 |
One of the most difficult challenges of intervening in and attempting to resolve a conflict is facing the question: Is this intervention making society better or worse? Am I preventing the perpetuation of a struggle that should persist, because one side of this conflict is truly just? The international development professional faces a similar moral question--in reverse: Am I causing serious conflict in the society or village in which I am intervening? Are my interventions making matters worse or better? How can I justify my work if it leads to destructive conflict, or repression, or even murder?
These ethical dilemmas occur every day to countless well-intentioned international development workers around the world, who see their work as rooted in the promotion of social justice. To others in the international development community, however, particularly in its upper echelons, these dilemmas do not occur enough, and their absence affects negatively and even afflicts those citizens of the world who are at the receiving end of international intervention. At the heart of international development work, for many of its practitioners, is the desire to do what is just for the world’s citizens, to enable poor societies to be self-sustaining, to eradicate absolute poverty, poverty-related diseases and suffering. For others, however, international development has become a self-interested occupation that has wreaked havoc on certain parts of the world.
A major part of the problem involves the inattention to the moral underpinnings of stated social goals and their mixture with the self-interested character of most human activity. This occurs especially when a moral goal, such as social justice or poverty relief, is made into policy, bureaucratized and professionalized, and its aims are mixed, sometimes deliberately and sometimes unconsciously, with other aims, such as an agency’s prestige, simple financial profits, the satisfaction of internal governance concerns, and, of course, national interests.
We want to confine our research to the ways in which this problem with human institutions leads to destructive conflict generation processes among recipients of aid, and how conflict resolution theory and practice may be able to avert this eventuality. We also want to highlight the critical importance, as an antidote to this problem, of moral reflection at every stage of the operationalizing and professionalizing of moral goals.
In this paper I will examine 1. the ways in which international development often results in conflict, sometimes deadly conflict, 2. the way in which conflict resolution as an intervention in society and international development express competing concerns, with disparate social and moral goals, that professionals and lay people often have difficulty reconciling, and 3. the ways in which these two interventions might work together in a new integrated strategy.
There are many ways in which international development expresses itself. Some of these efforts are more clearly grounded in moral goals, such as social justice, human rights, or poverty relief, while other expressions are more clearly grounded in corporate and national interests. These international efforts include: long-term hunger relief, short-term disaster relief, village-based development of micro-enterprises and self-reliance strategies such as low-interest loans, affordable low-technology innovation, human rights work, genocide prevention strategies, protection of minorities at risk, efforts at “democratization”, macro-economic development, large-scale loans for major infrastructure developments, such as highways, electrification and the development of large-scale agriculture.
Sometimes the motivating factors of development work are the opposite of what appears on the surface. Sometimes relief gives the appearance of being solely for the purposes of saving lives, when, in fact, there is a strong national or economic motivation to export and encourage the use of a particular product, while the recipients themselves could actually benefit much more from other forms of aid.
There is a core of professionals, multi-lateral and bi-lateral international agencies, researchers, non-profits and for-profits that comprise a virtual industry of development. Many of the professionals engaged in these efforts have an inescapable mixture of motivations involving professional and financial gain, institutional commitments, and commitments to international structures such as the United Nations or the Catholic Church. The closer one comes to government agencies and multi-laterals such as the World Bank, the more the motives are mixed with national interests and international business interests, with all of the complications that this entails.
We will examine several discreet expressions of international development work: bilateral and multilateral investment in large projects involving forced displacement, efforts at democratization as a form of development, village-based development, emergency humanitarian aid in the context of war, and human rights work. We will also examine the Rwandan genocide as a paradigm of international development and conflict generation. We will then turn to some promising alternatives and new directions, and finally offer a series of recommendations for the integration of conflict resolution and international development.
LARGE SCALE DEVELOPMENT
International development that is conducted by governments and multi-lateral agencies is often done in the name of improving the lives of the poor, improving local economies, and solidifying a given country’s infrastructure. But it must be acknowledged how often this stated goal is at variance with the facts. For example, a hydroelectric power plant that floods the homes of 70,000 rural people, and then gives electricity to city dwellers is development of a sort, but also, by definition, generates enormous conflict and resentment. It also has the look and feel of gross injustice to some, even as it is justified by others as necessary for the growth of a country. Of course, it can generate more or less conflict depending on how the resettlement and compensation is handled. But the conflict inheres in the situation, no matter how much compensation there is. No one watches the entire region that defines their identity placed under water and walks away without resentment, no matter how much they are paid. Forced displacement may be considered, by definition, conflict generating and unjust to those who have no say in the loss of their homes and their land-based identities.
The conflict generating and socially destructive character of international development is sometimes painfully blatant. The sheer number of displaced people is astonishing. In Brazil, the modernization of its agricultural sector, which made it more capital intensive and export oriented, uprooted 28.4 million people between 1960 and 1980, a number greater than the entire population of Argentina. In India, large-scale development has uprooted 20 million people. [1] Many of these people are at the bottom of their societies: landless poor, indigenous peoples around the world, and “untouchables” in India. When the U.S. Congress Human Rights Commission investigated the World Bank’s activities in the 1980s it discovered that 1.5 million people were being displaced by Bank-sponsored programs, with millions more projected. A full three quarters of the Bank’s loans involved forced displacement.
