Humanitarian, Conflict, Security: Assessing the Global ... · Final Report DFID UK Humanitarian, Conflict, Security: Assessing the Global Demand May 2010 2.1.10 Recommendations 19

Humanitarian, Conflict, Security: Assessing the Global Demand/Needs

Final Report May 2010 By Coffey International Development

This report has been prepared for the Department for International Development by Andrew Rathmell, Mayssa Daye, Rohan Burdett, Peter Middlebrook and Peter Walker, Consultants supplied by Coffey International Development through the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre Framework. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the view of Coffey International Development, the consortium members of GSDRC or DFID.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Coffey International Development

Final Report DFID UK Humanitarian, Conflict, Security: Assessing the Global Demand

May 2010

RECOMMENDATIONS 1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3

Understanding the Problem 3

Humanitarian 3

Disaster Risk Reduction 4

Conflict Prevention 4

Peacebuilding 5

Peacekeeping 6

Mediation 6

1 UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM 7

1.1 Costing the ‘Demand’ for Assistance: Some Examples 7

1.2 Challenges in Understanding Supply and Demand 8

1.3 Challenges to Applying Demand Side Management to These Domains

1.4 Implications for This Report 9

2 CATEGORIES

2.1 Humanitarian 10

2.1.1 What is the True Demand? 10

2.1.2 Approaches to Deducing Global Demand 11

2.1.3 Known Needs 13

2.1.4 Targeting 13

2.1.5 The Dependent Case Load 14

2.1.6 How does DFID Compare with Other Donors? 15

2.1.7 How do Aid Agencies see DFID’s Humanitarian Donorship? 16

2.1.8 Why May the Future Hold? 18

2.1.9 Conclusion on Humanitarian Issues 19

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2.1.10 Recommendations 19

2.2 Disaster Risk Reduction 19

2.2.1 DFID’s DRR Commitment 20

2.2.2 Global DRR Needs and Supply 23

2.2.3 Safety Nets 25

2.2.4 Conclusion on DRR 26


2.3 Conflict Prevention 26

2.3.1 Causes of Conflict 27

2.3.2 Quantifying Conflict 27

2.3.3 Costing Conflict 28

2.3.4 The Effectiveness of Conflict Prevention 29

2.3.5 Supplying Conflict Prevention 29


2.4 Peacebuilding 30

2.4.1 Demand for Peacebuilding 30

2.4.2 The Supply of Peacebuilding 31

2.4.3 Conclusion on Peacebuilding 32


2.5 Peacekeeping 32

2.5.1 Demand for Peacekeeping 32

2.5.2 Supply of Peacekeeping 33

2.5.3 Conclusions on Peacekeeping 35


2.6 Mediation 35

2.6.1 Mediation Supply Side and Gaps 36

3 ENDNOTES 37

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TABLES IN THE TEXT

1 DFID DRR Funding 2006 - Present 21

FIGURES IN THE TEXT

1 DAC Member Humanitarian Spending 1990-2008 10

2 Comparison of Spending (Supply) Against Two Measures of Demand 10

3 Natural Disasters Reported 1900 - 2008 11

4 UN-CAP Appeal 12

5 Best and Worst Covered CAP Appeals 2000 - 2008 13

6 Absolute Funding to Short, Medium and Long Term Operations 14

7 Percentage of Funding to Short, Medium and Long Term Operations 14

8 Humanitarian Spending by Country 15

9 DAC Donor Total Humanitarian Assistance Contributions as Shares of GNI 16

10 DAC Donor Total Humanitarian Assistance Contributions Per Citizen 16

11 DFID's Scores Compared with DAC Average and DAC Minimum 17

12 DFID’s Ranking on the Five Aggregated Pillar Values 18

13 OECD/DAC 2007 Humanitarian Spending by Category DRR 23

14 OECD/DAC 2008 Humanitarian Spending by Category DRR 24

15 Percentage of 2008 Humanitarian Aid Invested in DRR 25

16 Battle Deaths Per Year, Per Million of World Population 27

17 DAC Countries ODA to All Developing Countries for Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

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DFID UK: Humanitarian, Conflict, Security: Assessing the Global Demand/Needs

May 2010

RECOMMENDATIONS

Humanitarian

Encourage and fund research to better understand the relationship between probable total global humanitarian needs and presently identified needs.

Work with the Good Humanitarian Donorship group to set targets for the percent funding of the CAPs which represents an acceptable level. Support this by encouraging more coherent, rigorous and sustained efforts to improve needs assessments.

Continue to invest in the UN’s CERF, support the Common Humanitarian Fund (CHF) and the Emergency Response Funds (ERFs). Be far more assertive in pressing the UN Secretariat and its agencies to demonstrate effectiveness and efficiency.

Foster studies linked to pilot applications to test and ultimately scale up new approaches to humanitarian assistance.

Review the structure of present DFID humanitarian funding, noting what percentage goes into long term humanitarian “holding” operations. It may be that the time is now ripe to break the dualistic mould of relief or development.

Disaster Risk Reduction

Work with OECD/DAC to agree definitions of disaster risk reduction funding and ensure DRR is reported on separately and systematically.

Review DFID’s guidance to ensure that DRR is seen as a legitimate programming goal and strategy.

Fund and promote research to build rigorous economic models for the calculation of environmental risks in relation to development programming.

Conflict Prevention

Increase support to mechanisms for the rapid deployment of conflict prevention expertise (similar to what the Civilian Stabilisation Group provides for stabilisation operations)

Focus UK conflict prevention funding on niche areas which act as a “force multiplier” to enhance the effectiveness of existing conflict prevention measures. These include better lessons learning, improved donor coordination and harmonisation of activities.

Limit the commissioning of additional research on the value for money of conflict prevention to lessons learning on “how to improve interventions”, particularly micro-studies.

Mandate that a study of baseline indicators be conducted at the commencement of each conflict prevention project so as to improve assessment of impact.

Engage OECD-DAC and donor partners to reach agreement on the definitions of “conflict prevention”, “peacebuilding” and related terms.

Peacebuilding

Focus peacebuilding activities on further addressing the seams between humanitarian support and development assistance.

Concentrate peacebuilding research on applied lessons learning pieces.

Mandate that a baseline study of demographic, social and economic indicators be conducted at the commencement of each peacebuilding project so as to improve assessment of impact.

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Peacekeeping

Support regional peacekeeping initiatives and commission research on lessons learned from such initiatives.

Look for ways to address the imbalance between the resources devoted to the international component of a PSO and the resources devoted to developing host nation capabilities.

Commission further research on the relative impact of peacekeeping in relation to other measures used in peace support operations. This research should test the implications of these conclusions for an integrated HMG policy response.

Mediation

Increase HMG support to the UN Mediation Support Unit and Mediation Support Standby Team and to international efforts to improve harmonisation and professionalisation of mediation.

Work with FCO to encourage more professional use of mediation approaches after the conclusion of peace agreements and during the deployment of peace operations.

Increase support to local and regional mediation capability and commission lessons learning research regarding such activities.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Understanding the Problem

Assessing the demand for Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) to meet international peacekeeping, peacebuilding and humanitarian reduction targets is a complex challenge with no simple answers. Since demand is essentially a limitless concept, assessing ‘demand’ alone makes for an exercise in futility unless it is tempered with the concept of supply and scarcity. If supply and demand must meet to make demand effective, an exercise like this needs to focus on assessing effective demand as a starting point.

There have been a number of experiences of major donor attempts to quantify demand for development aid. The 2004 Afghanistan needs assessment, which came up with a bill of $28.7bn for post-conflict reconstruction, or the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, are two examples. These examples should probably lead us to conclude that, given the costs and time required to assess even single country ‘demand’, it is unrealistic to expect to gain a detailed understanding of global demand in a comprehensive manner.

In sum, there are four key problems to overcome: demand side data, supply side data, targeting errors of exclusion and inclusion and problem of attribution.

Demand Side Data Gaps: Data describing the size and dynamic of the humanitarian and conflict “needs” are not systematically collected, leading to two fundamental problems. First, we have no way of knowing whether the crises we know about equal the sum of all crises and second we have limited understanding how expressions of total need relate to actual need.

Supply Side Data Gaps: On the supply side, aid agencies do not fully report what they pledge, commit and actually disburse. Unconventional donor spending, along with local and general population contributions are consistently underreported. International tracking systems are therefore are incomplete at best.

Targeting: Errors of Inclusion and Exclusion: Agencies cannot be confident that they are truly targeting the most vulnerable groups, or even clearly identifying what the actual needs are.

Attribution: Humanitarian and conflict interventions essentially work off past experience, case histories and anecdotal information. In essence they are not evidence driven. Very few humanitarian or conflict interventions attempt to uncover the true impact of their interventions.

Humanitarian

In terms of volume of supply on an annual basis, DFID tends to fund in line with its OECD-DAC partners; this trend is also in line with overall reported funding from all sources of humanitarian assistance. When we ran a regression analysis to see if there was a statistical correlation between changes in DFID funding per year and changes in measures of “demand” (number of people killed in disasters and the economic loss from disasters) we discovered that DFID funding is correlated with OECD spending from the same year and with economic damage from the previous year. While these correlations are only indicative, they do suggest that there is something of a herd response in funders of humanitarian activity. They also highlight the following challenges in assessing humanitarian demand.

First, the unknown unknowns. The number of natural disasters reported has increased exponentially since the 1950s. The obvious question is whether this represents an actual increase in disasters or simply increased reporting. We believe that lack of data, poor reporting and deliberate cover-up mean that humanitarian demand is never known in its totality. Second, there is the problem of mind-sets in donor agencies. A crisis may be labelled natural or man-made and may be perceived as in its relief phase or to have moved on to rehabilitation. There are questions, for instance, of how to label, and

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thus fund, situations of chronic physical dislocation and political violence, such as the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Afghanistan or Darfur-Sudan.

There are of course established mechanisms for assessing in a more tangible way “known needs” and understanding the relationships between supply and demand. The UN’s consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) allows us to compare a large body of UN appeals from year to year. The UN’s Financial Tracking System shows that, on average, for the last six years for which we have full data, 30% of the needs appealed for went unmet.

Promising approaches to assessing demand at a more comprehensive level include efforts to map the likelihood of humanitarian crises such as the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Humanitarian Aid’s Global Needs Assessment - Vulnerability Index and Crisis Index. This index seeks to rank states according to how vulnerable they are and how severe a crisis is going on. Another attempt to provide a more coherent picture of actual comparative needs across countries is being spearheaded by the FAO. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) uses a standardised methodology to classify food security levels on a sub-national basis and is widely seen as one of the most promising innovations in humanitarian aid targeting in the last two decades. However, neither of these methods yet make the leap from the relative ranking of crises, or crisis probability, to actual numbers of people in need.

In sum, all donors suffer from the lack of transparency in the process by which humanitarian need is calculated, the outcomes of funding mechanisms which are essentially voluntary and the weakness of agencies’ ability to efficiently target their assistance. DFID aspires to be needs driven and hopes that supply is regulated by demand. There are four key weaknesses in this chain. First, we have very little idea of the relationship between the humanitarian need identified and the true scale of need. Second, when need is identified it is rarely fully met, often missing the mark by 30%. Third, when funds do flow, the state of the art of aid-targeting can lead to exclusion errors of over 20%. Finally, an increasing proportion of that aid which is funded, and is targeted, is flowing to what are essentially long term social support programmes, saving lives for sure, but also locking donors into inescapable annual funding.

Disaster Risk Reduction

Disaster Risk Reduction is not some sort of “ahead of time” humanitarian action. Rather, it is far more an approach to development, one that recognizes the inherently risky nature of life, livelihoods and economies in poverty stricken environments. It is an approach which aims to identify risk and helps people reduce their vulnerability to that risk. Its value lies in the lives and economy saved but also in the change in mind-set it brings. Our tentative conclusion from the material we have reviewed supports the view that DRR does make economic sense, especially when viewed over the longer term. However, we see no way to usefully calculate global DRR needs.

On the supply side, differences in donor coding plague quantification. For instance, DFID’s own reports have it devoting an average of just over 8% of its humanitarian funding to DRR from 2006-2008 but DFID’s returns to OECD-DAC for the same period report a 5% share for the DAC category of disaster prevention and preparedness. Nonetheless, the best figures that we have available are that DAC donors allocated 1% ($81m) and 2.7% ($302m) of total humanitarian spending in 2007 and 2008 to DRR. Thus, even on DAC figures, DFID is allocating proportionately more to DRR than all except Japan – which has a high figure of 13% -, Belgium and Spain.

Conflict Prevention

Conflict prevention can encompass an extremely wide spectrum of activities and tools, spanning the hard and soft power continuum. It involves structural conflict prevention, as a longer-term process aimed at improving political, economic and social circumstances, and operational conflict prevention focused upon crisis-oriented interventions. Conflict prevention often overlaps with peacebuilding, and indeed also with stabilisation. In order to make useful analytical and quantitative judgements on

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conflict prevention, we would have to have some certainty in four areas: the causes of conflict; the quantity of conflict; the costs of conflict; and the supply of, demand for, and impact of conflict prevention activities. The methodological approaches and datasets that would answer these questions remain weak:

There is a vigorous scholarly debate on causes of conflict and wars. The evidence base is generally better at demonstrating the correlation of certain factors with conflict rather than a causal nexus; hence the importance of conducting a detailed conflict assessment for each individual case.

Datasets on conflict reflect some of the weaknesses of the humanitarian datasets. It is probably safe to conclude that the number and severity of armed conflicts worldwide have decreased in recent years but this provides little guide to future trends.

A considerable body of literature has sought to quantify and assess the costs of conflict. Direct and indirect costs of conflict can be defined extremely broadly to cover costs at local, regional and international levels but the various approaches to estimating the costs of conflict are based on rather shaky foundations. Notable efforts underway to improve the evidence base include work on the societal impact of war, epidemiological surveys and comparisons of battle deaths and WHO datasets.

Some scholars have attempted to quantify the cost-effectiveness of conflict prevention; for example, the work of Chalmers at Bradford. However, recent work has discounted the methodology used. Other attempts, for instance by Collier to assess the impact of security guarantees, also remain contentious. Nonetheless, while individual approaches have been criticised, scholars such as Lindgren, Brown and Rosencrance argue that undertaking successful conflict prevention saved or would have saved the international community costs in every case examined.

