The Busan forum on aid effectiveness put a set of peacebuilding and statebuilding goals (PSGs) onto the mainstream development agenda, marking a positive shift in development policy for fragile and conflict-affected states. But a lot still remains to be done to ensure there is action on commitments and coherence with other initiatives, principles and guidelines.  

Looking ahead, three priority areas for CSOs related to conflict and fragility stand out: continuing to engage in ongoing global policy processes; supporting implementation of New Deal commitments; and addressing gaps in current debates and processes.

Currently 40 governments and international organisations have endorsed the New Deal, so a key priority for CSOs is to encourage more governments to endorse the deal. The more that do, the stronger the commitments become. We also need to make sure that appropriate indicators are developed to judge meaningful progress on the PSGs. These should include public perceptions of progress. As debates on what will follow on from the Millennium Development Goals take shape, joint advocacy will be crucial to ensure that peace, security, justice and governance-related goals are included in discussions and reflected in the mainstream framework for development post-2015. We also need to continue to push for more inclusion and participation of CSOs and people from conflict-affected states in international policy dialogues more widely – with adequate resources to make this possible.

CSOs can support the implementation of New Deal commitments in a number of ways – not least by raising awareness of what the commitments are, and the right way to interpret them, in donor and fragile states. We also need to build understanding and share expertise on conflict analysis, conflict sensitivity and participatory methods for planning, implementing and monitoring initiatives to take forward the PSGs. Outreach and support may be needed to build the capacity of CSOs’ in-country, encouraging them to engage in planning and delivering New Deal commitments at national and local level. Civil society can also play a key role in monitoring the commitments made to peacebuilding across the Busan Partnership document, New Deal, and Fragile States Principles – at country level, particularly in pilot countries, and at the global level. This should involve ensuring donors and recipient governments live up to their commitments set out in the New Deal, and testing whether these commitments ‘add up’ to more peace and development in each focus country.  

Finally, we need to continue to address the gaps that exist in and between current debates and processes. This means jointly advocating for greater coherence between aid, diplomacy, military/security, financial, and commercial agendas (including the uptake of conflict sensitive approaches by private sector actors), to achieve a greater contribution to peace and conflict prevention. We also need to push for greater coherence between the plethora of commitments, initiatives, policies, principles and guidelines on conflict prevention, development and humanitarian assistance. The International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding and the Busan Forum didn’t manage to get to grips with the need for a preventative agenda for States that aren’t already fragile. The question of how to support stateless peoples and disenfranchised sections of society to claim their rights likewise looms large. A further area of work would be CSOs working on their own conflict sensitivity to ensure they maximise their positive impact on peace and conflict dynamics in their own right.

So how can we best organise ourselves to take forward these joint actions and agendas? BetterAid and Open Forum provide one possible platform, especially if they are willing to increase their focus on conflict and fragility within their overall advocacy programme and relevant thematic areas, and deepen policy expertise on these issues. The urgency of tackling very poor development progress in conflict-affected contexts suggests that the time is right for them to integrate the theme of conflict into their broader agenda for development as social justice. At the same time, better links could be forged with existing or new networks of CSOs directly advocating on conflict and fragility, or new structures could be created to uphold progress on the New Deal and in other areas. Now is the time for anyone who wants to be part of the conversation to share their views and get involved.

The Busan high-level forum culminated with the endorsement of the Busan Partnership agreement, representing consensus among over 80 governments and organisations on more effective development cooperation. The agreement also welcomed a ‘New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States’. This New Deal includes five peacebuilding and statebuilding goals – legitimate politics, people’s security, justice, economic foundations, and revenues and fair services – and marks a new international consensus that progress on the MDGs in fragile states is impossible without first achieving peace and security.

The wider Busan Partnership agreement also includes measures and commitments that can help to promote peace. For example, sections of the document provide a basis for challenging aid that risks reinforcing human rights abuses or doing harm, and for challenging overly state-centric and non-inclusive approaches. Other sections reinforce the New Deal’s commitment to consider public perceptions when measuring peacebuilding progress, and promote inclusive planning processes that consider people’s perspectives, not only those of elites. They also reaffirm previous pledges to defend a vibrant civil society – often threatened in many conflict-affected and fragile states – which is essential to hold actors and institutions to account. Finally the agreement also upholds the importance of promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in peacebuilding efforts. 

