What have we learned about crisis/fragile states? Findings of a 5 year research programme.

Cards on the table, confronted with a closely argued 11 page exec sum, I am unlikely to then read the full report. But the short version of Meeting the Challenges of Crisis States, by James Putzel (LSE) and Jonathan Di John (SOAS), is a meal in itself. It summarizes 5 years of DFID-funded research by the Crisis States Research Centre, led by the London School of Economics, and is a great way to take the temperature of academic thinking on ‘states with adjectives’ – fragile, failing, crisis etc etc.

The key question it seeks to answer is why the daily and inevitable tensions of politics and ‘conflict as usual’, which exist in any society, tip some states over into a downward spiral of distintegration, grand theft and violence, while others, even poor ones, prove resilient. Key Findings?

Like most political scientists, Putzel and Di John believe that if you want to understand politics, you have to understand elites. And that means jettisoning preconceptions of ‘good governance’ (aka how much do the institutions resemble an idealized notion of American/European democracy) and thinking instead about the underlying political settlement. How do individuals and groups with different slices of power protect and negotiate over their pieces of the pie?

What leads to fragility? In the rather disturbing language of the report:

‘Factors that are most likely to provoke violence and lead towards state collapse [include] the lack of a basic legitimate monopoly over the means of large-scale violence, the absence of control over taxation, the failure of state organisations to operate in significant territories of the country and the existence of rival rule systems that take precedence over the state’s rules.’

And when we talk about ‘states’ we need to go well beyond presidential palaces and parliaments, especially in thinking about cities:

‘Analysis and policy discussion around fragile states has concentrated almost entirely on the “central state”, failing to see the particular place of cities in state formation historically and the contemporary importance of growing cities as key sites of state building and state erosion. The concentration of high-value economic activity within the cities of fragile states renders them central to state-building processes. Elites capable of challenging the bargains on which political settlements rest are often located in cities, and growing civic conflict and violence threatens to undermine state consolidation.’

There’s a good focus on taxation (as you’d expect from anything authored by Jonathan Di John, who was analyzing taxation long before it became the latest development fad:

‘Taxation is a key indicator for measuring state performance and assessing the extent of fragility or resilience of a state. A state’s taxation capacity can provide an objective means to assess the power, authority and legitimacy the state possesses to mobilise resources and the degree to which it monopolises tax collection. The level, diversity and manner of collection of taxes all provide indications of a state’s position on the fragility to resilience spectrum.’

What drives transitions from fragility towards more resilient states?

‘Possibilities exist for transformative political coalitions to emerge committed to establishing security, particularly in urban environments where a diversity of relatively well organised interest groups can challenge reigning political practices. Reformist politics are most likely to emerge when it is in the collective interests of newly emergent elites who do not have the means enjoyed by traditional elites to finance their security privately.‘

Which sounds to me like polisci speak for ‘it’s the new middle classes, stupid.’

The research has bad news for promoters of the more militarist reading of ‘Responsibility to Protect’. Military intervention seems to resemble chemotherapy in that it destroys existing anti-conflict mechanisms:

‘There is a strong, negative and significant association between military interventions and democracy. Military interventions have tended to destroy a state’s conflict-resolution mechanisms, often unleashed forms of politics incompatible with democracy, upset political settlements and critically weakened state systems in general.’

Rather than direct intervention, outside powers should be trying to ‘go with the grain’ of cycles of war and peace, pitching mediation at the right moment when the incentives of warring parties are aligned.

There are stern words for the deregulatory assault on the state undertaken by Washington Consensus policies over recent decades. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the economic arguments, undermining the state has been disastrous in terms of politics and fragility:

‘Policy makers need to consider the extent to which deregulating an economy across the board will be politically destabilising and actually undermine economic reforms….. policies that contribute to state withdrawal are often evaluated on grounds of efficiency and equity, but almost never for their impact on the institutional resilience of the state. This is a major blind spot which has far-reaching consequences for the ability of states to embark upon or return to a path of institutional consolidation.’

The report is vehement about the need for donors to help build strong states:

‘Aid needs to be channelled through the agencies of the state and it should give due priority to developing the core capacities of the state to govern economic development. Donors need to give due consideration to mechanisms that increase the capacity of states to raise their own finances.’

The case for an ‘activist state’ is particularly strong in regards to natural resource extraction, and here the report’s message is interesting – donors and others need to get in before a country discovers natural resources and ‘consolidate a national development coalition before the exploitation of resources begins.’ (this ought to be known as ‘doing a Botswana’ – Botswana nationalised subsoil mineral rights before it discovered diamonds, and has used the wealth spectacularly well ever since).