The effects of the displacements and large scale projects on the population affected have been devastating. Essentially, governments tend to promise to create resettlement and compensation programs, but often this is ignored. The Brazilian Itaparica dam project is a case in point. After protests by thousands of people took place, several World Bank executives insisted on the government providing a resettlement program. The Bank gave additional loans to cover the cost. 40,000 people were in fact relocated--to desert lands that could not sustain them, with almost no compensation, despite the fact that the Bank gave the equivalent of $63,000 per family. The money was gone by the time the life of this group was already disintegrating in a morass of alcoholism and child abuse. [2]
There is a significant increase in death rates in populations experiencing forced relocations due to development. [3] The food economies of rural people tie them to the land. Those who are the most tied, such as older people, suffer the most by relocation. Such relocations naturally exacerbate whatever tensions already exist, such as among the Tuxa Indians of the Amazon region. Thayer Scudder has described the process of abuse and quarrels as “relocation-induced social breakdown”.
The conflict-generating character of this kind of intervention takes place on several levels, including the conflict between citizens and the government, and the conflict between those who immediately benefit from such projects and those who are displaced. Most important, the intervention generates a destructive pattern of conflict within the communities and families that lose this battle for their homes and native lands, and who turn the rage at the injustice onto themselves.
DEMOCRATIZATION
Another major international intervention that involves conflict is the pressure of human rights groups and, in the post-Cold War period, of Western governments toward democratization. This pressure for democratization is perceived as an effort to create more human rights, social justice, and to prevent conflict. The Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, for example, released a report on democracy promotion in the 1990s. David Hamburg states in the introduction, “In a world full of ethnocentrism, prejudice, and violent conflict, there is a vital need for core democratic values to resolve ethnic and religious conflicts and to prevent their escalation into violence.” [4] This assumes that democratic institutions, in all places and cultures, creates less conflict. This is an interesting hypothesis, and certainly suggests some long-term international social goals that could prove beneficial to many peoples at all levels of society. However, intervention of any kind carries grave risks.
Democratization is designed to create change. In most situations, however, there is a group that is benefiting from the status quo. That group could be cattle growers as opposed to small land owners, loggers as opposed to forest dwellers, men versus women, one ethnic group versus another, or city dwellers versus the rural population. Every intervention by outside forces creates change in the relationships just described. And every change will create resentment among those who lose the advantages of the status quo. If the intervention is so profound as to create violence and death on a large scale then no group will appreciate the intervention, no matter how much that intervention may fit Western concepts of development or democracy.
The push for democratization is now a fact of life in development work. The Agency for International Development, for example, has spent over $400 million in democratization in fiscal year 1994. [5] Numerous other NGOs are involved in similar work. AID listed five goals in 1994 for its sustainable development program, including democratization as goal #2. [6]
It is certainly the case that making aid contingent on democratization could be a powerful tool to promote change in brutal regimes. [7] And it is certainly reprehensible when foreign governments prop up brutal regimes such as Burma without using aid and international trade as leverage to encourage human rights and democracy.
It is also the case, however, that pressure on a volatile political structure creates unpredictable consequences. Diamond himself cites two instances. On the one hand, pressure from international donors compelled the regime of Hastings Banda in Malawi to liberalize and eventually hold elections. Pressure on Kenya also led to suspending a ban on opposition parties. But President Moi was bitter about this forced change, and the net result was a fracture along ethnic lines of the new parties. This is a very dangerous development, and it is typical of the problem that I am suggesting. Democratization cannot easily be forced. What if this pressure had set the stage for a Rwanda-type genocidal ethnic war in Kenya, and tens of thousands of people had died? Would such an intervention for democracy be morally justifiable then? Surely, it could not be justified to the families of the victims, and that must give pause to policy makers and professionals in the field.
THE RWANDAN TRAGEDY AS A PARADIGM
The most important instance of international intervention with deadly consequences that illustrates this problem is the case of Rwanda. There now can be no doubt as to the extent of the genocide of Tutsi in 1994: 500,000 to 800,000 murdered, and the international community’s unwillingness, by their own admission, to heed the warning signs of this disaster. [8] But the issue is much more complicated than the unwillingness to intervene once genocide was about to occur. On the contrary, the real question of genocide and extreme levels of conflict involves an examination of its deep roots over time, and the many factors involved in setting the stage for genocide. [9]
There is no doubt that food production had fallen by 25%, and that there was great instability due to civil war. [10] But this in no way accounts automatically for genocide. As Peter Uvin states, “...all these hypotheses in no way imply “automaticity”, i.e. that the occurrence of one factor -- land scarcity, or declining food production, or increased marginalization of young men -- automatically leads to violent conflict and genocide. If they were automatic, the Netherlands, Belgium, Japan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Costa Rica, and Hong Kong would all be destroyed by civil violence.” [11]
Two major factors need to be included in order to understand the genocide: 1. racism as a political and social tool of power, and 2. the ways in which colonial occupation and international intervention and aid in general either wittingly or unwittingly aided # 1. The Belgian occupation decades ago had long favored the Tutsi minority with superior education and a variety of privileges. [12] Decolonization at the end of the 1960s led to a Hutu regime that mobilized resentment against the Tutsi, killed thousands of them, with up to half of the remaining Tutsi fleeing the country, thus further illustrating the tragic violence that befalls minorities placed in the middle of long-term power struggles and socio-economic imbalances. [13]
The Hutu government, from its very inception, returned to a founding myth of anti-Tutsi prejudice every time it had been challenged internally or externally. The Hutu regime had never received a popular mandate, and it stood on shaky ground even with many Hutus who saw the regime as mired in corruption and nepotism. Every time Tutsi refugees tried to reenter the country and reverse the government, the government used the opportunity to deflect the issue of its legitimacy by creating pogroms, killing tens of thousands, especially in 1963 and 1965. In other words the genocide of 1994 had clear precedents.