If quantifying the demand for and impact of conflict prevention in a macro sense is too ambitious a goal, then DFID may wish instead to focus on gaps and areas where the UK can make a particular contribution to enhance the effectiveness of existing conflict prevention efforts. Measures may include rapid deployment of expertise, better lessons learning, and improved donor harmonisation of activities.

Peacebuilding

Various definitions of “peacebuilding” have been proposed but the content of such definitions are complicated by related concepts such as “early recovery” and “stabilisation” as well as the overlaps between peacebuilding and conflict prevention. While there does appear to be a scholarly and policy consensus on the value of peacebuilding in the immediate aftermath of conflict to reduce the length and intensity of conflicts, the OECD cautions that “we do not have sufficient evidence to guide judgements regarding the relative value of different approaches measured against the resources expended, so it is difficult to establish a standard for assessing the relative costs of outcomes and impacts.”

The DAC does record “post-conflict peacebuilding” as an ODA category; DAC country sums disbursed in 2008 totalled just under $320m. However, the international consensus on a funding gap in the immediate aftermath of conflict has led to a plethora of institutional initiatives to provide more rapid donor support – including the UN Peacebuilding Fund; the World Bank State-and Peacebuilding Fund (SPF); the UNDP Thematic Trust Fund for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (CPR TTF); and the EU’s Instrument for Stability (IfS).

Based on these figures and the UN’s assessment of continuing demand, funding for peacebuilding would appear to be under-resourced. However, given the broadening scope of peace support operations, which now involve deployment of police and civilian expertise in addition to soldiers, more work is required to disaggregate international community spending on peacebuilding as distinct from peacekeeping. Key issues for future UK funding consideration include balancing early recovery with

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longer-term peacebuilding imperatives and ensuring that there is a seamless transition from humanitarian support to development assistance. OECD INCAF’s caution should however be borne in mind, that “over-emphasising funding ‘gaps’, could misleadingly imply deficits that could be plugged, when more fundamental changes may be required.”

Peacekeeping

“Peacekeeping” is more amendable to precise definition than “conflict prevention” and “peacebuilding”. However, key definitional issues include whether “peacemaking” and “peace enforcement” are included, leading to some broader category of “peace support operations” (PSO) as employed in UK doctrine, and how military interventions such as Afghanistan and Iraq should be treated (ISAF tends to be included in peacekeeping datasets while Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom are not).

There is reason to believe that peacekeeping is effective, at least in certain circumstances. Williams argues that peacekeeping in Africa since 1990 has been “a major contributing factor to the 60 per cent decline in the number and magnitude of African conflicts over the same period.” Doyle and Sambanis agree that UN peace operations have contributed positively to post-civil war transitions. Collier favourably cites the positive Copenhagen Consensus 2 assessment of peacekeeping and suggests that doubling UN peacekeeping expenditure would significantly decrease the risk of renewed conflict. De Waal however casts doubt on the effectiveness of peacekeeping and peacebuilding in African countries with weak institutions and strong patrimonial social structures. If he is correct, a key lesson for the international community will be the importance of intimate knowledge of local context and consequently the potential value of regional bodies such as the AU.

Organisations including DPKO, SIPRI, and NYU’s Center for International Conflict (CIC) consider that demand for peacekeeping far outstrips supply. In 2008, 23 UN missions fell around 22,800 personnel short of authorised strength. One interesting observation on the supply side is the significant disparity of scale between funds provided to central authorities as opposed to the costs of PSOs. For example, in East Timor, the central authorities received $59.2m for 2000-01 while UNTAET costs were some $600m.

Mediation

A growing body of scholarship points to third party mediation as being a significant contributor to a reduced number of violent conflicts in recent years combined with an increased numbers of conflicts successfully ended or managed. The key point is that mediation, in a number of cases, seems to work. Mack notes that in the post-Cold War period, twice as many conflicts have ended through negotiated settlement as through victory and that the rate of negotiated settlements is accelerating. Griffiths and Whitfield note that “by 2004, more conflicts had been settled by negotiation in the previous 15 years than in the last two hundred, mostly facilitated by third parties and driven by the comparative activism of the UN and regional organisations.”

Mediation is undertaken by a large number and variety of actors. The playing field is crowded and, compared with conflict prevention, peacebuilding and peacekeeping, mediation is well resourced. Nonetheless, there are three notable supply-side issues to which DFID could make a positive contribution:

Helping to consolidate efforts at harmonisation and professionalisation, for instance working with the UN Mediation Support Unit.

There appears to be further need for mediation after the conclusion of peace agreements and during the deployment of peace operations.

There appears to be a need to address the relative lack of international support to local and regional mediation capability such as the AU’s Panel of the Wise.

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1 UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM

Assessing the demand for Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) to meet international peacekeeping, humanitarian and poverty reduction targets is a complex challenge with no simple answers. Since demand is essentially a limitless concept, assessing ‘demand’ alone makes for an exercise in futility unless it is tempered with the concept of supply and scarcity. If supply and demand must meet to make demand effective, an exercise like this needs to focus on assessing effective demand as a starting point. In other words, the core problem to be addressed here is not just quantifying the demand for aid per se, across the different set of functional priorities (i.e. humanitarian, disaster risk reduction, conflict prevention, mediation etc.) but rather identifying priority needs (and related gaps). This introductory section explores a standard market-based approach to supply and demand for the main functional priorities supported by CHASE, even though aid remains effectively a public not private activity.

This section provides a brief overview of (i) examples from country based demand assessments; (ii) the challenges of assessing demand and supply; (iii) the challenges to developing demand side management approaches; and (iv) a summary of the definitional issues affecting the main categories of observation in this study.

1.1 Costing the ‘Demand’ for Assistance: Some Examples

In 2004 the Government of Afghanistan, supported by the World Bank and UN Agencies, embarked on a countrywide costing-exercise to place a value on the cost of meeting all political, security and socio-economic transition goals over a period of seven years. Over a period of six months, a team of more than 200 experts developed a $28.7bn public investment programme in support of post-conflict reconstruction, on the basis of which donors pledged more than $8.4bn to cover the first three years of engagement. Similar costing exercises in Iraq, Sudan, East Timor and countries in the Western Balkans have been undertaken, though with a less comprehensive approach. They have had varied successes in turning donor pledges into actual commitments on the ground. However, even though these exercises were conducted in order to value ‘demand’, in all cases, aid delivery was slow, often poorly coordinated and targeted, poorly sequenced and prioritised. As a result, given the numbers of agencies involved, the exact value of supply has been hard to assess; as has its actual impact. Moreover, outside of these high priority international engagements, and in countries where humanitarian crises are beyond the purview of the international media, such as Burma and North Korea, there are probably even larger gaps between donor pledges and actual demand.

Another example of efforts to assess demand is the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative of the World Bank and IMF, which led to the development of Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) in Afghanistan, East Timor, Ethiopia, Iraq, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Sudan amongst other countries. The HIPC demonstrates that, even though supported by the international community, and based on costed service delivery targets within a medium term fiscal framework, such demand assessments by and large remain substantially underfunded.

Lessons from these examples highlight that:

The concept of ‘demand’ remains both theoretical and contentious and so efforts are best placed on strengthening the prioritisation, composition and targeting of existing supply;

Whilst pledges lead to commitments, given the high transaction cost of aid delivery, particularly in the humanitarian and post-conflict setting, only 40-60 per cent of all assistance may end up with actual beneficiaries and targeted stakeholders;

The costs and time required to assess even single country ‘demand’ makes the prospect of gaining a detailed understanding of global demand in a comprehensive manner unrealistic;

The bottom line is that, while there is a clear need to identify a better evidence-based approach to determining the demand for external assistance in core areas of the aid business, as well as the effectiveness of such interventions in crisis and conflict-affected zones, the solutions do not exist out there. Significant additional research will be needed to help answer this need.

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1.2 Challenges in Understanding Supply and Demand

In assessing the effective demand for development aid, it is essential to balance independent theory with institutional theory, to bridge the perspective and responsibility gaps that divide both sets of analysis. The supply of and demand for aid does not work like a market for vegetables. It is planned, principled and driven by internationally endorsed outcomes. Meeting demand is about the price of securing a peace, the price of limiting human suffering or the price of saving lives. In other words, the notion of “demand” is as much about the social and political constructs of the suppliers as of any independent measure of human need.

At the institutional level, the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC), has adopted principles of engagement to support aid effectiveness. These principles, reflected in the Paris Declaration, include ownership, alignment and harmonisation. Yet, in the absence of an effective government counterpart or financial management system to channel direct budget support, these principles often fail to be implemented at all. Instead, funds flow through non-state institutions such as non-governmental organisations, federations (ICRC/IFRC) and civil society organisation/action groups. In the humanitarian domain, operating principles are encoded in norms such as the seven 1965 Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, the 1994 ‘Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and non-Governmental Organisations in Disaster Relief’ and the more recently consolidated, Sphere Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response. In the humanitarian response field therefore, the effective goal statement derives not from the Millennium Development Goals but from these principles and standards; namely that humanitarian assistance is given to save lives and livelihoods in the aftermath of a crisis and is given solely on the basis of need, with the most acute and life threatening needs priorities.

In relation to data sources, various institutions track aid spending against international targets by donor, function and country. Aid expenditure tracking systems (OECD QWIDS, CRED Em-Dat, UN-OCHA FTS, SIPRI) successfully capture various pieces of the supply and demand equation, but comprehensive analysis that might assist bilateral agencies such as DFID-CHASE in making spending and prioritisation decision is lacking. On the academic side, while the work of Collier, Chalmers, Cramer, Anderson, Brown, M.E., Nathan, Sambanis, Stiglitz and Bilmes, Suhrke, Astri and Ingrid Samse, De Waal, Boyce, J et al, have all contributed to this debate, none have solved the problem of how to create an evidence based approach that shapes and scales engagement to meet humanitarian and conflict-related needs.

1.3 Challenges to Applying Demand Side Management to These Domains

So, what does this mean for strengthening demand side management?

First, the concept of ‘demand’ is complicated by the fact that aid tends to be supply and not demand driven in the first place. Moreover, the word ‘demand’ is impossible to quantify because ‘demands’ are of course endless, and would need to be quantified over time (immediate, short, medium and longer term), space (geographical location) and function (saving lives, managing or ending conflicts etc.)

Second, there is compelling logic not just to focus on demand per se, but rather to look at supply and demand gaps in the seven core areas identified, assuming that supply and demand data were available to allow calculations to take place. Whilst this is a challenging undertaking, it would allow (in principle) a more rational approach to prioritisation to emerge. Third, beyond supply and demand issues, it becomes equally important to quantify the effectiveness of aid, against its intended purpose.

In addition to demand, supply and aid effectiveness issues, the functional classifications provided for the seven groups are not universally used and even within OECD DAC there are considerable overlaps between functions, as well as definitional blurs. This hampers efforts to map these categories to the supply data that is available. Finally, the costs and perhaps even benefits of doing nothing – the counterfactual - simply cannot be known, even before we deal with the issue of false positives and false negatives. In sum, in identifying the strategic and practical constraints to demand side management, so that we can forecast the future, there are four key problems to overcome:

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demand side data, supply side data, targeting errors of exclusion and inclusion and problem of attribution.

Demand Side Data Gaps: Data describing the size and dynamic of the humanitarian and conflict problem are not systematically collected, leading to two fundamental problems. First, we have no way of knowing whether the crises we know about equal the sum of all crises and second, we have limited understanding how our expressions of total need relate to actual need.

Supply Side Data Gaps: On the supply side, aid agencies do not fully report what they pledge, commit and actually disburse and international databases and tracking systems are therefore are incomplete at best. Where interventions include other instruments, e.g. peacekeepers or integrated peacebuilding missions, the data problems become even more complex.

Targeting: Errors of Inclusion and Exclusion: The measurement problems already alluded to mean agencies cannot be confident that they are truly targeting the most vulnerable groups, or even clearly identifying what the actual needs are.

Attribution: Humanitarian and conflict interventions essentially work off past experience, case histories and anecdotal information. In essence they are not evidence driven. To add more uncertainty to this, very few humanitarian or conflict interventions attempt to uncover the true impact of their interventions and reporting of transaction and delivery costs, many of which are exorbitant, remains patchy.

1.4 Implications for this Report

This section has problematised the very notion of demand and supply in these domains and identified the practical obstacles to making progress. What do these general observations mean in more detail for assessing the supply of resource and demand for services in the major functional areas identified as priorities by CHASE? In summary, the relevance of the problem statement to each area under analysis is as follows:

Humanitarian: The problem of assessing the demand for humanitarian assistance is partly mitigated by the fact that a large number of humanitarian problems are structural in nature, and therefore in part predictable. Where they are not, a rapid and adaptive response capacity is needed involving fungible resource and derogated/expedited procedures.

Disaster Risk Reduction: Disaster risk reduction is difficult to classify, even harder to quantify, and undermined by counterfactuals, false positive and false negative responses, including targeting errors of inclusion and exclusion. As we shall argue, it is particularly difficult to separate out many DRR interventions from broader developmental interventions.

Conflict Prevention: Conflict prevention is an extremely broad category of engagement, with tools covering the spectrum of structural and proximate prevention, shading over into peacebuilding to prevent recurrences of conflict. Demand for prevention is hence hard to separate out from other areas while supply is at least as much about non-aid instruments (diplomatic, military, informational).

Peacebuilding in the Immediate Aftermath of Conflict: Completing the triple-transition (political, security and socio-economic) in the immediate aftermath of conflict is costly, hard to sequence and prioritise. Increasingly, there are also extensive overlaps with conflict prevention and peacekeeping interventions, as well as elements of “normal” development.

Peacekeeping: It is important to differentiate between post conflict peacekeeping missions such as Rwanda and Sierra Leone, those that are attempting to support a peace process, such as Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, and those that resulted from “invasion” such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mediation: Mediation is a core tool of conflict prevention. The bulk of mediation efforts are focused on political engagement rather than development support but the increased focus on

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using civil society and track two mediation efforts, including supporting mediation as part of a peacebuilding, are making this a more significant area for development agencies.