The Busan Partnership agreement and New Deal represent a significant step forward towards a better approach for fragile and conflict-affected states. Civil society played a central role pushing for the widest possible endorsement of the New Deal, and will continue to push for more governments to add their weight to it, and to ensure individual countries implement public participation commitments and adopt multi-stakeholder approaches.

But at a wider level, it is now crucial that the international community improves coherence between the range of different, overlapping and sometimes contradictory commitments, initiatives, policies, principles and guidelines on conflict prevention, development and humanitarian assistance. There is also the need for greater coherence between agendas on aid, diplomacy, security, finance and commerce – and co-operation to ensure a positive contribution to peace and conflict prevention across governments and by the private sector. For the private sector, in particular, this means the uptake of more conflict-sensitive approaches.

Conflict prevention also needs to figure much higher on international agendas, identifying ways to help a much broader range of states and societies avoid fragility, and overcome the threats presented by bad governance, in particular. The New Deal is largely a vision of how to work with leaders who are prepared to spearhead positive change. A genuine dialogue in aid policy is yet to be initiated in the most challenging contexts, where leaders are pursuing more destabilising agendas. Akin to this is the need for an agenda that offers consistent and balanced support to stateless peoples and helps disenfranchised sections of society to claim their rights.

A step towards this could be for donors to operationalise other long-standing commitments. For example, they must address their poor progress in implementing the fragile states principles – particularly on ‘doing no harm’ – and support civil society to play a full role in peacebuilding and development processes. We need to ensure that not only recipient countries but also donors take forward the peacebuilding and statebuilding goals in their actions.

Measures are also needed to address the regional and global drivers of conflict, as the New Deal frames solutions at the level of the nation state. The World Development Report 2011 posed the question of how the international community will reduce external shocks: for Saferworld these would include not only illicit flows of finance and narcotics, but also illicit and irresponsible arms transfers.

As 2015 rapidly approaches, governments, international organisations and civil society also need to follow up the work of the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding with work to incorporate peace, security, justice and governance-related goals in debates on global development frameworks and the renewal of the MDGs. The agreement that aid in fragile states should focus more explicitly on achieving peace at last demonstrates an aspiration to tackle the elephant in the room: the real issues that are holding the bottom 20% of the world’s population in the double bind of fear and want. It is high time that conflict, security, justice and governance issues become part and parcel of what follows the MDGs in 2015.

Larry Attree is a Conflict and Security Adviser at Saferworld. He participated in the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding as a civil society representative throughout 2010-11, and coordinated civil society advocacy on conflict and fragility in Busan within the Better Aid global civil society platform.

Over 1.5 billion people live in states affected by conflict and fragility. These states are also the ones furthest from achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In recognition of this, ‘A New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States’ will be unveiled and endorsed at next week’s international aid summit. This New Deal will affirm agreement on a set of five peacebuilding and statebuilding goals, marking a new international consensus that progress on the MDGs in fragile states is impossible without first achieving peace and security.

The proposed goals include fostering inclusive and legitimate politics, establishing and strengthening people's security and justice, promoting employment and livelihoods, and ensuring fairer social service delivery and better financial management.

With the agreement that aid in fragile states should focus more explicitly on achieving peace, the outcomes of Busan could be the first step towards ensuring conflict, security and justice issues – which have been missing from the current MDG agenda – are at last brought into discussions about what follows the MDGs from 2015.

The International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (IDPS), which is made up of governments from conflict-affected states (the G7+), donor governments and multilateral agencies, has been working on this New Deal since it was established under the Accra Agenda for Action in 2008. Its biggest achievement is the strong leadership shown by G7+ countries in crafting and committing themselves to take forward the peacebuilding and statebuilding goals.

But there are still a number of challenges ahead. The New Deal is a compromise between stakeholders whose agendas differ, so how its vaguer passages are interpreted in practice will really define it. For example, while the peacebuilding and statebuilding goals are a good broad framework, everyone involved needs to make sure that the right indicators and targets are developed to monitor the progress of states.

If the New Deal is to support peace rather than simply legitimise the use of aid for ‘train and equip’ style programmes, these indicators must not focus only on the capacity of state institutions, but on how they behave. Most importantly, they should focus on the results that matter to people living in conflict-affected countries: less exposure to violence, greater confidence in their safety, access to justice, services and livelihoods, and political freedom and inclusion.