This is all targeted at aid’s big hitters – DFID, World Bank etc, and their relationships with governments. But NGOs should pay attention too. Putzel and Di John argue that funding civil society protest when the state is fragile or non-existent can be disastrous:

‘Programmes designed to promote participation and tap the resources of non-state organisations must be cognisant of this dimension of state fragility or they may potentially contribute to provoking or aggravating violent conflict.’

Which leads in practice to the kind of convening and brokering approach I’ve talked about on this blog ad nauseam.

Overall, there’s something offputting about the fixation on political elites, almost revelling in an apparently amoral approach of thepolitical sciences – ‘we are trying to understand power and politics, not pass judgement’. I’ve felt the same sense of academic machismo emananating from the ‘decent chap-ists’ of the Africa Power and Politics Programme over at ODI. I suspect there are other things going on behind it – the frustration of disillusioned lefties who feel let down by the past failures of popular movements, or the natural tendency when trying to understand a complex system to steer towards the simplest and most brutal concentration of power. But that’s enough amateur psychotherapy: the research is solid, and the findings fascinating, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to swallow the occasional jarring tone.

Global Trends 2030: top report from US intelligence

My inbox regularly receives the latest ‘global trends 20XX’ reports from thinktanks and futurologists, and a lot of them are pretty bland, and the scenarios they describe threadbare and unconvincing. The new ‘Global Trends 2030’ report from the US National Intelligence Council shares the usual flaws on its scenarios, and is understandably US-centric (the NIC is a US government body), but its description of trends feels spot on, albeit a bit cursory on climate change. In Rumsfeldian terms, it summarizes the known knowns – ‘megatrends’, reflecting underlying ‘tectonic shifts’, but adds in a discussion of known unknowns, both long-term processes  - ‘game changers’,  and (mainly negative) discrete events – ‘black swans’. But you can be pretty sure that Rumsfeld’s final category, unknown unknowns, will mess up this nice arrangement. Here are some of its summary tables:

Megatrends and Game Changers

Tectonic Shifts

Black Swans

The most novel aspect for me was the focus on the political implications of demographic transitions – NIC reckons aging populations will encourage liberalization and democracy, and reduce levels of conflict. Plausible given the age range of most fighters, but a bit reductionist?

Will this time be different? What hope for Gaza?

Ed Cairns (right), Oxfam’s senior policy adviser on humanitarian advocacy, on the prospects for peace and progress in Gaza

Two weeks after the ceasefire. One week after Palestine became a UN ‘non-member observer state’. Where are we now? As Jabr Qudeih, a local aid worker in Gaza says: There’s a truce, but all the key issues, the crossings, fishing, farmland, are still to be negotiated. Unless there’s a fundamental political solution, everything is liable to collapse again.

The UN vote provided a symbol of hope for Palestinians. More importantly, the ceasefire created an opportunity for Israel, Hamas and the international community to potentially do what they dismally failed to do in 2009, after the last spike in conflict: to lift Gaza’s blockade for good, and somehow use that to restart a meaningful process towards peace.

Till that happens, people like Jabr will stay trapped in the pressure cooker that is Gaza. As one of Oxfam’s Gaza staff, Abdelrahman Elasssouli, said a few days ago: I want to feel free to travel, to visit my relatives outside Gaza and invite them here. This is like a dream for Palestinians living in Gaza.

The deaths and injuries on both sides have been shocking and a high cost for both communities to bear. And as a new Oxfam paper, Beyond ceasefire: Ending the blockade of Gaza, points out today, behind them lies the protracted impact of Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Even before November’s surge in violence, 80 % of Palestinians in Gaza relied on humanitarian aid, and almost 50 % of youth were unemployed. Since the blockade began in 2007, nearly 60 % of businesses had closed, and another 25 % had laid-off 80 % of their staff. And Israel’s ‘buffer zone’ inside Gaza has severely restricted access to farming land and fishing grounds alike.

None of this has been a recipe for peace. Like the fear and insecurity that grip Israeli civilians as a result of the rockets fired into southern Israel, Gaza’s economic decline and poverty is extraordinarily corrosive of any realistic prospect of peace. To many, Israel’s occupation is the fundamental cause of the problem; and of course that is true. But after decades of conflict, it is also the vicious cycle of violence feeding fear and hostility on both sides. And Gaza’s seemingly endless suffering is at its heart.

The walkway from Gaza to Israel at the Erez crossing

So where is there hope? Well, it potentially lies in the ceasefire and the continuing negotiations, brokered by Egypt, between Hamas and Israel to build on it. In Palestinians demanding that their leaders settle their differences, as well as demanding freedom from Israel’s occupation, and a permanent end to the blockade .

