13 September 2008: APP
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 13 (APP): World Bank President Robert Zoellick has called for a new approach to fragile states focused on “securing development” to help people in those countries escape from poverty and civil war.
There need to be an “overhaul” of the multilateral approach to meet the current challenges regarding fragile states such as Afghanistan and Iraq, Zoellick told an international conference of security policymakers and officials in Geneva on Friday.
He said soldiers and aid workers need to cooperate to help the people in these countries “shift from being victims to becoming the principal agents of recovery.”
“Without this cooperation, efforts to save fragile states are likely to fail, and we will all pay the consequences,” he warned.
According to the World Bank chief, current situations require looking beyond the analytics of development “to a different framework of building security, legitimacy, governance, and economy.”
“This is not security as usual, or development as usual. Nor is it about what we have come to think of as peace building or peacekeeping,” said Zoellick.
He said the new approach must focus on “securing development”, which means bringing security and development together first to smooth the transition from conflict to peace and then to embed stability so that development can take hold over a decade and beyond.
“Only by securing development can we put down roots deep enough to break the cycle of fragility and violence,” he said.
Zoellick also called for better integrating the military, political, legal, developmental, financial and technical tools with a variety of actors, from states to international organizations, civil society to the private sector.
The World Bank estimates that 1 billion people, including about340 million of the world’s extreme poor, are estimated to live in fragile states.
Zoellick noted that these countries account for about a third of the deaths in poor countries from HIV/AIDS, a third of those who lack access to clean water, and a third of children who do not complete primary school.
Go to GSR homepage
GENEVA (AFP) — The international community must rethink its approach to "fragile states" such as Somalia and Afghanistan to ensure security and development go hand in hand, the head of the World Bank said Friday.
Bank President Robert Zoellick said in remarks prepared for a security conference in Geneva that soldiers and aid workers should cooperate to provide coherent policies to lift countries out of poverty and conflict.
One billion people are estimated to live in such states, including 340 million of the poorest people in the world, he said.
"Without this cooperation, efforts to save fragile states are likely to fail, and we will all pay the consequences," Zoellick warned.
"Only by securing development can we put down roots deep enough to break the cycle of fragility and violence."
Zoellick said that the World Bank has committed over three billion dollars (two billion euros) in the fiscal year 2008 in development assistance to countries hit by fragility and conflict, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, the Ivory Coast and the Palestinian territories.
"But this work is not just a matter of money," he said.
"Commitment to helping fragile states also means sustained attention to signs of fragility and conflict, and countering the myriad risks that threaten security, governance, development -- and legitimacy."
To this end, Zoellick said that efforts should be focused on tangible and visible projects such as education and refuse collection to bolster a state's legitimacy, rather than grandiose political schemes of elections.
"Legitimacy in fragile situations is not just achieved through elections or agreements that share power among factions. In some cases, premature elections may actually trigger a new cycle of violence," he cautioned.
He also called for lengthier and better-resourced deployments by United Nations peacekeepers in countries recovering from conflict.
"To build confidence, UN peacekeeping mandates and renewals should be authorised for much longer than 6 to 12 months. In some cases, we may need mandates that are less restrictive, so UN operations can prevent the outbreak of violence," he said.
Only this week, the UN's independent human rights expert on Sudan charged that the UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur was ill-equipped to protect the civilian population from armed attacks.
Zoellick also said that macroeconomic stability was a prerequisite for wider social recovery.
"Countries need to get the fundamentals right -- fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate policies -- so that there can be stable economic conditions that permit markets to expand," he said.
However, reforms cannot be imposed in such a way that jeopardise political stability, and must bear in mind issues such as rising food and energy prices.
Overall, Zoellick said the entire multilateral structure that emerged at the end of World War II needs to be reformed to meet the realities of the 21st century.
"The time is ripe, and the dangers -- and opportunities -- of fragile states will be on the agenda for all of us," he said.
Go to GSR homepage