2 CATEGORIES

2.1 Humanitarian

This section examines a number of aspects of the global funding of, and response to, humanitarian crises. First, it looks at our ability to say anything meaningful about what total global humanitarian need is. Second, it examines a number of models which are moving towards predicting global needs. Third, we examine the system’s ability to fulfil existing demand for humanitarian funding. Fourth, we reflect on how well targeted present humanitarian aid is. Finally we look at relative UK performance by considering how generous the UK is compared with other DAC donors and what aid agencies, receiving DFID’s funding, think of DFID’s behaviour. In addition, this section touches briefly on research presently being done to better understand future humanitarian crises and response.

2.1.1 What is the True Demand?

Figure 1 shows the funding trend for humanitarian assistance this decade. What it tells us is that DFID tends to fund, in volume terms, in line with its OECD-DAC partners and that this trend is also in line with overall reported funding from all sources of humanitarian assistance. Figure 2 shows the DFID and DAC funding again, only this time plotted alongside two measures of “demand”, the number of people killed in disasters and the economic loss from disasters. These latter figures are drawn from the EM-DAT database which attempts to record figures for all humanitarian crises, but is known to have a bias towards natural and technological disasters, thus probably under-representing deaths and damage from conflicts.1

Figure 1: DAC Member humanitarian spending 1990-2008

Figure 2: Comparison of spending (supply) against two measures of demand. (All figures have been divided by the series

average for the time period. A score of 1.0 indicates average, 1.1 10% above average, 0.9 10% below average.)

We ran a simple regression analysis to see if there was a statistical correlation between changes in DFID funding per year and changes in any of the other variables. DFID funding is correlated with two

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things. First with OECD spending from the same year, and second with economic damage from the previous year! There is no correlation between the amount the UK spent and the numbers of people killed or people affected. Figures 1 and 2 indeed suggest that there is something of a herd response in funders of humanitarian activity.

The above analysis highlights a fundamental underlying problem with the proposition that global humanitarian assistance is needs driven. The problem breaks down into a number of sub-sets.

First, the unknown unknowns. Figure 3. shows the historical data on numbers of disasters per year since 1900. It looks like a classic Malthusian exponential curve. The database this graph comes from (EM-DAT) was established in the 1970s. Data before that is gathered by going back over the historical records. But, is the graph showing the reality of disaster occurrence or the reality of poor communications and reporting as one goes back in time?

Figure 3: Are the number of disasters going up every year because there are more disasters or because, with better

communications and more freedom of the press, more disasters get reported?

We only react to what we know. Crises can go unnoticed because they take place hidden from view. The controversy over how many people died after the Rwanda genocide, in what is now the DRC, is a classic case of this.2 Deaths were occurring across a huge region of dense tropical jungle, in an area with virtually no governance, no aid agencies and an international presence less than keen to investigate what was happening. In the past we have seen deliberate hiding of crises. In the 1950s at least 30 million people starved to death in China’s Great Leap forward”3, yet this did not receive media headlines and solicited no humanitarian reaction from donors. Lack of data, poor reporting and deliberate cover-up mean that humanitarian demand is never known in its totality.

Second, there is the problem of mind-set in donors and response agencies. Crises tend to get labelled and labels stick. A crisis may be labelled natural or man-made. It may be perceived as in its relief phase or have moved on to rehabilitation. Today, particularly in situations of chronic physical dislocation and political violence, as we see in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Afghanistan or Darfur-Sudan, how the situations are labelled matters. In Afghanistan, the donor community, for justifiable political reasons, has sought to label the country as post-conflict. This in turn has led to a sidelining of the humanitarian imperative and an emphasis on reconstruction4.

2.1.2 Approaches to Deducing Global Demand

One approach to try to overcome these biases is to stand back from the daily crises and map the likelihood of humanitarian crises. The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Humanitarian Aid has created a Global Needs Assessment - Vulnerability Index and Crisis Index5. This index, developed for each country on an annual basis, seeks to rank states according to how vulnerable they are and how much of a crisis is going on. In the words of ECHO it seeks to “identify those countries

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that are home to people who ought to be priority beneficiaries.” So, it is a tool to tell you where to look for humanitarian need, but it does not tell you what that need looks like, nor the scale of need.

A promising attempt to provide a more coherent picture of actual comparative needs across countries is being spearheaded by the FAO. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)6 uses a standardised methodology to classify food security levels on a sub-national basis. The thesis is that “using a common scale, which is comparable across countries, will make it easier for donors, agencies and governments to identify priorities for intervention before they become catastrophic.” The methodology has been tested in nine African and five Asian countries and is widely seen as one of the most promising innovations in humanitarian aid targeting in the last two decades.

However, neither of these methods yet makes the leap from the relative ranking of crises, or crisis probability, to actual numbers of people in need.

2.1.3 Known Needs

There are of course more established mechanisms for assessing in a more tangible way “known needs.” The UN’s consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) is one of the main mechanisms used to appeal for humanitarian funds. It is not the only mechanism, some states object to what they see as the stigma associated with making such an appeal and many small crises do not warrant the work needed to produce a CAP. Nonetheless, the CAP allows us to compare a large body of UN appeals from year to year. Through its Financial Tracking System, the UN keeps good records on what is applied for and how much of those appeals are met. The picture is consistent over time, as shown in figure 4 below.

Figure 4: UN-CAP Appeal. Data for the past years suggest that, consistently, the UN-CAP appeals are underfunded by 30%.

(Source: Development Initiatives analysis 2009, UN OCHA FTS data)

On average, for the last six years for which we have full data, 30% of the needs appealed for went unmet. If we take at face value that the CAP appeals are a good measure of need and are not consistently inflated, this is a shocking figure when we recall that these are appeals for humanitarian needs, i.e. those that must be met to save lives. The implication is of a direct link between donors’ failures to meet needs and increased mortality associated with the crisis.

Disaggregated, the picture is worst for many appeals, particularly the smaller ones. As figure 5 shows, whilst there is the occasional appeal over funded, each year, at least one appeal fails to raise more than 30% of its needs.

3,9582,197

4,020 3,365 3,7195,082

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0

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US$ million

Unmet need

Funding

Requirement

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Figure 5: Occasionally CAP appeals are over funded. Those that are underfunded tend to be the smaller appeals. Over the

past decade many small appeals have failed to raise more than 20% of what they need. (Source: Development Initiatives

Analysis 2009, UN OCHA FTS data]

2.1.4 Targeting

Humanitarian assistance is supposed to flow to the most urgent and needy cases. It needs to flow when people need it, to where they need it, in an appropriate amount, for appropriate things and through effective and efficient systems. 7 The big question of course is who needs aid? Typically agencies worry about exclusion errors (errors where people who should have been targeted are left out) and, less worrying, inclusion errors (people are included in aid distributions who should not have been). The former reduces the effectiveness of aid, the latter its efficiency.

A recent study by the FIC into targeting of food aid in Darfur, “concludes that there is very little household targeting of food aid at the local level. The accepted basis of entitlement of food assistance in Darfur is based on group status (IDP, host/resident, rural), not need (food insecurity).” 8 It estimates that, within the population the WFP defines as being in need, the targeting methodology is leading to exclusion errors in the order of 28% and inclusion errors of around 22%. In addition, there are large, probably at-need, segments of the population, principally in pastoralist areas, who are simply excluded from the calculations of potential beneficiaries.

Darfur is not atypical of modern major crises. It is also a crisis where DFID invests heavily. These targeting problems are not unique to Darfur. They are a reality across most complex emergencies9. So, even when an appeal is issued and funded and an operation gets underway it is still highly likely that upwards of 20% of those who should have been assisted, are not.

At the global level, the CAP process, referred to above, is also trying to improve its targeting, through the work of the IASC led Needs Assessment Task Force and the NGO-led ACAPS process. These initiatives seek to improve the quality of both the initial needs assessments done in emergencies and the translation of those assessments into better operational plans. Though promising, these new initiatives have yet to show results and, to the outside observer, seem to be having a hard time escaping the system politics of agency positioning, the bureaucratic tendency to favour control over innovation and the reticence to invest in rigorous data gathering and analysis.

In its first ever report trying to assess the overall state of the humanitarian system, ALNAP commends agencies for increases in efficiency, relevance of programming and effectiveness but found a systematic underinvestment in local capacity building, an over reliance on top down command and control management systems and a continuing inability to reach a sufficient percentage of those affected by disasters. The report found “a nearly universal perception of insufficiency, despite quantitative evidence of progress.”10

81.6% 89.3% 94.8%

121.1%

96.1% 88.5%

123.3%

100.0% 100.0%

17.2% 21.7% 17.6% 21.9% 14.2%30.4% 36.4%

12.4%25.4%

Best and worst covered CAP appeals, 2000‐2008

Highest level of needs met Lowest level of needs met

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2.1.5 The Dependent Case Load

In most people’s minds, humanitarian assistance implies the funding of short term emergency operations to address a crisis. Over the past decade, this picture has gradually changed both in terms of absolute spending and proportional spending. Figure 6 shows absolute spending by OECD-DAC donors and figure 7 the proportion of their funding that goes to short, medium and long term operations. What is startling is that the proportion of funding going into long term “humanitarian” operations (those that have been running for 8 or more years) has risen from 25% in the mid 90s to between 35% and 40% today. Project this forward a decade and by 2020 well over half of all humanitarian spending could be in these long term operations.

Figure 6: Absolute funding to short, medium and long term operations (Source: Development Initiatives 2009 from OECD DAC

data)

Figure 7: When viewed as a proportion of funding, it is clear that, increasingly, humanitarian funding goes to long term holding

operations, not to short term crisis response. (Source: Development Initiatives 2009 from OECD DAC data)

What this really underlines are the massive structural problems in many states that receive humanitarian assistance. In failed states, like Somalia, the Occupied Territories and Afghanistan, this represents a population that is totally dependent on outside assistance for survival. This is still humanitarian assistance, in that it is a life saving operation, but it has now become, to all intents and purposes, open ended. In these situations, there is no foreseeable ethical exit strategy. If the trend of an increasing proportion of humanitarian aid going into these situations is valid, then this has a major implication for donor funding strategy. It means that an increasing proportion of DFID’s humanitarian budget is going to be pre-defined, year on year and an increasingly smaller proportion available to respond to new and unexpected crises. In essence humanitarian action may be turning into an international welfare system.

An additional and closely related explanation may lie in the growth of public safety net programmes, as discussed below in the Disaster Risk Reduction section. These systems, like the Productive Safety Net in Ethiopia, are often billed as an alternative to humanitarian response and as a way of helping

02000400060008000

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t 2007 prices)

Unspecified by country

Long‐term (more than 8 years)

Medium‐term (3‐8 years)

Short‐term (3 years or less)

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% Short‐term (3 years or less)

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% Long‐term (more than 8 years)

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the most impoverished escape the spectre of famine. Whilst this may be true, it is also probable that they are being funded, at least in part, using humanitarian assistance.

2.1.6 How Does DFID Compare with Other Donors?

We have two measures to compare DFID’s relative humanitarian generosity to that of other DAC donors. First, as shown in figure 9 we can calculate contributions as a percentage of Gross National Income (GNI). Using 2007 figures, we can see that the UK scores “more generous” than the OECD-DAC average, but lies well behind Ireland and the Scandinavian states. Using a second measure (figure 10), dollars contributed per citizen, thus measuring generosity per capita, the UK comes out as more generous than the DAC average but significantly less generous than Ireland, the Benelux states, and the Scandinavian states.

How to interpret these league tables? It is important to realise that the DAC average is heavily skewed by the absolute value of assistance from the United States. Figure 8 shows the absolute level of humanitarian funding for the top countries (excluding that which flows through the EC). The UK ranks second in absolute terms, but all donors are dwarfed by the US spending and the US ranks very low on both per capita spending and spending as a proportion of GNI. This in turn significantly pulls the DAC averages down. Bearing this in mind, it would be fair to say that, proportional to its wealth and population, the UK is not one of the more generous states. With a doubling of funding, it would just scrape into the top third of the DAC donors.

Figure 8: US humanitarian spending dominates all other DAC states

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Figure 9: DAC donor total humanitarian assistance contributions as shares of GNI, 2007 (Source: Development Initiatives

analysis 2009, UN OCHA FTS data]

Figure 10: DAC donor total humanitarian assistance contributions per citizen, 2007 (Source: Development Initiatives analysis

2009, UN OCHA FTS data]

2.1.7 How Do Aid Agencies See DFID’s Humanitarian Donorship?

Starting in 2007, the Spanish based NGO and consultancy, Dara, has been compiling an annual humanitarian response Index. It seeks, by means of a standard interview process with aid agencies, to compile data on 58 factors, grouped into five “pillars” to rank the quality of OECD-DAC members' humanitarian assistance. In essence, it is a measure of donor’s implementation of the Good Humanitarian Donorship principles, to which DFID has signed up11. Any ranking system which builds index values by adding together essentially qualitative data can always be criticised – how much weighting should each individual factor be given, have interviewing techniques been consistent across all donors, has language and interpretation skewed the data? Thus, absolute values are usually regarded with caution, but, assuming consistency of data gathering across time and countries, relative values, can be enlightening.

In the 2009 survey12, the UK (DFID) is ranked first or second amongst donors for:

Equitable distribution of funding against levels of crisis and vulnerability.

Funding of forgotten emergencies and those with low media coverage

0.02%0.02%0.02%0.02%0.02%0.02%0.03%0.03%

0.03%0.03%

0.04%0.06%

0.07%0.08%

0.11%0.11%0.11%0.11%

0.00% 0.02% 0.04% 0.06% 0.08% 0.10% 0.12%

Italy

Australia

DAC total*

United Kingdom

New Zealand

Switzerland

Netherlands

Ireland

Sweden

$9$10$10$10$12$15

$26$27

$32$46

$56$56

$92$98

DAC total

United States

United Kingdom

Switzerland

Netherlands

Ireland

Norway

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Funding of IFRC and ICRC appeals

Funding of UN consolidated and interagency appeals

And funding to CERF and other quick disbursement mechanisms.

There are 23 countries ranked in the survey, thus the lowest ranking available is 23 and a median ranking would be 12th any ranking higher than 12 puts DFID in the bottom half of the league table as it were. DFID achieves its lowest rankings for:

Generosity and burden sharing (12th)

Equitable distribution of funding to different crisis countries (17th)

Funding local capacity (16th)

UN-earmarked funding (13th)

Funding UN coordination mechanisms and common services (9th)

DFID’s pillar by pillar ranking, compared with the DAC average, and DAC minimum, is shown in figure 11.

