The World Bank and other institutions

International Alert targets a wide range of institutions and actors with the aim to improve their peacebuilding policies and practices. The following are but a few examples:

World Bank

As a financier and as provider of often quite forceful policy and technical advice, the World Bank:

• has very substantial direct and inadvertent impacts on local and national economic systems and governance. (These can be negative or positive);
  
• influences the direction and characteristics of other aid and investment flows;
• leverages interest and activities on the part of governments who are accessing, or seeking to access, external sources of funds.

Moreover, despite recent ructions involving the Bank president, some argue that the Bank’s role and influence will increase further in the coming years. This is because influential voices in the donor development community are currently arguing the need to 'multilateralise' development assistance and Finance Ministers may push for this in order to reduce the high transaction costs of aid incurred by bilateral donors.

International Alert is currently studying the decision-making of the Bank in conflict prone, conflict-affected and otherwise fragile countries. We are looking at the structures and procedures in Washington DC and between HQ and country offices. Essentially, the country cases are Burundi, Nepal and Sri Lanka, although it is planned to also cover the Multi-donor Trust Fund in Sudan. We plan to expand this list and the scope of the work in 2008-2009.

Our primary interest is in the institutional incentives and performance criteria for Bank staff and how they design and implement Bank programmes in-country (and across sub-regions). We aim to assist the process of adapting these to the acute development challenges in 40-50 countries worldwide dubbed ‘fragile’. The ultimate goal is to help improve the Bank’s ability to reduce state and societal fragility and prevent violent conflict.

UK Government

Alert engages regularly with a wide range of departments across the UK government, particularly in the Department of International Development (DFID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). We work with UK officials both as an individual organisation and also collectively with other conflict prevention NGO partners through the Peace and Security Liaison Group. PSLG members, for example, have been engaged in a process of mapping of the UK Government’s Conflict and Security Policy to look at how the UK Government has responded over the past five years to changing security needs, particularly in its international policy, and to understand how far conflict prevention/ peacebuilding has been integrated into broader government thinking. The PSLG has also sought to influence the Government Public Service Agreement on conflict prevention and resolution from late 2007.

In its individual advocacy, Alert focuses on the UK Government’s policies, funding streams and institutional set-up that determine how effectively it can contribute to peacebuilding, including through the UK’s operationalisation of UN SCR 1325 (see the section on the UN). For example, Alert submitted a paper to DFID as part of the consultation process for its White Paper on eliminating world poverty. Alert’s paper argued that DFID must push to change the way the UK engages in fragile states and situations – laying the foundations for peace and stability as its central priority and emphasising the critical importance of governance systems, and the social contract, in this regard. Alert was pleased to see the emphasis on governance when the White Paper was published in mid 2006, as well the prominence given to peace and security issues as the document will inform the UK’s development policy for the coming years. As with the 2005 publication of DFID work on fragile states and on security and development, we also strongly welcome the recent DFID paper on Governance, Development and Democratic Politics and the publication of a conflict priority.
Going forward, our work will remain focused on the extent to which this kind of knowledge is integrated into spending plans and programming, and the degree to which the commitments are put into practice.

OECD-DAC

Alert has lobbied the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) to emphasise the need for a different model of aid effectiveness when operating in ‘Fragile States’. The DAC Fragile States Group have made changes over the past 12 months that certainly go in the right direction towards a sensitivity to providing development assistance in conflict regions and the most recent draft of the DAC principles of Good International Engagement in Fragile States reflects some of Alert’s concerns. However, there is still much awareness-raising needed amongst the international donor community.

For more information on our advocacy work, contact Edward Bell

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Last updated: October 2007