The main financial backing of this regime was development money, mostly from the Belgians. The state, in turn, was the chief dispenser of wealth in the country, a way of life that it is hard for Westerners to comprehend. It means that the political structure of the country owed its ongoing existence completely to aid money. The fact that the regime legitimized itself through racial prejudice is something that the Belgians and the international aid community chose to ignore for decades as they poured money into this country, despite “small” earlier genocides. These underlying realities must give us pause as we analyze levels of moral responsibility for radical conflict, extreme violence and genocide, without blurring the obvious lines of primary and secondary responsibility. It also must figure into our analysis of the deepest roots of violence.
Three forces combined in 1993 to make the Hutu regime vulnerable: 1. internal discontent from Hutu elites in the South, 2. the invasion of Rwanda by the RPF, and 3. the international community’s newly discovered interest, after the Cold War, in democratization tied to development, and its call for free and fair elections. The fomenting of ethnic hatred was the only tried and true solution of the Hutu regime, and it had been used before many times. Well organized speeches, political rallies, and radio broadcasts convinced thousands of Hutus that the time had come for full elimination of the Tutsi threat. Indeed, the civil war between the government and the RPF had caused many casualties and a million internally displaced people. But the purpose of the government was quite clear: deflect the internal disenchantment with the regime and the economic situation, and render elections, demanded by donors, impossible. And that is precisely what the genocide did. The unexpected
victory, however, of the RPF completely destroyed the Hutu regime’s plan.
The Hutu regime capitalized on the “perception” of the Tutsi that was generated over generations by the political and educational structure of the society, in addition to the difficult economic straits of the 1990s. The Catholic Church in Rwanda and its educational network of public schools were an important part of this sad story of ethnic prejudice, despite the Church’s valiant social justice work elsewhere. [14]
The part that international aid played in all of this must be confronted. Millions of dollars were going into Rwanda annually from international agencies, which in turn financed a large part of the government’s activity and a network of local NGOs. This international process of development does not pay attention to conflict analysis, or it feels powerless to stand in the way of incipient conflict. Much of development analysis tends to see a society in terms of aggregates of statistics. These statistics are used to evaluate a country’s progress in development, not its ability to cohere as a society. For example, Peter Uvin has noted that UN data on Rwanda and Burundi show slow declines in population over time. They do not indicate decades of sudden outbursts of violence and genocide that are the true source of that “slow decline”. In 1962-1964, over 20,000 Tutsi were killed and almost 250,000 fled. Again, in 1972, in Burundi this time, the Tutsi army went on a rampage and 100,000 to 150,000 Hutu were killed. Yet when population figures are used to examine development issues they are not seen in the light of conflict analysis or violence analysis. [15]
As far as the role that forcing democratization played in this tragedy, one Tutsi survivor told me recently that members of her family, now dead, were among the leading voices for African democratization. Now she says, “Democratization is irresponsible. It takes years for a society to become free, and so many things have to happen before elections are safe....If only we could have our families back, I would gladly have a dictatorship.” [16] It seems to me that where an intervention entails risk to many lives, it is morally indefensible to take that risk without the permission of the families affected. Elections are the most threatening form of change to a ruling regime. There are many important democratic steps to be taken over time short of elections, that is, short of the struggle to wrest power completely from an ensconced leadership through elections, and certainly a history of ethnic hatred should serve as a red flag to outside intervenors if they are insisting on radical change. [17]
There is a problem in first-world programs and institutions, such as democratization, that is at the heart of this tragedy: the compartmentalization and professionalization of intervention strategies, without a moral examination of means and ends, or strategies and consequences. The intentions are often good, but it is in the very nature of bureaucratic directives that bilateral and multi-lateral agencies will stick to their mandates and thus ignore key problems that may call into question their essential mission or higher social goal. This is at least one reason that the warning signs were missed in Rwanda. The development data showed Rwanda as a success story overall:
Economic growth per capita progressed at 1.5% per capita for the 1965-1988 period; industrial production, services, domestic investment, exports, length of paved roads, number of telephone lines, electricity consumption--were all growing fast, especially for African norms. Rwanda was generally considered by development specialists to be a “good pupil”, a model country.... [18]
But the social reality was one of extreme ethnic hatred and institutionalized racism that the regime utilized quite adeptly whenever it was in trouble. Yet the international community continued to support this government and its social and educational institutions.
Another central problem is the inattention of international development interventions to conflict anticipation, conflict analysis and conflict prevention. There is an inattention to principles and guidelines of when not to give, and to whom not to give, when to tie one’s aid to strategies that at the very least do not support a political or economic situation bound to create conflict, war or genocide, and at best are designed to create a peaceful and just society, in addition to a more literate or well-fed society that produces exportable goods.
The tragedy of Rwandan genocide demonstrates that from international churches to multinational corporations, from private NGOs to multilateral and bilateral governmental agencies, no one should dare intervene anymore in other cultures without training in conflict analysis, prevention, and resolution, or without a collaborative intervention strategy together with conflict experts. Ideally, they should also be schooled in the creative process of designing development that generates a peaceful and just society. Most important of all, in terms of conflict analysis, the interventions need to be designed with a careful attention to and inclusion of local culture and its representatives.
CONFLICT GENERATION AND HUMANITARIAN AID
Veterans of good NGOs are keenly aware of this problem. In general, good, experienced NGOs, especially those that focus on long-term development, have raised these issues for many years. Dr. Laurence Simon, director of Brandeis University’s Program on International Sustainable Development, recalls numerous occasions in which he and others had to struggle with the moral contradictions of their development work, particularly regarding violence. In Zambia, Simon recalls the way in which the self-help projects that he was brought in to examine created immense communal conflicts between the men and women, with the women eventually demanding that they have all-women projects that would satisfy the needs of their families.