Figure 11 DFID's scores compared with DAC average and DAC minimum (Source: DARA, reality if aid report, 2009)

Overall the UK (DFID) ranks 9th on the HRI 2009 rankings. In 2008 it was ranked a place higher, 8th.

What does this data tell us about DFID? It tells us that overall, aid agencies in the field feel DFID is one of the better donors, when compared across the breadth of the 23 DAC countries (see figure 12). Once DFID has decided to commit to a particular crisis, agencies see DFID as a rational donor, one which takes responding to need seriously, which invests across a range of agencies, invests more than most in supporting learning, and, outside of immediate response, is willing to invest in the UN mechanisms set up to create multi-lateral rapid action facilities. On the downside (from the operational agencies’ perspective), DFID is still viewed as an agency of a country with a strong foreign policy agenda, hence the low ranking for “Equitable distribution of funding to different crisis countries”. It is also viewed as a donor that invests less than most in developing local capacity.

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Figure 12 DFID’s ranking on the five aggregated pillar values

2.1.8 What May the Future Hold?

Oxfam GB, in its 2010 report “The Right to Survive: the humanitarian challenge for the 21st century”13, estimates that some 98% of the 250 million people affected annually by natural disasters in the first half of this decade, were caught up in climate related crises. Oxfam predicts that this number could grow to 350 million in five years time. They also make a linkage to conflict as a consequence of climate disasters, predicting that “new and existing conflicts, added to the growth in climate-related disasters, are likely to create, by 2015, an unprecedented level of need for humanitarian assistance that could overwhelm the world’s current humanitarian capacity.” The model they used, based on the CRED data referred to earlier, looks at numbers of people affected since 1980 and constructs a linear future trend for the present data.

However, the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), using the same database and a time period 1991 to 2005, shows no such alarmingly inexorable upward trend14. ISDR’s data shows much more year on year variance including a peak of 600 million people affected globally by natural disasters in 2002 with the 1998 figure approaching the future predicted 350 million figure. In essence while the predictions of 350 million people affected by 2015 may be true, the reality is that we have already had at least two years and maybe three (1987 is the other outlier) where global affected exceeded 350 million. In addition, such predictions are of absolute numbers, not percentage of population, or made comparative to the ability of individual countries’ economies to address the needs of the disaster affected.

The point here is that the data we are using to describe the past and predict the future is messy, the predictions and models have many caveats and are best used as hints of what is to come, not predictors.

Understanding this uncertainty, the Humanitarian Futures Programme at Kings College London, led by Dr Randolph Kent, has sought to build dialogue between scientists, the corporate sector, governments and agencies over how they might better prepare for and tackle the sort of future scenarios we can envisage.15 The central thesis of the project is that the future crises that

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humanitarian agencies are likely to be asked to address will be more complex, less predictable and more likely to cascade into multiple disasters than at present. In order to tackle this, agencies need to think radically in terms of new partnerships and the way they make present partnerships function.

In their Humanitarian Horizons studies16 on how future demographics, globalisation, climatic and political trends are likely to affect the humanitarian enterprise, the Feinstein International Center, working with Kings College’s Humanitarian Futures Programme, has shown how the intersection of economic, environmental, social and political trends will lead to a humanitarian future far less predictable and far more volatile than in the past. The Horizons project has stressed the need for agencies to better equip themselves to innovate, to form new partnerships, to programme to the specifics of context and to be driven by data and evidence rather than by anecdote and ideology.

2.1.9 Conclusion on Humanitarian Issues

In the humanitarian field, agencies see DFID as a reliable and thoughtful donor, though one that is not above marrying humanitarian and political need. DFID suffers, as do all donors, from the lack of transparency in the process by which humanitarian need is calculated, the outcomes of funding mechanisms which are essentially voluntary and the weakness of agencies’ ability to effectively target their assistance. DFID, like many donor bodies, aspires to be needs driven and hopes that supply is regulated by demand. However we have identified four key weaknesses in this chain. First, we have very little idea of the relationship between the humanitarian need identified and the true scale of need. Second, when need is identified it is rarely fully met, often missing the mark by 30%. Thirdly when funds do flow, the state of the art of aid-targeting can lead to exclusion errors of over 20%. Finally, an increasing proportion of that aid which is funded, and is targeted, is flowing to what are essentially long term social support programmes, saving lives for sure, but also locking donors into inescapable annual funding.

In comparison to other major donors, it can be reasonably argued that DFID gives less than the wealth and population size of the UK would lead one to expect, but, that agencies on the ground in general hold DFID in high esteem as a donor.

Looking to the future, DFID, like all actors in the humanitarian system, will have to be more willing to experiment with new partnerships, to invest in data gathering to drive programming and to nuance its application of policy to suit each individual country and the context of each crisis.

2.1.10 Recommendations

Encourage and fund research to better understand the relationship between probable total global humanitarian needs and presently identified needs.

Work with the Good Humanitarian Donorship group to set targets for the percent funding of the CAPs which represents an acceptable level. Support this by encouraging more coherent, rigorous and sustained efforts to improve needs assessments.

Continue to invest in the UN’s CERF, support the Common Humanitarian Fund (CHF) and the Emergency Response Funds (ERFs). Be far more assertive in pressing the UN Secretariat and its agencies to demonstrate effectiveness and efficiency.

Foster studies linked to pilot applications to test and ultimately scale up new approaches to humanitarian assistance.

Review the structure of present DFID humanitarian funding, noting what percentage goes into long term humanitarian “holding” operations. It may be that the time is now ripe to break the dualistic mold of relief or development.

2.2 Disaster Risk Reduction

Investing in disaster risk reduction makes intuitive sense, but does it make economic sense? The short answer is yes, probably. It depends how you add things up.

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Venton and Venton in their programme level study of two DRR programmes in India17, showed that two projects, which invested in water pumps, boats for evacuation, better building techniques, capacity building of the local community and improved irrigation, as measures to reduce risk from floods and drought, achieved cost benefit rations of 1:3.76 and 1:13.38 respectively. They also report that a local low-interest loan project looked at separately, displacing local high-interest lenders, achieved a ratio of 1:57.80. The project, although normally classified as a development project, achieved huge advances in disaster risk reduction because it substantially strengthened the ability of villagers to economically withstand the immediate and longer lasting shock of drought and flood. All these are calculated over an assumed investment return period of 20 years. Other studies have reported similar rates of return. So, at the micro level, DRR pays off, in the long term.

It is important though to understand that these estimations are if anything, conservative. First, human life has been valued in the above calculation on the basis of wages lost, so every life saved by DRR, is worth, in these calculations, 20 year’s worth of wages. Almost certainly this undervalues human economic worth as it takes no account of the knock-on effects of lives saved or lost. A better measure may be ‘willingness to pay”, which is a measure of how much a surveyed population feels a life is worth. Using this measure the cost: benefit ration for DRR goes way up.

Second, quantitative measures as used above find it hard to incorporate the effects DRR has on confidence, trust and social cohesion, all of which are vital components for a society to survive a crisis, particularly violent crisis.

At the macro level, a review commissioned by DFID18 reports on World Bank and US Geological Survey estimates which contend that, if an extra $40 billion had been wisely invested in more disaster proof buildings, bridges and other infrastructure in the 1990s, the world would by now have “avoided” some $280 billion in economic loss: a cost/benefit ratio of 1:7. The same review reports that China estimates that its investment of $3.15 billion in flood control in the last 40 years has averted losses of $12 billion: a ration of 1:3.8.

So, at both the macro and micro levels, DRR is shown to be cost effective; if you invest in the right things and they pay back over a long enough period – 20 years in our Indian villages, 40 years in the case of China’s flood control. These calculations, particularly the future projections as opposed to the retrospective studies, assume a static model, one in which the nature of hazards remains the same and in which large unexpected disastrous events are absent. They also assume that the societies invested in are sufficiently stable that economic and social conditions do not erode badly over a 20 year period.

But, DFID has a major commitment to humanitarian investment in fragile states. If DRR is tied to humanitarian investment, then these calculations of steady return from stable economies and societies seem a bit of a gamble. Building bridges and road networks may well open up economies and help villages build resilience to the risk of local drought, but in Southern Afghanistan for example, such investment is likely to be blown up well before its 20 year investment return period.

In addition present day research on the likely effects of climate change, globalisation and, particularly in Africa, changing demographics, all point to an increasingly unpredictable and hazardous environment.19 Flood prevention measures to stop seasonal flooding are of little use if rainfall patterns change and flooding is no longer an issue.

2.2.1 DFID’s DRR Commitment

DFID supports DRR efforts through three mechanisms:

Supporting global disaster risk reduction efforts

Supporting efforts to reduce disaster risk at the country and regional levels

Ensuring communities are left less vulnerable to future crises by using its response as an opportunity to engage with developing country governments20

The last mechanism, usually referred to as the 10% rule, has achieved most publicity. Under this, DFID commits to spending up to 10% of its relief effort in larger operations (over £500,000) on

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disaster risk reduction. Since the policy came into place, it has programmed some £21m via this route, an average of £5.2m per year.

Why 10%? There is no real scientific logic behind the figure. The reality is that DFID programmes more of its DRR finding through long term commitment to international institutions and NGOs (see table 1) and these programmes probably do more than the “10%” to reduce disaster losses. But, the 10% is an extremely useful policy tool. It is a good way to raise the profile of disaster risk reduction, allowing it to be talked up at a time when the public, and affected states, are likely to be open to listening to such a message, and have their attention fixed on the tragic human cost of disasters. There is also some logic to not increasing the percentage too much. The assumption is that, if a state has suffered a major crisis, thus requiring significant relief aid, then, it is likely that its capacity to quickly absorb large amounts of funding into effective DRR is small. Thus 10% is enough to flag the issue and get things started, but is not a great deal to risk losing.

DRR Funds Committed 2006-Present21

Institutions

Organisation Total Commitment

World Bank Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) £5,180,000

International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) £4,000,000

Indian Ocean Consortium (IOC) £1,500,000

PAHO £2,250,000

ProVention £2,250,000

IFRC - DRR program £2,150,000

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) - International Strategy III £5,000,000

TOTAL £22,330,000

NGOs

Organisation Total Commitment

Practical Action £1,907,354

Tearfund £3,297,500

Christian Aid £2,500,000

Plan UK £2,017,488

ActionAid £2,809,700

IDS Consortium £1,106,860

Oxfam Consortium £1,071,000

TOTAL £14,709,902

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DRR "10%" Approved Commitments 2006-Present

Indian Ocean Tsunami £7,500,000

Yogyakarta Earthquake £500,000

Pakistan Earthquake £5,300,000

Burma Cyclone £4,500,000

China Earthquake £353,110

Haiti Hurricane £607,436

Indonesia Earthquake 2009 £300,000

Haiti Earthquake 2009 £2,000,000

TOTAL £21,060,546

TOTAL COMMITTED 2006-PRESENT £58,100,448

Table 1 DFID DRR Funding 2006 - Present

Noting DFID’s DRR investment structure it is interesting to reflect that recently there has been more focus on risk reduction, focusing on reducing exposure and increasing a household’s or community’s ability to cope with hazards. Many agencies are adopting the principle of ‘building back better’ – with the recovery effort serving as an opportunity for ‘transformation of society’. However this approach has been highly focused on infrastructure rather than livelihoods, posing major systematic problems with DRR programming, particularly in World Bank projects where governments often borrow, in order to achieve higher building standards, without establishing what would be necessary for longer term maintenance of the structures. For the most common recommendations for disaster planning, suggested building codes were too lax to be of much help in DRR, while improved weather forecasting (early warning) and environmental coping mechanisms were more likely to be beneficial and cost effective.22 Two other approaches that have been prominent in the recent DRR literature are administrative decentralization (as a way to reduce corruption and make interventions more community specific) and insurance schemes. The greater focus on social safety nets – via insurance schemes – is meant to transfer risk outside of the community as well as to encourage farmers to take greater production risks.23 However, though beneficial where effective regulation is present, insurance as a standalone intervention is insufficient. Another trend has focused on agricultural recovery and development seeking to identify “positive deviants” who have the capacity to take advantage of the opportunities of economic development and create jobs. Though this has worked for the winners, trickle down benefits for the landless and near landless households have not been forthcoming.24

A particular nuance of disaster risk reduction programming, which DFID is in a position to address, is the relationship between covariant and idiosyncratic shock25. Briefly, covariant shock is when everybody is affected by the same shock. Thus, everyone living near the coast is subject to the shock of sea level rise or everybody in a drought zone is subject to that drought. Idiosyncratic shock is the way additional and subsequent more localised shocks affect individuals within the broader community. Much large scale DRR programming seeks to deal with covariant shock: flood barriers and levies protect everyone for the same flood shock, but small scale programming, such as that described in the two Indian case studies above, can be tailored to deal with idiosyncratic shock. In studying pastoralist populations in Southern Ethiopia, Lybbert et al (2004)26 show that although covariate shocks, like rainfall decreases, clearly matter, it was household level specific factors that accounted for most of the observed changes in household wealth and hence resilience. Thus, DRR

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approaches which combine macro and micro level programming, are likely to be much more effective than either on their own.

2.2.2 Global DRR Needs and Supply

There is no way to calculate global DRR needs. First, disaster risk reduction is not a discretely defined set of activities. As we showed earlier, a micro-loan project can be a DRR activity, as can building a multi-million dollar dam, or decentralising state administrative structures. Second, the need is infinitely expandable. Like healthcare and security, one can never saturate need. Do you want citizens to be protected from the one in three year flood, the one in 20 or the one in 100 and so on? Should drought and flood loss insurance be available to everyone, and subsidised to what level, paying out against what percent of loss? Finally, no single body gathers data across states on their own calculations of DRR needs, however they define them. The UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) hosts a website which profiles each country, its disaster record and its DRR activities, but there is no attempt to collect and report actual spending on DRR. (http://www.preventionweb.net/english/countries/ )

What we do have is a record of what donors code as spending on Disaster Prevention and Preparedness, in their annual reports to OECD-DAC. Again, we need to caveat the data. Donors still have to make choices as to how individual funding lines get coded. So what is reported is only what they choose to categorise as disaster prevention and preparedness, not all those activities which achieve disaster prevention and preparedness. Second, even if the data was perfect, it is data on supply, not demand and then, only supply through international aid, not direct investment, not bank loans and not local investment.