And in the fact that Israel, like Palestine, is anything but monolithic. Its politicians and people have diverse views on everything from Iran to the national budget. Some are convinced that the blockade is necessary for Israel’s security. Others argue that it damages Israel’s international reputation, while failing to stop weapons being smuggled into Gaza. Indeed, with the blockade in place Palestinians have resorted to using tunnels to get products in and out to Egypt, a strong economic incentive to maintain the tunnels that are also used to smuggle arms.

In the ceasefire negotiations, the government of Israel agreed to consider ‘opening the crossings and facilitating the movement of people and transfer of goods’. Despite no clear agreement between the two sides, according to reports on the ground some farmers have already begun returning to their fields even quite near the Israeli security fence. And the post ceasefire agreement may allow Palestinians in Gaza to reclaim almost one third of their agricultural land

No-one should expect Israel’s policy to change overnight. But there do seem to be signs from Israel’s leaders of some potentially important shifts. And that means the international community has more opportunity to help than it did in 2009.

So what can outsiders do? Well, they can press all sides to live up to their agreements, the new post-ceasefire one, and build on the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access, which actually worked for more than a year up to 2007. And they can provide international resources for effective monitoring that could give both Israelis and Palestinians the confidence to make (and keep) a deal. For instance, they could offer more of the sophisticated x-ray technology that the US and the Netherlands have already provided, to reassure Israel that all crossings, not just some, really can be open and secure at the same time. Those and other practical ideas are in today’s new Oxfam paper.

A few days ago, another colleague in Gaza, Ghada Snunu, said: Since the ceasefire I really hope that the future of Gaza will be different. I hope we can visit Palestinians in the West Bank and they can come here. I want Palestinians in Gaza to feel strong enough to follow their dreams.

Will that be a more realistic prospect in 2013 than it has been? Let’s hope so. Now is certainly the time to try.

How can INGOs improve their work in fragile and conflict states?

There’s nothing like the impending threat of giving a talk to make you mug up on an issue, usually the morning before. Today’s exercise in skating on thin ice (the secret? Keep moving. Fast as possible) was a recent talk to some Indiana University students studying the developmental role of the state while enjoying our splendid British summer (ahem).

I gave them the standard FP2P spiel on Active Citizens and Effective States (powerpoint here - just keep clicking), but then got into the different roles INGOs play in countries with different types of state. The big distinction is between stable and unstable states, but there are lots of subcategories (middle v low income; democratic v autocratic; willing (nice) v unwilling (nasty); centralized v decentralized; aid dependent or not). But my recent crash-and-burn experience of trying to come up with a typology was salutary, and I won’t try and repeat the exercise.

Stable states are in many ways the easy ones: we can help with civil society strengthening, some state-building at local level (especially in decentralized states), or play a convening role to help bring state, civil society and other non-state actors together to find solutions. Even in stable states, change is often a cycle of conflict and cooperation (see diagram), something we struggle to navigate. See this post for more findings from some interesting research on what works by John Gaventa and Rosemary McGee.

But the more substantial bit of my talk was on Fragile and Conflict Affected States (FRACAS – my best acronym in ages). These, if you believe the new numbers from the ODI, are where the majority of poor people will live in 15 years time and that’s a real headache for aid agencies and NGOs: without a well-functioning state, everything gets more difficult. For starters, you need to send your best, most politically astute staff there, but FRACAS are not always the most desirable place to live, raise a family etc, so recruitment can be a ‘challenge’.

As prep for my session, I read two recent Oxfam papers: Programming in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries: A Learning Companion (June 2011) and Within and Without the State (Research Report, February 2012). According to these, some of the key features of working in FRACAS are:

With a weak/absent state, more power lies in the hands of multiple non-state actors, including faith-based organizations, private sector (think money lenders in Somalia), traditional authorities, and (increasingly) well organized, educated and funded Diaspora networks. INGOs have to learn how to engage with all of these in rapidly mutating coalitions.

With the state not delivering, there is always a temptation to start building parallel systems to provide health, education etc. But in the long term these can actually get in the way of building a viable state (see my critique of Paul Collier’s Independent Service Authorities). The trick is to ensure that service delivery work also builds long-term state capacity.

Even in apparently dysfunctional states, there may be ‘pockets of functionality’ with which INGOs can engage, (the papers point to education in the DRC). This both delivers services now, and can act as a nucleus for longer term state-building.

In FRACAS, the situation is always likely to be complex, unpredictable and messy. As aid agencies increasingly concentrate their operations there, there is going to be a fascinating conflict with the rising demand for tangible, measurable and attributable impact.