In Guatemala, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, death squads were ruthless. Oxfam England had been engaged in simple projects of terracing hillsides and teaching primary health care, but Simon recalls that they had to suspend operations after over three hundred local workers were murdered. Simon concludes, “Development is in conflict with the structure of power, and almost every act that we take, especially in repressive regimes, may endanger people.” [19]
Yet another way in which conflict intersects with issues of underdevelopment and poverty is the use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war. It is often either a byproduct of military co-optation of food supplies, or a deliberate military tactic of getting rid of select civilian populations. This has direct implications for the complex interplay of food relief, development and the major actors in a conflict.
The chief victims of the so-called food wars are women and children. In the past decade, over 1.5 million children have been killed, 4 million disabled, and over 12 million made homeless by conflicts globally. [20] Critics of food distribution will often point to the fact that, unless food in relief situations is directly distributed to mothers, it will often end up supplying militaries, or at least not reaching the children. In this sense, some have argued that food assistance in certain situations can deepen conflict and may outweigh the benefits of directly saving lives in the short term. “...food aid itself has been implicated as an underlying cause of conflict. Instead of mitigating food assistance it has become an instrument of prolonging conflict, and competition for aid a factor that can further divide communities already fractured by war and privation.” [21] An example of this is that NGOs increasingly have to arrange their relief in close cooperation with warring militias and rebel groups, often dealing with and bribing the very figures that the international community is trying to isolate due to their human rights abuses and war crimes. Clearly, there is a vital need to introduce conflict analysis and management techniques in order to discover ways for the flow of disaster relief to continue without causing a perpetuation of the conflict. There is also a clear need for the development community to go through a self-conscious process of acknowledging the reality of difficult moral dilemmas, evaluating the choices, studying alternative scenarios, and learning from mistakes.
We have also witnessed a significant increase in humanitarian aid supported by military intervention, notably in Kurdistan, Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. [22] This further complicates the relationship between humanitarian work and conflict, but it has also been the only way to save many lives in intractable circumstances. Thousands more would have died in the winters of the Sarajevo siege had the humanitarian workers not been at least somewhat protected by military force. On the other hand, this alliance of military intervention and humanitarian work further strengthens the relationship between humanitarian work and conflict. It makes itself a battleground.
Workers in food relief and development feel they have no choice but to persist. The prevailing reality is of food being used as a weapon of conflict. For example, in Angola in 1994, the government halted aid flights to UNITA-controlled areas in retaliation for a UNITA offensive that halted aid to besieged Cuito, where 30,000 people were estimated to have died from lack of food, water and medicine. On the Thai borders with Burma, Thai soldiers have intimidated the refugees by refusing to allow humanitarian assistance, in addition to engaging in outright attacks, forced labor and relocations. Development is perceived directly as a part of the conflict.
There is no question that the humanitarian delivery of aid itself will often support one side of a war. The alliance that consolidated against Serbian aggression and atrocities drew a line in the sand, as it were, with Sarajevo. Aid to Sarajevians was part of a determined effort to keep a symbol of Bosnia intact, and, as such, it became a weapon against Serbian intentions.
In light of this confluence of development and conflict, some development experts and human rights advocates are calling for political activities that strengthen central governments that are at least decent if not competent, since civil war is such a key element in destructive conflict. It is increasingly clear that nothing is as deadly to the poor and vulnerable as being caught in the middle of civil or ethnic war. Conflict analysts need to carefully consider these dilemmas faced by development workers, and help to evaluate such complex scenarios.
Development experts are also thinking about programs that would strengthen ties between various ethnic communities and the central government. Donors and NGOs are being encouraged by some to focus their efforts particularly on areas at high risk for conflict, and to develop early warning systems in places where perceived injustices and scarcity combine in an atmosphere ripe for violence. [23] Indicators, according to food security experts, should include an examination of 1. key factors in livelihood vulnerability, including conditions of food production, the price of principal cash crops or minerals, 2. the status of social and political groups, their historical relationships and current concerns and conflicts, 3. the preparedness of domestic and international actors to respond to a crisis in this part of the world. Cohen and Messer write, “Conflict prevention should be a major goal of development policy....High population growth-resource poor areas of high conflict potential should receive special priority so that they overcome perceived scarcities and destructive competition for resources.” [24]
Scholars of development are increasingly emphasizing that it is perceived scarcity that is at the core of destructive conflict. While it is true that scarce resources are always an issue in conflict, it is also clear from cases such as Rwanda and Bosnia that bigotry, ethnic hatred and their uses at the hands of political leaders can artfully combine with real scarcity to generate the perception of life-threatening scarcity. And the latter creates massive violence. This new direction of thinking explains many instances of underdevelopment that were seen before simply in terms of resource scarcity.
Conflict analysis is or should be designed to examine perceived needs of conflicting parties, and how that interacts with the actual economic situation and availability of scarce resources. Thus, economists, food security experts and conflict analysts need to collaborate to tease out real scarcity, perceived scarcity, other human needs such as identity affirmation, and the uses of all of these for conflict generation. [25] Only through this combined analysis can effective solutions be discovered that address real needs, perceived needs and the deep structural social problems. In addition, this body of analysis can create a better framework for dialogue and negotiation when that becomes possible.
HUMAN RIGHTS WORK AND CONFLICT
Another international intervention that is in potential conflict with peace making involves human rights. There is no suggestion here that conflict generation with regard to human or civil rights is inherently problematic; there is no progress in human affairs without some conflict. The problems arise when change creates destructive conflict that undermines the envisioned social and moral goals of the intervention.