With all these caveats, and bearing in mind the DAC has only been gathering data in this category for the past four or five years, there are a few things we can say. In 2007, DAC donors allocated $81m for disaster prevention and preparedness. In 2008, the latest year for which we have figures, this went up to $302m. This represented respectively 1 and 2.7 percent of total humanitarian spending (see figures 13 and 14 below).

Purpose US$ millions

Emergency/distress relief 4,621

Emergency food aid 2,171

Relief co-ordination; protection and support services 209

Reconstruction relief 1,065

Emergency/distress relief

51%Emergency

food aid 24%

Relief co-ordination;

protection and support services

2%

Reconstruction relief 12%

Disaster prevention and preparedness

1%

Totally unearmarked through UN

10%

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Disaster prevention and preparedness 80

Totally non-earmarked through UN 916

Figure 13: OECD/DAC 2007 humanitarian spending by category DRR, categorised as disaster prevention and preparedness,

accounts for 1% of spending (Source: Development Initiatives, from OECD/DAC data)

Purpose US$ millions

Emergency/distress relief 5140

Emergency food aid 3431

Relief co-ordination; protection and support services 414

Reconstruction relief 1201

Disaster prevention and preparedness 301

Core ODA to UN agencies 899

Figure 14: OECD/DAC 2008 Humanitarian Spending by Category DRR, categorised as disaster prevention and preparedness,

accounts for 2.7% of Spending (Source: Development Initiatives, from OECD/DAC data)

In the same years the UK reported a total of $743 million for humanitarian funding in 2007 and $1057 million in 2008. From the data presented earlier, we know that the UK has funded, since 2006, on average, approximately $87 million a year on DRR, thus 12% of its total humanitarian spending in 2007 and 8% in 2008. Across the three years 2006-2008 for which we have good total and DRR spending data, DFID has an average annual allocation to DRR of over 8%. However, what DFID reports above as DRR spending is not the same as it coded for disaster preparedness and prevention spending in its data submission back to OECD/DAC. Using this database, the only database that allows us to compare donor sending, DFID spends 5% of its 2008 humanitarian budget on disaster preparedness and prevention, not the 8% as calculated from DFID’’s internal figures. Thus, when compared with other DAC donors, DFID is allocating substantially proportionately more to DRR than all except Japan, Belgium and Spain (see figure 15).

Emergency/distress relief 45.1%

Emergency food aid 30.1%

Relief co‐ordination;

protection and support services 3.6%

Reconstruction relief 10.5%

Disaster prevention and preparedness

2.7%

Core ODA to UN agencies7.9%

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Figure 15: For 2008, the UK reported spending 5% of its humanitarian budget on DRR. This makes it the 4TH HIGHEST

spender in relative terms. (Source: Development Initiatives, from OECD/DAC data)

2.2.3 Safety Nets

Somewhere between humanitarian response and disaster risk reduction lie social safety nets. These schemes, almost always run by states, provide for some form of entitlement based safety net, in the form of cash or goods handouts, to which vulnerable citizens are entitled. State pension schemes are safety nets as are food stamp systems and most social security systems.

The Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia has experimented for the past five years with a non-relief based approach to countering Ethiopia’s chronic vulnerability to famine. It is designed as an asset protection mechanism for the household level and to create productive community assets. It delivers cash and food transfers in rural Ethiopia to up to 8 million every year, either through Public Works (85%) or as Direct Support (15%). It is tempting to see the PSNP as a brave alternative to the seemingly endless round of annual crisis appeals for famine relief in Ethiopia and as a way of helping people climb out of poverty and become more resilient to the shock of drought. However, a recent review of the program by IFPRI found that:

“the programme has little impact on participants on average, due in part to transfer levels that fell far below program targets. Beneficiary households that received at least half of the intended transfers experienced a significant improvement in food security by some measures. However, households with access to both the PSNP and packages of agricultural support were more likely to be food secure, to borrow for productive purposes, use improved agricultural technologies, and operate their own nonfarm business activities.27”

In essence, the findings are saying that Ethiopia does not have a sufficiently robust administrative infrastructure to deliver the informal gathering and exchange systems needed to effectively run the PSNP, the irony being that it is precisely in such impoverished states that safety nets are most needed. Most assessments support the observation that the PSNP provides food security benefits, but that there is little evidence of graduation out of poverty. However, we should note that the more established safety net programmes in Asia and South America can take up to 20 years to have any

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

Japan

Belgium

Spain

United Kingdom

Germany

Denmark

Norway

Austria

United States

Netherlands

Portugal

% 2008 Humanitarian Aid Invested in DRR

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real impact on poverty, and even then there’s the question of attribution - viz. safety nets or macro economic growth.28

An alternative approach, being experimented with in slightly more robust states, seeks to make direct government to citizen cash transfers. With recent innovations in cash card and mobile phone technology, these schemes are rapidly evolving beyond old style pensions. Old cash transfer schemes required cash to be transferred through a government system to a local office and then for citizens to come into the office and pick up their cash: lots of opportunities for corruption and missed targeting29. New schemes use cash cards which are recharged at local cash point or direct transfers to mobile phone. Such schemes are fed from a computerised system with little space for human interference. In addition, these systems can be linked to savings schemes, which automatically put a percent of the citizen’s entitlement into a savings account so that they have that available as an additional safety net in hard times. Such schemes, still in their infancy, hold out the possibility of providing targeting and effective DRR strategies30. They have also been used in disaster relief. In the recent Pakistan Earthquake response the government partnered with a local bank and Visa to issue 230,000 cards—one per displaced family—, each loaded with $300 per month 31.

2.2.4 Conclusion on DRR

The point to take home is that Disaster Risk Reduction is not some sort of “ahead of time” humanitarian action, it is, when done well, far more of an approach to development. It is an approach that recognises the inherent risky nature of life, livelihoods and economies in poverty stricken environments. It is an approach which aims to identify risk and helps people reduce their vulnerability to that risk. Its value lies in the lives and economy saved but also in the change in mind-set it brings. If you have very little you don’t risk losing it. If you are a subsistence farmer you are not going to experiment with new techniques unless you have good evidence they work, or unless someone else carries the risk of loss, i.e. through an insurance scheme.


Work with OECD/DAC to agree definitions of disaster risk reduction funding and ensure DRR is reported on separately and systematically.

Review DFID’s guidance to ensure that DRR is seen as a legitimate programming goal and strategy.

Fund and promote research to build rigorous economic models for the calculation of environmental risks in relation to development programming.

2.3 Conflict Prevention

Conflict prevention can encompass an extremely wide spectrum of activities and tools ranging from efforts to transform the nature of the political and social environment so as to address causes of conflict, through the use of hard power, including weapons of mass destruction, to deter conflict or coerce parties to a conflict, through preventive diplomacy and the use of a wide set of political and development tools. For the purposes of this paper we shall concentrate on the soft power elements – especially those within the purview of a development agency. (Note that, for the purposes of this paper we use the thresholds often used in conflict datasets of 25 battle-related deaths annually as constituting a “conflict” and 1,000 deaths annually, a “war”.32)

Simply put, conflict prevention seeks to stop armed violence from starting, escalating or, in the post-conflict setting, recurring. The UN Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO) characterises conflict prevention as involving “the application of structural or diplomatic measures to keep intra-state or inter-state tensions and disputes from escalating into violent conflict. Ideally, it should build on structured early warning, information gathering and a careful analysis of the factors driving the conflict. [In a UN context] conflict prevention activities may include the use of the Secretary-General’s “good offices,” preventive deployment or confidence-building measures”.33

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Conflict prevention involves both structural and operational tools: structural conflict prevention is a longer-term process aimed at improving political, economic and social circumstances so as to prevent conflict whereas operational (or “proximate”) conflict prevention focuses upon crisis-oriented interventions. In the post-conflict setting, structural conflict prevention overlaps somewhat with peacebuilding, and indeed also with “stabilisation”. 34 Indeed, the OECD and EU have tended to link “conflict prevention and peacebuilding” into a single concept.35 For instance, the relevant DAC codes are “civilian peace-building, conflict prevent and resolution” (15220) and “post-conflict peace-building” (15230). If we are to start to make useful analytical and quantitative judgements on conflict prevention, then we would have to have some certainty in four areas: the causes of conflict; the quantity of conflict; the costs of conflict; and the supply of, demand for, and impact of conflict prevention activities.

2.3.1 Causes of Conflict

There is a vigorous scholarly debate on causes of conflict and wars. Historically, much of this work has focused on interstate conflicts but, over the past two decades, conflict prevention has tended to be aimed at intrastate conflict. It is self-evident that an understanding of the causes is a prerequisite for effective conflict prevention activities. Practitioners can draw upon a wide range of theories espoused in the literature on the causes of “civil wars”. Recent scholarship has been critical of monocausal theories such as ethnicity or “greed and grievance”, finding significant data gaps and methodological weaknesses. Rather, the consensus is that numerous drivers of conflict may come into play, including the role of power and politics and of the state, interactions between local and international factors, difficulty in negotiating peace settlements, the consequences of conflict for vulnerable groups, and the relationship between resources, (under)development and the distribution of power.36 The evidence base is generally better at demonstrating the correlation of certain factors with conflict rather than a causal nexus; hence the importance of conducting a detailed conflict assessment for each individual case.

2.3.2 Quantifying Conflict

Datasets on conflict reflect some of the weaknesses of the humanitarian datasets discussed above. Nonetheless, the number and severity of armed conflicts worldwide seems to be decreasing.37 Writing in 2007, Mack38 notes that “all forms of political violence except terrorism in the Middle East and South Asia and campaigns of one-sided violence have declined in the past fifteen years, and the wars that are still being fought are far less deadly on average than those of the Cold War era.” Typically, intrastate wars involve small arms and light weapons and at least one relatively poorly trained, resourced and led party to the conflict, rather than the heavy weaponry used by sophisticated armies seen in Cold War era interstate conflict.

Figure 16: Battle deaths per year, per million of world population:39

However, although armed conflicts had declined in both intensity and in number, in 2008 there were still 71 active armed conflicts, with 2008 seeing the greatest number of battle-deaths since 2001.40 There has been some debate as to whether these modern conflicts are becoming more intractable but in fact only 29 % of conflicts in 2005 had lasted for over ten years.41 Collier estimates that at any one

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time some twelve countries are at risk of recurrence of conflict, with on average two descending into conflict each year.42 Furthermore, it would be foolhardy to project forward recent trends. US and UK government work on future strategic trends by the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, the Joint Forces Command and the National Intelligence Council all point to numerous risk factors that may well exacerbate the risk of conflict in coming decades.

2.3.3 Costing Conflict

A considerable body of literature has sought to quantify and assess the costs of conflict.43 Direct and indirect costs of conflict can be defined extremely broadly to cover costs at local, regional (particularly affecting neighbours) and international levels. Collier et al44 estimate the average total national and regional cost of a civil war at more than $64 billion. This figure is based on loss of GDP and increase in DALYs (disability-adjusted life years). It includes the effect of the “conflict trap” (i.e. the increased likelihood that countries that have had a civil war will have a further civil war). However as it disregards a number of other factors that are more difficult to quantify, it is probably a significant under-estimate. Collier and Hoeffler45 estimate there is on average a 2.2% reduction in growth rate for each year of civil war and that this decline continues for seven years after the conflict before improving. Economic harm is compounded by a rise in military expenditure in the state experiencing the civil war of around 1.8%of GDP. The cost of armed conflict to Africa’s development between 1990 and 2007 has been estimated by Oxfam et al at around $300 million, with an armed conflict shrinking an African economy an average of 15% over this period.46

Growth rates and military expenditures of neighbouring countries are affected significantly by civil wars. For example, neighbourhood arms races increase the region’s military expenditure, causing a cost of about 12% of one country’s GDP.47 Furthermore, the international community may face costs from the need for military intervention, terrorism, drugs, and refugee flows. Military interventions are particularly expensive. Stiglitz and Bilmes calculated the direct and indirect costs to the US of the Iraq War to be around $3 trillion.48 The cost to the international community of the earlier interventions in Bosnia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Haiti, Rwanda and Somalia was estimated at $85 billion.49 Interestingly when costing the value of conflict prevention, non-violent intervention by the international community appears to be markedly cheaper; for example, successful third party mediation between Renamo and Frelimo in Mozambique in 1989-92 cost approximately $350,000 and the successful gun return scheme in El Salvador (1995-1999) cost $1.3m.50

All of these various approaches to estimating the costs of conflict are however based on rather shaky foundations. Suhrke and Samset51 criticise the practice of converting unsubstantiated academic claims (such as Collier’s initial estimate of an almost 50% risk of a country emerging from civil war facing a recurrence of war within five years) into policy statements. In the Collier case, his downwards revised estimate to around 20%– based on the same dataset - was barely noted by policymakers. Suhrke and Samset express concern that “failure to acknowledge the fragility of findings reinforces the bureaucratically-shaped inclination of policymakers to ask for formulaic solutions.”52 This would seem to be exacerbated by the inclination of some advocacy groups and NGOs to publicly employ unsubstantiated and often alarming statistics. The forthcoming Human Security Report (HSR) criticises the methodology behind some estimates of war-related deaths, including in the DRC, and concludes that the claims were greatly exaggerated.53

There are notable efforts underway to improve the evidence base. The HSR54 studied retrospective mortality surveys and found that attributing changes in mortality to wartime violence may be highly inaccurate. The Report recommends that surveys should instead compare mortality rates in war zones with that of the regional average. Getting baselines from nation-wide population surveys would create an evidence base for designing, implementing and evaluating humanitarian and peacebuilding work.

