Lessons from Rwanda

Peter Uvin

Development aid , not humanitarian aid , not foreign policy or peacekeeping, but development practice narrowly conceived

they are there, in large numbers, before violence and soon thereafter

Written as part of the system, not critical outsider (genocide survivor)

Long live the JEEAR, BUT

in the country of the thousand technical assistants, easily 3/4 of the bazungu that lived there before the genocide were in development –and yet, the JEEAR devoted no space to it at all

Reflected broad sense that there was no relation at all (UN and OAU report too)

“development to relief continuum”

This has now totally changed

The deliberate blindness I dissected in my book has disappeared, and almost all are trying to see now

those now working in Rwanda are aware of the social and political challenges facing the country and seek to reflect on their agency’s impact thereupon. Many spend money in explicit attempts to influence core social and political dynamics of governance, reconciliation, justice, security, etc.

A lot has changed since 1994

JEEAR in part, but more The Rwandan development, foreign policy,

humanitarian crises themselvesThe on-going post Cold-War change in

international political climate favoring more forceful interventionism

The longstanding debates about more holistic definitions of “development”

POST-CONFLICT AGENDA

The addition of new fields of work –justice, policy and security reform, demobilization, disarmament and reintegration, reconciliation and exclusionary values, and a few not so new but still very much strengthened areas such as inclusive governance, respect for human rights …

Funding of conflict resolution organizations and projects –some very new and good stuff… . In Burundi’s, take radio Ijambo or the Burundi Leadership Training Project, for example.

– (masquerading as conflict prevention) Budgets of organizations such as IA or CMG have

risen dramatically, mainly paid for on development budgets.

Funding goes to interesting local organizations like POLE Institute in Goma, or the IRDP in Kigali

But the agenda is also about doing the existing stuff, the old issues, differently, with a better sense of their impact on conflict --rural development, for example, or education, or even reconstruction

Tools were developed, although they tend to be weak: scientifically not solid, superficially implemented, under-discussed (especially transparently), without much impact on actual policy…

Difficulties

Hard to assess situation & trends time horizon way too short, and financing+ project

tools even shorter. Goals and objectives of donors are not

necessarily clear, shared, consistent, or coherent (incl. self-interested goals)

Same holds for recipients Heavy footprint of the system

In conclusion

1. disjuncture between breadth of mandate and absence of prioritization + paucity of resources donors fund a bit of everything

the total is less than the sum of the parts

2. new agenda is not contextualized and unrealistic

deep imbalance between far-reaching aims and limited resources + knowledge

3. post-conflict agenda grants unconstrained license to intervene, devoid of tools for making choices about priorities or under conditions of scarce resources or conflict

need to define an approach that minimizes the reach of the international community, leaving as much as possible to local actors, while being principled and providing a real value-added

Until now: post-conflict agenda. – Widely implemented (too many countries in or out of

war)– Although with enormous difficulties in terms of impact

The more important agenda, however, is the conflict prevention one, which is very rarely implemented –although an enormous amount of lip-service is paid to it

CONFLICT PREVENTION

It remains extremely difficult to get serious investment and attention to preventing conflict before it broke out... Although there is a lot of talk about a culture of prevention and how efficient and humane it would be to invest more in CP, there is little practice in this regard.

One of the few exceptions: Burundi There are good ideas around (Bernard Wood’s

paper for UNDP for ex.), but they have a hard time getting attention…

Known difficulties

lack of political will of donors lack of urgency for IC policy-makers lack of interest of most poor country

governments (unwarranted interference in their internal affair)

Turf wars about control & resources lack of quality knowledge a) about the situation,

and b) about what can be done e.g. international community in Rwanda before genocide

LESSONS NOT LEARNT

Choice: no mechanisms for choice anywhere. JEEAR and its 10-years later report never mention choices: they just pile on great things to do, as if time and money and energy were limitless.

Realism: an enormous amount of what we are doing in the PCP agenda is deeply normative, essentially a copying of a pluralist, liberal-democratic market + democracy system. This stands not the slightest chance in many PC countries.

Ottaway: “the international community needs to rethink its approach, starting not from what the ideal end goal should be, but from what can realistically be achieved with the resources that are likely to be available and taking into consideration the real distribution of power that exists in the country. We cannot hope to impose an ideal solution on all countries.”

Staying the course: much of what is being asked for is very complicated political judgment, and a willingness to pursue a path for the long turn, taking risks, understanding that the changes required will not happen rapidly, the process wil not always be forwardsh

Self-constraint: they also contain no sense of what one should not do, how to limit one’s power, how to cut down on the deep interventionism inherent in the agenda. This may entail working in fewer areas, leaving entire fields off the map of our interventions….

Organizational focus: too little on the way the incentive structure that prevails within organizations militates against most of what is required. Focus is only substantive, and interesting, for sure, but without critical analysis of personnel, budget, accounting, knowledge management, and other organizational polices, little will change.

Dealing with politics: OECD 1999 Synthesis report on “the use of incentives & disincentives for peace”: All aid, at all times, is political –recognized or not, deliberate or not…

PC agenda and a fortiori CP one are even more political –they seek to affect local actors’ aims, powers, relations, etc.

We cannot admit it, and cannot cope with it

At the end of the day, then,

I think we cannot prevent conflicts at this time. We have neither the knowledge, nor the power, nor the flexibility, nor the stamina, to prevent conflicts (if local people aren’t doing it).

Would need a different world where the weak and the poor have equal voices, Where governments represent all (incl survivors) Where people are committed to peace Case of Burundi

significant change in international infrastructure required

stronger principled behavior, presumably based on human rights conditionality (although…)

All the rest is long-term muddling through by local actors, who can be supported