Contents:
The World Bank, bilateral, and other multi-lateral donors invest billions of dollars a year to help achieve peace and build states. The evidence base for designing such programs is, however, sparse, especially with regards to rigorous evaluations aiming to identify what works, and how, to reduce fragility, conflict, and violence.
This knowledge vacuum impedes our ability to design effective interventions to promote poverty reduction and welfare improvement in FCV settings. Rigorous evaluation of policies targeting FCV issues is therefore of paramount importance, all the more so as the volume of resources from the World Bank and other development partners towards such settings increases under IDA18, for example, the World Bank is set to significantly increase financing for FCV-related issues. Not only is developing this evidence a priority, but experience to date shows that, even with the amplified challenges of working in FCV environments, rigorous evaluation in such settings is possible.
Its overall goal is to assess evidence gaps in FCV responses and generate improved knowledge about how to best support FCV clients to deliver the results so critically needed for citizens to gain confidence in the path out of conflict. Today, the program includes 36 IEs across 21 countries.
Further, a series of white papers synthesizing the state of the evidence in each of the four target themes and proposing priority IE research topics will be completed and disseminated in An important development during the last program year has been the redefinition of the E4P focus areas around broader development issues encompassing and building on the original four program themes. Four key research areas have been defined: i basic service delivery in weak states; ii job opportunities for at-risk youth; iii breaking poverty traps and vulnerability; and iv the political economy of post-conflict reconstruction.
This redefinition was conceived with a view to strengthen linkages with other i2i areas and with World Bank Global Practices, beyond the FCV group. Work under each key research area is summarized below. Youth in FCV contexts are often left with few marketable skills and little opportunities to cultivate a sustainable livelihood.
They can become vulnerable to involvement in conflict, illicit activities, or violent crime. Work in this area investigates ways of breaking this cycle of poverty and violence through hard and soft-skills training, psychosocial therapy, and labor market-insertion programs.
For example, work in Honduras looks to break cycles of crime and violence through a temporary jobs program aiming to provide at-risk youth with the hard and soft skills needed to succeed in the labor market. A focus on cognitive behavioral therapy as well as traditional skills-based training aims to provide recipients with the practical and emotional resources to earn a sustained livelihood in a challenging setting. Strong institutions that provide quality services to citizens are a necessary condition to support countries to move out of fragility, conflict, and violence.
Yet, these are the settings in which institutions are likely to be the most eroded and dysfunctional. Here, the program focuses on civil-service reforms as well as the rebuilding of government capacity and accountability systems, to improve our understanding about what works to develop effective governance structures where it is most needed and, perhaps, the state is least capable.
In FCV contexts, support for vulnerable groups is often lacking and both their immediate and long-run needs are overlooked and their productive capacity ignored. This can lead to a perpetuation of poverty traps and cycles of vulnerability. Further, evidence shows that poverty-induced vulnerabilities tend to disproportionately affect women and children.
Our research work in this area builds on the ultra-poor literature to understand the potential of interventions geared toward breaking poverty traps and addressing systemic vulnerabilities. It also considers the effectiveness of social safety-net programs to support such individuals as well as big-push interventions, which seek to provide a productive livelihood and exit from poverty traps in the long run.
In Comoros, research examines the implications for expenditure and intra-household resource allocation of assigning cash-for-work safety-net schemes to women. Our work measures differences in investment in children, an area of central importance for breaking cycles of poverty in fragile settings.
Once there, people pile into cars and set off northward. Book Description Routledge , The political process in Libya. Nevertheless, a new narrative, built on the massive presence of Daesh in North Africa, and its potential spillover to Europe through the flow of migrants, became central to increasing support for the Cyrenaican strongman, General Haftar, who presented himself as the last bastion against IS, asking for support and—particularly—for political recognition Sizer On the Sanusi side, the casualties are difficult to put a figure on.
It also investigates the potential of norms-shifting and targeted interventions to eradicate child labor and address gender-based violence. E4P research in this area focuses on understanding the drivers and perpetuators of conflict and on evaluating strategies designed to address these. Postwar societies are often confronted with a wide range of issues—including information asymmetries between elites and masses, low levels of inter-personal coordination, social dislocations, and security and mobility constraints—that prevent a rapid return to stable social and political orders.
The growth of criminal groups involved in human smuggling and trade in illicit goods across the region and towards the Mediterranean has added to the volatility of the situation. His trial opened in July , and he was found guilty of crimes against humanity in May He was sentenced to life in prison; the decision was upheld in April Chad was initially ruled as part of French Equatorial Africa and became a separate French colony in While France favoured southerners and maintained the heaviest governing structures there, the north served as a pool of labour, but was loosely governed by local proxy.
