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Texts and Reports
- Business in Conflict Situations - Preface
Business in Conflict Situations
The nature of global violence has changed radically during the last decade. The population of several developing countries had to live through violent conflicts that - for the most part - did not originate in interstate war. Of the estimated five million people killed in wars during the 1990s, a majority was civilian. Only too often purely economic interest of a specific part of the population, often backed by external support, resulted in a violent threat to the daily lives of ordinary citizens. Just a few examples, such as the civil wars in Rwanda and Burundi, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo were noticed by the Western public as they were sufficiently well covered in the media. The necessity of a new perception of security in a world of changing patterns of violence was horrifically driven home to the West with the terror bombings in New York and Washington in September. The attack directed against civilians and perpetrated by non-state actors added new weight to already ongoing efforts to shift traditional security thinking from inter-state war to other forms of confrontation. The obvious challenge to governance and development that are posed by the changed patterns of conflict results in attempts to redefine the concept of security. Till now, it was not the departments traditionally responsible for security questions, but departments and international organisations engaged in development co-operation that took intra-state violence, the greatest threat to peoples, as a starting point and came up with a new concept of "human security". But our understanding of the factors leading to violent conflict has to be broadened to ease adequate policy formulation. So far, empirical research from the Economics Research Group of the World Bank not only contributed to the formulation of a new World Bank policy on Conflict Prevention, but initiated an international debate on the weight of economic factors in conflict analysis. International bodies such as the European Union and notably the OECD-DAC formulated policies to help to prevent conflict and promote peace. For a number of years already, German development policy strengthened its strategies to achieve crisis prevention, peaceful conflict settlement and peace consolidation as fundamental goals of German policy. Notably, a Federal German Government's "General Concept of the Federal Government on crisis prevention and conflict settlement" was approved in April 2000 and a new instrument, the Civilian Peace Service (ZFD) was created. Elements of crisis prevention and efforts to prevent technical assistance from unintentionally exacerbating the crisis were integrated in German technical assistance projects. The growing readiness of German development co-operation to engage in partnerships with the private sector to achieve development goals and an intensified debate on the activities and identity of business companies - including the issue of corporate citizenship - added new momentum to the question in which ways business can make a positive contribution to conflict resolution. It seemed therefore more than feasible to broaden the international exchange of experience on conflict prevention that began with the International Policy Dialogue on "Development and Disarmament" in autumn 2000 and to assemble not only experts from politics, but research and business representatives as well. The expert meeting in November 2001 laid the ground for another major international conference that concentrates on "Economic Dimensions of Conflict" to be organised by the German Development Policy Forum/DSE and the Germany Ministry for Economic Development and Co-operation in July 2002. The German Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ) and the German Foundation for International Development (DSE), who invited to this expert meeting, were happy to be supported by the OECD Development Assistance Committee's (DAC) Network on Conflict and Peace and Development Co-operation (CPDC) and the World Bank's Development Economics Research Group (DECRG) research project "The Economics of Civil Wars, Crime and Violence". Apart from experts related to the World Bank and the DAC/OECD, the Co-operation for Development Action, the Confederation of German Employers' Association, the Deutsches Netzwerk Wirtschaftsethik, the Bonn International Centre for Conversion, the German Development Institute, the Conflict Prevention Network (CPN) of the European Union, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), the newly founded German group on peace development (FriEnt), international NGOs such as "Business Partners for Development", International Security Information Service/Europe and "International Alert" as well as individual private sector representatives were ready to join the deliberations. Our thanks to all of them for their readiness to share their insight and experience with us. Gudrun Kochendörfer-Lucius
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