And what of future directions for INGOs in FRACAS? Within and Without the State makes some tantalisingly general, but interesting suggestions. Some should be familiar to regular readers of this blog, e.g. learn to work better with non state actors such as faith groups, and to respond better to shocks. Others are less familiar:

Focus on building legitimacy/trust/social contract between citizens and state (accountability comes later). In FRACAS, the standard INGO repertoire of supporting demands for greater accountability may be premature: the state may simply lack the capacity to deliver, rather than the will, while citizens may have had such a negative previous experience of the state that all they want is to be left alone. So the first priority is to help build the social contract in terms of trust and supply (capacity), before moving on to demand.

Civil society organizations are often atomised and inexperienced in engaging outside their sector or locality. Helping to convene ‘local to national’ conversations for them with national players (both state and non state) is one possible niche for INGOs.

Promote ‘community conversations’: in the chaotic unpredictability of FRACAS, the usual pieties about not trying to impose blueprints are even truer than ever. There is no substitute for having ‘embedded’ conversations, without a prior agenda, with as many people as possible. Only that way will you detect new currents of power and thinking, and react promptly to such changes.

Any other advice to INGOers working in FRACAS?

How can an NGO campaign against rape in armed conflict? An inspiring case study from Colombia

I recently ran a fascinating workshop with colleagues at Intermón Oxfam (Oxfam’s Spanish affiliate) at which the different country programmes brought examples of change processes at work. One that particularly struck me was about our work in Colombia on sexual violence and conflict. Here’s the write up, jointly authored with Intermon’s Alejandro Matos.

The campaign began in 2009, jointly agreed by Intermón Oxfam and 9 national women’s and human rights organizations. The main aim was to make visible, at national and international level, the widespread use of sexual violence as a tactic by all sides in the armed conflict, and the gaps and failings in the responses of the Colombian state, in terms of prevention and punishment, the end of impunity and the care of women victims.

The main problem we faced was the lack of a strong advocacy tool. Many individual cases of sexual violence within the armed conflict had been recorded and publicised in recent years, but that wasn’t enough – we needed a single national ‘big number’ that would alert people (decision makers, public, media) to the true scale of the problem.

We therefore decided to carry out a national survey to produce up to date, rigorous information for use in advocacy work. The work was carried out by respected academics and researchers of Casa de la Mujer (the survey design alone took 4 months), and opted for the more difficult terrain of testimony (‘have you suffered sexual violence?’) rather than perception (‘do you know of cases….’)

At the start of the campaign, Intermón Oxfam invited Jineth Bedoya Lima, a Colombian journalist, to be the public face of the campaign. In 2000, while working as a journalist for El Espectador, she was kidnapped, tortured and raped by paramilitaries, while investigating the involvement of high military commanders in arms trafficking. Her public profile and courage gave a human face to the research and the campaign’s demands for truth, justice and reparations.

With the survey results and the testimony of Jineth, the campaign launched the results of the first survey with huge media impact. Here’s a quote from the report:

The rate of sexual violence, for the period 2001-2009, in 407 municipalities with an active presence of the armed forces, paramilitaries, guerrillas, and other armed actors in Colombia was estimated at 17.58%; this means that during these nine years 489,687 women were victims of sexual violence (…) every hour 6 women were victims of some type of sexual violence in these municipalities.

We followed this up with an international tour, including Belgium and a meeting with Conservative women in the UK. In March 2011, the campaign met in New York with the UN Special Representative on sexual violence in conflicts, Margot Wallström. In Washington, it met with the number 3 official on security of the White House, and with Melanne Verveer, a close adviser to Hillary Clinton. That visit led to the topic becoming a priority issue in US-Colombian relations. For example, Jineth’s case involved, among others, a Police General  Leonardo Gallego. In 11 years, the judicial case had failed to puncture impunity and key documents had been ‘lost’. Within two months of the campaign’s visit to the US State Department, the General was called to testify and Colombia’s first female Attorney General personally committed herself to take forward the case, which has advanced considerably since then.

The results of the survey continue to be widely disseminated by the Colombian press and various state bodies have started to use the data in their official reports. One result of the campaign’s scrutiny of the Santos government has been a document ‘Summary of the actions taken by the government of President Juan Manuel Santos in its first year: prevention and elimination of sexual violence within the armed conflict and care for women victims.’ This generated large amounts of media coverage in Colombia and beyond.

On 9 March 2012 the US State Department awarded Jineth Bedoya its ‘Women of Courage’ award. This was personally presented by Hilary Clinton and Michelle Obama (see pic), and in the presentation the work of the campaign ‘Take My Body out of the War’ was recognized. On 16th March, Melanne Verveer visited Colombia and asked for her first meeting to be with the campaign – a 2 hour breakfast in which she said ‘I am meeting the Minister of Defence and the Presidential adviser on Women – what message would you like me to transmit?’ The messages were duly transmitted.