The 2005 HSR55 identified a number of other promising areas of research that may help improve the level of our understanding of indirect costs of war: (i) “societal impact of war” work by Monty G. Marshall, which found that since the end of the Cold War societal costs (which include “population dislocations, damage to ‘societal networks’, environmental and infrastructure damage, resource diversion and ‘diminished quality of life’56” ) declined more rapidly than either the number of conflicts

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or battle-deaths per conflict; (ii) epidemiological surveys; and (iii) Yale studies by Russett et al which compared a dataset on battle deaths in 51 civil wars during 1991–1997 and the WHO 1999 dataset on mortality and disability rates, finding that there were almost four additional years of healthy lives lost for each battle death.57

2.3.4 The Effectiveness of Conflict Prevention

Some scholars have attempted to quantify the cost-effectiveness of conflict prevention; for example, the assertion by Chalmers that for £1 spent on preventive activity, £4 is effectively saved through not becoming involved in armed conflict.58 Recent SOAS work for DFID, and indeed other analysis, has discounted the methodology that gave rise to this figure.59 Indeed, in a recent SOAS paper for DFID, Keen notes that it is “very difficult to know whether particular CP measures worked in preventing a conflict (or would have worked if they had been tried).”60

Other efforts to quantify the cost-benefit of particular conflict prevention measures have also aroused controversy. Collier has argued that over-the horizon security guarantees – that is, promises of military intervention if circumstances require – would be relatively inexpensive conflict prevention means if deterrence was effective as it has been in the case of the UK’s security guarantee for Sierra Leone and, arguably, for French security guarantees in Francophone Africa from independence to the mid-1990s. Collier has argued, for instance, that an over-the-horizon security guarantee would have deterred the attempted coup in Timor Leste in 2006 thereby obviating the need for subsequent Australian military intervention (at the request of Dili).61 Clearly, this is a small dataset from which to infer effectiveness so Collier’s assertions remain controversial.

While individual approaches have been criticised, on the basis of a comprehensive review of the methodologies for measuring the costs of conflict (i.e. accounting methods, modelling methods, and empirical estimates) Lindgren62 concluded that “the estimates of the economic costs of conflict can show us that conflict resolution without violence in most cases also is a very good investment.” He makes the case that despite data gaps and methodological weaknesses, such metrics ought to be considered by policy makers, noting that economic growth forecasts are not significantly more statistically sound but are used as a basis for economic policy. Brown and Rosencrance63 support this view, arguing that undertaking successful conflict prevention saved or would have saved the international community costs in every case they examined; and that therefore the case for conflict prevention on the basis of cost is compelling and policymakers need not be restricted by the obvious methodological weaknesses in the literature.

2.3.5 Supplying Conflict Prevention

Quantifying the supply of conflict prevention is hampered by differing interpretations of conflict prevention and paucity of data. But we do have some understanding of the approximate scale of donor assistance. The UK has allocated £627 million in 2009-10 for peacekeeping, conflict prevention and stabilisation activities.64 The 2004 assessment of Conflict Prevention Pool funds found that spending amounted to only a fraction of conflict prevention demand.65 The UN has argued that it is under-resourced in its preventive diplomacy capacity, a key element in the international community’s conflict prevention toolbox, and is burdened by inflexible rules that limit the effectiveness of responses to evolving situations.66


DFID should increase support to mechanisms for the rapid deployment of conflict prevention expertise (similar to what the Civilian Stabilisation Group provides for stabilisation operations)

DFID should focus conflict prevention funding on niche areas in which the UK is well-placed to take a leading role and which act as a “force multiplier” to enhance the effectiveness of existing conflict prevention measures. These include better lessons learning, improved donor coordination and harmonisation of activities. 67

DFID should limit the commissioning of additional research on the value for money of conflict prevention to lessons learning on “how to improve interventions”, particularly micro-studies.

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DFID should mandate that a baseline study of demographic, social and economic indicators be conducted at the commencement of each conflict prevention project so as to improve assessment of impact.

DFID should engage OECD-DAC and donor partners in order to reach agreement on the definitions of “conflict prevention”, “peacebuilding” and related terms.

2.4 Peacebuilding

Various definitions of “peacebuilding” have been proposed but the contents of such definitions are complicated by related concepts such as “early recovery” and “stabilisation”. As Bailey notes, “there are overlaps and contradictions, and even agreed definitions are lacking.”68

DPKO defines “peacebuilding” as involving:

“A range of measures targeted to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundation for sustainable peace and development. Peacebuilding is a complex, long-term process of creating the necessary conditions for sustainable peace. It works by addressing the deep-rooted, structural causes of violent conflict in a comprehensive manner.”69

Recently, both the EU and OECD have linked conflict prevention and peacebuilding, with the OECD70 stating that together these comprise activities “that adopt goals and objectives aimed at preventing conflict or building peace; usually focused on a particular conflict zone – an area threatened by, in the midst of, or recovering from serious intergroup violence.” The OECD however urges caution over being over-inclusive regarding what activities ought to come under the rubric of conflict prevention and peacebuilding, distinguishing between efforts with primarily conflict prevention and peacebuilding objectives, those with mixed conflict prevention and peacebuilding and other objectives and those with primarily other objectives. Whether the policy or programmatic goals seek to make a difference to key drivers of conflict is a fundamental definitional question; and it should not be assumed that progress towards improved democratic/freedom, social or economic indicators- or other “good” things - necessarily contributes to this.

Early recovery has been closely linked to peacebuilding in UN circles. The UN Secretary-General listed as necessary responses from the international community in the immediate aftermath of conflict (i.e. first two years) - support to basic safety and security, political processes, the provision of basic services, restoring core government functions, and economic revitalization. 71 However, a recent assessment by Bailey et al72 casts doubt on the added value of early recovery as an approach, noting that it overlaps with stabilisation (briefly defined as “ending conflict”), peacebuilding (“institutionalising peace”) and statebuilding (“enhancing state capacity and legitimacy”). The British Government also sees a conceptual overlap between early recovery and stabilisation.73

2.4.1 Demand for Peacebuilding

There does appear to be a general consensus in the literature and in policy circles that successful peacebuilding would appear to reduce the length and intensity of war and therefore its costs. The “costs of war” literature, reviewed above, has relevance here, with the same caveats as to data gaps and methodological weaknesses.

In a survey of the evidence, the OECD concluded that “we do not have sufficient evidence to guide judgements regarding the relative value of different approaches measured against the resources expended, so it is difficult to establish a standard for assessing the relative costs of outcomes and impacts.74 Examining demand for early recovery, the OECD’s International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF) viewed it as impossible to quantify shortfalls in transitional funding. These studies cautioned against “over-emphasising funding ‘gaps’, which could misleadingly imply deficits that could be plugged, when more fundamental changes may be required.”75

Some scholars have urged a broader focus on the economic dimensions of the post-conflict recovery process. Doyle and Sambanis use the example of Cambodia. They argue that the $1.5 billion spent

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could have been supplemented with an addition $1 billion for economic reforms that they consider crucial for peacebuilding.76 Collier et al suggest that because there is “a simple and statistically strong relationship between the severity of post-conflict risks and the level of income at the end of the conflict... resources per capita should be approximately inversely proportional to the level of income in the post-conflict country.” 77

2.4.2 The Supply of Peacebuilding

Breaking out peacebuilding data from general aid or peace support operations data is a difficult task. Figure 17 provides the DAC country ODA records classed as “post conflict peacebuilding.”

Year 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

US$ 929.42 268.44 255.81 232.03 349.88 319.72

Figure 17: DAC countries ODA to all developing countries for post-conflict peacebuilding78

Recognising peacebuilding’s importance and the need for leadership and donor coordination in this field, the UN established the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) in 2005 with the mandate of supporting peace efforts in countries emerging from conflict. The Commission “plays a unique role in (1) bringing together all of the relevant actors, including international donors, the international financial institutions, national governments, troop contributing countries; (2) marshalling resources and (3) advising on and proposing integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery and where appropriate, highlighting any gaps that threaten to undermine peace.” The Commission is being reviewed in 2010, which should provide useful data on future trends in peacebuilding.79

The UN Secretary-General80 has stressed the importance of a funding gap between the end of humanitarian funding and the start of development funding. In order to close this gap, a number of rapid and early disbursement funds have been instituted by the international community: the UN Peacebuilding Fund; the World Bank State-and Peacebuilding Fund (SPF); the UNDP Thematic Trust Fund for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (CPR TTF); and the EU’s Instrument for Stability (IfS). OECD-DAC is also seeking to revise donor procedures to allow earlier and faster release of funds.

The UN Peacebuilding Fund for 2009 has received pledges of $278m, commitments of $271m and deposits of $248m from a total of 44 donors, eight of whom account for some 80% of pledges. The World Banks’ SPF81 has received a provision of US$100m for the period FY09-FY11. The EC’s Third Facility under the IfS (IFS/2009/12) has been allocated €12m. Projects commenced in 2007 were: Afghanistan (€2.5m), Southern Thailand (€3m), Burma (€695,000), Lebanon (€9.2m), Occupied Palestinian Territories (€ 7.5 million), Syria (for Iraqi refugees) (€3m), Columbia (€5m), Bolivia (€1m), Haiti (€3m), Chad (€15m), Sudan (€15m), Somalia (€9m), DRC (€8.2m), Uganda (€4.2m), Guinea-Bissau (€603,000), Zimbabwe (€3m), and Kosovo (€10m).82 The UNDP CPR TTF83 spent $90.4m in 2008, comprising $50m for conflict prevention and recovery; $13.3m for early recovery; $12.8m for DRR and recovery; $11m for policy and programme support and $2.7m for gender equality.

The World Bank also undertakes post-conflict financing through the International Development Association (IDA) mechanism84. IDA commitments to fragile states have increased from $772m in FY00 to US$1.6 billion in FY09. Recognising the need to provide longer-term post-conflict support, the Bank has lengthened the duration of exceptional allocations for fragile and conflict-affected states during IDA 15.85 This has involved doubling the phase-out period from three to six years, thus reducing harm to country programmes caused by a drop-off in IDA support. It has allowed 9 out of 12 countries (including Afghanistan and the DRC) to continue to receive exceptional allocations which they otherwise would not have received. These countries are projected to receive 50 per cent higher allocations (amounting to some SDR 2 billion) - and re-engaging countries double (SDR 160.9 million) - under these new phase-out arrangements than they would have under IDA 14 arrangements. The Bank’s action in extending the phase-out period reflects a commitment to continue long-term support of countries which have almost by definition extremely poor governance capabilities. Such countries are otherwise liable to miss out on other significant sources of donor support owing to a perception that countries with better governance records could make better use of international funds.

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2.4.3 Conclusion on Peacebuilding

Based on these figures and the UN’s assessment of continuing demand, funding for peacebuilding would appear to be under-resourced. However, given the broadening scope of peace support operations, which now involve deployment of police and civilian expertise in addition to soldiers, it is increasingly difficult to disaggregate international community spending on peacebuilding as distinct from peacekeeping. Key issues for future UK funding consideration include balancing early recovery with longer-term peacebuilding imperatives and ensuring that there is a seamless transition from humanitarian support to development assistance.


DFID should focus peacebuilding activities on further addressing the seams between humanitarian support and development assistance.

DFID should concentrate its peacebuilding research on applied lessons learning pieces.

DFID should mandate that a baseline study of demographic, social and economic indicators be conducted at the commencement of each peacebuilding projects so as to improve assessment of impact.

2.5 Peacekeeping

“Peacekeeping” appears to be more amendable to precise definition than “conflict prevention” and “peacebuilding”. However, key definitional issues include whether “peacemaking” and “peace enforcement” are included, leading to some broader category of “peace support operations” (PSO) as employed in UK doctrine, and how military interventions such as Afghanistan and Iraq should be treated (ISAF tends to be included in datasets while Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom are not).

UN DPKO offers the following definitions:

“Peacekeeping is a technique designed to preserve the peace, however fragile, where fighting has been halted, and to assist in implementing agreements achieved by the peacemakers.” Now is a “complex model of many elements – military, police and civilian – working together to help lay the foundations for sustainable peace.” By way of contrast, “Peace enforcement involves the application, with the authorization of the Security Council, of a range of coercive measures, including the use of military force.”86

The nature of peacekeeping has changed since the end of the Cold War. There has been a shift in UN doctrine from traditional interpositional military focused operations to broader approaches involving police and civilian expertise aimed at tasks perhaps ordinarily associated with peacebuilding.87 PSO doctrine differs in a number of ways from traditional peacekeeping which permits such operations to potentially more effectively deal with challenges such as ethnic cleaning and genocide, according to Ramsbotham et al88 these include: (i) consent – traditional peacekeeping operations required universal consent while PSOs do not require the consent of spoilers; (ii) neutrality – traditional peacekeeping is politically neutral between the main conflict parties while PSOs may eschew neutrality of a party opposes the mandate; and (iii) use of force – traditional peacekeeping operations are limited to self-defence while PSOs may employ rules of engagement necessary to fulfil the mandate. While peacekeeping operations can have narrower mandates than peacebuilding work, there are many multidimensional peace operations that combine peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities.

2.5.1 Demand for Peacekeeping

There is reason to believe peacekeeping is effective, at least in certain circumstances. Given that annual expenditure is now over $7 billion the level of international commitment to peacekeeping would appear to be strong.89 A recent paper90 on peacekeeping in Africa argued that the UN’s African PKOs since 1990 have been “a major contributing factor to the 60 per cent decline in the number and

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magnitude of African conflicts over the same period.” By way of contrast, the costs of Africa’s recent conflicts have been estimated at over $700 billion. The paper suggests that this downward trend is likely to continue if “peace operations are given sensible operational directive, clear mandates, and sufficient resources to fulfil the proposed objectives.91 Doyle and Sambanis92 agree that UN peace operations have contributed positively in post-civil war transitions. Collier93 favourably cites the positive Copenhagen Consensus 2 assessment of peacekeeping and undertook an empirical study with colleagues that suggested that doubling UN peacekeeping expenditure would significantly decrease the risk of renewed conflict.94

De Waal95 however casts doubt on the effectiveness of peacekeeping and peacebuilding in African countries with weak institutions and strong patrimonial social structures, noting that “ill-governed” civil wars are difficult to stop. He argues that peace operations need to take account of the “auction of loyalties in which provincial elites seek to extract from one or other metropolitan centre the best price for their allegiance” and may employ violence as a rent-seeking tactic. Where the main centre of state power is represented by foreign peacekeepers, these too are subject to the “auction of loyalties” but often lack the local context knowledge to manage this with finesse, possibly increasing the risk of provincial elites resorting to violence. He also has doubts about the outcomes of “heavy footprint multi-mandate peace support operations to justify concerns that the hardest cases – including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Somalia – may not be amenable to this approach.”96 The only guarantee is endless peacekeeping, although De Waal doesn’t consider Collier’s over-the-horizon security guarantee concept which, if linked to a capable rapid deployment force mechanism, might have an adequate deterrent effect. De Waal suggests that exit strategies for peace support operations in such countries require “normative success” such as a peace agreement, human security success and a “robust and inclusive buy-in” (i.e. an elite bargain)97. If de Waal is correct, a key lesson for the international community will be the importance of intimate knowledge of local context and consequently the potential value of regional bodies such as the AU.

