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"War kills development as well as
people". It destroys livelihoods as well as lives, and it undermines
economic as well as political progress. Violence deprives people of opportunity
as well as the physical infrastructure and social structures on which they
rely. Above all, perhaps, it robs them of hope and belief in the future.
In other words, the impacts of conflict are as damaging to the economic
potential of a nation as they are to its social and political prospects.
There is also a widespread assumption, although there is no direct causal
relationship between the two, that poverty can be a factor driving violent
conflict. Over the last decade, increasing recognition of these points
has stimulated consensus on the nexus between security and development
and has led to a greater appreciation that peace and economic development
are inseparable.
Less clarity exists on what this means
in practice. The relationship between the economy, conflict and peace is
more complex than is often assumed. It has largely been approached in one
of two ways, reflecting the different perspectives of those engaged in
exploring this issue: for conflict specialists, attention has focused on
war economies and the economic drivers of conflict more broadly, emphasising
the potentially destructive consequences of shadow economies, elite capture
of natural resource revenues and the illicit trades in people, weapons
and drugs. For those concerned with the socio-economic pillars of traditional
'development', the focus has been on the importance of stimulating rapid
economic growth as the most direct path out of poverty for the estimated
1.2 billion people living on less than $1 a day.
This paper, published under the EU-funded
Conflict Prevention Partnership (CPP), and informed by discussions among
international experts at a conference on private sector development and
peacebuilding in Berlin in September 2006, looks at two aspects critical
to economic development: trade promotion (specifically Economic Partnership
Agreements) and support to private enterprise. Given that this is a comparatively
new area of inquiry, there is a need for deepened research in the future,
building on these first findings. In particular, this paper explores to
what extent these instruments can be made 'conflict-sensitive', i.e. responsive
to the requirements of conflict contexts; and secondly, to what extent
they can contribute to promoting peace and stability.