INCREASED FUNDING, IMMEDIATE ACTION VITAL FOR POST-CONFLICT DEVELOPMENT, AGENCY CHIEF TELLS SECOND COMMITTEE

Fifty-eighth General Assembly

Second Committee

Keynote Address

“The Development Dimensions of Crisis

 and Post-Conflict Management”

INCREASED FUNDING, IMMEDIATE ACTION VITAL FOR POST-CONFLICT

DEVELOPMENT, AGENCY CHIEF TELLS SECOND COMMITTEE

Development in post-conflict situations desperately required increased funding and immediate action to avoid a return to crisis, Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), told the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) this morning.

Delivering a keynote address on “Rebuilding Peace:  The Development Dimensions of Crisis and Post-Conflict Management”, he stressed that conflicts were likely to re-ignite in the first year of peace, and that tokens -- a handful of combatants reintegrated, a school or two built -- were not enough.  The international community must provide more funding to the UNDP’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, as well as ramp up post-conflict analysis so that the best knowledge could be harnessed and applied.

He said that with nearly a quarter of the world’s population facing crisis or post-conflict situations, and 22 of the 34 countries that were furthest from meeting the Millennium Development Goals suffering from current or recent conflict, the United Nations must urgently fulfil its leading role in peace and development.  Economic muscle must be put into early, fragile post-conflict peace-building, together with the standing capacity that was so vitally needed.

Noting that policy-making and funding in donor capitals and the United Nations had traditionally been split down the middle -- with emergency and humanitarian relief on one side and recovery, reconstruction and development on the other -- he noted that both were largely separate from the politics or diplomacy of peacemaking.  Consequently, gaps that had repeatedly emerged between emergency relief and development had challenged the management of recovery in post-conflict countries -- as shown by the slow starts in Kosovo, Timor-Leste and elsewhere.

The UNDP, ideally placed to link development, conflict prevention and post-conflict recovery, had set up the Bureau for Crisis Management and Recovery in 2001, he said.  One of its key roles was to work with United Nations bodies in ensuring that development and recovery planning were integrated into the early stages of international crisis response.  It was taking systematic steps to strengthen collaboration between the development and political arms of the United Nations and to work in a more coherent, integrated and coordinated manner for the peaceful settlement of disputes.

At the country-level, he said, the UNDP’s services in assisting locally-owned crisis prevention and recovery included support for economic and social interventions to head off renewed conflict, as well as security-sector reform and transitional justice; small arms reduction, disarmament and demobilization of ex-combatants; mine action; natural disaster reduction; and special initiatives for countries in transition, including targeted public works to provide a peace dividend in the post-conflict economic blight.

In Albania, for example, the agency was helping in programmes to collect, manage and destroy weapons.  The UNDP and its partners had pioneered the “weapons for development” approach, which had helped in rounding up and destroying more than 14,000 illegal arms looted during the riot of 1997.  The UNDP was also assisting with ex-combatants in the Niger, the Solomon Islands and Congo, where more than 8,000 ex-combatants had been demobilized.  In addition, it was helping to improve prison conditions, train national and communal police, and support judicial reform in Haiti and Rwanda.  The agency had helped to institute security reforms, modernize judiciaries and strengthen the rule of law in Afghanistan, El Salvador, Guatemala and Kosovo.

Responding to a question about post-conflict reconstruction in Iraq, Mr. Malloch Brown said everyone involved believed a multilateral, non-partisan approach to peace-building was best.  The intergovernmental development community broadly supported the creation of small arms collection programmes, a national justice system and self-rule.

Asked about greater funding for conflict-resolution processes, he noted that an estimated 90 per cent of fragile peace agreements could revert back to conflict during the first year of a peace agreement.  Large-scale intervention, therefore, was critical to keeping the peace process on track.  For example, given more resources, the UNDP could have accomplished more in Côte d’Ivoire, but too little often arrived too late.  Rather then relying on core resources, the UNDP should be funding peace-building with non-core funds raised in advance, so that money was available immediately.

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