As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pointed out in his report to the Security Council on June 11, 2009, “the immediate post-conflict period offers a window of opportunity to provide basic security, deliver peace dividends, shore up and build confidence in political process, and strengthen core national capacity to lead peace-building efforts.” Although conducting development activities is a time-consuming process hindered by difficult structural conditions, including a climate of fear and continued distrust and weak state institutions, peace-building and nation-building efforts must be interlinked to long-term strategies for promotion of democratization and market economies, and assurance of rule of law and civilian security.
Post-conflict societies are vulnerable due to poor implementation of laws as well as increasing lawlessness and rampant corruption. Societies are usually divided as a result of distrust and ongoing threat to individual security, and civil liberties. Organized crimes and criminalization of politics directly hinder efforts to ensure justice to victims and establish accountability in government system, which basically destabilizes state mechanisms and governance, and also affects economic activities and development strategies.
Transparency and accountability are not only important for governance in post-conflict countries, but also essential to launch confidence-building activities among stakeholders and address root causes of conflict and trauma of victims. In this context, peace-building and nation-building should be made long-term priorities in order to create nonviolent environments that ensure freedom, liberty and democratic space.
Unfortunately, Nepal has neither focused its priority towards development nor achieved the goals of peace process through political means. Development could be a starting point for long-term peace and political stability. As a result, foundations for economic and social institutions are further weakening and found dysfunctional, and ordinary people continue to suffer from price hike, scarcity of energy and resources, poor infrastructure and roads, garbage disposal, hazardous emission, unemployment, poverty and impoverishment, discrimination, ethnic and communal tension, etc.
Transparency and accountability are not only important for governance in post-conflict countries, but also essential to launch confidence-building activities among stakeholders and address root causes of conflict and trauma of victims.
Issues related to control arbitrary use of force, strengthen the capacity of state’s security mechanisms and transformation process for democratization of state polity and economic adjustment must be looked at in broader perspective, and needs to be addressed efficiently and appropriately to prevent possible escalation of conflict and violence.
Development strategies supporting nation-building in post-conflict scenario should cover three issues as per Sabine Kurtenbach of the Institute of Development and Peace, Germany. That includes functionality of state institutions to ensure public goods; capacities at different levels in the territory matters and technical capacities to fulfill certain functions; and legitimacy of these institutions and the state. Thus, development strategies need to be prepared based on integrated approaches that does not only address crisis management, but also includes the establishment of legitimate state institutions.
Integrated approaches must take into account varying dynamics and contexts of conflict to launch development activities. Development strategies work efficiently if it is context-specific and problem-oriented. As most of the conflicts are somehow related to the development of states and their structure, the question of priorities and sequencing always arises. Therefore, development activities must give priority to pressing problems related to public security that helps in peace-building and the establishment of legitimate state structures through identifying short-term needs of stabilization and long-term peace-building goals, ensuring local ownership, incorporating peace-building agendas, and internalizing donor policies within the framework of national guidelines.
According to Kurtenbach, external actors usually feel the urgency to address disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants (DDR), rehabilitation of the economic and social infrastructure, and the reconstruction of social relations, including psychological support for victims. Although donor resources often were used towards rehabilitation of physical infrastructure, a country like Nepal must prioritize the need to rebuild roads, sewage systems, bridges, energy infrastructures, schools, etc. as a part of peace-building efforts.
The success of long-term peace-building and transformation depends upon the engagement of local communities and incorporating their issues and concerns in development efforts. In this regard, different issues must be considered prior to preparing development strategies such as social, economic, historical and cultural aspects of society, as well as their norms and values, and forms of traditional modalities. Also the level of third-party involvement during conflict period and the process of ending conflict, the dynamics and consequences of conflict and resource availability to continue development and peace-building activities should also be included.
While building foundation for sustainable peace, actors of the peace process must address issues related to macro-level (unemployment, inequalities, exclusion, protection of civilians, etc) and micro-level (political economy, horizontal inequalities in economic, social and political spaces, identities, etc) that directly and indirectly contributed to the emergence and escalation of conflict. Development without economic security cannot contribute much toward post-conflict peace-building and nation-building to achieve the goals of the peace process.
(Writer is a conflict analyst.)
peace_sb@yahoo.com
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