Thematic Workshop: Development Cooperation in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings

This note captures the key takeaways from the thematic workshop with 13 diverse experts – see the annex for the full list. It is not meant to be a comprehensive record of the conversation, nor does it seek to capture consensus views.

1. Focus on humanitarian and development goals together, rather than consecutively

• Make system strengthening a cross-cutting priority of humanitarian action.
• Invest in building the broader institutional ecosystem, not just individual programs.
• Strengthen state capacity so that results are sustainable, recognizing that business actors can also help sustain peace over the long term.
• Create jobs as a lever for security and stability.
• Treat economic resilience as a foundation for broader societal resilience.
• Keep policy solutions adaptable so they can evolve as local conditions change.

2. Adopt a state plus approach, extending development cooperation to civil society and the private sector

• Take the time to identify often overlooked reform-minded community actors, entrepreneurs, and elites across all sectors and build connectivity between them for sustained bottom-up development. Empower local actors by taking a counterpart rather than sectoral approach.
• Promote accountability between people and institutions (state, civil society, private sector) by:
• reducing long-term dependence on external actors;
• supporting the state to address root causes of conflict; and
• building relationships with neighboring countries to help achieve and sustain peace.
• External humanitarian actors should not shy from engaging with the state.
• Increase development finance institutions’ engagement with civil society and the private sector.

3. Expand engagement with the private sector at all stages of conflict to provide services and build resilience

• Incorporate investment-readiness early in “humanitarian” period, identifying promising supply chains and bankable projects, supporting investment structures and building capabilities to take advantage of windows of opportunities. Markets exist even where states have failed.
• Address demand-side constraints on capital absorption, not only supply-side availability of capital. This requires properly resourcing the time, energy, and creativity needed for effective coordination at the tactical and delivery level.
• Develop distinct category of fragile or conflict-affected countries that allow for higher risk tolerance by global financial institutions and multilateral development banks; identify which specific rules need to be changed. For each category, identify core risks that need to be brought down and build strategies to address them, including risks associated with e.g. procurement, property rights, and contract rights. Make some first loss capital available.
• Deploy patient capital to private sector where there is promise of growth and jobs.
• Leverage technology-enabled delivery mechanisms wherever possible, such as delivering cash transfers and vital communications through mobile phones.
• Lean more about the dynamics of war economies, including what real economy initiatives can still be supported. When the conflict eases, support shifting power structures and incentives away from extractive activity and toward productive economic engagement.
• Invest in regional approaches to infrastructure development, particularly for small countries.

4. Adapt accountability systems to reflect local systems rather than imposing external structures.

• Explore models to drive local ownership even when the state is not the dominant actor. For instance, in the absence of a functioning state, set up a group of local actors with vested interest in peace and cohesion, to monitor the actions of external actors so that they meet local needs, rather than donor preferences. Particularly in protracted crises.
• Avoid selecting partners primarily based on their ability to comply with externally-designed accountability standards, rather than the impact they can achieve.

5. Seek to understand the root causes of conflict to achieve sustainable results

• Contribute with humility, noting that it is hard for external actors to fully understand all economic, political, and social realities on the ground, and that the presence of external actors has the potential to undermine legitimacy of existing actors, without sufficiently questioning their own.
• Examine how extractive economic structures, private sector dynamics, and state incentive structures contribute to both the onset of conflict and the pathway out of it.

6. Refine the typology used to classify fragile and conflict-affected states

• Recognize fragile communities as a subset of fragile states rather than treating fragility as uniform across an entire country.
• Avoid binary state-level classifications; account for sub-national variation (for example, only a few Local Government Areas [LGAs] are affected in the Northeast of Nigeria versus all LGAs affected in the Northwest).
• Distinguish between fragile, conflict-affected, and vulnerable states rather than conflating them, and diversify the partner base beyond traditional donors.

Where further attention is needed:

• What are potential long-term solutions that engage diaspora capacities?
• How to better assess the connections between fragility, conflict and natural resources?
• What are strategies to ensure that evidence-based programs can be sustained after donor funding ends?
• How can we make the case to development actors that fragile and conflict-affected states are the core of the challenge (with overlaps with climate vulnerability and poverty) and not the periphery?
• How can we take a “counterpart” approach to identifying and supporting reform-minded leaders?

List of Participants

1. Magdi Amin
2. Mossadeck Bally
3. Amanda Catanzano
4. Freddie Carver
5. Jake Cusack
6. Stefan Dercon
7. Peter Evans
8. Joel Hellman
9. Hans Peter Lankes
10. David Miliband
11. Wale Osofisan
12. Paula Tufro
13. Leila Zerrougui