Research

Conflict and Fragility

Policy briefs

Community-based approaches in conflict-affected states

21 May 2013 - 15:50

Community-based approaches (CBA) to post-conflict development and re-covery are in vogue. Community-based programmes have been implemented in a range of post-conflict countries, from Timor Leste and Afghanistan to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.

CBA are increasingly viewed by the donor community as an effective instrument for promoting development in contexts where the reach of the state is weak or non-existent. Operating outside of formal state structures, they have the potential to support community mobilisation in places where the state lacks the capacity to play a positive role or where it may even provoke feelings of hostility and fear. As such, CBA are a potentially valuable state-building tool.

Yet, in advocating the empowerment of non-state actors, CBA do not necessarily sit comfortably with other, more mainstream, state-building instruments focused on bolstering official institutions. Combining the two is likely to create difficulties that need to be addressed head-on by both donor governments and im-plementing agencies. Most of all, governments and agencies need to engage proactively with the political challenges of implementing CBA and recognise that they are a political undertaking as well as a technical one.

These challenges call for a rethink of the type of support donors bring to local state-building processes. CBA require qualitative forms of support, such as diplomatic assistance, rather than the predominantly financial support that is more commonly provided.