Development Aid, Humanitarian Assistance and Emergency Relief

In an interesting document, presented by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) — a conference held in November 1999 in Addis Ababa,1 the opening paragraph states:

"Over the last decades, the mandate of aid has been extended significantly. The end of the cold war brought about far-reaching political changes that culminated in a great rise in civil wars, especially in Africa and the former Soviet Union, as well as a willingness by the international community to promote democratic and peaceful change in those same countries. Thirty years of exploitation, poverty, dictatorship and mismanagement, however — usually with active backing from the same international community, in the name of the cold war politics — had left many places characterised by deep social division and weak governance. As a result, humanitarian assistance and development aid found themselves confronted with a great extension of their mandates, and this under increasingly difficult conditions."2

This opening gives rise to many observations and is used as a point of departure for general comments on the role of aid in conflict situation. First of all, the definition of and trends in of aid have to be considered. The general conclusions made in the DAC study will be returned to, as it is — at least for the time being — one of the few authoritative sources on "the influences of aid in situations of violent conflicts" as the title states. Finally, some examples of Swedish policies and practices will be provided as seen from the perspective of the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida).

DEFINITION AND TRENDS OF AID

What is meant by the concepts ‘development’ and ‘humanitarian assistance’? Aid, in a very general understanding of the word, means first and foremost a flow of financial resources. Within the OECD, DAC is the body that has been assigned to report on aid flows. Given the basic assumption in the 1960s of ‘a resources gap’ as the stumbling block for development in the poor countries of the world, it is easy to understand the importance accorded to quantities and flows of aid.

Since the mid-1980s, aid has also been strongly identified by the set of priorities and policies linked to the release of these resource flows. It is called, alternatively, conditionalities or incentives/ disincentives. The best known examples are the set of conditionalities linked to the structural adjustment programmes of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). One prominent feature of this process is the call for aid co-ordination, at global, as well as at country levels.

It is a common understanding among donors today that a central focus of development assistance should be to improve the general economic, political and social climate in partner countries, by supporting measures to improve the legitimacy and effectiveness of the state, as well as the emergence of a strong civil society. Conflict prevention is seen as a central development goal.

In situations of acute conflict, humanitarian assistance is extended to the victims of the conflict according to established criteria. In these situations, the importance of analysing the ways in which projects affect the relations between the parties involved, has become increasingly evident. By supplying resources to areas with extremely limited resources, projects can bring about or fuel existing conflicts.

The development of new aid instruments has taken place, in the wake of peace agreements or periods of non-violence. This particularly refers to post-conflict aid in support of post-conflict recovery. The objective is seldom to return to pre-crisis conditions, but to lay the foundations for peace and sustainable development.

Conflict and aid in conflict situations are not seen as static and unchanging, but rather as part of a dynamic process. The close co-operation of all policy instruments (humanitarian, diplomacy, military, trade and development co-operation) is thus required to ensure coherence and co-ordination.

Given these stated objectives, which can be found in the DAC guidelines series on Conflict, peace and development co-operation on the threshold of the 21st century,3 aid flows and recent trends may be considered, using figures from DAC statistics4 and the 1999 World disasters report5.

Aid flows have overall begun to stagnate since the beginning of the 1990s. In relation to gross national product (GNP) a record low level of 0.22 per cent has been reached today, which is far below the target adopted by the United Nations of 0.7 per cent.6 And the trend is continuing downward. The positive news is that overall flows from OECD countries have increased, as is seen in Figure 3, from 0.57 per cent in the mid-1980s to 0.86 per cent in 1997.

But there are disturbing regional disparities. In Africa, ODA has decreased from US $25 597 million to US $18 529 million between 1990 and 1997, while private flows have fluctuated from negative in 1990 to a positive US $5 876 million in 1997 (still less than in 1978).

Sub-Saharan Africa’s share of the ODA is also falling, from 31 per cent in the mid-1980s to 29 per cent in 1997. Even more disturbing is that overall ODA from OECD countries to the Least Developed Countries group has decreased from 38 per cent in the mid-1980s to 31 per cent in 1997.

Despite the increased emphasis on aid in conflict situations, overall aid flows are stagnating and Sub-Saharan Africa’s share of ODA is declining.

