A high-level steering group met in New York yesterday to ask how to get Africa on track to make poverty history. But they will not get very far if they fail to consider how to prevent violent conflict.
If the Millennium Development Goals Africa Steering Group needs convincing on this point, they would do well to rewind almost exactly three years to 11 March 2005 and the launch of the Commission for Africa’s report – which answered precisely the same question they are asking themselves this week.
Many think that the commission’s report was all about aid. I suggest they read the report. It argues violent conflict is one of the main drivers of poverty across the world and nowhere more than Africa. In fact, a recent report, by Saferworld, Oxfam and International Action Network on Small Arms, found that armed conflict cost Africa $300bn between 1990 and 2005 – more or less the same amount of money that it received in aid in the same period. Throughout Africa armed conflict not only costs lives, it destroys growth, damages schools and roads, and spreads disease.
The commission made recommendations on how to improve the prevention of violent conflict. It argued that preventing and managing violent conflict is ultimately the responsibility of Africans, but that there is also a clear role for the international community. This goes much deeper supporting peacekeeping: the UK and others can also ensure their policies do not make violent conflict and the risk of it worse – by putting better controls on the arms trade, stopping the trade in ‘conflict goods’ such as diamonds and by ensuring that aid goes towards reducing violent conflict not making it worse.
The then prime minister, Tony Blair, promised at the launch that all of the recommendations would be implemented. The current prime minister Gordon Brown declared that now was the moment when the world would put an end to Africa’s long wait for justice. But three years down the line, only a few of the recommendations on conflict prevention have been implemented and others have been ignored.
The greatest success is progress towards an international arms trade treaty. The UK has been at the forefront of efforts which have led to 153 countries voting in favour of the ATT in 2006. A UN group of experts is now discussing what an ATT could look like. Though slow to get off the ground and too young to have proven its worth, the UN Peacebuilding Commission – charged with helping countries recover from conflict – has also been set up and begun its work in Burundi and Sierra Leone.
Progress against other recommendations has however been much slower. Donors have been slow to ensure that aid is not making conflict worse and in the UK, there is a growing risk that increasing aid volumes alongside reductions in DFiD’s staff could make oversight more difficult. Rather than promoting non-military means to prevent conflict, as suggested by the commission, international donor support to the African Union has continued to focus on the AU’s reactive, rather than preventive, capacity. There has also been a notable absence of British leadership in championing a common definition of ‘conflict resources’ and punishing multinational companies for behaviour that exacerbates tensions.
Three years is not much time considering the scale of the task. However, now is the mid-point in the timetable for the achievement of the millennium development goals – so time is short. Last July’s ‘call to action’ from Brown, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and the steering group provided further impetus to the recommendations made by the Commission for Africa and to make sure they are achieved.
But, as ever, there is a risk that the impact of violent conflict on poverty reduction will be ignored. Despite its huge impact on poverty, there is no MDG on reducing violent conflict and development actors have a habit of ignoring conflict prevention, seeing it as someone else’s business and not their own. And the steering group has not included it in its three ‘key challenges’.
Gordon Brown and his international colleagues need to avoid this mistake when they meet to discuss the call to action in September. They need to make a clear the link between violent conflict and poverty. Building on the Commission for Africa report, they need to agree clear and measurable steps towards reducing violent conflict in the future. And they need to ensure they keep to them. Otherwise, they will not take us any closer to achieving the millennium development goals.
