DIIS Report

Foreign aid in countries of conflict

Aid donors and international agencies have struggled for more than a decade to find appropriate ways of helping facilitate development and transform violent conflict in areas of limited or contested statehood. These countries include South Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, or the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A new report from DIIS analyses examples of three recent trends in international development cooperation, which aim at changing traditional aid approaches to better fit the challenges of these contexts. The report looks at:

  • the Somaliland Special Agreement as an example of a New Deal compactdeveloped under the principles of the New Deal for engagement in fragile statesthat emerged from the G7+ countries and the International Dialogue for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding. The report shows the immanently political character of the process, which, in this case, raises the question of who can be party to a New Deal compact.
  • the (re-) emerging interest among donors and international agencies in ways of engaging development aid in the ‘upstream’ prevention of violent conflict at local levels. On the basis of analyses of various cases, the report warns against limited conceptions of the ‘local’, and emphasizes the need for flexibility as well as the often noted need for comprehensive conflict analysis and local monitoring capacity.
  • the experience with what has been called hybrid governancein areas where the central state is absent or has to compete or cooperate with other forms of authority. Such alternative approaches have emerged with the recognition that, in the short term, at least, other authorities than the state are or could be responsible for daily governance, in particular with regard to security and justice. However, the report warns against instrumentalizing hybrid orders or introducing hybrid governance from the top-down.

The authors of the report present their findings at a public seminar the 18th of December, 2014.

The report has been commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of the grant Tendencies in Development Policieswith five themes: new partnerships, the results agenda, foreign aid in fragile regions, financing economic development, and new social movements.

DIIS Eksperter

Finn Stepputat
Peace and violence
Emeritus Researcher
+45 32698685
none
New approaches to foreign aid in conflict-affected countries and fragile situations