There is a general assumption that development co-operation has been replaced by humanitarian assistance and/or relief assistance. While development co-operation is defined by its long-term objectives, humanitarian assistance and relief operations are seen as short-term aid which involves immediate, survival assistance to the victims of crises and violent conflicts. The general humanitarian principles constitute the framework within which aid is delivered — impartiality, neutrality, access, and parties’ responsibility. The increase in the number of conflicts, especially in Africa, has also seen an increase in humanitarian aid.

According to the 1999 World disasters report,7 the overall non-food emergency and distress relief disbursements have increased from US $809 million in 1989 to a record high of US $3 468 million in 1994, but has since decreased to US $2 163 million in 1997.

It is doubtful whether any conclusions can be drawn about humanitarian aid. It has declined, although conflicts have remained fairly constant over the last few years. A dramatic rise in natural catastrophes has also been experienced recently. How these events have affected the distribution of humanitarian aid is still unknown. The effects of the development in Kosovo during 1999 have furthermore become clear and the result of this development on the distribution of aid. A ‘crowding out’ effect will probably become evident which will negatively affect the humanitarian aid flow to Africa.

So far, this contribution has concentrated on official resource flows. But as has been shown, there is a sharp increase in private flows, at least in parts of the world. Private flows are not the main theme of this article. Nevertheless, some general reflections on the importance of the private sector relative to the public sector in resource flows to conflict-ridden areas of the world and, in particular, in Africa, are important.

The importance of natural resources as a source of income for actors in conflict has been substantiated in many research projects and articles. William Reno has studied the connections between the diamond trade and conflict in Sierra Leone and Liberia. In a recent article by Colette Braeckman, she writes about the carve-up of the Congo, involving both governments and private companies. It calls to mind a visit to Kinshasa in September 1997. The hotel was the centre for aid discussions — bilateral, as well as multilateral — with a World Bank delegation, political discussions with a human rights group appointed by the UN Secretary-General, and business dealings with people from all over the world, including Sweden and South Africa. It can be surmised that the latter had more impact on the conflict than the former.

Arms exports to Africa almost doubled during the last year, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Around 60 per cent of the deaths from armed conflicts also occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Eleven of the 25 civil wars that were out of control last year were in sub-Saharan Africa. Military expenditure in the region totalled nearly US $10 billion in 1998, if military assistance and the funding of opposition groups and mercenaries are taken into account. According to the same source, spending on arms in sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa, increased by 14 per cent which can be compared with an average economic growth of less than one per cent.8

These figures must be contemplated before the role of development aid and humanitarian assistance is discussed. The conclusions — or hypotheses — are that the private sector plays a much more prominent role in conflict situations than previously assumed. The importance of private flows in Africa, however, are very difficult to estimate quantitatively as they do not always appear in official statistics.

THE INFLUENCE OF AID IN SITUATIONS OF CONFLICT

The above does not mean that development aid — or humanitarian aid — only has a minor role to play, only that there should be a greater awareness of its relative significance in terms of resources — and where they come from.

The influence of aid in situations of conflict is the title of an interesting DAC document, written by Peter Uvin, a research professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University.9 The document is based on country studies of Afghanistan, Bosnia, Rwanda and Sri Lanka. The studies examine whether and how donors, during and after violent conflict, use their official development assistance to create incentives and disincentives to reduce conflict and promote peace.

Incentives for peace refer to all purposeful uses of aid that strengthen the dynamics that favour peace. It covers actions such as influencing actors’ behaviour, by modifying their capacities, by changing relations between conflicting actors and by influencing the social and economic environment in which conflict and peace dynamics take place.

The study reveals some basic lessons about the role of aid in a strategy of incentives for peace:

All aid, at all times, creates incentives and disincentives for peace or for war, (this means that efficiency may sometimes have to be traded for stability and peace).



Aid alone usually has limited capacity to determine the dynamics of violent conflicts.



The impact of ODA takes place in the broader, often volatile, environment of the relations between the country and the international community.

Promoting peace is a long-term commitment, according to the study. It requires donors to have a long-term vision.

Co-ordination among donors is another aspect discussed at length. It is observed that domestic policies and national interests in donor countries play a powerful role in determining their goals and margins for manoeuvre. Differences between headquarters and field staff are yet another complicating factor of the co-ordination dimension.