Organisations including DPKO, SIPRI, and NYU’s Center for International Conflict (CIC)98 consider that demand for peacekeeping far outstrips supply. SIPRI99 notes that in 2008, 23 UN missions fell around 22,800 personnel short of authorised strength. CIC criticises the kneejerk deployment of peacekeepers even “in the absence of a peace agreement or viable political process” and despite “repeated warnings of overstretch,” and argues that “the complexity of operations began to outstrip the ability of international organizations to keep pace.” The failure of the Darfur peace operation was a prime example of the difficulties faced in peacekeeping. 100

Estimating future demand is difficult owing to the volatility of demand for PSOs, particularly since the Cold War, and the myriad drivers of conflict that come into play including the global financial crisis and recent food crises. A CIC paper produced for the UN101 sought to characterise past and present demand trends concluding that the main potential areas for UN PKOs are Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia; there was little demand for large-scale peace operations in the Asia/Pacific (with the exception of Timor Leste) and South America. The demand in Europe is likely to be met by regional organisations. Within Africa itself, West Africa has stabilised somewhat but conflicts in the Horn of Africa and central Africa remain intractable and volatile. Some 47,000 UN and AU troops are in these regions, and this number would rise to 60,000 if all mandated operations were fully deployed. The unlikely event of a Somalia deployment would see a rise to 80,000. A recent assessment of lessons learned from peace operations in Africa noted that since 2000 the UN had spent over $32 billion on its 12 peacekeeping operations.102

2.5.2 Supply of Peacekeeping

The ability of the international community to deploy peacekeepers is uneven with only 62 UN Member states being ready for “intensive missions”. Furthermore, the future availability of current levels of Pakistani and Indian support for peacekeeping operations – which is not just important for troop numbers but also for key equipment including helicopters – is under threat owing to Pakistan’s internal problems and India’s rising defence costs. While other Asian countries such as Indonesia and China are increasing commitments, these are far smaller in scale.103

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The UN’s share of peacekeeping supply is likely to change, through future trends are difficult to predict. Since 2003 forces deployed by regional organisations and coalitions have risen after having declined during 1999-2003. Rather than add net resources to the peacekeeping pool these increases might instead merely remove resources from the UN. To meet this competition for resources the CIC report’s authors propose that the UN incentivise the international community to support it through its role as a force enabler and multiplier.104

The UN plans to spend about $7.75 billion on peace operations in 2009-10, of which some $1.85 billion was outstanding at the end of 2009. Recent figures for the costs of major PSOs are:

Afghanistan: ISAF $176.5 million (October 2006 – September 2007), EUPOL $17.6 million (June 2007 – May 2008), UNAMA $123.5 million (Jan 2006 – Dec 2007)

Central African Republic/Chad: MINURCAT - Approved budget 07/09–06/10 $690.75 million

Côte d’Ivoire: UNOCI - Approved budget 07/09–06/10: $491.77 million

Cyprus: UNFICYP - Approved budget 07/09–06/10: $54.41million

DRC: MONUC - Approved budget 07/09–06/10: $1,346.58 million, EUSEC RD Congo $8 million (October 2006 – September 2007), EUPOL RD Congo $1.8 million (October 2006 – September 2007)

Haiti: MINUSTAH - Approved budget 07/09–06/10: $611.75 million

India/Pakistan: UNMOGIP - Appropriation 2008-09: $16.96 million

Kosovo: UNMIK - Approved budget 07/09–06/10: $46.81 million, KFOR $35.5 million (October 2006 – September 2007), OMIK $43.1 million ( October 2006 – September 2007)

Lebanon: UNIFIL - Approved budget 07/09–06/10: $589.80 million

Liberia: UNMIL - Approved budget 07/09–06/10: $560.98 million

Sudan: UNMIS - Approved budget 07/09–06/10: $958.35 million, AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS) $297.6 million (January – June 2007), African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) - Approved budget 07/09–06/10 $1,598.94 million

Timor-Leste: UNMIT - Approved budget 07/09–06/10 $205.94 million, ISF $87.4 million (October 2006 – September 2007)

Western Sahara (MINURSO) - Approved budget 07/09–06/10: $53.53 million

United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) - Appropriation 2008-09: $66.22 million

United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) - Approved budget 07/09–06/10: $45.03 million 105

By region, Africa had the largest number of peace operations (19) and received the greatest number of personnel deployed in 2008 (78,985). Asia has ten operations and 55,542 deployed (mostly ISAF); Europe 19 operations and 26,797 deployed; the Middle East 10 operations and 26,797 deployed and the Americas two operations and 9,621 deployed. The total numbers were 60 operations with 187,586 personnel deployed. The UN and NATO provided the largest number of personnel to peace operations in 2008; with 98,614 and 65,978 respectively (the AU provided only 3,560 while the EU provided 7,932). Both the number of peace operations and the number of personnel deployed have risen significantly since 2002 – 2008 saw almost twice the number of personnel deployed as in 2003.106

The major financial contributors to the UN peacekeeping budget in 2007 were the USA – 22%, Japan – 10%, Germany - 8.6%, UK - 6.6%, France 6.3% and Italy – 5.1%. The “top twenty” list of contributors also includes – in order of magnitude - Canada, Spain, China, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland, Russia, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Brazil and Norway.107 This is roughly in line with these countries’ assessments to the regular UN budget.

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A significant disparity of scale noted by Doyle and Sambanis is the funds provided to central authorities as opposed to the costs of PSOs. For example, in East Timor, the central authorities received $59.2 million for 2000-01 while UNTAET costs were some $600 million for the same period. The total international community contribution to East Timor during 1999-2002 was $2.2 billion, most of which went on UN costs, in particular staff salaries.108

2.5.3 Conclusions on Peacekeeping

The 2004 assessment of the Conflict Prevention Pools109 posed the question as to whether the pools could deliver a ‘spend to save’ outcome by reducing peacekeeping costs. Initial conventional wisdom held that a well-targeted increase in conflict prevention measures would result in a reduction in peacekeeping costs. But since the establishment of the CPPs, peacekeeping costs had gone up (albeit in line with international trends). The assessment therefore questioned this ‘spend to save’ premise, noting that the saving would accrue to international community in general and that increased conflict prevention activity would lay the British Government open to more engagement and hence more peacekeeping. The assessment argued that more research was needed on the cost-effectiveness of peacekeeping as opposed to non-peacekeeping measures.

In any case, if purely on economic grounds, the international community would do well to further encourage regional peacekeeping initiatives such as the African Standby Force which will be developed by 2010 in two phases and will be available for observer missions, peacekeeping or peace-enforcement operations, and post-conflict peacebuilding.110


DFID should support regional peacekeeping initiatives and commission research on lessons learned from such initiatives.

DFID should look for ways to address the imbalance between the resources devoted to the international component of a PSO and the resources devoted to developing host nation capabilities.

DFID should commission further research on the relative impact of peacekeeping in relation to other measures used in peace support operations. This research should test the implications of these conclusions for an integrated HMG policy response.

2.6 Mediation

“Mediation” may be defined as “a process of conflict management, related to but distinct from the parties’ own negotiations where those in conflict seek the assistance of, or accept an offer of help from, an outsider to change perceptions or behaviour, and to do so without resorting to physical force or involving the authority of law.”111 Conceptually it is generally considered to be an element of “peacemaking”, which is defined by UN DPKO as including:

“Measures to address conflicts in progress and usually involves diplomatic action to bring hostile parties to a negotiated agreement... Peacemakers may ... be envoys, governments, groups of states, regional organizations or the United Nations. Peacemaking efforts may also be undertaken by unofficial and non-governmental groups, or by a prominent personality working independently.112”

Track I mediation is undertaken between the above bodies and the governments of states in conflict which Track II mediation involves business, academic, religious, NGO and other non-official linkages.113 Most of the cited successes of mediation involve Track I efforts but Track II activities can play a valuable subsidiary role and broaden and deepen consensus on peace agreements.

A growing body of scholarship points to third party mediation as being a significant contributor to a reduced number of violent conflicts in recent years combined with an increased numbers of conflicts successfully ended or managed.114 There are methodological weaknesses in such assessments and there is a possibility of trend reversals but the key point remains that mediation, in a number of cases,

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seems to work.115 In a recent study, Griffiths and Whitfield 116 found that, since the end of the Cold War, the number of negotiated settlements to armed conflicts (as opposed to victory) has increased rapidly, associated with a decline in number and intensity of conflicts. They note that the quality of a peace agreement is associated with its durability – “where a peace agreement has held for at least a year, there is evidence of greater durability over the next (critical) five-year period”. Mediation seems to prove particularly helpful in ameliorating “crises of the state” (often in post-colonial contexts).

Mack117 notes that in the post-Cold War period, twice as many conflicts have ended through negotiated settlement as through victory (the obverse was true during the Cold War),and that the rate of negotiated settlements is accelerating. Negotiated settlements remain subject to failure but Mack ascribes this to their being “inappropriately designed, ineptly implemented and poorly supported”. Mack sees early evidence of an improvement in stability of negotiated settlement outcomes, with only two out of 17 such settlements during 2000-2005 failing. He remains however sceptical that this pattern can continue. Despite the exponential growth in mediation activities in the past decade, Griffiths and Whitfield118 note a difficulty in developing data to track the incidence of mediation but have been able to establish an approximate aggregate statistical base: “By 2004, more conflicts had been settled by negotiation in the previous 15 years than in the last two hundred, mostly facilitated by third parties and driven by the comparative activism of the UN and regional organisations.” While the UN still lacks the peacemaking capability it needs, there are a greater variety of mediators and a trend toward hybrid mediation efforts such as Darfur (joint UN and AU-led).

While mediation has had successes, research also shows that mediation efforts suffer from a range of generic weaknesses including poor understanding of the specific conflicts and lack of coordination, which can incentivise parties to “forum shop” rather than engage with one capable mediator. Crocker further notes that the implementation of mediated settlements, particularly in Africa, has been problematic. There have been many agreements compromised by breaches, neglect and distortions even if they have not fully collapsed.119 He considers that external leadership and sponsorship of peace processes has been key to successful peace agreements, and this depends on continuing international support which might be starting to suffer donor fatigue and a focus on the “war” on terror.

Wallensteen120 considers the issues of the mediator’s appointment and mandate and the approach taken as of key importance. The UN Secretary-General can have a particularly important legitimating role in mediation owing to his generally perceived greater impartiality than the Security Council and other UN organs. However, on other occasions it has proved valuable to back mediation efforts with the credible threat of force, for example, Holbrooke’s mediation over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

While there have been few systematic attempts to cost mediation efforts and link these to the costs of conflicts avoided, one examples is the Aceh peace talks. These required relatively minute resources and avoided financial costs of operations that President Yudhoyono later estimated at $130m per year.121

2.6.1 Mediation Supply Side and Gaps

Mediation is undertaken by a large number and variety of actors. The European Centre for Conflict Prevention directory, for instance, contains over 1,000 entries. The playing field is crowded and, compared with conflict prevention and probably peacebuilding peacekeeping, is well resourced. Nonetheless, there are three notable supply-side issues to which DFID could make a positive contribution:

The UN Mediation Support Unit and Mediation Support Standby Team seek to provide an expert repository of knowledge on mediation, with the latter providing a rapid deployment capability in support of UN or non-UN third party mediation in the field.122 Further efforts to consolidate efforts at harmonisation and professionalisation may well bear fruit.

Brahimi et al see a need for more mediation after the conclusion of peace agreements and during the deployment of peace operations. There are important connections to be made between mediation and peacekeeping, and in ensuring that peacekeeping contributes positively to brokering political agreements.123

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There appears to be a need to address the relative lack of international support to local and regional mediation capability such as the AU’s Panel of the Wise.124 The AU-led mediation of the Darfur Peace Agreement was a prime example of a poorly managed negotiated peace settlement which failed after having been rejected by key non-signatories.125 Since some argue that international diplomacy can be too state-centred in its mediation efforts, 126 there will be benefits in making better use of regional and local talent – e.g. traditional negotiation means but in ensuring that this talent applies best practices in mediation.


DFID should increase HMG support to the UN Mediation Support Unit and Mediation Support Standby Team and to international efforts to improve harmonisation and professionalisation of mediation.

DFID should work with FCO to encourage more professional use of mediation approaches after the conclusion of peace agreements and during the deployment of peace operations.

DFID should increase support to local and regional mediation capability and commission lessons learning research regarding such activities.