Uneven patterns of impoverishment, a deteriorating economy, crumbling state services marginally supported by foreign aid, ecological stress and military intervention by foreign powers have contributed to ethnic antagonisms. National policies and programmes have had scant regard for the legitimate interests of minorities. Rather, since the early s a succession of authoritarian juntas and warlords have sought to advance interests of particular clans or ethnic groups through violence.
From colonial times, French forces have never left. As a civil war dragged on into the s and French forces propped up his government, Tobmalbaye aligned himself with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Several rebellions resumed, matched by brutal heavy-handed government responses.
These were exacerbated by conflicts in neighbouring countries. The discovery of oil reserves in southern Chad also brought new challenges to a country already struggling with poor governance and factionalism. In the World Bank agreed to finance a pipeline for newly discovered oil in southern Chad, through Cameroon to the Atlantic coast. The deal provided some measures for transparency and targeting of oil revenue to social needs. Income from the pipeline began reaching Chad in , and the mechanisms intended to ensure accountable and responsible spending and investment quickly showed strain.
In October the government announced its wish to increase its control over the oil revenue. The World Bank initially suspended lending to Chad and froze the revenue account, before working out a face-saving compromise. Government elites, cronies and warlords have been the only beneficiaries of the incessant conflict that has impoverished Chad; besides being one of the poorest countries in the world, Chad is regularly ranked as one of the most corrupt. It was not until that a special court was opened to launch proceedings against him, with the trial opened in July and his sentence to life in prison issued in May , a decision upheld in April Conflict between Sudanese government-backed Janjaweed fighters and opposition militias in neighbouring Darfur, followed by targeted Janjaweed assaults on ethnic Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa villages — later characterised as genocide — led to mass displacement into eastern Chad in and The causes of these attacks were partly criminal — theft of cattle and assets — and partly strategic, targeting communities left unguarded as the Chadian army was otherwise engaged with rebel groups.
Over time, however, tensions in eastern Chad could no longer be blamed solely on the mass refugee flows from Sudan or on cross-border attacks from Janjaweed horsemen; from the fighting was increasingly between local communities, nonetheless replicating a model familiar from Darfur. As the conflict escalated, both Chad and Sudan accused each other of supporting rebel cross-border attacks.
The conflict had an ethnic dimension: in the simplest terms, the Sudanese government accused the Chadian authorities of offering support to the Darfur rebels — particularly those from the Zaghawa ethnic group — to fight against Khartoum. Although a minority in Chad estimated at a little over 1 per cent of the population , the Zaghawa formed the political elite in the country. By contrast, in Sudan, the Zaghawa were a marginalized group, excluded from political power by the Arab elite concentrated in Khartoum.
Chadian Zaghawa provided vital support, including funds and weaponry, to their Darfur kinsmen in their struggle against the central government. But a Libyan-brokered peace deal saw Nour appointed defence minister, and a promise to integrate FUC into the main armed forces. This lasted just a month. By late , the security situation had deteriorated sharply, not least as these groups were reported to have embarked on a fresh offensive against the government, with correspondents reporting the fiercest fighting in the east for months.
Rebel groups reportedly largely developed along ethnic lines, and the government manipulated pre-existing ethnic rivalries to divide them and to shore up its own position; these practices heightened inter-ethnic tensions in the region, already exacerbated by the various impacts of cross-border conflict and displacement. The situation in Chad remained highly volatile during as the conflict with Sudan escalated. The AU attempted to make peace between the two countries, without success. In early August, the Libyan government helped to broker an agreement between the two governments, and in October representatives from Chad and Sudan met in Tripoli to formally restore diplomatic ties between their nations.
Several international missions were deployed in an attempt to help control the situation and protect civilians, and the Chad-Sudan border reopened as relations normalised somewhat. In tensions stemming from internal conflicts within the Central African Republic CAR , located to the south of Chad, grew and by the end of the year an estimated 50, CAR refugees had sought sanctuary in Cameroon and Chad. Chad officially sent troops in ; in some instances in , Chadian and other soldiers among the AU peacekeepers were accused of targeted violations against suspected anti-balaka, and Chad eventually withdrew from the AU mission.
Refugees from the CAR continued to arrive in Chad as of early In conflict displaced 2.
Chad took part in joint offensives with Nigeria to regain control of border areas under Boko Haram dominance and joined the regional Multinational Joint Task Force to combat it, operating in Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon. The ensuing violence has exacerbated existing ethnic and intercommunal tensions.
Main religions: Islam Most northerners practise Islam, and most southerners practise Christianity or indigenous religions. However, population patterns are becoming more complex, especially in urban areas.