Conference report

1. Introduction

Due to a grant from the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the INEF was able to invite 19 papergivers and discussants from Northern and Southern countries. Our six panels and two roundtables covered a set of issues related to development and conflict research and were very well attended.

2. Summary of Presentations 

The first panel covered the role of "Youth in Development and Peace-Building". Rose Atieno Noo analysed the impact of a bicycle transport initiative - the bodaboda business - on public security in the Kisumo district in Western Kenya. In order to guarantee the safety of the bicycle transport businesses, which are operated by young men, the bicycle drivers helped the police to identify criminals. Also, young businessmen organised themselves and increased the political leverage of the youth. The bodaboda groups are now represented in administrative units at the local level.

The paper by Luis Moniz Cardoso Pereira and Natalie Grove presented findings from the Youth in Action project on the mass violence which erupted in Dili in East Timor in April 2006. The survey drew on focus group discussions with over 470 young people across Timor. The study showed that political leaders manipulated ethnic tensions and influenced youth to take part in violent action.

The paper on Madrassa youth by Noman Sattar, who was unable to present in person due to visa issues, provided an overview on the evolution of Madrassas in Pakistan. The paper concluded that Madrassa youth were both the helpless victims as well as instruments in the escalation of conflicts. On the one hand, the education does not provide qualification for jobs other than in religious organisations. On the other hands Madrassa Youth were key actors in sectarian violence.

The second panel dealt with the topic of "Transforming Local Practices in the Wake of Conflict". Padraig McAuliffe`s paper examined the judicial treatment of gender-based violence since 1999. The United Nations established a Serious Crimes Process and hybrid political courts. However, the Serious Crimes Process did not take the opportunity to target cultural attitudes to rape.

Anne Brown and Alex Gusmao presented their findings on peace-building under conditions of political hybridity in East Timor. Both East Timorese political elites and the international community have taken relatively little account of customary institutions and their potential for contributing to governance and order. However, the focus on central government institutions has overlooked the fundamental role of custom in social life and order. In the case of East Timor, state-building and to some extent peace-building are in danger of producing a state and a political and social order from which people feel alienated even though it has been shown that local customs can be adapted.

Michael Canares asked the anti-poverty program implemented by the provincial government in the Bohol province in the Philippines, in partnership with non-government organizations and the private sector led to a the decrease and the promotion of peace. The results of his research showed that poverty reduction programs have led to a decline of insurgent activities, promoted resettlement, and increased the number of rebel returnees alongside a significant decrease in the incidence of poverty. Yet, Canares made clear that the real challenge was to make these results sustainable. Thus, he called for policy programmes that would remove the conditions which perpetuate the cycle of poverty.

The paper by Claudia Hale and Rudi Sukandar looked at the impact the local government, lawmakers, NGOs and ethnic organizations can have on promoting communication across ethnic lines. Their analysis showed that local government, lawmakers and ethnic groups did not promote openness during the reconstruction and peace-building process. The same applies for NGOs despite their positive contribution in providing legal assistance and aid for refugees. According to Hale and Sukandar, Dayaks had adopted the attitude of a victor reminding non-Dayak groups that they were only guests. Yet Dayak and Madurese have also changed their attitudes and behaviour towards each other, which implied that both groups had learned some lessons from the conflict.

Panel Three titled "External Actors in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations" featured papers on East-Timor and Somalia, respectively. Akihisha Matsuno asked why there was an eruption of violence in East-Timor in 2006. In his paper Matsuno argued that the crisis was composed of initially five different conflicts between the army and police forces, politicians and soldiers from the Western and Eastern regions of East Timor. The heavily centralized political systems did not offer mediating opportunities. Matsuno concluded that political elites opted for mobilizing thugs to pursue their goals. The parliament and civil society were too weak to counterbalance political power struggles between political elites.

The paper by Leonardo Paz Neves and Marcelo Mello Valenca looked at Somalia as a case study of the regionalization of peacekeeping. According to their study the conflict in Somalia had several regional dimensions. Somalia`s neighbours had facilitated most of the agreements between the warring parties in Somalia. Ethopia directly intervened in Somalia in order to back the government in 2006 while Uganda, Nigeria, Malawi and Burundi supported the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM). 

The fourth panel of the series comprised two papers on the "The Role of Regional Organizations in Conflict Resolution". Francine Jacome reviewed the main mechanisms which have been developed by the Organization of American States (OAS) during the past 10 years. Among others, Jacome concluded that the OAS has to establish institutionalized mechanisms rather than relying on ad hoc conflict preventions initiatives. Moreover, Jacome suggested focusing on new forms of violent conflicts such as transnational criminal activities, violence by social and political movements and conflicts over the access to natural resources and land.

Elkhan Mehtiyev`s paper on the role of the OSCE in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict focused on the OSCE-facilitated Prague process. Mehtiyev argued that neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan tried to enforce change in an environment conductive to peace. Internal politics prevented a real settlement of the conflict. Both sides were unable to reach an agreement on whether to solve the conflict issues stage-by-stage or whether to accept a comprehensive package solution.

