1 - 1999

The New German Goverment

New Hope Crises Prevention

Development Policy is Peace Policy

by Lothar Brock

The new leadership in the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) professes commitment to crisis prevention and handling conflicts. In the face of the conflicts in Africa, Latin America and also now again in Asia this is logical. But it is also sobering.

Considering that "Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit" - EZ (Development and Cooperation) has attempted for more than forty years to get self-supporting peaceful change under way in the regions just mentioned, this present statement of the main focus appears at first to be the admission of failure. Evidently EZ was up to now not that which it, renewed, should be, that is, a policy for peace. Can it become that?

The necessity for strengthened involvement in the area of the handling of conflicts and crisis prevention has been recognised for years. Conceptual preparation for this has been done in the BMZ, by the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and also by the churches. There is a problem with the implementation at the present, because the conflicts in several countries and regions have intensified so that a sensible involvement is scarcely possible any more. What should be done?

The new leadership in the BMZ supports the reshaping of the macropolitical framework according to social and ecological perspectives as a condition for development (world structural policy), and, to do this, improvement of the coordination between the departments, an increase in the resources for fighting poverty when the whole budget of the EZ is raised, building up the inland work and, finally, with inclusion of the NGOs getting a new North-South dialogue going. As a special innovation a civil peace service is aimed at, which would support with expertise and personnel the local or regional peace efforts, mediate directly locally and take part in the training of mediators.

Will such approaches achieve more than up till now? The linking of crisis prevention, handling conflicts and world structural policy is the expression of an important decision. That was that either one reacts to the experience to this point with resignation (and elimination of the EZ) or one makes a new offensive.

The present federal government has clearly decided for the offensive. However, it will have to be careful not merely to produce new frustration through higher demands on what EZ should achieve, not least by those who carry out the detailed work locally. Innovations in the EZ need not only new visions but also a new prudence. This is especially true of crisis prevention and dealing with conflicts.

Nothing could be more damaging than a policy that in this area places more value on commitment than on competence. The new EZ must aim for professionalisation, which is also needed in order to hold the personal risk to those involved within halfway acceptable limits. Second, the EZ must concern itself more than it has to this point with the realization that it has itself contributed to the spread of clientism instead of self help, to the intensifying of the conflict constellations and social tensions already present, and in connection with humanitarian aid even to an extension of the violence. Is the EZ ready to allow these experiences to become truly constitutive for the new definition of its own work?

Third, crisis prevention and handling conflicts assume a politicizing of EZ, because the conflict interference motivated or deformed by foreign policy (as today in Central Africa or earlier in Central America) is an essential element in the framework mentioned. The conditions for closer coordination between BMZ and the Foreign Ministry in this question are more favorable today than under the former government. The question is whether the BMZ in differences of opinion with the Foreign Ministry regarding the foreign political interests of the Federal Republic will actually have greater weight than in the previous government.

Prof . Dr. L. Brock teaches political science at Frankfurt Univ. and is Chairman of the Commission for Development Affairs and Environment of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). Unabridged translation of a commentary first published in E+Z Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, vol. 40-1999/1.