Comment & analysis

UK aid and the SDSR: managing the contradictions around increased aid to fragile states

25 November 2015

The government’s commitment in the new Strategic Defence and Security Review to increase aid to fragile states raises important questions about a whole-of-government approach to conflict prevention.

The UK’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) released on Monday affirms new commitments to UK work on conflict and fragility. One such commitment is to increase UK investment in fragile states and regions: the Department for International Development (DFID) will spend at least half of its budget in fragile states and regions every year of this Parliament. The UK’s latest review of its aid spending is the first indication of how the UK Government might approach this SDSR commitment, but highlights some important questions that need to be considered as part of this scale-up.

Where should aid be spent?

The aid review does not indicate which individual fragile states will receive aid – nor how it defines a fragile region. If the UK’s aim is to prevent conflict, then attention must be focused beyond states currently experiencing crisis. Post-conflict countries are still those statistically most likely to fall back into conflict – they need continued attention and focus for many years after the guns go quiet.

Nonetheless, as the Arab Uprisings demonstrated, countries considered stable on the surface also need to be on our radar. How the UK government conceptualises and defines fragility and resilience will be vital. It is also worth noting that a lot can be done by focusing on managing global-level conflict drivers like illicit financial flows. Not everything relevant to fragility means spending within fragile states.

How much aid?

This is obvious but critical: as we have argued before, more aid does not necessarily lead to more peace. For starters, what drives conflict and underdevelopment, even in the poorest countries, is rarely an absence of money. While in 2012-13 the UK delivered around US$200 million to South Sudan, with a GDP of around $10 billion, its president asked government officials in June 2012 to return over $4 billion in stolen assets. Aid can and must be used to assist some of the most vulnerable people in the world, but extractive political systems, cycles of injustice or deep-seated divisions within society are not issues that are primarily solved by outside money.

Aid can also make things worse, for example through entrenching political systems that underpin conflict dynamics. Somalia was Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest recipient of aid in the mid-1980s with 100 per cent of its development budget funded by outsiders. When this aid was cut after the end of the Cold War, a complex network of patronage relationships built up under the authoritarian regime came violently undone. Aid has continued to be part and parcel of conflict and power dynamics in the country.

How should aid be used?

Western aid policy has perhaps become too enamoured with statebuilding, seeing the creation of strong institutions as a technical and apolitical project. Without sufficient levels of reconciliation within society alongside an inclusive political settlement, strengthening and widening the reach of the state risks driving conflict. The UK needs to be thinking about how its aid can promote peaceful societies and more bottom-up approaches to peacebuilding.

It is also important to make sure that increasing aid delivery in fragile states does not distort incentives for those whose job it is to deliver it. If success for in-country DFID staff becomes defined by spending more, then their ability to push-back when aid is not the answer becomes restricted, as does their ability to support local partners unable to manage large funds.

Whose security?

The national security of the UK and the security of people living in countries on the other side of the world should be aligned. However, the reality is that the pursuit of national security, especially in the short term, can often justify policies that undermine human security. For example, will aid be continued in countries where human rights violations are starting to occur at the hands of governments that are partners in fighting terrorism? The UK must be able to distinguish between people’s security and regime security: as forthcoming Saferworld research on counter-terror efforts in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan will show, ‘partner’ regimes that pursue security in repressive ways often end up fomenting rather than resolving conflict, terror and instability. In this sense, the UK’s long term focus on empowering citizens and promoting human rights must guide and inform its approach even to immediate security challenges and partnerships.

Who should lead?

Giving DFID sufficient independence from short-term political pressures at home will allow it to lead on long-term and upstream conflict prevention overseas. It has more potential than any other government department to work patiently on the messy and complex systems that underpin conflict. Retaining its commitment to poverty reduction will allow for people’s security and social transformation to be prioritised. The critically important perspectives learned from its experience on the ground must be able to influence the difficult decisions being made in the National Security Council. Similarly, it will be important to ensure that peacebuilding experience and a human rights perspective is applied within all cross-government teams (for example the new teams working on counter-terror and the Middle East and North Africa).  

Is there sufficient political leadership to make this work?

To address the causes of conflict effectively, the UK will need to look well beyond aid towards leveraging the whole of the government, both overseas and at home. The SDSR and aid review note the importance of whole-of-government approaches, but political leadership at the highest level will be needed to maintain this coherence when security, geopolitical or commercial interests do not align with what’s needed for long-term stability and conflict prevention. The continuing partnerships with repressive regimes that drive conflict in countries of concern to the UK – including arms transfers – suggest that such political will does not yet exist.

Read Saferworld’s previous analysis of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact evaluation of DFID’s scale-up in fragile states.

Saferworld will provide a broader analysis of the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review in the coming days.

“Aid can and must be used to assist some of the most vulnerable people in the world, but extractive political systems, cycles of injustice or deep-seated divisions within society are not issues that are primarily solved by outside money.”

Saferworld