Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) as a participatory process: involving communities and beneficiaries in post-conflict disarmament programmes

Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes are a structured approach to returning soldiers and militia members to civilian life. One of the aims is to support implementation of the peace process, by addressing their interests and reducing the chance of them becoming “spoilers”. Since the early 90s, DDR has been implemented in countries emerging from conflict, such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola and Afghanistan. They are now underway in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. The results have been mixed, and the agencies responsible for designing and implementing DDR are still developing best practice. This study aims to identify the role of a participatory approach as a factor in ensuring success in a DDR programme. Ex-combatants, receiving communities, local implementing partners, and newlyestablished national structures can all be involved to a greater or lesser degree in the process. The argument for greater involvement – a participatory approach – includes better outcomes in terms of ownership of the process and political will, improved likelihood that real needs are addressed, greater relevance for female ex-combatants and children, sustainability in reintegration and economic initiatives, and capacity building

Diversity of Communities and Economic Development: An Overview

This paper reviews the literature on the impact of ethnic diversity on economic development. Ethnically polarized societies are less likely to agree on the provision of public goods and more likely to engage in rent seeking activities providing lower levels of social capital. Initial conditions are important determinants of adverse development outcomes. The role of decentralization, democracy and markets as potential remedies are discussed. The paper then presents a number of preliminary hypotheses on the relationship between diversity and instability in order to stimulate future research.Africa, Diversity, Economic Growth, Instability

Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration: The co-evolution of concepts, practices, and understanding

Programs for the Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) of ex-combatants have become more common as an element in the peacebuilder’s toolkit. They have evolved over the last 15 years, and can interact positively with an ongoing peace process. The literature assessing DDR is reviewed in this paper. Results have not always been positive, however. Despite recognition of the need for a more holistic, integrated approach, there are real challenges in implementing such a complex program in a post-conflict environment. Qualitative studies have highlighted these difficulties, and the few quantitative assessments of the outcomes are mixed. However, understanding of DDR is being advanced by a rich policy literature, together with specific “best practice” studies. Recognition of the importance of a participatory approach, and ownership of the process by the beneficiaries, has added to this understanding. The paper concludes that DDR is set to remain an important tool, and that it is most effective when used flexibly, appropriately, and with the genuine participation of those it is supposed to benefit

Development Assistance, Institution Building, and Social Cohesion after Civil War: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Liberia

Can brief, foreign-funded efforts to build local institutions have positive effects on local patterns of governance, cooperation, and well-being? Prior research suggests that such small-scale, externally driven interventions are unlikely to substantially alter patterns of social interaction in a community, and that the ability of a community to act collectively is the result of a slow and necessarily indigenous process. We address this question using a randomized field experiment to assess the effects of a community-driven reconstruction (CDR) project carried out by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in northern Liberia. The project attempted to build democratic, community-level institutions for making and implementing decisions about local public goods. We find powerful evidence that the program was successful in increasing social cohesion, some evidence that it reinforced democratic political attitudes and increased confidence in local decision-making procedures, but only weak evidence that material well-being was positively affected. There is essentially no evidence of adverse effects.Liberia; reconstruction; post-conflict; institution building; democracy; development; peacebuilding

Disentangling the Determinants of Successful Demobilization and Reintegration

Since 1989, international efforts to end protracted conflicts in Africa, Latin America, and Asia have included sustained investments in the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of combatants from the warring parties. Yet, while policy analysts have debated the organizational factors that contribute to a successful DDR program, little is known about the factors that account for successful DDR at the micro level. Using a new dataset of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone, this paper analyzes, for the first time, the individual level determinants of demobilization and reintegration. Conventional views about the importance of age and gender for understanding reintegration find little support in the data. Instead, we find that an individual’s prospect of gaining acceptance from family and neighbors depends largely on the abusiveness of the unit in which he or she fought. Finally, while internationally-funded programs designed to assist the demobilization and reintegration process may have had an effect at the macro-level, we find no evidence that those who participated in DDR programs had an easier time gaining acceptance from their families or communities as compared to those who did not participate.demobilization, reintegration, conflict, disarmament, Sierra Leone