Rights themselves are often in conflict and can cause conflict. [26] The right to land, for example, and the growing awareness of this right, has brought indigenous groups into conflict with each other. Some anthropologists and NGOs who actively engage indigenous peoples in awareness of their rights can find themselves in the midst of a battle over land between groups. Often such intervenors are not prepared to engage in conflict analysis and resolution in these situations. Furthermore, this often exacerbates the position of indigenous peoples vis à vis a government or a majority culture that stands to benefit from indigenous peoples warring amongst themselves over rights rather than focusing on their status vis à vis the larger society.
Cultural rights versus those of the individual is an especially important issue. Mexican and Guatemalan Maya have engendered difficult conflicting rights, such as the right of the community to enforce religion and choice of livelihood in order to protect the integrity of the community as a social unit. Indigenous Maya in Chiapas in the 1970s and 1980s threatened and exiled non-conformists who challenged the status quo. This is a particularly painful moral dilemma for an outsider to confront, especially since indigenous communities already suffer so much abuse, and one’s critique of them will make them even more vulnerable to attack.
This dilemma is especially acute in terms of the status of women. Women across the world are fighting battles against domestic violence, for the right to work outside the home, to improve their status and rights within religious traditions. Cultural rights applied in the purest sense would undermine all of these efforts, if the cultures in question placed women in an inferior position. [27] Women’s roles in their societies are changing around the world. Some women are finding ways to integrate those changes with their cultures. But as more women work outside the home, for example, or create their own industries, cultural human rights advocates and individual human rights advocates will have to learn to work together to accommodate, on the one hand, the changing needs of women and their children and, on the other, the social integrity of various cultures. Here too there is no other course but a deeper collaboration between international development workers, conflict resolution experts, and the indigenous community, in addition to a conscious process of moral reflection on these dilemmas.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Until now we have examined the ways in which competing moral claims can express themselves in terms of the activities of development and conflict resolution, and how this has led to some serious conflicts between these activities. Now I would like to make a series of recommendations for the future, based on our analysis, and then cite some encouraging signs of change that point in the direction I am suggesting. Messer and Cohen’s recommendations are welcome and collaboration with their strategies would be advisable. But there is a need for a more systemic set of long-term institutional changes. I would like to elaborate the basic elements of what I am calling an integrated intervention strategy(IIS). This entails the integration, at every level, of conflict analysis and resolution strategy with all other strategies of development intervention.
1. Ideally, every institution, private or governmental, should have on staff conflict resolution experts. A small NGO should have at least one person who has gone through CR training and is familiar with the literature. Teams that go out into the field should always have at least one person trained in CR techniques. The larger agencies need to develop entire divisions that will help formulate policy, and engage in training of the agency’s country officers and overseas operatives in the art of anticipating conflict, conflict prevention, conflict management, conflict resolution, post-conflict reconciliation and transformation.
2. If and when a particular situation appears to be headed toward major conflict: a. agencies need to develop criteria to decide on the point at which collaboration with outside experts in CR becomes essential, and b. when the “business as usual” process of development, poverty relief, human rights work etc. needs to slow down, come to a halt, or take a back seat to conflict analysis and prevention.
There is virtue in not acting sometimes. This is difficult for institutions, governmental and nongovernmental, to accept, especially in the West, for a couple of reasons. 1. Not doing implies failure in the West, which is so aggressively oriented to problem solving, whereas in many traditional cultures not doing is a demonstration of spiritual courage, or moral restraint. 2. Budgetary allocations and political pressure, both internal and external, push agencies to show that they are doing something with their allocations--the ‘use it or lose it’ syndrome. Conflict resolution can solve this understandable dilemma. Business as usual can stop for the agency, but conflict resolution efforts can kick in, at that point, so that action is being taken by the agency, but not action that is blind to the destructive effects of moving forward with one’s principal mandate in the midst of conflict.
3. Conflict assessments need to be incorporated into every country report that governments, multi-lateral agencies and NGOs generate. In other words, this should not be a separately generated document that is dealt with in a separated bureaucratic manner. Development work needs to incorporate this with every assessment of other matters, such as economic growth, food scarcity, the educational system, elections, women’s development projects, the creation of a legal system etc. No assessment should be made without an analysis of the implications of policy alternatives for conflict.
4. The conflict resolution field needs to generate easy to use guidelines for policy professionals, country officers, and field operatives. This would include checklists of what to avoid, what to encourage, and warning signs to notice. This is no replacement for professional conflict resolution training, but compromises must be made as we incorporate CR techniques into the daily decision making of development professionals. One World Bank consultant told me, “Don’t give me theory. I don’t have time for it. But if you give me a concrete list of ten things to pay attention to and beware of, as I am conducting my business, I just may remember to use your ideas.” As crass as this may be, it would be a vast improvement over the way that many development financial deals, for example, are currently arranged.
5. CR experts also need to develop training programs specifically geared toward international development professionals who face ethical dilemmas in these matters on a regular basis. This training should be offered at agency headquarters on a regular basis.
6. Both the conflict resolution field and the international development field need to incorporate into their mode of discourse the language of moral dilemmas. The professionals in these fields need to be able to talk openly and freely about their conflicting moral priorities, including the moral obligation to oneself and one’s dependents, in terms of maintaining one’s job, the obligations to one’s organization, in addition to the dilemma of choosing one moral course of action over another in one’s strategy of intervention.