The right indicators will be particularly important because G7+ countries have made a strong push for donor governments to provide more aid through country systems, building their capacities and reducing aid volatility. These are worthy aims, but have been difficult to accommodate given donors’ significant concern over the risks of corruption and financial mismanagement (as highlighted, for example, by the UK Independent Commission for Aid Impact’s report published on 22 November). Civil society has also argued that giving aid through country systems in fragile states risks in some cases reinforcing conflict dynamics – as states may be party to a conflict, have questionable legitimacy, or a poor record on human rights.

The New Deal has partially addressed these concerns: it promises joint assessments of the risks of working in fragile situations, and joint mechanisms to manage these risks. It also states that donors will increase the proportion of aid delivered through country systems based on measures and targets agreed at country level. Much will now depend on whether these country-specific measures and targets offer a genuine framework to monitor whether the state is making progress towards an inclusive and positive peace. Where country level commitment and progress is not satisfactory, donors will need to funnel more aid through other channels – to meet immediate humanitarian needs and support a range of actors across society to demand and shape the state they want to live in.

Much will also depend on how the New Deal commitment to work to ‘one national vision and one plan’ is interpreted in practice. Imposing overarching national plans and visions can drive and magnify conflict – as has been seen all too painfully in Darfur, South Sudan, Somalia, Yugoslavia and Timor L’Este, among many other places in recent decades.

If affected countries are to lead their transitions to peace successfully, they will need to ensure that the fragility assessments and dialogue processes they carry out are genuinely inclusive and sensitive to the local context. Assessments will also need to be independent enough to bring in a range of perspectives – including those of marginal groups – and keep the most sensitive issues on the table.

The IDPS hopes that agreement on a New Deal next week will lead to a number of fragile and conflict-affected countries piloting the proposals. This could mark real progress in the way development is approached in conflict contexts. At present, however, dialogue has not penetrated far beneath the international level. The next step will require concerted outreach in two directions: across the governments of pilot countries, to get a strong consensus on the need for progress on peacebuilding and statebuilding goals; and across society, so that non-state actors can help shape and uphold a progressive agenda for peace.

If we are to achieve lasting results in conflict settings, it is critically important to empower local communities to articulate their own peace and security needs – and to ensure they have a role in monitoring national and donor governments’ progress in delivering their commitments. Commitments in the New Deal (to multi-stakeholder review of donor-government compacts, consultation of citizens on how aid and domestic resources are used, and measures to understand the views of people on results achieved) all give strong grounds for optimism.

Real success going forward will depend on the extent to which the New Deal becomes a deal not just between national governments and international donors, but between them and the people living in conflict-affected societies – giving them genuine ownership of development and peacebuilding processes.

Larry Attree is a Conflict and Security Adviser at Saferworld. He has participated in the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding as a civil society representative throughout 2010-11, and is coordinating civil society advocacy on conflict and fragility in Busan within the Better Aid global civil society platform.

The Southern Sudan Action Network on Small Arms (SSANSA) held a series of public debates on the theme of ‘Gun violence as an obstacle to socio-economic progress in the new Republic of South Sudan’, which were broadcast by radio stations Liberty FM and Bakhita FM.

The debates explored citizens’ perspectives on armed violence in South Sudan, disarmament processes and the links between poverty and gun violence. As well as providing a forum for citizens to discuss solutions to the problem of armed violence in the new nation, which is expected to declare independence on 9 July, the debates provided a platform for survivors of gun violence to share their stories.

Phone-in discussions with members of the public made it clear that many people are ready to become part of the solution to the arms problem in South Sudan. Audience members suggested a programme of uniform and simultaneous disarmament, professionalising the armed forces and police and making them more accountable to the public. They also called for the removal of army uniforms that are in the hands of civilians or ex-combatants, and a stronger legislative system to deal with those responsible for perpetuating gun violence.

In Gjilan, East Kosovo, the Kosovo Center for International Cooperation (KCIC) organised two groups of young artists to create paintings on the subject of gun violence. They also handed out 1,500 leaflets to members of the public, which gave statistics on the dangers of small arms and light weapons (SALW).

