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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Mitigating and managing conflict
>> Foreign Aid in the National Interest >> Overview >> Mitigating and managing conflict Jump to Overview Sections:
>> 50 years of development gains >> Promoting democratic governance >> Driving economic growth >> Improving people's health >> Mitigating and managing conflict >> Providing humanitarian assistance >> The full measure of U.S. development assistance-official and private >> Notes >> Background papers >> ReferencesWhat foreign assistance can do
At a very general level, conflict prevention and management entail a continuum of interventions that have as their primary objective strengthening the capacity of states and societies to sustainably manage sources of tension and strain in their own countries. This will require helping key stakeholders locate and rank the most important causes of conflict that exist in their own country. In some places, this may be rural to urban migration. In others, communal competition over a dwindling water supply or access to arable land. And in others, still, corruption. Whatever the underlying cause, a critical part of the solution is encouraging the growth of institutions that can craft innovative and participatory solutions to these problems at the local, regional, and national levels.
While there are clusters of fairly distinct activities for short-term and long-term interventions, it is important not to compartmentalize them. Even in the period immediately before and after violence, it is critical that the foreign assistance community continue to encourage the creation of institutions that can address underlying grievances and ambitions. It is also vital that short-term assistance, humanitarian or otherwise, be acutely sensitive to how it feeds into or sustains long-term conflict dynamics, particularly the economic dimensions of violence. Some factors critical in the short-term, such as high levels of youth unemployment, require both long-term and short-term interventions.
Determining where a country falls on the continuum from pre-conflict to post-conflict requires much more sophisticated risk-monitoring systems than most foreign donors currently use. Some early-warning models are being developed to assess risks two or more years out. While these models are not perfect, and certainly cannot predict the outbreak of violence with accuracy, they do a reasonably good job of ranking countries by the probability of violence. In combination with regional expertise, they can help donors identify priority countries and guide decisions about what type of intervention is most necessary at a point in time.
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Last Updated on: October 07, 2009 |