Now this will undoubtedly lead to divisions regarding moral choices, because there is no clear consensus on many of the difficult issues we have raised. Nevertheless, the very organizational process of raising the issue of the moral values of peace making, saving lives, protecting human dignity, justice, compassion etc. will transform the way in which the organization deals with this in the future. I would argue that by raising the issues in this way as conflicting or competing good values, it will become clear that, while sometimes stark choices have to be made, professionals will be motivated to come up with strategies that satisfy several moral goals. The projects and the societies affected will be that much better off as a result. Furthermore, the strategies of CR, including communication, relationship building, third party interventions, dialogue workshops, shuttle diplomacy, will be naturally favored, because most people, when given a choice, want to discover a way to integrate good moral values, not sacrifice one for the other. For example, a social advocate may value human rights of women above all else. But she/he would rather accomplish this without creating communal hatred, the destruction of a family, and certainly violence. A country officer for an international bank may see it as a primary goal to create an electricity infrastructure. But, given the choice, he would rather not do it by destroying entire communities or creating a civil war. Conflict resolution gives him/her a way out, a way to pursue professional or moral goals and at the same time address other concerns that may be less of a priority but not entirely absent either. The key is that the professional needs an institutional structure that allows and encourages this type of integrative intervention strategy. One of the keys to that integrated strategy is the freedom to acknowledge conflicting moral priorities.
7. It is in the nature of the process of bureaucratizing and professionalizing a certain moral value or social good, such as disaster relief, or human rights, that we reify that value in the body of an organization or bureau, and make the latter specifically dedicated to only that value. Now this makes it particularly difficult for professionals and activists to freely and creatively respond to complex moral dilemmas. The professional and bureaucratic pressure is to pursue exclusively and zealously one value. We need organizational atmospheres in which members are encouraged to respond creatively and in an integrative fashion to incipient or actual conflicts that arise in the field. The leaders set the tone here, and while I am not calling for organizational anarchy, it is likely that program heads, boards and directors will miss critical information--and be responsible for terrible human disasters--if professionals are reluctant to talk openly about the potential for conflict, and the dilemmas they feel in proceeding with the organization’s principal mandate. Effectively, organizations need to reframe their mandates so that both the leaders and staff feel that preventing conflict and building peace is an integrated part of their vision of intervention.
8. Both the conflict resolution field and the development field need to incorporate into their intervention strategies the cultural values (secular, religious and/or ethnic) of the people whose lives they are affecting. This requires active local participation in project conception and project execution, and it requires careful study in advance on the part of the outside intervenors. The reason this is so crucial is that it is almost impossible to anticipate what development efforts will or will not generate conflict in a given local scenario. The chances of anticipating what kind of intervention will work go up dramatically with local participation and with a studious knowledge of the indigenous cultural values. Professionals in various agencies may feel compelled to make many decisions independent of local input. But these choices should be made in the context of extensive listening and awareness of the lives that are about to be transformed by one’s intervention. That requires a further set of interpersonal values, not discussed until now, including humility, the capacity to listen intelligently and empathically, the capacity to be fair in one’s deliberations, and the capacity to demonstrate respect and honor for culture in ways that are appreciated by the people involved.
9. A critical area of exploration that will require close collaboration between development professionals and conflict resolution analysts involves a creative process of envisioning and generating projects that pursue development and conflict resolution at the same time. This will involve experimentation, flexibility and close attention to local sensibilities. The key, in fact, would be to explore what is happening already in local communities, and reinforce or encourage those projects that pursue these goals simultaneously. The goal would be to take basic projects of development, involving, for example, food security, child survival, irrigation, inoculation, or low interest loan systems, and make the operations a joint venture of adversarial groups. Clearly, the extent and even the possibility of these operations would depend on the stage of conflict, and the nature of the conflicting parties. Also power imbalances and class differences need to be considered in terms of the parties to the collaboration. It is possible that there will be many transformative moments in this process. What one hopes would happen is the humanization of the enemy through seeing the enemy as vulnerable, in need of aid, and not a larger than life, externalized symbol of evil. [28] Of course, there is likely to be conflict as well, and one should expect it. Conflict analysts tend to see conflict in a project, not as a disaster or a reason to cancel a project, but as an opportunity to get to the heart of the problem in broken social relationships. Development experts should be encouraged to adopt the same approach, which will require them to plan projects in a way that allows for the time it takes to manage conflicts and move toward resolution.
In many cultures, dialogue about conflict or violence is so painful that all it evokes is rage. It is true that the whole point of dialogue is to move through stages that eventually transcend the rage and venting through various measures, depending on the model of dialogue being employed. But I am suggesting that there are other ways to break the psychological impasse of what Mack refers to as the “enemy system”. [29] The joint venture will be a way to evoke a new vision of the enemy, a way to elicit that painful transitional moment when one truly sees the other as human. Simultaneously, it can be an opportunity to pursue social justice and development. It may be less efficient than a program that lacks the complications of adversarial relationships, but the opportunity to transform a broken society is much deeper.
There is a way to do this well and a way to do it poorly. On a much simpler level, I recall some of my early attempts at peaceful overtures in Jerusalem. Once I passed a very poor Arab man who had his hand out for charity in the Arab quarter of the Old City. I had just come from a very meaningful exchange with an Arab shopkeeper about a statue of Abraham; we communicated, mostly non-verbally, about how we all come from one father. Among the other peace building activities I was engaged in I thought that I would help this poor man and also strike up a relationship. But he turned his open hand away with his head down, a mixture of disdain and sadness appearing on his face. I realized immediately that, in his context, I had done more harm than good by offering charity, either because I had humiliated him or for some other reason that I did not anticipate.