Endnotes 1 http://www.emdat.be/ 2 Coghlan, B et al., Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Results from a Nationwide Survey (Conducted April–July 2004), New York: International Rescue Committee, 2004 3 Smil, V. China's great famine: 40 years later. British Medical Journal, Vol. 319:1619-1621, December 1999 4 Donini, A. Humanitarian Agenda 2015: Afghanistan Country Study. Feinstein International Center Field Report https://wikis.uit.tufts.edu/confluence/display/FIC/Humanitarian+Agenda+2015+--+Afghanistan+Country+Study 5 European Commission Methodology for the Identification of Priority Countries for the European Commission Humanitarian Aid "GNA and FCA": http://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/policies/strategy/methodology_2009_en.pdf The index tables for 2007-8, derived from this methodology, can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/policies/strategy/gna2008.pdf 6 The methodology and application of the IPC is well described on their web site: http://www.ipcinfo.org/index.php . 7 Barrett, C and Maxwell, Daniel, Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting its Role, London: Routledge Press, 2005 8 Young, H. and Maxwell, Daniel, “Targeting in Complex Emergencies: Darfur Case Study”, Feinstein International Center Briefing Paper, April 2009. https://wikis.uit.tufts.edu/confluence/display/FIC/Targeting+in+Complex+Emergencies+--+Darfur+Case+Study 9 Maxwell, D., Young, H., Jaspars, S., Frize, J. and Burns, J. Targeting and Distribution in Complex Emergencies Part I: Participatory Management of Humanitarian Food Assistance, (2010 - in preparation)

10 ALNAP. The State of the Humanitarian System: Assessing performance and progress. January 2010 11 The Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative is well documented on its website http://www.goodhumanitariandonorship.org/ . 12 DARA, Humanitarian Response Index 2009 Madrid: DARA, 2009. http://www.daraint.org/node/31

13 Downloadable at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/papers/downloads/right_to_survive_report.pdf 14 See International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISRD )website (2010) on Disasters Impact: http://www.unisdr.org/disaster‐statistics/impact‐affected.htm. 15 The project’s work is well described in their recent report “Stage One Analysis of HFP Work to Date: A discussion document for HFP stakeholders.” Available at http://www.humanitarianfutures.org/main/content/stage‐one‐analysis‐hfp‐work‐date‐discussion‐document‐hfp‐stakeholders 16 The full set of studies, published in 2010, can be found at: https://wikis.uit.tufts.edu/confluence/display/FIC/Humanitarian+Horizons+‐‐+Futures‐Related+Drivers 17 Venton, C. and Venton, P., Disaster Preparedness Programmes in India: A cost benefit analysis. HPN Network Paper # 49. November 2004 18 Environmental Resource Management, Natural disasters and Disaster Risk Reduction Measures: A Desk Review of Costs and Benefits, DFID, 8 December 2005 19 Feinstein Intentional Center, Humanitarian Horizons - A Practitioners' Guide to the Future. FIC Report, January 2010. https://wikis.uit.tufts.edu/confluence/display/FIC/Humanitarian+Horizons+--+A+Practitioners%27+Guide+to+the+Future

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20 DFID. Reducing the risk of disasters- helping to achieve sustainable poverty reduction in a vulnerable world: a policy paper, March 2006. http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/publications/disaster-risk-reduction-policy.pdf 21 DRR figures supplied by DFID Humanitarian and Disaster Risk Policy Team (HDRP) 22 United Nations and the World Bank, UnNatural Disasters: The Economics of Reducing Death & Destruction, . Washington DC: World Bank Publications, 2010 23 Christoplos, I., Rodriguez T., Schipper, L., Alberto, N., Mejia, K., Buitrago, R., Gomez, L., and Perez, F., “Learning from recovery after Hurricane Mitch”, Disasters, 2010 24 Ibid. 25 Dercon, S. “Income risk, coping strategies and safety nets.” Center for the Study of African Economics, Paper 136, 2000. http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1137&context=csae 26 Lybbert, T, Barrett, C, Desta, S and D. Layne Coppock, “Stochastic Wealth Dynamics and Risk Management among a Poor Population.” The Economic Journal Vol. 114, No. 498 (Oct 2004), pp. 750-777 27 Gilligan, D. Hoddinott, J. and Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse, The impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme and its linkages. IFPRI Discussion Paper 00839. December 2008 http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00839.pdf 28 Lustig, N., Shielding the Poor: Social protection in the developing world. New York: Brookings Institution Press, 2000. 29 Bankable Frontier Associates, Promoting Financial Inclusion Through Social Transfer Schemes, Report Commissioned by DFID, December 2008 30 Maldives Case Study Policy and Regulation for the World’s First ‘Universal Access’ Branchless Banking System, http://dev.cgap.org/gm/document-1.9.2133/13%20Maldives%20Case%20Study.pdf 31 The Economist, Payment cards and the poor: A plastic prop, 20 Aug 2009. 32 See e.g. SIPRI Yearbook, Human Security Report, Journal of Peace Research, Uppsala Conflict Database and States in Armed Conflict. 33 UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines, New York: UN, 2008, p. 18. 34 Stabilisation Unit, The UK Approach to Stabilisation: Stabilisation Unit Guidance Notes, London: Stabilisation Unit, 2008, p.13 35 See e.g. Swanston, Nikolas and Weismann, Michael, Conflict, Conflict Prevention, Conflict Management and Beyond,: a conceptual exploration, Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2005; Lund, Michael S., “Conflict Prevention: Theory in Pursuit of Policy and Practice” in Bercovitch, Jacob et al (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Conflict Resolution, Sage Publications Ltd., 2008; Wallenstein, Peter and Muller, Freda, “Conflict Prevention: Methodology for Knowing the Unknown”, Uppsala Peace Research Papers No.7, Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2003; . Bayne, Sarah and Trolled, Patrick, Stocktaking and scoping of the Peacebuilding Partnership, Brussels: European Commission – External Relations, 2009 36 Preston, Matthew, Conflict and Civil Wars: A Critical Survey of the Academic Field, Research Analysts, March 2008; for more background on ‘greed and grievance’ see e.g. Collier, Paul and Hoeffel, Anker, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, Washington DC: World Bank, 2001 37 UN General Assembly, Progress report on the prevention of armed conflict: Report of the Secretary-General, A/60/891, New York: United Nations, 2006, p.4. 38 Mack, Andrew, “Global Political Violence: Explaining the Post-Cold War Decline”, Coping with Crisis Working Paper Series, International Peace Academy, New York, March 2007, p. 13 39 Human Security Report Project, The Shrinking Costs of War Part II of the Human Security Report 2009, Vancouver: School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, 2009, p. 26. 40 Griffiths, Martin and Whitfield, Teresa, Mediation ten years on: Challenges and opportunities for peacemaking, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, March 2010, p.5 41 Mack, p. 6 42 Collier, Paul and Hoeffler, Anke, “The Challenge of Reducing the Global Incidence of War”, Copenhagen Consensus Challenge Paper, 2004, p. 8 43 See e.g. Gutierrez-Sanin, Francisco, “Stupid and Expensive? A Critique of the Costs-of-Violence Literature”, Crisis States Research Centre Working Papers, London: LSE, 2009 44 Collier, Paul, Hoeffler, Anke and Soderbom, Mans, Post-Conflict Risks, Oxford: Centre for the Study of African Economies, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, 2006, p.8 45 Ibid., pp. 5-6 46 Oxfam, Africa’s Missing Billions, Oxford: Oxfam-GB, 2007 http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/conflict_disasters/downloads/bp107_africa_missing_billions.pdf 47 Collier and Hoeffler, pp. 6-7 48 Stiglitz, Joseph and Bilmes, Linda, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2008 49 Collier and Hoeffler, p. 9 50 Elsworthy, Scilla, Cutting the Costs of War: Non-military Prevention and Resolution of Conflict, Oxford: Peace Direct/Oxford Research Group, 2004, p. 15 51 Suhrke, Astri and Samset, Ingrid, “What’s in a Figure? Estimating Recurrence of Civil War”, International Peacekeeping, Vol. 14, No. 2, April 2007, pp. 195-203 52 Suhrke and Samset, p. 199 53 Human Security Report Project (2009) 54 Human Security Report Project (2009), pp. 49-55 55 Human Security Report Project, Human Security Report 2005: War and Peace in the 21st Century Oxford: OUP, 2005, pp. 124-140 56Ibid., p. 127 57 Ibid., pp. 126-127 58 Chalmers, Malcolm, Spending to Save? An Analysis of the Cost-Effectiveness of Conflict Prevention, Bradford: University of Bradford, 2004, p.2 59 “Methodological Challenges of Assessing Cost-Effectiveness of Conflict Prevention”, What Price Peace, Paper for CHASE, DRAFT, London: SOAS, 2010

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60 Keen, David, “Mission Impossible? Assessing conflict prevention”, What Price Peace?, Working Paper no. 3, Paper for CHASE, DRAFT, London: SOAS, 2010, pp. 3-4 61 Collier, Paul, Guns, Wars and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, New York: Harper 2009, pp. 85-87 and “Development in Dangerous Places: If richer states provide security, the poorest can finally grow”, Boston Review, July/August 2009 62 Lindgren, p. 12 63 Brown, Michael and Rosencrance, Richard, The Costs of Conflict: Prevention and Cure in the Global Arena, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999, p. 223-4 64 DFID, White Paper 2009: Building Our Common Future, DFID, London, 2009, p. 78 65 Austin, Greg, Brussett, Emery, Chalmers, Malcolm and Pierce, Juliet (principal authors), Evaluation of the Conflict Prevention Pools - Synthesis Report, London, DFID, 2004, p.21 66 United Nations General Assembly, Progress report on the prevention of armed conflict: Report of the Secretary-General, A/60/891, New York: United Nations, 2006, p. 34 67 Barnes, Catherine, Bridging the Gap: Improving UK support for peace processes, London: Conciliation Resources, 2010, p. 1 68 Bailey, Sarah, Pavanello, Sara, Elhawary, Samir and O’Callaghan, Sorcha, Early recovery: an overview of policy debates and operational challenges, HPG Working Paper, November 2009, p. 13 69 UN DPKO, p.18 70 OECD-DAC, Encouraging Effective Evaluation of Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Activities: Towards DAC Guidance, Paris: OECD, 2007, p. 20 71 UN General Assembly, p. 6 72 Bailey et al, pp.4-6 73 Stabilisation Unit, The UK Approach to Stabilisation: Stabilisation Unit Guidance Notes, London: Stabilisation Unit, 2008, p.14 74 OECD-DAC, p. 39 75 Bailey et al, p.6 76 Doyle, Michael and Sambanis, Nicholas, Making War and Building Peace, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. 342-343 77 Collier, Hoeffler and Soderbom, p. 15 78 OECD QWIDS 79 http://www.un.org/peace/peacebuilding/ 80 UN General Assembly Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General on peacebuilding in the immediate aftermath of conflict,,11 June 2009, pp. 21-22 81 http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/PROJECTS/STRATEGIES/EXTLICUS/0,,contentMDK:21836102~pagePK:64171531~piPK:64171507~theSitePK:511778,00.html, accessed at 4.53 pm GMT on 28 March 2010 82 http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/ifs/projects/index_en.htm 83 http://creatrixonline.net/bcpr/financial.htm 84 http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:20042303~menuPK:34480~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html 85 International Development Association, IDA 15, Mid-term Review: Implementation Report, November 2009, pp. 25-26 86 UN DPKO, 2008, Op. Cit., pp. 17-18 87 United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines, New York: United Nations, 2008, pp. 17-29 88 Ramsbotham, Oliver, Woodhouse, Tom and Miall, Hugh, Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The prevention, management and transformation of deadly conflict, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005, pp. 141-145 89 For further details of current and historical costs of UN peace operations see United Nations, United Nations Peace Operations 2009: Year in Review, pp. 68-69 http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/publications/yir/yir2009.pdf 90 Williams, Paul. D, “Lessons Learned from Peace Operations in Africa”, Africa Security Brief No. 3 March 2010, Africa Center for Strategic Studies, p.1 91 Ibid., p.8 92 Doyle, Michael and Sambanis, Nicholas, Making War and Building Peace, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 93 Collier and Hoeffler, 2004 94 Collier, Hoeffler and Soderbom, p. 13. 95 De Waal, Alex, “Mission without end: Peacekeeping in the African political marketplace, International Affairs 85: 1 (2009), p.103 96 De Waal, p. 102 97 De Waal, pp. 111-13 98 CIC, “Peacekeeping Overstretch: Symptoms, Causes, and Consequences”, Background Paper for the Thematic Series Building More Effective UN Peace Operations, New York: CIC, NYU 99 SIPRI, p. 7 100 CIC, Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2008: Briefing Paper, New York: CIC, NYU, 2008, p. 3 101 Jones, Bruce, Gowan, Richard and Sherman, Jake, Building on Brahimi: Peacekeeping in an era of Strategic Uncertainty, A Report by the NYU Center on International Cooperation Submitted to the UN Departments of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support for the ‘New Horizons’ Project, New York: CIC, NYU, April 2009, pp. 49-51 102 Williams, p.1 103 Jones et al, pp. 51-2 104 Ibid., pp. 53-4 105 UN, United Nations Peace Operations 2009: Year in review, New York: UN, 2010. http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/publications/yir/yir2009.pdf; CIC,, Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2008, New York: CIC, NYU, 2008 106 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2009, Stockholm: SIPRI, 2009, Appendix 3A 107 CIC, Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2008

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108 Doyle and Sambanis, pp. 251-2 109 Austin et al, pp. 67-68 110 Deutsches Institut fur Entwicklunspolitik, Donor Contributions to the Strengthening of the African Peace and Security Architecture, Bonn: DIE, 2008, p. 3 111 Bercovitch, Jacob, “Mediation and Conflict Resolution”, SAGE Handbook of Conflict Resolution (eds. Bercovitch et al), SAGE, London, 2009, p. 343 112 DPKO, pp. 17-18 113 Ramsbotham et al, pp.51-52 114 Mack, Andrew, “Global Political Violence: Explaining the Post-Cold War Decline”, Coping with Crisis Working Paper Series, International Peace Academy, New York, March 2007 115 Crocker, Chester, “Peacemaking and Mediation: Dynamics of a Changing Field”, Coping with Crisis Working Paper Series, International Peace Academy, New York, March 2007, p. 3 116 Griffiths and Whitfield, p. 5-6 117 Mack, pp. 5-6 118 Griffiths and Whitfield, pp. 7 -11 119 Crocker, pp. 4-7, 12 120 Wallensteen, Peter, Understanding Conflict Resolution, London: Sage Publications, 2007, pp. 266-72 121 Aguswandi and Large, Judith (eds.), “Reconfiguring Politics: the Indonesia – Aceh peace process”, Accord, Issue 20, Conciliation Resources, London, 2008 122 http://www.un.org/depts/dpa/peace.html 123 Brahimi, Lakhdar and Ahmed, Salman, In Pursuit of Sustainable Peace: The Seven Deadly Sins of Mediation; Center on International Cooperation, New York University, May 2008 124 Nathan, Laurie, Mediation and the African Union’s Panel of the Wise”, Discussion Paper No. 10, Crisis States Development Research Centre, June 2005; 125 Nathan, Laurie, Mediation and the African Union’s Panel of the Wise”, Discussion Paper No. 10, Crisis States Development Research Centre, June 2005; Bah, Sarjoh, Dilemmas of Regional Peacekeeping: The Dynamics of the AU’s Response to Darfur, New York: NYU CIC, March 2010, p. 3; http://www.africa-union.org/root/au/publications/PSC/Panel%20of%20the%20wise.pdf 126 See e.g. Bradbury, Mark and Healy, Sally (eds.), “Whose peace is it anyway? Connecting Somali and international peacemaking”, Accord, Issue 21, Conciliation Resources, London, 2010