KCIC hosted a roundtable meeting on the theme of ‘Approaches to bringing SALW under control’. The meeting was attended by representatives from government, the media and civil society, including Izmi Zeka, Vice Minister of Internal Affairs, Zenun Pajaziti, Kosovan Member of Parliament, and Almina Mahmuti, Police Commander for the Gjilani region.

The overall conclusion from the roundtable discussion was that all those working on the issue of SALW must start to co-operate more closely in order to begin implementing the recently approved law on guns and strategy for the control of SALW. Vice Minister Izmi Zeka appealed to the citizens to avoid the use of SALW, and declared the Kosovan Government’s intention to work closely with civil society to put an end to gun violence.

Every year Saferworld offers places in the British London 10k Run to raise vital funds for our work in conflict affected communities and we have 18 places available in the 2011 race!

The route is set in the heart of historic London and passes by many of the city’s most famous sites, including Hyde Park, St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. 

Last year, the Saferworld team made the 2010 race our most successful yet, raising a total of £4,088 to support our work improving community security around the world. It would be fantastic if we could match, or even beat, this figure in our 2011 race appeal raising money for Saferworld’s Small Arms and Transfer Controls programme.

The recent use of weapons against protestors across the Middle East and North Africa has been viewed by some to have caused several situations of humanitarian “crisis” in the region, and has renewed demand for stronger controls on the international arms trade. The case of Libya in particular, has revealed serious flaws in how international rules and regulations meant to control arms have been put into practice (see Saferworld’s recent article on Libya and arms transfers).

Without effective international controls, we risk weapons being diverted for use in the commitment of human rights violations or in regions of conflict and instability. Here, they can aggravate existing tensions, help to escalate already violent situations and have a devastating effect on lives and livelihoods in the world’s most vulnerable countries. According to the World Bank’s most recent World Development Report, “No low income fragile or conflict-affected country has yet achieved a single Millennium Development Goal.”

Saferworld’s Small Arms and Transfer Controls Programme helps create safer communities and improve the lives of those facing situations of armed conflict by working at national, regional and international levels to advocate for stronger controls on the global arms trade. We work with partners in UN offices and agencies in New York, and at regional and national levels on a variety of themes and initiatives including working to ensure a robust and effective UN Arms Trade Treaty.

Find out about Saferworld’s work on this issue at the community level through a photo story on our project in Kenya, where we are working with local partners to support community based initiatives for arms management and control.

We have set up an event for the London 10K on our Virgin Money Giving charity page to make fundraising fun, easy, and secure for our runners and their sponsors. Through the site, runners set up personalised profiles, linked to our event, which can be promoted through their own Facebook and Twitter accounts and sponsors can make online donations and get updates on progress in training and fundraising.

The run is also featured in the ‘Support Us’ section of our website and on Saferworld’s Facebook page, so please feel free to “share” the event with friends, family and colleagues who could be potential Saferworld Runners 2011!

After the run the Saferworld team will be having a picnic in St James Park. So if you would like to find out more about our work, please feel free to come along.

On Sunday long queues could be witnessed already at sunrise in polling centres across Juba, the regional capital of the South. Many residents got up as early as 2 am and walked to the polling station in order to be among the first in the voting queue. There were emotional scenes as people from all walks of life cast their votes. Ululations and jubilations from the crowd greeted those exiting the polling station proudly holding up their ink-stained index finger as a sign that they have already voted.  Many indicated through signs and songs that they had voted for an independent Southern Sudan; and stated that this vote was for the future generations of Southern Sudanese.

Day two and three of the seven-day long referendum have also seen continuously high voter turnouts. Many polling stations in Juba saw over half of their registered voters cast their ballots already during the first two days. This is an important sign, as 60 per cent of all registered voters need to cast their votes for the referendum to be considered valid. On Monday evening the country as a whole had 20 per cent votes cast.

International and local observers, as well as hundreds of international media representatives and high profile figures such as former President Carter, US Senator John Kerry, and actor George Clooney arrived prior to Sunday to monitor the referendum process.      

Voting has been overwhelmingly peaceful in the South, despite international fears to the contrary. Most Southerners have little reason to resort to violence at this stage, as for many this vote represents the culmination of years of struggle in which they lost their relatives and dedicated their lives to the fight with the SPLA/M.

