The Role of Foreign Assistance
in Conflict Prevention

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Download the paper from this session: - Word - PDF - HTML Listen to audio clips from this session  January 2001 Conference Report TOC     Session I: The Rationale for Change and a Vision for the Future The human species demands, at minimum, a certain quality of life. Human rights should be protected, pluralism advocated, oppression avoided, and children given a chance to live life to the fullest. To the extent that many countries cannot yet do this, the international community should reach out in friendship to help. The international community has two roles in promoting this quality of life: Putting out fires when they are just starting. Building capacity to help others deal with problems in non-violent ways. The international community needs attitudes, insights, institutions, and resources to implement a farsighted, proactive approach of assistance, cooperation, and education for countries in trouble. Many will welcome such an approach, even if ambivalently. For the small number of countries that are intransigent toward outsiders, mired in hatred, and controlled by tyrants, the international community should continually seek to draw them into the community of nations, while containing and deterring as necessary with forceful means. Foresight is necessary to prevent conflict. The international community should take the initiative to assist countries in acquiring the necessary attitudes, concepts, skills, and institutions for resolving internal and external conflict. It should be proactive in helping them build the political and economic institutions of democracy. In offering such help, the international community will need to engage moderate, constructive, and pragmatic leaders who are committed to humane and democratic values. While such leaders exist all over the world, their situation is often precarious. The international community can assist these leaders by providing a support network, which will, over the long run, help build institutions capable of meeting basic human needs and coping with conflicts that arise in the course of human interactions. It is important to realize that the world will never be conflict-free. Ways must be found to deal with conflict, short of mass violence. Fulfilling the promise of democracy requires informed, proactive, and sustained efforts to prevent deadly conflict through just solutions and improved living conditions. There is a positive correlation between open market economies and democratic transitions. It is difficult to conceive of a long-term, flourishing market economy in the twenty-first century in the absence of a democratic political system because participation in the world economy requires openness in the flow of information, ideas, capital, technology, and people. Civil society builds democracy by allowing the evolution of democratic values through non-violent conflict. Groups compete with each other and with the state for the power to carry out their specific agendas. Within the context of institutionalized competition, tolerance and acceptance of opposition develop. Civil society provides the opportunity for coalitions of individuals to undertake innovative activities, e.g., in the service of equal opportunity or protection of human rights. The most useful means of promoting lasting democracy include: The provision of technical assistance and financial aid to establish the necessary processes and institutions. Education of the public about free societies, i.e., democracy, democratic institutions, and markets. Fair elections at both the national and local level. The establishment of national and local legislative bodies. The creation of a rule of law embodied in an explicit and legal framework, including a constitution, an independent judiciary, and the protection of individual human rights and minority rights. Oversight institutions for public accountability. Political and public administration of a professional nature. Civilian institutional capacities to deal with security questions. Mechanisms to deal with conflict that are perceived as fair. Encouragement of the formation of political parties with no attempt to favor one party over the another so long as they are all in the democratic family. To make the above tasks feasible, the international democratic community needs to establish special funds for economic assistance to be given to countries struggling to ensure their democratic future. It is vital that this financial assistance be sustained over an extended period of years, as the democracy building process is complicated. There is more to lasting democracy than one successful election. An early warning system needs to be developed to identify countries, especially democracies, that are slipping into crisis, and ensure timely international intervention. The embassies of established democratic nations could serve as a focal point in each emerging democracy for intellectual, technical, and moral support. Kofi Annan, when speaking to the World Bank in 1999, said that inclusive democracy is a form of non-violent conflict prevention, underlining the importance of ensuring formation of the right form of democracy. A system with checks and balances is required to prevent the emergence of the highly destabilizing "winner takes all" approach. Annan concluded by saying, "If war is the worst enemy of development, healthy and balanced development is the best form of conflict prevention." Successful development entails building local capacity and promoting competent governance, which over time will provide the essential enabling environment. All of this will require sustained international development cooperation, including NGOs, UN agencies, government aid agencies, private firms, and educational and research institutions. The international community is best suited to provide the essential ingredients for indigenous development: knowledge (generated by research and development), skills (generated by education and training), and freedom (generated by democratic institutions). Building democratic societies with market economies in a technically competent and ethically sound way is a clear path to structural prevention. AUDIO CLIPS FROM THIS SPEECH Click here for audio clip#1 of Dr. David Hamburg. [RealAudio non-streaming file, 118k] Transcription of audio clip: "The present conference, in my view, is rooted in the nature of the human condition. We are a single, worldwide, highly interdependent species, now driven more closely than ever by the forces of techno-economic globalization." Click here for audio clip#2 of Dr. David Hamburg. [RealAudio non-streaming file, 241k] Transcription of audio clip: "The most pervasive need is for the international community to be prepared and proactive in helping nations or groups in trouble, rather than waiting for disaster to strike. For the longer term, this essentially means help in acquiring additives, concepts, skills, and institutions for resolving internal and external conflicts. It means help in building political and economic institutions of democracy. It can be and, if necessity, will be many different international configurations to which such help can be provided. And it can be done in a way that is sensitive to cultural traditions and regional circumstances. It involves people at the grassroots level." Click here for audio clip#3 of Dr. David Hamburg. [RealAudio non-streaming file, 356k] Transcription of audio clip: "Democratic traditions evolve in ways that build ongoing mechanisms for dealing with the ubiquitous conflicts that arise in the course of human experience. Democracy seeks ways to deal fairly with conflicts and to resolve them below the threshold of mass violence. This is a difficult process. There are failures, but the general tendency is clear and strong, and in a way that's what democracy is about. We do not, and never did in the [Carnegie] Commission, assume that there would come a time of a conflict-free world. This is a highly contentious species. As a sometimes-biologist, I would rank the human species as one of the most contentious and destructive of all to each other, as well as to our environment. And therefore the issue is not some happy day when the human genome will make it possible for us to eliminate the human aggression but rather taking the aggression into account when finding ways to deal with it, short of mass violence. " Click here for audio clip#4 of Dr. David Hamburg. [RealAudio non-streaming file, 133k] Transcription of audio clip: "Building democratic societies will market economies in a technically competent and ethically sound way is a clear path to structural prevention of mass violence. In this direction, albeit with large bumps in the road over long and hard distances, can be found the conditions conducive to peaceful and productive living." [This audio clip requires RealPlayerTM. The RealPlayer software is available for free download from RealNetwork at http://www.real.com/player/index.html.]

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