Paying for Essentials A Policy Paper Series Recovering From Conflict: Strategy For An International Response SHEPARD FORMAN STEWART PATRICK DIRK SALOMONS In this paper we identify seven challenges that the international aid community must address to maximize its support for sustainable peace and reconstruction in the wake of conflict. We call for stricter collaboration in (i) designing aid interventions; (ii) mobilizing resources; (iii) deepening institutional reform; (iv) harmonizing aid conditions; (v) coordinating assistance locally; (vi) enhancing recipient capacities; and (vii) ensuring accountability in aid delivery and implementation. In the end, we recommend institutionalizing these efforts in a new Strategic Recovery Facility that would ensure the timely disbursement of aid in a more coherent and equitable manner. Although global private capital flows now dwarf official development assistance, most foreign direct investment destined for the developing world focuses on a handful of dynamic emerging markets. Most poor countries — and war-torn ones above all — are marginalized from conventional world markets. Thus, the donor community retains an indispensable role in assisting beleaguered societies to achieve enduring political stability and sustainable economic growth. Bilateral and multilateral donors have committed themselves in principle to encourage and support conflict resolution and recovery. They have reaffirmed this objective repeatedly in pledging conferences and other venues by offering generous support for these purposes. Good intentions notwithstanding, external interventions to support recovery have been hindered by insufficient collaboration in the design and execution of assistance; inadequate financing for transitional needs that fall between relief and development; misleading pledging conferences; incompatible aid conditions; inattention to local capacities; unreliable databases; and weak tools to gauge the impact of assistance. CONTENTS Preface Summary and Recommendations Introduction: The Challenge of Reconstruction I. Organizing Assistance For Societies Emerging From Conflict II. Mobilizing Adequate, Appropriate Resources III. Deepening Institutional Reform IV. Harmonizing and Humanizing Aid Conditionality V. Improving Local Coordination VI. Building on Local Capacities VII. Ensuring Accountability The Way Forward: A Strategic Recovery Facility Appendices Download a PDF of the entire paper