Aid Effectiveness

This report summarises current debate on conflict, aid and peacebuilding and suggests that humanitarian agencies can go beyond avoiding negative impacts on conflict to contributing positively to peacebuilding in a way that respects their core mandates and key humanitarian principles.

This report is divided into two sections. The first section is a brief overview of the new context in Nepal resulting from the People’s Movement II of April 2006. The second section comprises the substantive part of the report and offers concrete recommendations for how donors can collaborate to support civil society in peacebuilding and conflict transformation. In the current context, greater focus has been given to recommendations based on collaborative donor support to civil society outside of Kathmandu.

Produced as part of the EU-funded Conflict Prevention Partnership, this paper analyses the context in which the European Union uses its external relations instruments to address security issues, promote legitimate and effective governance, and support economic recovery and regional integration, in the DRC. Consultations in the region and in the EU, as well as meetings held in Kinshasa in September 2006 with local officials, civil society and international diplomats have been used to develop recommendations and suggest possible avenues under each theme.

This paper is aimed at motivating and informing discussion within the EU institutions and Member States on the nature of their engagement in the South Caucasus. It suggests priority areas for political dialogue and external assistance programming under the upcoming EC Country and Regional Strategy Papers. It argues that unless authorities and civil society in the region, supported by the international community, genuinely address the root causes of violent conflict, societal instability and distrust, then broad-based development and prosperity will remain beyond reach.

This paper grows from the meeting between IA and the Donor Group on 23rd November 2006 on how to respond effectively and appropriately in the changed political context in Nepal. Drawing on the comments and analysis at the meeting, this paper offers recommendations on priorities for donor engagement. The basic theme is that short-term goals can be achieved, but only if addressing the culture of power in Nepal is the starting point.

This paper aims to provide a think-piece for how donor strategies might respond in support of Nepal's future prospects for sustainable peace. It does this recognising that Nepal is still suffering from the causes and consequences of 10 years of debilitating violent conflict and a history of multiple, parallel governance systems

New strategy papers for the EU's engagement with developing countries will soon be agreed. The activities under them will have fundamental impacts on the contexts in which they will be applied, and many of these are prone to, or affected by, violent conflict, or experience some kind of societal or state fragility. Recognising the importance of the strategy papers, and the programming which will flow from them, International Alert, Saferworld and the European Peaceubilding Liaison Office, have come together to produce this briefing paper, providing analysis and advice for decision-making in Brussels and in the field.

This study outlines the particular development challenges confronting international actors in fragile and conflict-affected countries, and gives a summary of the World Bank’s evolving approach to those challenges. The study then sets out certain key problems which, despite recent improvements, continue to reduce the quality of the Bank’s impacts. Noting the inconsistencies in the Bank’s approaches, it assesses the factors that determine the Bank’s ability to deal with, and help address, the immense complexity of its operating environments. It concludes with recommendations for improving approaches to those complexities.

In this challenge paper the members of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council propose a new vulnerability and protection business model for humanitarian assistance. This new model should have six requirements: A comprehensive risk framework; A reworked balance of spending between response, prevention and recovery; A big investment in national and local capacity; Fuller engagement of the private sector; Linking of the humanitarian to broader social and economic development issues; and Regional and international readiness to address cross-border humanitarian issues.