In most situations of conflict, humanitarian and development assistance co-exist for long periods of time. New intermediate instruments, such as transition aid or post-conflict recovery, have been developed to work in this grey zone. The study takes note of the ongoing debate about the extent to which humanitarian assistance should be used as part of a strategy of incentives for peace. It refers to the fear within the humanitarian aid community that this may entail a weakening of the humanitarian imperative. The study observes that there is a tendency to end emergency aid as fast as possible, in part because of this problem.

The study also highlights that humanitarian aid normally bypasses governments more than ordinary development aid. It concludes that donors face a fundamental strategic choice when engaging in an incentive for peace strategy. One strategy is based on trust seeking to strengthen the government’s own capacity to finance and manage its own priorities. The other strategy is based on control seeking maximally and directly to control the use of funds.

The four country case studies suggest that conditionality is more often than not ineffective. And even if it works, it has a high political price, for it increases a climate of adversity and resentment between donors and recipients.

The study advocates alternatives to conditionality, including long-term constructive engagement, principled behaviour (bottom line) and to seek to negotiate political benchmarks with recipient governments.

SOME EXAMPLES OF SWEDISH AID

Following the development of new conflict patterns in the world, new policies and new strategies have been developed by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and by Sida. These policies and strategies reflect new conflict situations, but are also based on the Swedish political tradition of engagement.

As a matter of historical record, it is more than thirty years since the Swedish parliament, in May 1969, endorsed a policy of direct official humanitarian assistance to the Southern African liberation movements. This policy was based on some main principles of which the significance of the UN as a global ‘security umbrella’ for conflict resolution was one and public legitimacy was another.

In the late 1990s, Swedish aid policy is again subject to parliamentarian review. The purpose is, among others, to assess the consequences of globalisation and to update the general aid policy. Peace and conflict resolution have been mentioned as areas of particular concern.

In 1998, Sida developed a strategy for conflict management and peacebuilding that was adopted by the Swedish government in January 1999. The strategy was accompanied by a policy paper on Humanitarian assistance in armed conflicts with a children’s rights perspective. In addition to these two documents, Sida also developed a so-called ‘concept paper’ on Developmental humanitarian assistance in 1998.10 These papers and Sida’s action plan on democracy, human rights and conflict management — Justice and peace — include the main guidelines for the Agency’s activities in conflict management within development and humanitarian assistance.11

At the macro-level, Swedish development assistance to main partner countries is guided by country strategies. In all its country strategies — and similar documents — Sida analyses the risk of ongoing conflicts and gives priority to projects/programmes and working methods which reduce conflicts in society and prevent armed conflict. The underlying assumption is that programmes of development co-operation can contribute to the prevention of armed conflicts before they break out. This can be achieved through targeted development projects, programmes for strengthening democracy and human rights, regional co-operation programmes and supporting communication between hostile parties.

The regional dimension and the need for conflict analysis are aspects of the development co-operation which have been given additional attention. To this effect, Sida has established links with academic institutions in Sweden and abroad. Sida has contributed to the WIDER research project on Social and economic consequences of complex emergencies and to the Queen Elizabeth House project on Social and economic costs of conflict. Sida has also initiated close co-operation with the Peace and Conflict Research Department of Uppsala University and with the Conflict and Development Department (Padrigu) of Gothenburg University. Presently, Padrigu is involved in conflict analysis in Angola, part of which is done in close co-operation with Angolan academics.

At the mezzo and micro-levels, Sida is at present reviewing methodology and instruments to enhance conflict analysis. It is believed that, with a rights-based approach, Sida would be in a position to promote forces in society conducive to peace. But, and this need to be repeated from time to time, aid alone cannot make the difference.

In the action plan, peace and justice — a dichotomy of institutional dimensions vis-à-vis cultural dimensions and state vis-à-vis civil society — is used as the main analytical tool. The institutions of democracy need to be the expression of a democratic culture, and vice versa. In the analysis of a given country, an attempt is made to identify the role of development co-operation in relation to the tasks of the state, as well as those of the civil society

The Strategy for conflict management and peacebuilding was developed within the framework of humanitarian assistance. In the strategy, conflict management is used as a generic term for aid financed projects implemented during ongoing armed conflicts. Conflict prevention is used for interventions that have as their main objective the prevention of the outbreak of violence, the escalation of violence, or the return to violence.