At the beginning of May, after overcoming opposition from the Colombian presidency and the foreign ministry, the UN special representative visited Colombia to interview victims and social organizations, and investigate the response of the Colombian state: ‘one of the great challenges that the country has is overcoming impunity, and establishing political responsibility in the face of this crime and the implementation of the measures required’ argued her subsequent report, and she promised to take the message to the UN Security Council and keep Colombia as a priority country in her reports, given the seriousness of the situation.

In terms of the campaign’s theory of change, the Colombia experience contains some fascinating lessons:

Power Analysis: The “Zero Tolerance” of sexual violence is a consensus issue, unlikely to produce overt opposition. It therefore offers an ideal basis around which to build broad national and international coalitions.

Change Hypothesis: That giving the issue public visibility would lead to a range of solutions, including helping end impunity, and increasing state support to victims

Change Strategies:
• A single ‘killer fact’, based on rigorous research, would galvanize public debate
• A prominent champion would ensure greater profile at both national and international levels
• Oxfam’s international connections could act as a catalyst for international solidarity, increasing the external pressure on the Colombian state
• A broad coalition could be built around the issue, bringing together social organizations and local , national and international media, public defenders and some members of the congress and others politicians

There is still much to do, both in combating impunity and in alerting public opinion, but we are sure that after two years of campaigning. Sexual violence against women in the context of armed conflict in Colombia and its high levels of impunity are visible and publicly recognized by State´s representatives and civil society, as is the urgency in taking effective steps to end this crime, overcome impunity and protect and care for women and women victims.

For those of you who want to practice your Spanish, here’s Alejandro Matos in a two minute video describing our work in Colombia

Hunger in the Sahel and international arms control: what’s the link?

In a second post on the impending UN Arms Trade Treaty, Oxfam arms trade policy adviser Martin Butcher discusses the links between Libya’s arms race and hunger in the Sahel

The growing food crisis provoked by drought in the Sahel is affecting millions of people. This crisis has been deepened by the conflict in Mali sparked by the proliferation of arms from Libya in the wake of the fall of Colonel Gadhafi. Some 200,000 Malians have fled from the fighting, which engulfed the whole of Northern Mali from January to March this year. This situation of drought + conflict is providing some harrowing evidence of the need for effective international control of the arms trade. Oxfam has worked for ten years on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), currently under negotiation at the United Nations.

Tuareg tribes in northern Mali have refused to accept the authority of the Bamako government since independence in the 1960s, and their last rebellion ended in 2009 with Malian government forces victorious. But as the war in Libya turned against Colonel Gadhafi, Tuareg fighters from Libya’s armed forces began to return home and formed the Movement for the National Liberation of Azawad (MNLA).

The MNLA are much better armed than previous Tuareg fighters. Malian government forces have reported fighting against men armed with four-wheel drive vehicles mounted with heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft weapons or multiple rocket launchers, and Milan anti-tank missiles. The UN has said that substantial amounts of those kinds of heavy weapons, as well thousands of rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns, substantial quantities of semtex explosive, thousands of small arms and tonnes of ammunition and grenades have flowed into the Sahel from Libya. There are also persistent reports that MANPADS – single operator anti-aircraft missiles – have been smuggled out of Libya. The Libyan government had stockpiled some 40,000 of these weapons, and only 5,000 have been accounted for. Many were undoubtedly destroyed during NATO’s bombing, but several thousand have probably been smuggled out of Libya to the Tuaregs, to terrorist groups, and into the region’s black market for arms.

In addition to being better armed than ever before, the Tuareg fighters from the Libyan army are better trained and disciplined than rebels in the past. As the rebellion began, things went badly for government forces and on 21 March, army officers led by a Captain Sanogo, angered at being outgunned and outmanoeuvred by the MNLA, carried out a coup d’etat to overthrow President Toure. In the wake of the coup, all of northern Mali has fallen to the MNLA without serious fighting, and the Tuaregs declared the end of fighting and a free Azawad in early April.

Malian soldiers

In the South, the coup leaders are now working with ECOWAS and political figures in Mali to restore civilian government as soon as possible. While there is no fighting at present, interim President Traore (former speaker of the Malian parliament) has threatened to wage ‘total war’ on the north if the rebels do not submit to his authority. The army continues to call for more weapons. More fighting is likely in coming months.

How would an ATT help? For a start, in a situation like Mali, a treaty would cut off weapons heading for a conflict zone to encourage political negotiation. National legislation for Arms Trade Treaty implementation would require security sector reform and improve civilian control of the military, both vital areas of good governance that contribute to socio-economic development.

The ATT would provide simple rules, globally enforced, which would detail when an arms exporter could, and could not, send arms to a prospective buyer. If it was thought that the sale of arms might result in breaches of human rights or international humanitarian law; could damage socio-economic development of the recipient state; provoke or prolong a conflict; or lead to diversion to terrorist or into the black market – such a sale would be banned. This would apply to all conventional arms and equipment. While individual countries have such export control policies, there is no such global regulation.