In contrast to what I did in the Arab quarter, I recall a social structure that Moral Re-Armament has evolved in Caux, Switzerland, at their retreat center. It involves the shared tasks of their guests--including adversaries--preparing the dining room for guests. Everyone has to engage in some shared activity. It transformed the relationship between myself and several young Jordanian Palestinian students who were all put on kitchen detail. We had a task, and the task changed the nature of our relationship. We shared the drudgery of repetitive work, we shared power and authority together, we needed each other in order to succeed, and we needed to communicate. We enjoyed each other’s cultural character in a deep way that would have been impossible without these shared tasks. Had we immediately sat down in conversation about Israel--as they wanted to--the relationship would have been purely conflictual. Our relationship flourished over the next few days. It changed their lives, I was told years later, and it changed mine.
Shared tasks can be transformative. They also often have an underlying ethical character, a commitment to a shared community, that undermines the enemies’ traditional views of each other. I am suggesting that we explore ways to operationalize this on a much larger social scale, with the tasks of development and social justice in mind. This could accomplish important development goals, and simultaneously set the stage for a new kind of relationship between adversaries. And I am not referring to shared business ventures among elites, or shared experiences of intellectuals, although both of these are critical for conflict resolution. I am referring to ethical tasks, such as environmental care, child care, elder care etc. that speak to the highest values of the respective cultures, and that can transform the image of the enemy for every member of each society, no matter what his or her social station may be. I am also speaking of shared tasks that appeal to the deep emotional or spiritual, if you will, attachments that many cultures express about efforts to achieve social justice, and using those attachments as a bridge to the enemy, as a way of thinking and feeling about the enemy in a new way.
It must be remembered that the work at Caux does not take place in a typical international development setting. Rather it is a carefully planned environment, highly conducive to reflection, and there is considerable encouragement, by nature of the relationships, the tasks at hand, and the many gatherings, for people to reconsider their relationship to adversaries. It would be difficult to duplicate this environment in the midst of a village-based development project, for example.
However, the model of a retreat for reflection and the solidifying of relationships might still be applied. If, for example, there were a planned task of building a village clinic to be shared by former adversaries, it would be worthwhile for the planners to set aside a periodic weekend for a retreat of representative members from both sides, to plan the development project, but also for a considerable amount of time dedicated to people hearing each others’ stories. Issues could be explored, such as why a clinic is meaningful to their respective communities, what illnesses prevail in their respective communities, what their emotional challenges may be as healers or health workers, shared activity in strategizing on healing techniques, and, certainly, some shared tasks in setting up all the pragmatic, basic needs of the retreating group itself for the weekend. Retreaters would be encouraged, upon return, to join each other in visiting the sick of each community. This is just one idea, and does not address the necessary elicitive process in indigenous settings, for evoking both development and reconciliation strategies. [30] But it is a paradigm that combines reconciliation work and development work in a carefully orchestrated process of conflict management, resolution and reconciliation.
CONCLUSIONS
To sum up, we need to work towards the generation of development projects that are not just good anti-poverty work, but are, rather, a self-conscious combination of conflict resolution and development, as activists try to stimulate social change. Conflict resolution and development should increasingly become two sides of the same vision, both among policy makers and in the field.
It is particularly important for development experts to understand that conflict resolution theory is not the same as quietism or a shunning of any and all conflict. The CR field has recognized for years the roots of violence in injustice, for example, and that modes of conflict resolution that do not address those issues are likely to be conflict suppression not conflict resolution and certainly not transformation or reconciliation. Furthermore, conflict can be good, an opportunity for the positive transformation of relationships, as long as it is expressed in a way that is not destructive. Thus, there is more in common here between these two fields than is generally understood.
Promising developments include an increasing interest in CR training among NGOs, such as Catholic Relief Services, and that even some of the most mainstream development institutions, such as the World Bank, appear to be moving in a new direction of sensitivity to conflict. There is a push, for example, to return to the original roots of the Bank, in terms of post-war reconstruction, although the emphasis as usual is on infrastructure reconstruction. [31] The Bank’s “participation” initiatives have incorporated some very forward thinking initiatives and strategies, including several that I suggested above, though not described self-consciously as conflict prevention or management measures.
There is some fine analysis of the importance of consultation with all those affected by large projects, and how the differences between the needs and interests of the poor, on the one side, and other “stakeholders”, such as local government and businesses and NGOs, will generate conflict. Task Managers are called upon to consult with all of these groups regularly. [32] There is more honest analysis of why resettlement is often a failure and generates so much conflict [33] , and why “top-down” measures to avoid problems never work. In fact, there is encouragement to the Task Manager to look for conflict-related problems, rather than suppress them. [34] How much the “participation” projects become a model for the majority of other Bank loans and the effects of those loans globally remains to be seen. James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, states, “I personally believe in the relevance of participatory approaches and partnerships in development and am committed to making them a way of doing business in the Bank.” [35] The World Bank has thus seen in the very recent past a significant change in leadership, and that leadership is signaling a new direction. It has also experienced some field experimentation that demonstrates the benefits of collaboration and communication between opposing parties in development scenarios.