However, there have been isolated incidents of violence in the region of Abyei, which straddles the North-South border.  This had been expected by international analysts and observers. The Abyei referendum, which was to take place simultaneously with the South, has been delayed indefinitely, over lack of agreement between the two parties about who is allowed to vote. Even though, in his recent visit to Juba, President Bashir promised that a solution will be found before 9 July, the situation on the ground between the Dinka Ngok and the Misseriya remains tense.

 Isolated spoilers, such as candidates disgruntled during the recent elections may also seek to create localised disturbances, though this is unlikely to have a wider impact on the referendum process. Southern leaders and the general public have been exemplary at showing their commitment to a peaceful and credible referendum process and shown great skill at rallying everyone behind their common cause at this historic moment. 

Read Saferworld’s latest briefing  Southern Sudan: Looking beyond the Referendum

Monday’s Guardian blog, Aid should not be used to meet our security agenda, suggested it is right to ‘want to help those suffering in the world’s war zones’ but that diverting aid to countries that meet UK national security objectives is not the way to do it. In any case, it pointed out, recent research tells us there are more poor people in stable countries than in war torn ones: we should ‘get our facts straight’ and not allocate our aid on the basis of national security priorities.

All of us with a genuine concern for poor people’s interests, inside government and out, should resist the idea that UK aid be spent only where we think it will benefit our national security (although moving from a short-term view of our national interest to a longer term vision of sustainable security which emphasises the genuine importance of international development would be welcome). However, worrying about aid allocations only tells half the story – we must be concerned with how that aid is used, as well as where. And on this front, there is a desperate need for a more detailed story of the positive role that aid can play in addressing the conditions that cause or fuel conflict and insecurity.

For it is not just our security that is at stake. People in developing countries place a premium on their safety just as much as we do. In 2001, the World Bank’s Voices of the Poor report showed poor people around the world consistently citing ‘insecurity’ as one of their greatest concerns. As recently as last Sunday, an Observer article about Burmese exiles living on the Thai border said:

“[One of the camp’s residents] emphasises the precious feeling of safety she feels here. Safety: a seemingly abstract and simple resource, but when compared to food, shelter or medical care, it is perhaps the biggest gift these camps provide.”

This shouldn’t be taken to mean there is a contest between ‘food’, ‘shelter’, ‘medical care’ or ‘safety’ – clearly all these things are vital. But it does highlight that security and safety are important in all our lives, whether we live in the UK, in the midst of chronic everyday violence (such as in parts of Somalia or Afghanistan), or in stable, middle-income countries where the police and judicial services may still be inadequate, unfair or abusive – and so in need of reform.

Introducing new resources, such as aid, especially on a large scale, will always affect the political and economic dynamics within a society. In some cases, where local capacity to manage such change peacefully is already low, well-intentioned but ill-informed or badly implemented aid programmes can further destabilise an already fragile situation. For this reason, aid must be based on a thorough understanding of the contexts in which it is being used and the potential impact it will have on local power dynamics. Where possible it should target the root causes and current drivers of conflict identified in this analysis, such as political or economic marginalisation. Aid delivery should be flexible enough to respond to rapidly changing situations and always, at a minimum, seek to ‘do no harm’.

DFID is to be credited as a world leader in policy making around such ‘conflict-sensitive’ approaches to development, as well as using its aid to promote ‘security and justice’ services (such as the police and courts) that work for poor people, rather than against them. But the stark fact is that the entire international system needs to get better at managing the potentially damaging influence aid can have in ‘conflict-affected’ countries and, crucially, ensuring aid programmes best play their part in laying the ground for sustainable peace.

Aid is far from the only determinant for peace but, given it may play such a significant role, the UK Government’s commitment to getting better at preventing conflict ‘upstream’ should be seen as a welcome opportunity; a chance to make a compelling case for how aid can support the development of societies best able to manage conflict without resort to violence.

Of course we must not be naïve. As well as opportunity, a focus on overseas conflict carries significant challenge. However, the details behind the Coalition’s headline commitments on conflict prevention and ‘doing development’ in fragile contexts are still being developed. It is this detail that will indicate where the UK’s priorities really lie and determine whether its efforts meet the needs of those affected by poverty, conflict and insecurity, or only its own.