Identifying Conflict and Violence in Micro-Level Surveys

The overall goal of the report is to increase the capacity of researchers and policy makers to identify comparatively, and across time, how individuals, households and communities are affected by violent conflict. The report provides an extensive overview of existing practices and datasets used in this field of research. We investigate existing methodologies and data-bases used to operationalize the variables of interest and discuss the channels linking violent conflict to individual and household welfare. Special attention is paid to methodological issues on how to design a module and operationalize variables that allow researchers to analyze the welfare effects of violent conflict across countries and across time. We develop and discuss a generic household module that can be easily inserted into future socio-economic surveys implemented in conflict-affected countries. This module will enable researchers to address specific violence-related issues comparatively across different conflict settings and systematically across time. The module proposed builds on previous experiences on survey designs in conflict-affected areas. We review existing conflict- and violence-related questionnaires, with a special focus on World Bank's Living Standard Measurement Surveys (LSMS), and propose suggestions on how to improve questionnaires in order to deepen the understanding of the nature of violent conflict and the channels whereby conflict and violence affect the welfare characteristics and choices of individuals and households in conflict areas.conflict, violence, war, individuals, households, survey, questionnaire, methodology

Reflections on the ethics of social experimentation

Social scientists are increasingly engaging in experimental research projects of importance for public policy in developing areas. While this research holds the possibility of producing major social benefits, it may also involve manipulating populations, often without consent, sometimes with potentially adverse effects, and often in settings with obvious power differentials between researcher and subject. Such research is currently conducted with few clear ethical guidelines. In this paper I discuss research ethics as currently understood in this field, highlighting the limitations of current approaches and the need for the construction of appropriate ethics, focusing on the problems of determining responsibility for interventions and assessing appropriate forms of consent

Beyond the resource curse: minerals and global development

This repository item contains a single issue of Issues in Brief, a series of policy briefs that began publishing in 2008 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.This policy brief discusses the concept of the “resource curse” and the often-assumed connection between a country’s significant mineral wealth and violence and corruption. The paper argues that developing countries with abundant mineral resources can have positive and equitable development programs by establishing long-range plans that address governance, economic and social policies, and ecological issues associated with mineral extraction, and establishing appropriate frameworks and infrastructure to carry out these plans

Can the Government Deter Discrimination? Evidence from a Randomized Intervention in New York City

Racial discrimination persists despite established antidiscrimination laws. A common government strategy to deter discrimination is to publicize the law and communicate potential penalties for violations. We study this strategy by coupling an audit experiment with a randomized intervention involving nearly 700 landlords in New York City and report the first causal estimates of the effect on rental discrimination against blacks and Hispanics of a targeted government messaging campaign. We uncover discrimination levels higher than prior estimates indicate, especially against Hispanics, who are approximately 6 percentage points less likely to receive callbacks and offers than whites. We find suggestive evidence that government messaging can reduce discrimination against Hispanics but not against blacks. The findings confirm discrimination’s persistence and suggest that government messaging can address it in some settings, but more work is needed to understand the conditions under which such appeals are most effective

Information Technology and Political Engagement: Mixed Evidence from Uganda

This study integrates three related field experiments to learn about how information communications technology (ICT) innovations can affect who communicates with politicians. We implemented a nationwide experiment in Uganda following a smaller-scale framed field experiment that suggested that ICTs can lead to significant "flattening": marginalized populations used short message service (SMS) based communication at relatively higher rates compared to existing political communication channels. We find no evidence for these effects in the national experiment. Instead, participation rates are extremely low, and marginalized populations engage at especially low rates. We examine possible reasons for these differences between the more controlled and the scaled-up experiments. The evidence suggests that even when citizens have issues they want to raise, technological fixes to communication deficits can be easily undercut by structural weaknesses in political systems