It must be remembered that, on the one hand, multi-lateral agencies such as the World Bank, will never be ideal partners of conflict resolution work in its pure expression. The Bank is designed to support governments and economic systems around the world that many of us would see as conflict generating and as containing elements of structural violence. On the other hand, the conflict resolution field does a disservice if it does not respond creatively to the growing interest in conflict resolution theory and practice among development professionals. It can only help to insert training in conflict resolution into the character of international development at all levels. It may be the case that for expediency’s sake some agencies will choose to utilize conflict prevention and management skills, while failing to acknowledge deeper issues of injustice and the need for transformation or reconciliation work. But their efforts will still inch the world along a more peaceful path, in my opinion, and the bridge to multi-lateral agencies and governmental agencies will provide a constructive opening to further discussions. There will certainly be opportunity to continue to call the international community, should it be successful in conflict management and settlement, to “higher” levels of achievement in terms of conflict resolution and reconciliation. [36]
In sum, the potential for international development work to create conflict and violence is clear. The moral dilemmas raised by this problem have also been amply demonstrated. What is necessary is an integrative process whereby those in the field of development begin to incorporate conflict resolution strategies and goals into their own strategies and goals, and that the field of conflict resolution begins to generate the kinds of materials and training that will allow for a creative collaboration between fields. Both fields need to open themselves up to discussing and openly confronting the complexity of moral dilemmas and competing moral goals and social goods, in order that both can create more integrated strategies of intervention in human problems. Finally, none of this can be successful without a far greater attention to and humility before the cultural and spiritual values of those toward whom the intervention is directed. This will enable the generation of much more creative strategies of intervention that truly address the full gamut of human needs and aspirations.
[1] Bruce Rich, Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment, and the Crisis of Development. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 155.
[2] Rich, 158.
[3] See Diana Jean Schemo, “Indians Withering in an Epidemic of Suicide,” New York Times, August 26, 1996, on the devastating psychological impact of land loss on one tribe in Brazil.
[4] Larry Diamond, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives. (Washington, DC: Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, December 1995), v.
[5] Diamond, 13.
[6] Strategies for Sustainable Development (Washington, DC: U.S. Agency for International Development, 1994).
[7] Diamond, 64.
[8] “Report: Rwanda Genocide Worse,” Associated Press, 2/27/96.
[9] Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
[10] Peter Uvin, “Genocide in Rwanda: the Political Ecology of Conflict,” Research Report, World Hunger Program. (Providence, RI: Brown University, October, 1995), 9,15.
[11] Uvin, 15.
[12] Uvin, 4.
[13] See Walter P. Zenner, Minorities in the Middle. (Albany: SUNY, 1991).
[14] See Pierre Erny, Rwanda 1994: cles pour comprendre le calvaire d’un peuple. (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994); Gerard Prunier, Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). I have received personal correspondence from a Tutsi Jesuit priest, who lost some of his family, telling me how saddened he is that the Church in Rwanda is part of the process of examining the atrocities when it itself is implicated, based on what he saw himself. Another Tutsi survivor, who lost most of her family, told me that she was forced to learn in school why Tutsi were inferior and dangerous. On the participation of priests in the genocide, see “Clergy in Rwanda Is Accused of Abetting Atrocities”, New York Times July 7, 1995 A, 3:1. Thousands of Tutsi are refusing to go to Church as a result of the crimes of the priests. See “Rwanda Struggles with a Crisis of Faith,”San Francisco Chronicle January 2, 1995 A, 8:1.
[15] Peter Uvin, “Challenging Current Development Practice,” Brown Journal on Third World Affairs (Spring 1995): 3.
[16] Personal interview, April 12, 1996.
[17] On a critique of democratization policy, see Thomas Carothers, “In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Policy Towards Latin America in the Reagan Years,” Studies in Comparative Development 29:2 (1994); idem., “Recent U.S. Experience with Democracy Promotion,” IDS Bulletin 26:2 (1995); Yehuda Mirsky, “Democratic Politics, Democratic Culture,” Orbis, 37:4 (Fall 1993): 567-580. See also Preventing and Mitigating Violent Conflicts: A Guide for Practitioners (Washington, DC: Creative Associates International, 1996), 2:33-2:35.
[18] Uvin, “Challenging...”, 5.
[19] Laurence Simon, personal interview, January 28, 1996.
[20] Ellen Messer, “Food Wars: Hunger as a Weapon of War in 1994,” The Hunger Report 1995 (Yverdon,PA: Gordon and Breach, forthcoming), 23.
[21] Marc Cohen and Ellen Messer, “Food from Peace”, (a consultation sponsored by the Brown University World Hunger Program, Bread for the World Institute and the International food Policy Research Institute, n.d.), 9.
[22] Messer, “Food Wars...”, 28.
[23] Messer, “Food Wars...”31; Cohen and Messer, 21.
[24] Cohen and Messer, 1.
[25] On conflict analysis and Human Needs Theory, see Conflict: Human Needs Theory, ed. John Burton, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990). On poverty and human needs theory, see ibid., 219-234. Human needs is not the only useful school of analysis here. For example, analysis of the psychological components of intractable conflict, or the possible cultural roots of conflict resolution strategies would be other useful tools that conflict experts could introduce to the discussion.
[26] Ellen Messer, “Anthropology and Human Rights in Central America,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 1:1 (Fall, 1995), 48-95.
[27] Messer, “Anthropology....”, 66.
[28] Vamik Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1988), 60-81.
[29] John Mack, “The Enemy System,” in Vamik Volkan et al, eds., The Psychodynamics of International Relationships (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990), vol. I, 57-70.
[30] See J.P. Lederach, Preparing for Peace (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 55-63.
[31] “A Loan Amid the Ruins,” Washington Post, 2/12/96.
[32] The World Bank Participation Sourcebook (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1996), 6,7.
[33] The World Bank Participation Sourcebook, 71.
[34] The World Bank Participation Sourcebook, 103.
[35] The World Bank Participation Sourcebook, ix.
[36] See also Preventing and Mitigating Violent Conflicts: A Guide for Practitioners (Washington, DC: Creative Associates International, 1996), 4:79-4:130, on the use of development assistance for conflict prevention. See 1:22-1:23 on development and conflict generation. This draws largely on the work of John Prendergast. The study has a balanced presentation of the strengths and weaknesses of this strategy. It is also promising that this study was specifically prepared for the U.S. Department of State and U.S.A.I.D.