So, as well as ‘getting our facts straight’, those of us outside government need to have a serious debate about aid and conflict that goes beyond the sometimes hazy fears of ‘securitisation’ or ‘diversion’. In order to influence the government’s approach (and credibly hold to account the policy it produces) organisations from across the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding fields should come together to elaborate a comprehensive, evidence-based picture of how conflict and insecurity affect our work, and how our work can best affect conflict and insecurity. But we must avoid any creeping polarisation of the terms of the debate: it will take more than just ‘development’ efforts to achieve lasting socio-economic gains, and more than just ‘security’ actors to achieve the locally-owned, accountable security and justice poor people want and deserve.

Finally, the UK Government should communicate its thinking more clearly. By engaging in a genuine, constructive dialogue with civil society, government can help dispel any concerns that have no basis in reality. More importantly, government would also benefit from the analysis and input of civil society groups with many years experience working in and on conflict – experience that will not just add value to delivering outcomes, but also in thinking through appropriate and effective policy.

At stake is not just a question of how much aid the UK ring fences or where the UK spends its development assistance. But whether the UK – both government and development partners – can best support transformative and sustainable change in conflict-affected and fragile contexts or, ultimately, fail those who live with their daily reality.

In the weeks leading up to the referendum Saferworld worked with security providers and community peacebuilding groups in Isiolo in Eastern Province and in Embakasi, Starehe, Njiru, Kasarani and Makadara districts in Nairobi as part of a campaign to encourage Kenyans to vote peacefully. This work was part of an initiative dubbed Uwiano (coexistence) led by the National Steering Committee on Peace Building and Conflict Management, the National Cohesion and Integration Commission and Peacenet.

Saferworld supported local partners to organise ‘peace caravans’ which brought together people from different ethnic groups and the security forces to reach out to their local communities and encourage peaceful participation in the constitutional referendum.

In Isiolo Saferworld also supported a peace and security forum bringing together senior security officers and local communities.

These and other peace activities carried out countrywide contributed to a peaceful referendum. Nearly 8 million out of 12 million registered voters participated in the national referendum, with 67 percent voting in favour for the new constitution. The next stage will be an intensive legislative process to implement the reforms approved by the referendum.

See pictures from the Isiolo ‘Peace Caravan’ on our Facebook page

Related to this, we don’t just need to learn lessons from previous interventions, we actually have to use them to inform future policy-making. In one way, this goes well beyond stabilisation alone and is all about the culture of government and of politics, and how receptive decision-makers are to requesting, reviewing and acting on the lessons of previous experiences.

Perhaps the hardest lesson of all, however, will be to get better at defining what we mean by the ‘success’ of a stabilisation activity, and measuring this success. In a climate of falling budgets, there is an understandable focus on value-for-money and ensuring that limited taxpayers’ money is spent appropriately. However, different agencies have very different language and expectations when defining and measuring success – let alone how success is perceived by the mass media or the public at large. It is essential to avoid simplistic and unattainable definitions of success. But nobody is quite sure what a detailed set of measures for success would look like. And when should they be measured? How long does a situation have to be ‘stable’ for before the risk of further instability can be discounted and a stabilisation intervention can be declared a success – and how does this fit with short-term funding cycles and pressures?

As usual, there are no easy answers to these questions, but better monitoring and evaluation is part of the answer. Saferworld has been working on this topic for several years (see our Evaluating for Security and Justice report), and we will return to the topic of lessons learning and measuring success on this blog in the future.

Henry Smith

Director

This is not about strategies and policies being unrealistic or naïve. In fact, there is a general consensus that in the last few years that we have all learnt a lot about how to do stabilisation activities properly, and that policy-making has improved as a result.

The challenge is different, and it’s about management, it’s about translating commitments and ambitions into action on the ground. There are several challenges, but I’d like to focus on two.

The first is the capacity of UK government officials to manage delivery. Over recent years, HMG’s interest in security-building activities (particularly SSR, Rule of Law and defence transformation) has risen significantly, with a concomitant increase in the number, size and complexity of programme interventions. The project management function often falls to staff in-country, in our experience often to staff performing an essentially advisory role (conflict or governance advisers for instance). In most cases, these staff members are dedicated, committed, hard-working and anxious to do the right thing. But there is a big difference between the skills required to be a good advisor and those needed to be a good project manager. Furthermore, staff allocations have not kept pace with the size and complexity of programming, so staff are ever more thinly spread and juggling more – and more complicated – programmes. If UK engagement in this area is to keep growing, more consideration is needed of how to ensure that management capacity keeps pace with ambition.