The first roundtable of the series dealt with "Pakistan in 2020". Ayesha Siddiqa and Jochen Hippler discussed scenarios for Pakistan's future focusing in particular on domestic developments following the disputed elections of 2007-08. Siddiqa and Hippler were rather pessimistic about the near future, arguing that the elections has simply reaffirmed the old elite's hold onto power. The discussion also covered several aspects of Pakistan's role in the international system, from its contribution to the ‘Global War on Terror' and its position vis-à-vis the Afghanistan conflict to its nuclear arms and its relationship to India.

The second roundtable was about "OECD/DAC and Emerging Donors", which featured a debate between development practitioners and researchers. Sven Grimm, Elling Tjonneland and Heiko Warnken discussed the impact of the emergence of non-OECD donor countries, most importantly China, but also India, Brazil or South Africa, on international development aid. Overall, the panelists presented a mixed picture: While emerging donors made a harmonized approach more difficult, it is possible these nations will soon professionalize their aid agencies and integrate them into global frameworks.

The fifth panel on the "Internal Dynamics of Hybrid Political Orders" comprised three papers: Richard Kakeeto`s paper investigated the interplay between local government, civil service and civil society in the Ugandan District of Masaka. Kakeeto asked why the district of Masaka remained peaceful for decades even though Uganda witnessed periods of violence in other parts of the country. He concluded that civil society supplemented local government structures, while the government, civil service and the Catholic Church promoted a comparatively high degree of participation and subsidiarity.

Rochman Achwan explored the issue of ethnic violence in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. He argued that Western Kalimantan witnessed the emergence of ethnic elites and ethnic assemblies during the Soeharto period which made customary laws, institutions and leaders redundant. The hybridised authoritarian state fostered ethnic boundaries in the bureaucracy and the economy leading to the rise of opposing social movements based on ethnicity.

The paper by Sylvia Bergh dealt with local governance in Morocco. The study, which was based on data of the activities of 50 community-based organisations in two municipalities, showed that there was only limited scope for synergies in development between decentralization reforms and participatory approaches in the case of rural Morocco. Thus, there were no clear boundaries between political and civil societies and between public and private spheres. 

The sixth panel discussed "Donor Responses to Hybrid Political Orders". The presentation by Tobias Denskus looked at the engagement of the international community in post-war Nepal. Denskus described how international "peacebuilders" arrived in Nepal with ready-made solutions to a plethora of problems without taking account of the specific situation on the ground. Denskus argued that peacebuilders focused too much on managing their work and proving that their work was effective rather than addressing the root causes of the Nepalese conflict.

Pierre Englebert put forward two main arguments in his paper on post-conflict reconstruction in Africa. First, Western state institutions could not be successfully transplanted to post-conflict states in Africa because functioning Western-like states had not existed prior to conflict. Second, African political elites benefited from political instability and the resources that external actors chenneled into Africa. External actors were also prone to overlook the influence of personal relations and clientelist networks.

Sinclar Dinnen`s case study on the dilemmas of external state-building in Solomon Islands examined the country's history of state-building and the particular challenges associated with its colonial legacies, the nature of its post-colonial political development, and the manner of its integration into the global economy. Thus, his study covered political developments across colonial and post-colonial periods. Dinnen concluded that today`s state-builders needed a much stronger understanding "of the importance of nation-building - in its literal sense of building a shared political community" rather than focusing on narrow, technical issues of state-building.

3. Debates and further steps

Due the high quality of the INEF facilitated panels IPRA elevated the Development and Peace Working Group to a Commission. The inaugural meeting of the Development and Peace Commission allowed us to brainstorm about topics of common interest, ideas for future collaboration, methods, and possible topics and initiatives for the 2010 IPRA Conference in Sydney. The inaugural meeting also gave the participants an additional venue to discuss the papers of the INEF facilitated panel series. These deliberations showed that there is a great interest in assessing the impact of external actors and the dynamics of hybrid political orders. Another overarching question was how to get development moving after conflict.

Role of external actors

The papergivers and discussants expressed their interest in comparing the impact of regional organisations like the African Union or the Organization of American States on conflict prevention and conflict resolution. The scholars were also keen in gauging the work of Northern donors and in analysing donors` agendas, identities, behaviour, institutions, people and structures. Finally, the role of diplomacy in conflict prevention was also considered to warrant further research.

Internal political dynamics

Several papergivers argued that the concept of hybrid political orders needed to be further elaborated. There was a great interest in learning how formal institutions interact with local institutions at both the national and the local level. Attendants were especially interested in comparing traditional modes of community conflict management or bottom-up conflict management across different countries: What is the role of development-induced conflict in communities? Which are the patterns of community-based peace mediation? Finally, there was also an interest in analysing attempts of nation building in fragmented societies.

Methodological issues

Participants considered a variety of methods to be applicable to these questions from quantitative to ethnographic approaches. The attendants were also interested in the analysis of social networks and the systematic comparison of hybrid political orders at the local, national and regional level. Regarding the analysis of hybrid political orders the participants also expected that once the theoretical framework would be better defined, methodological choices would also become clearer.

Ideas and initiatives for IPRA 2010

For the 2010 IPRA conference in Sydney, there was a huge interest in having workshops on transnational spaces, the role of civil society in conflict prevention, external perceptions and internal realities in conflict zones, and issues of national security from a human security perspective. Members of the Development and Peace Commission would also like to see panels on the internal dynamics of hybrid political orders.