Historical archive

Economies of Conflict (Kjørven)

Historical archive

Published under: Bondevik's 2nd Government

Publisher: Ministry of Foreign Affairs

State Secretary Olav Kjørven's closing remarks at FAFO International Expert Consultations, Oslo, 04.11.03. (10.11.03)

State Secretary Olav Kjørven
FAFO International Expert Consultations, Oslo
4 November 2003

Economies of Conflict

A bird’s-eye view of our world today would reveal plenty of trouble spots. Fighting for rights or resources or recognition, a large number of people are at any given time actively involved in conflicts. And millions more are affected by conflicts - hit by humanitarian catastrophes, enduring a life of human suffering.

Violent internal conflict poses a threat to international peace and security and has serious regional impact. They result in untold human suffering and widespread humanitarian consequences.

It is often hard to find the reason why political conflicts turn violent. Many country-specific and situation-specific factors are at work. Sometimes seemingly stable countries erupt into conflict, while at-risk countries avoid large-scale political violence. What we do know, however, is that economic factors are one of the keys to why armed conflict starts, spreads and lasts.

The World Bank report "Breaking the Conflict Trap" makes some interesting points about security as a condition for development. It says that civil war is "development in reverse", and shows how civil wars have generated or intensified a "significant part of the global poverty problem". Furthermore, the risk of conflict and internal destabilisation is much higher in low-income developing countries than in middle-income countries. In the words of the report: civil war "reflects not just a problem for development, but is a failure of development". Although some have questioned these findings, the report makes a convincing case for the promotion of development co-operation as an instrument for conflict prevention.

A string of internal and inter-state conflicts has ravaged the African continent from the Horn of Africa through the Great Lakes Region to West Africa. However, there are grounds for cautious optimism.

First and foremost we have the personal commitment of Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his efforts to involve the international community in Africa. Second, with the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the new African Union, there are clear signs that African leaders themselves want to be in charge of development on their continent. In Maputo this year we saw the formal launching of the African Union Peace and Security Council. And we have recently seen efforts made to settle disputes and conflicts at the sub-regional level that have had positive results. The improvements are slow but steady.

In its effort to curb trade in conflict commodities, the world community has also been moving slowly but surely in a promising direction. What is currently needed is for us to quickly and thoroughly identify and fill in the regulatory gaps that still exist. We need to ensure a level playing field for businesses. And we need to forge partnerships between governments and multilateral institutions on the one hand, and the private sector and civil society on the other.

Large-scale misappropriation of state assets through corrupt practices on a grand scale or reckless and irresponsible public financial management creates hostility, alienation and disillusionment against those in power. It in turn fuels conflict and obstructs peacebuilding. Poorly developed or inadequate regulation of global trade and financial flows make it impossible to manage and resolve conflict and to build effective local and regional governance. Moreover, entrepreneurs of war not only destroy precious national economic infrastructure, they also compromise the state’s management of natural resources and the distribution of national wealth.

We still have a limited tool-box at our disposal to fix this. The international policy responses and instruments available to us are not coherent enough.

A plethora of international arrangements and initiatives has emerged. International and national policies are being developed and coercive measures are being enforced, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. We have sought to combine rules with voluntary approaches - muscle with ethics. We urgently need a more coherent approach and a more focused use of multilateral instruments and regulatory measures.

What we also need is an inventory of preventive measures – a catalogue of our tools, so to speak. We need to develop regulatory mechanisms and legislation, and combine these with early warning systems and other conflict prevention measures. We need to have ready coherent international responses before conflict erupts, rather than after.

But what is really required? What is, when it comes down to it, the missing factor? Real political will.

Targeted UN sanctions, the use of expert panels and assisting local law enforcement and fiscal control bodies can only address part of the problem. We know that convincing western multinational enterprises of the importance of their social responsibility when operating in conflict zones or dealing with repressive regimes is also only part of the solution. But I believe that if we work with both these categories of approaches through unified international action, our efforts will yield better and quicker results.

Furthermore, we need to find better ways of bringing preventive and coercive action together in a broad strategy. We must strengthen both human security and fundamental political and human rights. And we need to implement the comprehensive peace-building and development strategies embodied in the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals.

If there are economic drivers of conflict and it seems pretty clear that there are, we must look closer at policies for economic development and inclusion as means for influencing and altering these drivers. Or turning them into drivers for peace and prosperity.

How? Let me challenge you to look closer at one factor that has been ignored by too many for too long: the fact that an overwhelming number of people in developing countries are denied a right we take for granted: to be a citizen in the economic sense of the word, through formal recognition of property and economic assets. What’s the relation to armed conflict? It will probably vary from country to country, but take the case of Peru: In that country the rebel movement "the Shining Path" was totally undermined through the granting of property rights to millions of poor Peruvians. This made it much more difficult for the rebels to operate and to recruit new members. What’s the relation to poverty? As a recent study shows, the poorer the country, the more bureaucratic the hurdles to becoming an economic citizen. The right to property is actually a central part of the Human Right Declarations. But this has yet to be operationalized in a meaningful way in the international system.

There is a cocktail of approaches needed for developing effective policies and taking the initiative from the forces that thrive on violence and armed conflict.

It has been said that the real test of power is not the capacity to make war, but the capacity to prevent it. I believe that the international community has this power - but we have not yet developed it sufficiently. We need people like you to push for a greater understanding of these issues - issues that translate into so much suffering for so many, if they are left unresolved.

I would like to thank FAFO for organising this day of expert consultations, and to thank the participants for joining us here in Oslo for this important event.

Thank you.