management response A parliament for Somalia Common Code for the Coffee Community Corruption: World Bank sanctions Acres Ltd. Development policy and terrorism Peaceworkers wanted Lending guidelines overhauled Wieczorek-Zeul pledges German assistance Bad marks for the IMF 10/2004		Development policy and terrorism Development cooperation can help dismantle structures that provide a breeding ground for terrorism. It can thus make a valuable contribution to the global anti-terrorism campaign. That is the conclusion reached in a study by German technical cooperation agency GTZ summing up the organisation's experience with projects for the German government's so-called anti-terrorism package (ATP). In the wake of 9/11, GTZ was engaged by the government to conduct a special one-year programme comprising 34 regional and 5 supra-regional projects aimed at the “structural prevention of terrorism”. The key finding of the study: development cooperation geared to promoting crisis management and peace development works best where action is taken as an adjunct to existing projects. New projects specifically designed to address conflicts are less effective but nonetheless necessary for amassing experience with new concepts and tools. Prevention of terrorism in a narrower sense, the study team says, is promoted most effectively by projects which help build civil society structures in countries at risk from terrorism and which, above all, create prospects for disadvantaged youth. ATP projects in the Maghreb countries, for example, were found to significantly boost sensitivity to the issues of conflict management and terrorism. The GTZ study recommends that greater efforts should be made to establish cooperative links with moderate religious groups in Islamic countries – an issue that, for the authors, has been neglected in the past. (ell)