It is likely that, had an ATT been in place in the past twenty years, Libya would have been unable to build up the excessive stocks of arms that are now fuelling conflict in the Sahel. And, given the transparency and reporting mechanism that will be built into the treaty, much more would now be known about just what those stockpiles contained, and where they were stored. This would have allowed effective international action to contain them in the wake of the war.

The Sahel risks being trapped in a vicious self-perpetuating cycle of hunger, conflict and bad governance. That cycle can be interrupted

Tuareg rebels

at various points by action at both national and international level – building food security, fast and effective aid, and passing an ATT that will prevent the kinds of disastrous spillover Mali has suffered from the fall of Colonel Gadhafi.

Martin Butcher is Oxfam’s policy adviser on the Arms Trade Treaty

The UN is (probably) going to agree a global Arms Trade Treaty: what’s at stake?

Ed Cairns, Oxfam’s senior policy adviser on conflict, summarizes a new paper, Stay on Target, which lays out the case for governments to hold out for a top quality Arms Trade Treaty as negotiations enter a crucial phase

In the age of austerity it may seem that governments can do nothing but make cuts. But they can still legislate and regulate, and try to make the market work for the public good. In the last few years, some of them have been doing precisely that in the most deadly market of all – the arms trade. From Latin America to Europe, and through three separate regional agreements in Africa, there has been an array of new regulations on the arms trade. Some of them work better than others, but that’s not the point.  A patchwork of national and regional controls isn’t the best way – at least by itself – to regulate a trade that’s as global as everything else. 

Many governments and NGOs realized this years ago, and have spent almost a decade campaigning for an international Arms Trade Treaty. It’s been a brave and courageous campaign. Indeed, its critics might say that it’s out of its time. A new international treaty, agreed at the UN? When hopes of the UN are a shadow of what they were in the 1990s? And ‘a la carte multilateralism’ of the G20, BRICs and regional organisations has replaced the UN as the core of more complex international relations?

All right, I exaggerate. But you know what I mean. If the UN cannot agree an arms embargo on Syria, which seems a no-brainer to most of the world, is it likely to  agree an international Treaty to control the arms trade?

Right now, though, we should hold back our scepticism. The UN is not what it was, but the campaign to get it to agree an Arms Trade Treaty has been outstandingly successful. In 2003, the Treaty was just an idea in a report from one of my colleagues, Debbie Hillier. In 2006, the UN General Assembly welcomed the idea. In 2009, it started negotiations. This July, there’s a conference in New York scheduled to agree it.  In the world of international law, this is greased lightning. It’s like Usain Bolt has taken over the UN. 

But there’s no point in any new regulation unless it works – to make the market operate for the public good. And that applies every bit as much to a UN conference to agree a useful Arms Trade Treaty. The vast majority of governments want an effective Treaty that will have a practical impact on curbing the irresponsible arms deals that fuel human rights abuses or war crimes – or waste a vast amount of money that could be better spent on, say, development. But like every idea for effective regulation, there are those who want to water it down.  On the arms trade, they’re governments like Syria and Iran, and – an odd companion – the US, which may have made a catastrophic error when it insisted that the process to agree the Treaty should be by consensus.

Because of that, and the opposition of some, it’s impossible to tell what will come out of the UN conference in July. There’s an overwhelming humanitarian and developmental logic for a tough Treaty that curbs irresponsible arms deals, covers all conventional arms and ammunition, and covers every part of this complex and sometimes sordid global market, with its sleazy arms brokers who may never touch a gun, but wheel and deal to send them to war criminals around the world.

Between now and July, there should be a clear message to those governments that have championed the idea of an Arms Trade Treaty for nearly ten years. Hold out for a good one. Don’t compromise. In the next few weeks, another one of my colleagues, Deep Basu Ray, will be publishing five short papers on the reasons why. But today is my turn. With Amnesty International, Saferworld and others, we’re publishing a paper, Stay on Target, which lays out the case for the UK Government to hold out for an Arms Trade Treaty that will actually work.

Not surprisingly, the UK, like the EU, gets piqued at suggestions that it has less influence in our new multipolar world. The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, speaks of a ‘renaissance’ in British influence - not least in standing up for the values of human rights and poverty reduction. Whether that influence counts for much will be put to the test in the next few months.  Under two different governments, the UK has vigorously backed the idea of a strong, effective Arms Trade Treaty since 2004.  Can it help deliver that?  Rather than a weak treaty that would do almost no good?

We’re about to find out.

And here’s Ed ‘talking to the paper’

 

Tomorrow, Martin Butcher shows why all this matters – the link between an ATT and averting disaster in the Sahel

If change requires both cooperation and conflict, can we really do both?

