PRESS BRIEFING SPONSORED BY UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING SPONSORED BY UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY

The issue of inequalities in society should be taken into account in measures to address complex humanitarian emergencies, Professor Frances Stewart of Oxford University in England said at a Headquarters press briefing to introduce the results of a two-year-long multidisciplinary research project on "The Wave of Emergencies of the Last Decade: Causes, Extent, Predictability and Response".

Professor Stewart was one of three main contributing authors and coordinators of the project which was jointly sponsored by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economic Research and Queen Elisabeth House, Oxford, United Kingdom. The other authors were Professor Raimo Vayrynen, of the University of Notre Dame, and Professor E. Wayne Nafziger, of Kansas State University, both in the United States.

In response to a question, Professor Stewart said that the United Nations and the agencies in the United Nations family, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, should take account of the large inequalities in access to political power, to economic resources -- sometimes the result of lack of political power -- and inequalities in access to social resources and to education. She described them as "horizontal inequalities".

The United Nations, which tended to play a trouble-shooting role in its response to emergencies, should identify categories of vulnerable societies and see that resources were geared towards preventing such crises from erupting by looking at the fundamental problems of inequity in society and lack of development.

It was very important that the IMF and the World Bank consider those problems, she said. They should not only be looking at the short-term. They should also not look at development without any thought about the way it had been shared in society across different groups. "So, I think, there's a very strong role for these economic agencies", she said.

(In its policy brief released at the briefing, the authors said it was not the case that the IMF or World Bank themselves brought about increased insecurity. They said that since many governments were pursuing precisely the opposite policies to those that would promote group inclusivity, the international financial institutions had a potentially positive role to play in dealing with conflict-prone countries.)

Professor Stewart said scholars from all over the world, including economists, political scientists and anthropologists, were involved in the three-year study which began in 1996. They were producing a 3-volume work

which was to be published soon. The policy brief, which summarized the results of the research carried out in 1996-1997, had already been published.

According to the policy brief, she said, the study attempted, among other things, to emphasize the impact of key ex ante factors, such as acute "horizontal inequality' between social groups in the distribution of assets, state jobs, social services, etc.; the failure of political institutions and the ensuing crisis of the State; and protracted worsening of economic conditions and external shocks. The analysis summarized in the policy brief also debunked some of the common beliefs recurrent in the literature in the area that emergencies were caused by deteriorating environmental conditions, competition for non-renewable resources and structural adjustment.

Professor Vayrynen, a political scientist, said in his introductory remarks that the background of the study was the widespread perception during the mid-1990s that humanitarian crises were spreading, and that there was a new wave of emergencies, largely caused by violence and refugees, which also resulted in starvation. He emphasized that violence was a root cause of emergencies. Some of the emergencies reflected the decolonization process -- as in Mozambique and Angola; some, the dismantling of the cold war -- as in Ethiopia; while some reflected cold war dynamics -- as in Afghanistan.

It was clear, he said, that humanitarian emergencies did not take place in democracies, although there were some exceptions, such as Sri Lanka and Burundi. As was common in the case in Africa, humanitarian crises were not only caused by lack of democracy, but also prevented democratic transition. Militarization was an important cause of emergencies, such as the spread of small arms, the factionalization of the military, the rise of ethnic armies or the trafficking in small arms, which broke down public order. That breakdown was an important political element of the crisis. There were several cases in which predatory rule had emerged in a State where the government systematically exploited State resources and its people for its own purposes.

Summing up, he said that a humanitarian crisis was usually caused by mismanagement of the political system, by corruption or by infrastructural militarization of society.

Professor Nafziger of Kansas State University, who also spent 1996-1998 at the United Nations University's World Institute for Development Economic Research in Helsinki, said that, according to their research, a factor contributing to humanitarian emergencies was collapse of economic growth. That collapse in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s was linked to the increase in humanitarian emergencies in the region in the 1990s. They had also found that humanitarian emergencies tended to take place among developing countries which had a low gross national product per capita.

UNU Briefing - 3 - 22 March 1999

The researchers had found a linkage between high inequality and humanitarian emergencies, although the link was not a mechanical one, he said. They had also found that a high percentage of military spending to gross national product tended to be associated with humanitarian emergencies, partly because of the link with authoritarian governments. There was also a link between the collapse of food output and humanitarian emergencies, as well as one with failed structural adjustments programmes. "We actually expected at the beginning that an increase in IMF and World Bank funding or, say, adjustment programmes, would contribute to humanitarian emergencies. But we found, indeed, that it tended to work the other way, and we have some hypotheses about that".

Professor Stewart said that there had been democracy in Northern Ireland, but the majority group there had deprived the minority of economic resources and political power. That had been the fundamental cause of the conflict in Northern Ireland. "You have to have an inclusive politics in which members of all groups are incorporated. You have to have inclusive economics in which government investment is fairly distributed among members of society, particularly, among different groups". A good case, she said, was Malaysia, where the Government had quite deliberately tried to spread economic resources among all groups, even intervening in the market.

There was a very strong policy message for governments and for outsiders, she said. "And that is, you must all the time address horizontal inequalities in these vulnerable societies". The societies included those likely to be vulnerable; those which had had conflicts in the past; those with high levels of horizontal inequality; those with low incomes and stagnant incomes. Governments should deliberately try and correct horizontal inequalities, she said.

The big issue was how to persuade governments, "which were of course part of the problem and not part of the solution", about how to do those things, she said.

A correspondent asked to what extent environmental problems or water shortages could cause a crisis? Professor Steward said that water shortage was one of the major problems of the world. "Interestingly, it had not been the cause of a major strife, although it had caused minor disputes." Currently, she said it did not seem to be a source of major conflict, although others had always said that such a conflict could occur in the future. With regard to the environment and the actual cause of conflict, she said it had been found that environmental riches were more the cause of conflict than environmental property, "in the sense that when you have a lot of resources around, obviously, like diamonds in Sierra Leone, people are dying to get hold of them". That particular environmental conflict would not arise in societies without many resources.

UNU Briefing - 4 - 22 March 1999

Responding to the same question, Professor Vayrynen said there was no "one-to-one correlation" between water scarcity and emergencies. He said it could be generalized that there was seldom a single cause for emergencies. There were contexts for them: either decolonization, or economic decline which affected relations between the government and groups, or between groups. Group conflicts had been pronounced, he said.

* *** *