Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Horizontal Inequalities

A CRISE Workshop

Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

16 - 17 April 2009

What kinds of economic policies will help sustain a peace process and promote longer-term stability and reconciliation in deeply divided post-conflict societies? Have post-conflict aid and economic policies been sensitive to the issue of horizontal inequalities, and what has been their impact? This remains a surprisingly under-researched area, and one that has critical policy relevance. The cumulative experience of post-conflict policy-making over the past 20 years makes it possible to research this question in the context of actual policies adopted in a range of countries.

Quite a lot of attention has been focused on the economic causes and repercussions of conflict, as well as on the political/constitutional aspects of peace agreements, and on issues of post-conflict security and justice. But the large volume of work on peace-building in the last decade – which typically focuses on the triangular relationship between security, political transformation, and reconciliation – pays too little attention to how economic policies in the post-conflict context may affect political stability.

In April 2009, CRISE organised a two-day workshop in Uganda, in collaboration with the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC), Makerere University, to address the issue of post-conflict reconstruction and horizontal inequalities. The workshop featured nine case studies of individual country experiences and five cross-cutting papers on thematic issues of relevance to post-conflict reconstruction. The workshop papers are now being edited for publication as a book.

The workshop also featured a special session devoted to a new UNDP publication Post-Conflict Economic Recovery: Enabling Local Ingenuitywhich was co-edited by CRISE Director Frances Stewart and John F E Ohiorhenuan of the UNDP and towards which the CRISE team has contributed.

Programme

Abstracts

Session Notes

Participants

Abstracts

The workshop included papers on the following themes:

Post-Conflict Economic Policy and Horizontal Inequalities in Peru
Jose Carlos Orihuela, Columbia University.

Poverty Reduction Strategies and Horizontal Inequalities in Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development: Review of Guatemala, Haiti, Liberia, Nepal
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, The New School, New York.

A Dangerous Peace: drugs, inequality and ‘post-conflict’ peacebuilding in Afghanistan
Christian Dennys, CPAU-Europe, and Jonathan Goodhand, SOAS.

From Redistribution to Social Exclusion: the wartime and post-war creation of horizontal inequalities in Bosnia-Herzegovina
Susan L. Woodward, The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York.

Inequality and Post-Conflict Fiscal Policies in Burundi
Janvier D. Nkurunziza, UNCTAD.

Conflict and Inequality
Cagatay Bircan, University of Michigan; Tilman Brück, German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), Humboldt University Berlin and Households in Conflict Network (HiCN); and Marc Vothknecht, German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and Humboldt University Berlin.

The Role of Sri Lanka’s Post-Conflict Economic Package in the Failure of the 2001-2004 Peace Process
Rajesh Venugopal, CRISE, University of Oxford.

Macroeconomic Policy for Post-Conflict Recovery: a survey
Darryl McLeod, Fordham University.

Inequality and Conflict in Rwanda
Sebastian Silva Leander, UNDP Rwanda

Post-conflict Reconstruction and Economic Horizontal Inequalities in Uganda
Arnim Langer, CRISE, University of Oxford

Employment creation after violent conflict: An exploratory analysis of seven post-conflict countries
Arnim Langer and Frances Stewart, CRISE, University of Oxford

State weakness, globalization and horizontal inequalities in a small country: the case of Guatemala
Corinne Caumartin and Diego Sanchez-Ancochea, University of Oxford

Addressing Root Causes, State-Building and the 'Sovereignty Gap' in Post-Conflict Societies: The Case of Nepal
Graham Brown, University of Bath, and Yuba Raj Khatiwader, UNDP Sri Lanka

Privatisation in Post-Conflict Countries
Rajesh Venugopal, CRISE, University of Oxford

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