I’ve been thinking about my recent trip to Honduras, how change happens, and the discussions there (and with some other country teams since then) about what I am calling the ‘cooperation-conflict cycle’ (see pic). The default mode in Oxfam and most large NGOs is generally uncomfortable with conflict, but research by John Gaventa and others shows that conflict is an essential part of many processes of progressive social change.

This cycle is drawn from Jonathan Fox’s work on ‘transitions to accountability’ in Mexico. Fox found that progress depended on a cycle of conflict and cooperation – a conflict would break out, and then a more progressive section of local state officials would talk to more approachable protest leaders and a period of reform would ensue. When those reforms ran out of steam, or new issues emerged, conflict would reemerge and the whole cycle would start again in a process of ‘interaction between the thickening of civil society and state reformist initiatives’.

If true, and assuming that NGOs see their role as subsidiary, (i.e. they are not the main actor in the drama) this theory of change poses some serious challenges. If they want to be present and playing a constructive role over the whole cycle, NGOs may need to use very different tactics and language in the conflict and cooperation phases, and forge different alliances and partnerships.

In the conflict phase, the language and tactics will probably need to be more polarised and confrontational (us and them, good guys and bad etc), and the alliances are likely to be more horizontal – pulling together a large network of civil society organizations around some common aims, perhaps with some support from alternative media and radical churches.

By contrast, in the cooperation phase, the language and tactics will need to be more constructive and propositional, and avoid alienating potential supporters in other camps. Alliances will need to be forged with actors in other spheres (local state officials, politicians, private sector). Even media and church alliances may need to be different, pulling in more mainstream, conservative fractions than in the conflict stage.

But can the same organization really do both, moving coherently from one to the other and back again? Staff tend to opt for one or the other, and find it hard to change gears. Loyalty to allies in one phase will inhibit moving to the next. And life is of course a lot messier than the ‘cycle’ suggests, with conflict and cooperation both present at most points in a change process. 

What to do? In practice, I suspect a lot of NGOs and others tacitly opt for a division of labour – they either specialize in the conflict phase or the cooperative phase. But that may mean a lot of wasted effort when the cycle swings the other way.

Not sure if this is so abstract as to be virtually meaningless – do you recognize any of these issues from your own work?

Oops, just posted this by mistake. Sorry to post twice in a day – will take a day off tomorrow out of consideration for your inboxes.

What outsiders can (and can’t) do about Syria

Update: Please support Oxfam’s Syria action

This guest post, by Phil Bloomer, Oxfam GB’s director of campaigns and policy, is a bit unusual for this blog. No new research or (supposedly) clever ideas. Instead, he reflects on what outsiders can (and can’t) do about the terrible situation in Syria

“This morning, as on every recent morning, the news is dominated by civilians being killed in Syria. 100 a day may be dying, the UN said last Tuesday; the 13 killed in saving a Sunday Times photographer were just a fraction of that number – a shocking reminder of how many human rights activists have already died. Yesterday, one told Oxfam: ‘The situation is hell. In areas under attack, people do not have enough food.’ It is the bravery of people like that which challenges the rest of us to do something. But what?

The long-delayed UN resolution was welcome but far from enough. Like everyone else, I feel horror and frustration at the world’s inability to stop the killing. Oxfam was founded to support the poor and vulnerable in such crises, yet we can do nothing in Syria without access to those people under fire. In Turkey and Jordan, my colleagues urgently prepare for the escalating crisis they expect – for what Oxfam may do as the humanitarian fallout worsens, and more refugees flee. Where will Oxfam’s water and sanitation and other humanitarian  expertise be needed? What must we do now to make that happen? My Middle East colleagues work up scenarios, plan and negotiate our response with neighbouring governments and civil society.

But right now Oxfam is not working in Syria. So what do I do, as Campaigns and Policy Director of an NGO that passionately believes the answer to humanitarian crises is more than just aid (however vital)? The answer involves also challenging those with the power to resolve such crises and address their causes, principally the Government of Syria and its supporters (or at least defenders) in the UN and elsewhere. Whether it is in Homs, Helmand or Mogadishu, the killing has to stop, and Syria must start on the long road to sustainable peace. That is what our humanitarian campaigning tries to do, as well as upholding the rights of those affected by conflict and disasters. But what do we do when thousands are being killed in Syria, where Oxfam, unusually, has never worked, and so does not have the years of experience that underpin our advocacy in other crises? Do we denounce the killings and gang rapes the UN  reports?

