The development imperative: creating the preconditions for peace.

• Author: Atwood, J. Brian
• Position: Economic and Social Implications

"If the mistakes of the last decade are to be avoided, governments and international organizations will have to adopt a new mindset, one that focuses on the prevention of conflict. In this new culture of prevention, development cooperation will play a critical role."

Time and again over the past decade the United Nations has found itself dangerously positioned between hostile parties as it sought to create peace out of conflict. Often, these parties had ostensibly committed themselves to peace accords, but the agreements did little to modify the conditions that contributed to the discord, and the United Nations was left to face the consequences.

The Secretary-General's Panel on UN Peace Operations, convened in March 2000, examined the sad record of the 1990s. I served on that panel and can attest to the frustration that each member felt over reports of UN forces suffering the indignity of being held captive in Sierra Leone, the shame of being forced to witness ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and genocide in Rwanda and the embarrassment of having to evacuate from Somalia. Our report, named the "Brahimi Report" after our distinguished chairman, concluded that the organization founded "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war" was now incapable "of executing critical peacekeeping and peace-building tasks that the member states assign to it." (1)

In assessing the critical issue of the security of UN peacekeepers, the members of the panel observed that the increasing need for this type of operation reflected the international community's failure to respond to the development needs of conflict-prone societies. We concluded that the United Nations and the major nations of the international community had inadequately assisted developing world governments as they struggled to overcome conditions that contributed greatly to violent conflict.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has recognized the vital role of development cooperation in preventing and mitigating conflict. (2) He has asked UN member states to double the amount of development assistance made available to the poorest nations and to support the reforms recommended by the Brahimi Panel. There is a compelling urgency to his appeal. Conflict is becoming commonplace on the international scene and the UN system is already overwhelmed by the challenges.

Sadly, there is little indication that the world's most powerful nations are responding to the secretary-general's appeal. Development cooperation traditionally has been undervalued as a tool for preventing conflict. As the world's leading nations confront the threat of terrorism, only the British government has joined the secretary-general in expressing strong public support for the role development assistance can play. (3) Yet it has become painfully obvious that prominent terrorist networks like al-Qaeda have exploited the existence of pervasive poverty and the absence of democratic governance structures, finding safe harbor in places like Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia.

This is a personal account of the deliberations of the Brahimi Panel and the efforts of the United Nations and my own government to adapt policies and bureaucratic organizations to the urgent need to prevent conflict and build the structures of peace. It offers the perspective of a strong advocate of adding development cooperation to the mix of diplomatic and security interventions needed to counter terrorism and to prevent or mitigate violent conflict.

IMPLEMENTING THE BRAHIMI REFORMS

When the secretary-general convened the Brahimi Panel in March 2000, he asked us to "present a clear set of specific, concrete and practical recommendations" to assist the United Nations in conducting peace and security activities in the future. (4) A higher standard of performance on all fronts was essential; otherwise the UN's reputation would continue to suffer.

The nine individuals on the panel took the secretary-general's invitation to be candid quite literally. (5) Our diverse group of experts in diplomacy, the military, development, law enforcement, human rights and humanitarian law privately shared both positive and negative experiences in dealing with UN peace operations. We also shared a deep commitment to the goals of the United Nations.

With UN forces being held captive in Sierra Leone while we were meeting, we resolved to send a strong message to the Security Council. In order to underscore the disconnect between past peacekeeping mandates and the UN's ability to carry them out, we suggested that such resolutions in the future should be withheld until the resources to deploy a credible peacekeeping force were secured. (6) If they were not present, we suggested that the UN should stay out, or that a "coalition of the willing" should be introduced under the UN flag. The successful intervention of Australian troops in East Timor was a recent example of such a force.

The Brahimi Report made a series of recommendations that would bring a large portion of peacekeeping operations into the regular UN budget process, as opposed to having to raise resources for specific operations. It would also create a permanent peacebuilding capacity and give the secretary-general and his Executive Committee for Peace and Security (ECPS) an information-gathering and analysis capacity.

The initial costs of the reforms needed for these enhancements of the Secretariat--mostly to improve the capacity of the Department of Peacekeeping--were estimated to be about $40 million. This budget increase has been blocked by developing nations who are worried that, in the zero-sum game of UN budgeting, the allocation of these resources would further deplete the UN's development assistance accounts.

It was somewhat ironic that key developing nations found themselves in opposition to these recommendations in order to preserve development funds. These nations understand that development cooperation is one of the most promising antidotes to conflict, a view not widely shared among the richer countries.

CREATING A CULTURE OF PREVENTION

If the mistakes of the last decade are to be avoided, governments and international organizations will have to adopt a new mindset, one that focuses on the prevention of conflict. In this new culture of prevention, development cooperation will play a critical role.

Today, in the halls of government power, development cooperation is often entirely absent in discussions about conflict prevention strategies. It is sometimes simply ignored and sometimes rejected as irrelevant. But there should be little question that conditions of underdevelopment are creating real alienation from local and national power structures and, more ominously, from the international community's shared civil norms. In the worst case, this alienation has led to acts of terrorism, toppled sitting governments and produced civil wars, cross-border conflicts and failed states.

Severe underdevelopment, especially when combined with a precipitating event such as a national disaster, can produce desperation and movements of populations. In the Horn of Africa, such a mix has created huge demographic shifts, which have destabilized broad areas and disrupted food chains and economic and political systems. The refugee and displaced-persons population has more than doubled in the past fifteen years and is likely to grow...