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Key Text Can Development Prevent Conflict? Integrated Area-Based Development in the Western Balkans

Author: Rastislav Vrbensky
Date: 2009
Size: 36 pages (444 KB)

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Summary

How successful is the area based development approach (ABD) in contributing to conflict prevention and linking reconstruction and development? This article from Conflict, Security & Development discusses the strengths and limitations of the approach, drawing on two ABD programmes in South and Southwest Serbia. It argues that although ABD is often effective in responding to complex conflict characteristics on sub-national levels, under its current conceptualisation, it responds ineffectively to the full complexity of issues related to conflict and development on multiple levels.

The increasingly active role of international organisations in conflict prevention and post conflict reconstruction in recent years has been complemented by a continuous shift from humanitarian assistance to a more holistic and sustainable response to complex emergencies. Current ABD programmes largely concentrate on social, economic and governance-related factors of conflict at the local and regional levels. In these areas of concentration, the approach has provided some very successful results.

p>However, in its current conceptualisation and design of interventions, ABD is insufficient to capture conflict characteristics in their full complexity. This undermines its effectiveness as conflict prevention tool leading to sustainable peace and development.

Some of the national and cross-border issues, especially political, economic and security-related, are often difficult to understand and influence although they create conditions for (or limitations to) solving area-specific problems.
There is a contradiction in the terms ‘integrated’ and ‘area-based’, both conceptually and in practical applications.
Intervention becomes over-complex and impossible to manage if too many issues are incorporated.
Effective approaches maintain a balance between inclusiveness and manageability. The current balance seems to be slanted towards manageability at the expense of inclusiveness.
In order to be effective in a conflict setting, ABD has to move towards a more integrated and multilevel approach.

Most of the conflict factors and characteristics can only be addressed through a comprehensive and long-term effort. A broadened, integrated and multilevel approach is needed, incorporating multi-sector and multilevel interventions within a well-coordinated strategic and operational framework.

The approach should include interventions in governance, including support to legitimate political authority and institutional development, economic and social development and the security sector.
Interventions should be identified through thorough developmental and conflict analysis and implemented simultaneously at municipal, regional, national and cross-border levels.
At the local and regional level, the approach should be more integrative and respond inclusively to all conflict factors across structural, political, economic, social and environmental dimensions.
The cross-border or national level factors which cannot be directly included in the initiative should be taken into consideration as context characteristics.
In order to avoid undermining manageability, not all interventions should be included in the initiative itself and some of the conflict factors should be addressed thorough parallel, but well-coordinated, activities.
Some complex and sensitive cross-border and national-level issues, which cannot be addressed directly through specific interventions, should be targeted through advocacy and policy advice. This will require a broader partnership structure.

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Source: Vrbensky, R., 2009, 'Can Development Prevent Conflict? Integrated Area-Based Development in the Western Balkans', Conflict, Security and Development, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 75-110
Author: Rastislav Vrbensky , rastislav.vrbensky[at]undp.org