The second is how the implementation of policy objectives is outsourced to external contractors. External contractors – primarily in the private sector, but also third sector organisations (international and local NGOs, academic institutions) and multilateral organisations (such as the UN) – already implement many stabilisation activities, and there is every sign that their role will increase. This is normally seen to be a good thing, primarily for reasons of cost effectiveness but sotto voce also because private contractors are often less visible than UK troops or civilian officials. Yet it is an open question whether outsourcing responsibility for implementation in this way always leads to greater results.

In particular, the challenge is this: do the UK and other donor governments have the right set-up to translate their policies into appropriate action of external contractors on the ground? Do they have the experience and capacity to design and manage appropriate contracts? Can poverty reduction and/or institutional change objectives (such as improving the behaviour and performance of security and justice institutions) be captured adequately in a commercial contract primarily concerned with ‘deliverables’? Do they have the systems and authority to identify and deal with poor delivery by some contractors? Are the lines of responsibility and dialogue clear between London, in-country, the contractor and local counterparts? Are they monitoring and evaluating these programmes effectively and making the most of opportunities to learn lessons for future programming?

These are big and challenging questions, and Saferworld does not claim to have all the answers, but they definitely need further discussion. There is no doubt that in many cases, external contractors do implement programmes effectively, often in ways that the UK government simply could not deliver on its own. Yet contracting also adds an extra layer of complexity to an already complex picture. Without further thought about how to ensure that we have the right framework to turn plans into practice, ambitious goals to stabilise very insecure environments might never be achieved.

Duncan Hiscock

Team leader - Conflict and Security

However, the term seems to mean different things to different people and in different contexts. Maybe that’s inevitable, and we don’t want to get too wrapped up in arcane discussions about definitions. But it does matter. It matters because if we are to ‘do’ stabilisation better – in the UK, in the West as a whole – we need to be clearer about what it is, what it is not, and its place in conflict prevention.

The UK’s cross-departmental Stabilisation Unit has come up with a broad definition of stabilisation, which it quotes on its website:

Stabilisation is the process of establishing peace and security in countries affected by conflict and instability. It is the promotion of peaceful political settlement to produce a legitimate indigenous government, which can better serve its people.

Stabilisation often requires external joint military and civilian support to perform some or all of the following tasks: prevent or reduce violence, protect people and key institutions, promote political processes and prepare for longer-term development.

The problem with this definition, or at least the first half of it, is that it’s almost indistinguishable from any other definition of conflict prevention, peacebuilding, or statebuilding. To some extent, this is understandable, as there’s certainly an overlap. Yet we shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that conflict prevention and stabilisation are interchangeable.

Without getting too fixated on definitions, I’d emphasise three factors about what ‘stabilisation’ is:

1) Stabilisation activities occur in highly fragile situations – where there is a high risk of violent conflict, conflict is ongoing or is just coming to an end.

2) As the name suggests, stabilisation activities aim to ensure a basic level of stability that provides a platform for longer-term development and security building.

3) In practice it is assumed that stabilisation activities have a strong military component (though not necessarily direct military operations).

So, stabilisation happens in the most fragile circumstances and usually involves the military in some way. Conflict prevention, by contrast, is a much broader church. It is not only about intervening when the risk of violence is highest, but also about working with different groups across society at a much earlier stage to work out how to manage or eradicate potential causes of conflict before the risk of violence escalates. And where there has already been violence, again it is about understanding the causes of this violence and working with a range of actors on addressing the causes to prevent a return to conflict. This goes far, far beyond stabilising the environment, and includes a wide range of programming tools such as demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration (DDR), security sector reform (SSR), armed violence reduction (AVR), etc.

The distinction between stabilisation and other forms of conflict prevention matters because if certain institutions and budgets have a ‘stabilisation’ mandate, and if stabilisation is used as a lens for the UK’s response to fragile states, how will Whitehall make the distinction between a stabilisation and non-stabilisation context? It needs to be clearer where and how the UK’s stabilisation capacity will be employed and where other conflict prevention tools will have primacy.

