Economic Agendas in Civil Wars
DESCRIPTION:
Initiated in September 2000, the EACW program built on the outcome of a conference on Economic Agendas in Civil Wars held in London in 1999, which produced the seminal volume Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, edited by Mats Berdal and David M. Malone (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000).
The program addressed the critical issue of how the economic agendas of armed factions sustain violent conflict and inhibit durable peace, while also assessing the role of globalization in creating new opportunities for combatants to finance their military operations. This hitherto underdeveloped field of research holds particular promise of policy relevance for those international and national actors seeking more effective strategies for both conflict prevention and conflict termination.
Beginning with an overall commitment to durable conflict resolution, the broad aims of the program were:
- to improve understanding of the political economy of civil wars through a focused analysis of the economic behaviors of competing factions, their followers, and external economic actors in conflict zones;
- to examine how globalization shapes the economic interests of belligerents as well as creates new opportunities for competing factions to pursue their economic agendas, through trade, investment and migration ties, both legal and illegal, to neighboring states and to more distant, industrialized economies; and
- to evaluate the effectiveness of existing and emerging policy responses used by external actors, including governments, international organizations, private sector actors, and NGOs, to shift the economic agendas of belligerents from war towards peace and to promote greater economic accountability in conflict zones.
The Economic Agendas in Civil Wars program comprised two interrelated research phases:
- Phase I: Empirical and Conceptual Research (September 2000 to April 2002), which focused primarily on the economic strategies of belligerents and the relationship between natural resources and conflict. Eight case studies are published in The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance, Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman, eds. 2003.
- Phase II: Policy Research and Development (May 2002 to December 2003), which focused on key challenges and opportunities for policy action by assessing extant and emerging legal and regulatory regimes on a national, regional and international level, as well as private-public partnerships and other prospective policy initiatives to address the complex economic dimensions of conflict. An edited volume assessing policy responses to the economic dimensions of armed conflict was published in January 2004.
ACTIVITIES AND OUTPUTS:
Research and program activities were carried out alongside and in coordination with four interrelated yet distinct working groups (Advisory Group, Working Group on Economic Behavior of Actors in Conflict Zones, Private Sector Working Group, and Policies and Practices Working Group), including experts from governments, the UN and other international organizations, academia, NGOs, and the private sector.
Publications on the political economy of armed conflict were a core element of the EACW program activities. Based on in-house as well as commissioned research, the program published three edited volumes as well as an Occasional Paper. Other products included periodic reports on conferences and meetings, policy briefs and background papers. These publications are available electronically on our website.
The hosting of the IPA Policy Fora Series on The Political Economy of Armed Conflict was another core activity of the EACW program. Organized around regional or functional themes related to the issue of war economies, the Policy Fora featured expert speakers from the UN system, think tanks, academia, NGOs, and governments. Past Policy Fora focused on Economic Perspectives on Civil War; Natural Resources and Armed Conflict; The Prevention of Humanitarian Emergencies (booklaunch); Towards Peace in Sudan: Priorities for Concerted International Action; and Securing Natural Resources and Resourcing Human Security in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
OUTREACH:
EACW program staff were closely involved in on-going efforts to build an analytical and policy network of international experts and practitioners to disseminate research findings to the policy community. This included the organization and sponsoring of meetings and workshops that brought together relevant UN actors, governments, private sector actors and NGOs (see below), as well as the participation and consultation of EACW staff at academic conferences, workshops and briefings. Among others, EACW staff have presented at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Occidental College, the Centre d’Etudes et des Recherches Internationales (Paris), Stanford University, Columbia University, Tufts University, the Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science (Oslo), Wilton Park (Sussex, UK), the Swiss Peace Foundation (Bern), the Institute for Diplomatic Studies (Cairo), the Royal Institute for International Affairs (London), the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), as well as the UN Department of Political Affairs and the UN Development Program (UNDP).
Partnerships: As part of a continuous outreach effort, the program engaged in several collaborations with other partner organizations on issues pertaining to the political economy of war and peace. These partnerships ranged from the organization of expert meetings and conferences, to commissioned research and publications.
List-serve: In order to facilitate dialogue and information sharing among interested parties, we built a virtual network of experts and policy practitioners through sponsorship of an electronic list-serve, accessible at war_economies@yahoogroups.com. The list-serve was regularly updated and includes relevant articles, reports and papers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
The program on Economic Agendas in Civil Wars enjoyed the generous support of a number of donor states and private foundations, including: the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, the Government of Norway, the Government of Switzerland, the Government of Sweden, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the United Nations Foundation.