Addressing the economic dimensions of peacebuilding through trade and support to private enterprise

‘War kills development as well as people’.1 It destroys livelihoods as well as lives, and it undermines economic as well as political progress. Violence deprives people of opportunity as well as the physical infrastructure and social structures on which they rely. Above all, perhaps, it robs them of hope and belief in the future. In other words, the impacts of conflict are as damaging to the economic potential of a nation as they are to its social and political prospects. There is also a widespread assumption, although there is no direct causal relationship between the two, that poverty can be a factor driving violent conflict. Over the last decade, increasing recognition of these points has stimulated consensus on the nexus between security and development and has led to a greater appreciation that peace and economic development are inseparable.