Overview

1. Exploring the peace building-development nexus in situations of conflict and fragilityAlina Rocha Menocal, ODIInternational Parliamentary Conference on Peace Building: Tackling State Fragility2 February 2010

2. Overview • The challenge • A peace- and state-building approach to tackle fragility • Operational lessons and implications • A role for parlamentarians

3. The challenge • In conflict affected fragile states, the international community and domestic actors face the dual task of promoting peace while helping to build more effective and legitimate states that are inclusive and responsive. • At the heart of efforts to build more peaceful states and societies lies the challenge to strengthen/revitalise the linkages between state and society.

4. A peace- and state-building approach to tackle fragility • Work needed along three crucial dimensions: 1) work towards making political systems more inclusive and legitimate 2) work towards strengthening key core functions of the state so that it can operate at a minimal level 3) work towards helping the state meet public expectations • Crucially, these are interrelated and not sequential.

5. More inclusive and legitimate political systems • Objective is to develop a new vision of the state and rules of the game that: • Are acceptable to a majority of actors, and • Can create a legitimate political centre • The current context in which conflict affected fragile states are being transformed offers the potential for more inclusive statecraft. • But this remains a daunting task. • Guatemala provides a useful illustration.

6. Core state functions • Before the state can do anything else, it must be minimally effective in the following three areas: • Security (enforcing and protective) • Rules-based environment • Administrative, financial and macro-economic management

7. Public expectations • This focuses attention on those state functions and activities which are expected by the population based on the local context, including: • enabling infrastructure and regulatory framework • public service delivery (health, education, water) • employment programmes and job creation • access to justice Anti-corruption measures • voice and accountability (fair elections, free media, freedom of information, human rights, budget monitoring)

8. Operational lessons and implications • PB and PB is an endeavour full of contradictions. There are important complementarities but also tensions. Difficult trade-offs are always involved. • Start with domestic context to: • make informed policy decisions among competing priorities • facilitate existing domestic processes and leverage local capacities • foster inclusive dialogues at different levels of governance

9. Operational lessons and implications • Think politically and sharpen tools for more sophisticated political economy analysis. This is an area that DFID is increasingly engaging with, as well as other international organisations. • Be humble and realistic about what international actors can achieve from the outside. • Remain engaged over the long term. Developing in-depth knowledge and building trust and contacts in-country are time-consuming, and the kinds of transformations being sought are likely to take generations and not years.

10. Role for Parlamentarians • Parliament and parlamentarians are a key institution linking state and society. • They are crucial in terms of providing checks and balances, holding the executive to account and channelling citizens’ demands. • But in fragile contexts they are not as effective. • Donors can help by working with parliaments and parlamentarians in efforts to strengthen their internal capacity, their autonomy, and their ability to promote horizontal and vertical accountability.