Do we ask every neighbouring land to open its borders to Syrians fleeing violence? Do we use the channels in the region and around the world that we have nurtured in other crises to help get the humanitarian message across? Of course, but without grassroots knowledge, our voice is just another external voice and may not have much impact. And so I can only justify few precious resources – when our better-grounded campaigning on the Horn, West Africa and the DRC is so vital as well.

Until Oxfam starts to work on the ground in neighbouring countries such as Turkey – which looks ever more likely – we praise the ICRC for its work on the ground and extraordinary public calls for a ceasefire to help bombarded civilians reach aid. Such a cessation is the barest priority, the very first step towards removing every obstacle civilians in Homs are facing.

Right now, we don’t have sufficient information from the ground in Syria to develop detailed policy suggestions, weighing up pros, cons and uncertainties of different possible courses of action. We should be honest about that. But civilians struggling in crises value something else from international NGOs. They welcome a solidarity that reinforces their sense that they ‘are not alone’. That’s been my experience in every other crisis where Oxfam works all over the world. And in that sense, I doubt Homs is different. And it’s true even more now when social networking and the web allows people, even in the direst conflicts, to hear the world’s support louder than ever before.

Nothing is more important than stopping the killing on all sides. Unlike many crises we face, with a tangled mix of political and ‘natural’ causes, Syria is a political crisis caused by a government refusing its people’s right to be heard. Easy to solve? Of course not. But its direct political cause does mean it’s amenable to international political pressure – if the world had the will to exert it.

So far, that pressure has been fatally undermined. Last Thursday’s Security Council resolution was welcome but limited. Will it improve humanitarian access? We earnestly hope so. Will it stop the killing? That is very unlikely.

But there is a level of international outrage that can persuade the Syrian government’s international defenders that they must act to stop the killing now. While we plan what we might do on the ground, NGOs like Oxfam must be part of that global tide of outrage, joining the call for an end to the killings, the arms supplies that fuel them, and immediate access for humanitarian aid.”

An optimistic take on fragile states

Nice to see some upbeat–but-expert thinking on fragile states, which are all well on their way to becoming the biggestheadache/impossible problem in development. By the way, has anyone realized that the acronym for Fragile and Conflict Affected States is …… FRACAS? If not, remember you read it here first……

Anyway, back to the optimism. This is from a new paper by Laurence Chandy of the Brookings Institution, Ten Years of Fragile States: What Have We Learned?

Chandy reflects on what has changed since the World Bank established a taskforce to examine how to deal with what were then called LICUS (Low-Income Countries Under Stress). They don’t call them that any more, not least because many of them (Pakistan, Yemen) are middle income. But this group of countries suffers from name changes and constantly evolving typologies more than any other. (Another aside, DFID at one point created a ‘poor performers’ team, and then wondered why no-one wanted to work for it…..). That matters because it affects aid flows, which are twice as volatile for FRACAS as aid flows to stable countries.

And here’s his optimistic conclusions:

“Today, there is mounting evidence that aid to fragile states can work. Furthermore, with less than a dozen stable low-income countries left, donors no longer have the same excuse for overlooking the needs of the 30 or more fragile states. These needs loom ever larger. Over just the past six years, the share of the world’s poor living in fragile states is estimated to have doubled from 20 to 40 percent. No fragile state has yet achieved a single Millennium Development Goal.

Nevertheless, donors still face a difficult decision in determining whether to aid fragile states, and if so, by how much. Achieving results in these settings almost certainly requires greater expertise and time, which translate into higher cost and risk. A successful start to the second decade of fragile states policy would see donors redesign their resource allocation models to capture this reality. New models should:

•             Recognize that fragility does not end with graduation to middle-income status. Where donors make special allocations to low-income fragile states compared to low-income stable countries, an equivalent policy should be employed to distinguish allocations between fragile and stable middle-income countries.

•             Allow for more stable financing to fragile states. Donors should avoid trying to pin a trajectory on each partner country and instead concentrate on mitigating the instability inherent to fragile states by providing stable aid flows, supported by improved approaches to risk management. Aid commitments should be embedded in country compacts, which can serve as a useful tool for stabilizing flows.

•             Reassess the cost-effectiveness of aiding fragile states. There is an enormous potential for aid to help fragile states if it is properly designed and managed. This potential needs to be weighed up against an accurate sense of the costs of aid delivery. The effectiveness of aid flows to fragile states could be enhanced further by establishing a more systematic approach to documenting and learning from development interventions. This effort should be carried out under the supervision of the g7+ and focus on interventions with significant scope and scale.”

The g7+, by the way, is a group of 19 FRACAS that has organized itself to lobby for improved aid – a big improvement on donors and others speaking for such states in their absence. Check out its website, which houses this  slightly weird 3 minute youtube pitch to the recent Busan aid conference. And here’s the Broker’s scorecard of how Busan performed on FRACAS – not great, it seems.