A related point is that while in theory stabilisation is seen as the first step on the road to longer-term recovery, in practice it is very hard to identify, let alone manage the transition from stabilisation to whatever comes next. For stabilisation interventions, as other post-conflict activities, it is much easier to launch an intervention than it is to close it down or hand it over to another form of programming.

To conclude, the risk is that with decision-makers focused on Afghanistan and the stabilisation capacity that has developed around it, they will come to expect that wherever there is a need for conflict prevention, a muscular stabilisation intervention is the solution. This would be a mistake. While stabilisation is a conflict prevention activity, not all conflict prevention is about stabilisation.

Duncan Hiscock

Team leader - Conflict and Security

I don’t want to sound dismissive. We all know that we need more ‘joined-up’ government and ‘whole-of-government’ approaches, and the UK has always been in the forefront of trying to make that work. Maintaining such cooperation is going to be a serious challenge in an atmosphere of swingeing budget cuts, where departments’ natural urge to defend their patch will strain the links between them. But I digress.

The point is that if you spend too much time on co-ordinating between UK ministries (let alone between different international actors), you can easily lose sight of what matters to people in country – what people really need. It should be obvious that to achieve lasting stability, you don’t just need local people’s consent, but their input and ownership of the security and justice mechanisms that are established where they live. These days, it is increasingly recognised that external actors cannot simply turn up with ‘governance (or security) in a box’. There is much talk of ‘local ownership’, though too often, this means ownership by the national government and elite, not broader societal ownership of reforms.

At Saferworld, we strongly believe that true local ownership requires the involvement of most or all sections of society. This means finding out what they think about security, safety, and justice, and what expectations they have of their security and justice providers. But it goes beyond simply ‘consultation’ that gathers people’s opinions. Even in very insecure environments, what is needed is a chance for them to participate in decision-making about stabilisation and security.

Participation makes sense both because it’s empowering, but also because it’s more effective. If decisions were being made about security that affected your daily life, affected whether you felt safe walking down the street, wouldn’t you want the chance to be consulted and to have your say? This is what empowerment means, and it applies just as much to security as to any other field. Moreover, a key rationale for any form of consultation and participation is that you get better, more sustainable results because policy and practice is more grounded in real issues and real needs. Put the other way round, if stabilisation activities are happening without much knowledge of local security perceptions and needs, and without the participation of various different social groups, how likely is it that they are going to be appropriate, supported by the population and built to last?

What I’m saying is that no amount of time spent improving coordination between UK departments will help if all actors involved in stabilisation activities – both those that plan them and those that implement them – don’t get better at gathering and analysing information about local people’s security needs and perceptions, and using such information to plan. Of course, in very fragile contexts this is difficult and sometimes risky to do. But it can be done, even in places as insecure as Somalia, as Saferworld and others are showing. We could all get much better at it, but the first step is to recognise that without this kind of consultation and participation, stabilisation activities will always be less likely to meet the needs and win the approval of local people.

In short, maybe different departments need to spend more time speaking to each other, but we all need to spend more time speaking to the people whose communities we aim to stabilise.

Welcome and thanks for visiting our new site.  I'm Saferworld's Director and thought that an introduction to the organisation might be appropriate as the first contribution to our blog.  

First off though an admission: Saferworld has a bias.  We believe that everyone should be able to lead fulfilling lives free from fear and insecurity.  We are biased in favour of those most at risk from armed conflict.

We aim to make a telling contribution to preventing and reducing conflict both through contributing to effective international policies and initiatives, and through taking practical action nationally, and with communities in the countries in which we work.

We see our overall contribution as a combination of conducting research to establish a credible evidence base on which the policies and programmes of governments, donors and others are based; facilitating dialogue between different actors in the development of those policies and programmes; practical advice and support to implement them; and ongoing monitoring and review to learn and communicate lessons for the future.

I hope you'll spend some time looking through our website.  I think our track record of contributing towards real changes in people's lives in Africa, Asia and Europe is a strong one. But then again, as Director you would expect me to say that!  I hope you find our contributions both useful and interesting.  If you do, then why not get more involved.  Get in contact through the site and let's see what we can do together.

Henry Smith

Director of Saferworld