Libya, General National Congress Elections - Voting Day, 7 July 2012 - An elated voter casts her ballot. Credit: UNDP Photo

By Abdoulaye Mar Dieye
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 25 2018 (IPS)

As the old adage goes: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Nowhere is this more appropriate than when it comes to conflict. Violent conflict causes not only human suffering and destruction but robs entire societies of development and growth.

By some estimates, a country that suffers a four-year civil war loses nearly 20% of its GDP per capita. Syria has lost 19-36% of its productive capacity by 2016 due to conflict, its economy producing 20-38 billion USD less in value each year.

What is more, secondary effects of conflicts have no borders, affecting economies all over the world. For example, it is estimated that the conflict in Somalia and piracy attacks in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean led to an increase in shipping costs of about 10%.

Moreover, because conflict tends to disproportionally affect low- and middle-income countries it compounds the challenge of development – once conflict starts, development slows down or ends. Ending conflict not only ends human suffering — a worthy goal in and of itself – but leads to significant economic benefits as well.

Preventing conflict from starting, on the other hand, would magnify those benefits immeasurably. Even after the end of conflict, countries need years, if not decades, to recover. Along with rebuilding shattered societies and infrastructure, countries have to rebuild confidence in their economic systems and attract investment.

The UN Secretary-General recognized this immense potential in his “Peacebuilding and sustaining peace” report, where he called for “prevention of conflict and addressing its root causes”.

It is also the key conclusion of the “Pathway for Peace”, a joint UN and World Bank study, and has been identified by the European Union (EU) in the “Pre-emptive Peace” section of the EU’s Global Strategy, which states that the EU will “redouble our efforts on prevention, [and] monitoring root causes” of conflict.

We do not have the blueprint for preventing conflict. We do, however, have years of experience in attempting to do so, and one of the key lessons we learned is a clear and firm link between strong democratic foundations and resilience.

Countries with institutions such as inclusive and empowered parliaments, free media and robust civil society sector are less likely to experience conflict, and even if they do, they tend to recover much quicker.

We also know that an essential building block of a strong democratic system is inclusive and transparent elections, giving citizens a voice and making leaders accountable to their people. At the same time, elections can also be a trigger (although seldom the cause) of conflict, often serving as a catalyst for long-simmering grievances.

Prevention of electoral conflict was a topic of a recent high-level conference in Brussels, organized by the EC-UNDP Joint Task Force on Electoral Assistance (JTF) and attended by over 200 practitioners from over 60 countries and is a focus of a joint EU-UNDP study and toolkit on “Sustaining Peace through Elections”.

While the study found that there is “no blueprint for preventing electoral violence”, it clearly identified a common thread – support to strong democratic institutions and social values is an essential component of any conflict-prevention strategy.

Building democratic institutions and reinforcing social values capable of withstanding potential shocks of electoral violence requires sustained support, well before and well after the elections. Attempts to address electoral conflict in the weeks or even months leading up to an election is, in most cases, too little, too late.

To change this paradigm, we need to rethink the way we offer electoral assistance. Acknowledging that no single political or technical solution is sufficient, the conference presented to participants a “Democracy Strengthening” approach.

Such strategy attempts to view assistance through a wide-angle lens, to include all the stakeholders in a comprehensive, long-term vision from the very start of our involvement.

Too often, we initiate our assistance driven by short-term focus on an electoral event or a single electoral cycle, only to keep extending and adding on project after project, without a comprehensive strategy.

Instead, we should embrace a long-term view from the start and design our assistance with a goal of not simply holding a better election or having a more competent parliament, but to develop strong, empowered and independent democratic institutions.

To capture this broader timeframe and increase coordination between communities of practice and institutions more effectively, the JTF will propose the development of “Democracy Strengthening” approaches in future electoral programmes. Ultimately, our goal is to build social and institutional resilience to prevent conflict from starting in the first place.

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The European Union and the United Nations will co-chair a high-level meeting in Brussels on Monday, aiming to mobilise funding to provide immediate life-saving assistance for the Central African Republic.

Abdoulaye Mar Dieye. Photo courtesy of UNDP

The sectarian violence in the Central African Republic has uprooted nearly one million people and it is estimated that 2.2 million, about half the population, need humanitarian aid.

Drug supplies to clinics and hospitals have been disrupted and public infrastructure such as schools and government buildings has been destroyed. Now, a major food crisis is looming. According to the U.N., 94 percent of communities report that they do not have enough seeds to plant for the next agricultural season.

While fulfilling immediate humanitarian needs is essential, the international community needs to help address the development gaps that led to the crisis in the first place. If it fails to do so, another crisis could soon happen again.

As such, humanitarian action needs to be part of a wider effort aimed at putting the country back on a more robust development path.

The current crisis in the Central African Republic is the result of long-term State failure, chronic poverty and lawlessness, coupled with decades of underinvestment in social services and economic development.

Around 63 percent of the population in the country lives below the poverty line, while long-standing inequalities and competition for power and resources have driven successive conflicts, the latest fuelled by religious identity.

Because various administrations have been unable to implement the rule of law, women, children and other vulnerable groups are at increased risk of violence. By the same token, because people have not been included in local development planning, marginalised and excluded groups feel that violence is the only way.

When the violence subsides, attention must stay focused on measures needed to rebuild essential infrastructure such as water reservoirs, sewers, bridges and local clinics. To that end, public works projects can provide vital sources of revenue for women and men.

Such initiatives can help restore trust and confidence among local communities across ethnic and religious divides, while involving them in the rehabilitation of local administrations.

Addressing human rights and gender-based violence through dialogue and local reconciliation, as well as ensuring disputes are mediated and victims are supported through legal aid and physical protection, can go a long way toward preventing conflict.

In the medium term, because weak governance, compounded by the current power vacuum, is at the core of the problem, there will need to be considerable investments in rebuilding the capacity of the State to deliver basic services to the population, including outside of the capital, Bangui.

This includes creating a functioning judiciary and security corps, including police and gendarmerie units that are able to prosecute crimes. These investments are all the more critical in the lead up to eventual elections in the Central African Republic.

Having worked with donors, national actors and international partners to create a roadmap for the transition of the Central African Republic, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will support the country’s stabilisation through the phased implementation of community security, livelihoods, social cohesion, and reconciliation initiatives.

The current meeting in Brussels presents a unique opportunity for dialogue on how to eliminate the need for humanitarian intervention. If we seize that opportunity, the Central African Republic could be in a much stronger position to finally put its past behind.

Abdoulaye Mar Dieye is director of the Regional Bureau for Africa of the United Nations Development Programme.