The strategy makes a distinction between the victims of conflicts and the actors or parties to a conflict. In the first case, humanitarian principles apply with the focus on saving and protecting human lives and mitigating the effects of armed conflicts. In the second category, projects are designed with the aim of influencing the parties involved. The strategy identifies the promotion of dialogue and the promotion of security as two distinct areas of activities.

The first category includes:

projects to influence the culture of violence;

research, education, seminars and mediation at local level;

projects for increasing awareness; and

conflict analysis.

The second category includes:

a preventive presence (civil peace monitoring, observer functions, and so on);

demilitarisation, disarming, reintegration and control of arm flows; and

reform of the security sector, such as the establishment of an army and a police force under democratic control.

The privatisation of the security sector is a recent phenomenon which needs to be considered.

Swedish humanitarian assistance has a fairly broad mandate when compared internationally. The aim is to work in an integrated manner in order to avoid gaps between humanitarian and development mandates. To this end, a policy on Developmental humanitarian assistance has been developed. This means that, in acute conflict situations, the focus is on promoting solutions that have a long-term perspective and are accepted and supported locally.

Some practical examples of projects supported through Swedish assistance include the following:

Sida supports a number of international organisations which, through their work in forming opinions, increase the general awareness in cases of armed conflict. One such an organisation is the Swedish Life and Peace Institute working with processes of reconciliation at the local level in Somalia. The guiding principle is a ‘bottom-up’ approach. The capacities of local communities are strengthened. Councils of elders and women’s groups have been engaged in reconciliation conferences. Civic education is an important part of the programme.



In Uganda, Sida is in the process of formulating a long-term development programme in the field of human rights and democracy. A study has been commissioned that includes researchers from Sweden and Uganda. The result, a report entitled Peace, democracy and human rights in Uganda: A string of fragile pearls, was recently discussed in Uganda with academics, government officials and civil society representatives. The discussions and the final report will constitute the basis for formulating a programme for Swedish support.12



During the 1990s, Sida supported three regional human rights organisations in Banjul: the African Commission for Human and People´s Rights, the African Centre for Studies on Democracy and Human Rights, and the African Society of International and Comparative Law. The support was managed by the Swedish Raoul Wallenberg Institute.

These examples are chosen because they represent an approach that donors need to address: locally based projects in a regional context and focused on national priorities.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, these dimensions, in concert with a long-term and consistent commitment, are the most important contributions to a peaceful world that would result from greater development co-operation.

The international community — the donor community — also needs to sustain and increase the volume of official development assistance in order to reverse the growing marginalisation of the poor. The success or failure of poor people and poor countries will have a profound influence in shaping the 21st century, to quote from the DAC policy document adopted by all OECD development ministers in 1996.

Finally, 50 per cent — or more — of those affected by conflict are children. It is therefore of the utmost importance that those who work with the peace process, such as those engaged in reconstruction and long-term development, should first and foremost think — children!

Endnotes

DAC/ECA, Organisation of African Unity, Addis Ababa 15-17 November 1999,



P Uvin, The influence of aid in situations of violent conflicts, draft report prepared for DAC informal taskforce on Conflict, Peace and Development Co-operation, 1999.



Conflict, peace and development co-operation on the threshold of the 21st century, Development Co-operation Guidelines Series, OECD, Paris, 1998.



Development co-operation 1998 report, DAC/OECD, Paris, 1999.



World Disasters Report, IFRC, Geneva, 1999.



OECD member countries are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.



World Disasters Report, op cit.



The Military Balance 1999/2000, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999; RNTaylor & O Bowcott, Guardian Weekly, 28 October — 3 November 1999.



Uvin, op cit.



Strategi för konfliktförebyggande och konflikthantering inom det humanitära biståndet (Humanitarian Assistance in Armed Conflict with a Children´s Perspective), Sida/SEKA, Stockholm, 1998.



Developmental humanitarian assistance — A concept paper, Sida, Stockholm, January 1999.



H Hammargren, F Muheveza, Å Ottosson & J Ssenkumba, Peace, democracy and human rights in Uganda: A string of fragile pearls, draft report, for Sida, November 1999.