July 22, 2011
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Countries emerging from protracted and devastating conflicts are often seen as needing significant external intervention in their financial markets to rebuild their private sector and promote quick and effective economic recovery. Despite enormous challenges, the provision of credit or the implementation of various lending schemes often dominate efforts to promote domestic private-sector recovery in the immediate aftermath of conflict. This approach raises a number of questions: First, how effective are loan programs in the development of domestic enterprises in the immediate aftermath of conflicts? Second, can loan programs work without significant improvements in the business climate? How sensitive is the design of lending programs to the success of domestic enterprise development projects following devastating conflicts? This paper explores the experience of the Liberian Enterprise Development Finance Company, which was established in 2007 to provide medium-and long0term credit to small and medium domestic enterprises. In addition to shedding light on the challenges such an enterprise faces in a post conflict environment, the paper explores whether the strategies employed are effective and if there are opportunities for effecting remedial changes that could improve the outcomes of such a program in post-conflict environments generally....
July 21, 2011
International Monetary Fund
Abstract:
This paper identifies the factors linked to cross-country differentials in growth performance in the aftermath of social conflict for 30 sub-Saharan African countries using panel data techniques. Our results show that changes in the terms of trade are the most important correlate of economic performance in post-conflict environments. This variable is typically associated with an increase in the marginal probability of positive economic performance by about 30 percent. Institutional quality emerges as the second most important factor. Foreign aid is shown to have very limited ability to explain differentials in growth performance, and other policy variables such as trade openness are not found to have a statistically significant effect. The results suggest that exogenous factors ("luck") are an important factor in post-conflict recovery. They also highlight the importance in post-conflict settings of policies to mitigate the macroeconomic impact of terms of trade volatility (including countercyclical macroeconomic policies and innovative financing instruments) and of policies to promote export diversification....
June 13, 2011
Prism // Center for Complex Operations (National Defense University)
Abstract:
Transnational criminal organizations, networks, and terrorist groups are increasingly helping each other move products, money, weapons, personnel, and goods. They accomplish this through an informal network or series of overlapping pipelines. These pipelines can be best understood as recombinant chains with links that can couple and decouple as necessary to meet the interests of the networks involved. Many operate in “alternatively governed” spaces outside of direct state control or within criminal state enterprises. A criminal state counts on the integration of the state's leadership into the criminal enterprise and the use of public services—such as licensing, issuance of official documents, regulatory regimes, border control—for illicit purposes. A further variation of the criminal state occurs when a state franchises part of its territory to nonstate groups, with the protection of the central government or a regional power sharing the profits. The author shows that understanding and addressing these threats requires capacity-building in human intelligence collection and prosecuting transnational criminal organizations....
April 26, 2010
African Centre for for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes // African Journal on Conflict Resolution // International Center for Transitional Justice
Abstract:
Conflict is highly gendered, that much we know. That men and women
experience conflict differently and that women’s experience of the conflict is
shaped by the status of women in the country prior to the conflict, we also know.
However, the question remains: how is truth gendered and how does attention
to gender influence truth-seeking in a post-conflict situation? Following Liberia’s intensely violent conflict that ravaged the country for 14
years, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in Accra, Ghana,
in 2003 made provision for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC). This was an attempt by the negotiators to include an
accountability mechanism acceptable to all warring factions. The peace
talks had already witnessed thirteen stalled attempts to end the conflict. It is
important to note here that Liberian women played a critical role in bringing the
warring factions to the negotiation table, as well as in applying pressure during
the process for the agreement to be signed. But despite their activism women
were nonetheless excluded from the formal peace talks and only a select few
participated as observers. Against this background, the National Transitional Government of Liberia
(NTGL) was appointed in 2003 and it in turn created a Commission to begin
the process of truth seeking. However, this first Commission did not stand up
to public scrutiny for a variety of reasons, not least because there had been
no guiding Act or policy to steer its development. The TRC was therefore
reconstituted through an official Act passed in June 2005 and was tasked with
investigating ‘gross human rights violations and violations of international
humanitarian law as well as abuses that occurred, including massacres, sexual
violations, murder, extra-judicial killings and economic crimes’ perpetrated
between 1979 and 2003 (TRC Act, 2005).1 The newly constituted TRC was
mandated to investigate the causes, nature, patterns and impact of human rights
violations, as well as identify the key antecedents to the crisis by examining
Liberia’s history prior to the conflict. The Liberian Commission finally began its
operations in 2006 and was composed of nine national Commissioners under
the chair of Jerome Verdier, a former human rights and civil society activist....
April 6, 2010
Journal of Humanitarian Assistance // Feinstein International Center
Abstract:
This paper examines issues concerning forced displacement of people in Colombia and Liberia within the context of 20th-century internal armed conflicts. It explores how displacement is related to group identities such as gender and age, and it examines the displacement crisis in Colombia and Liberia. It argues that a commitment–implementation gap, or the failure of Colombia and Liberia to implement effective strategies to meet their commitment to global norms and principles as stipulated in the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, limits these countries’ ability to manage their displacement crisis effectively....
Liberia 
