ARK CEO Alistair Harris comments on the recent Brookings report

Much of this report resonates with ARK’s empirical experience across MENA – Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain and Yemen – over the past decade and what Brookings describe as the need to ‘complement a traditional approach focused on national level engagement and top-down strategies with approaches that are small, bottom-up, localized, and integrated’.  

In conversations a couple of years ago in the World Bank they were clear that from Libya to Yemen the absence of central government interlocutors with nationwide legitimacy and reach meant the International Financial Institutions needed to acknowledge the reality of societal fragmentation and deliver support even in the absence of national institutions – a real challenge for the IFIs, the UN and bilateral donors.

Decentralisation, combined with the ‘venture capital’ approach they outline help ensure we de-risk programmatic interventions, reinforce what works and create positive incentives for cooperation. We have also found that the kind of in-conflict inputs they are advocating for create relationships, experience, insight and access which can then be positively leveraged later down the line in support of peace building or development objectives. Two other points I would add.  The first is that whilst undertaking conflict and political economy analyses as the analytical baseline is a prerequisite to delivery, we should also not lose sight of the need to look at resilience factors and the reasons why some areas are less conflict-prone than others, whether that be as a factor of history, geography, demography or economy.  

In addition, whilst it is explicit in the UK’s stabilisation doctrine, we must acknowledge that there are significant human rights and accountability trade-offs in ‘good enough’ governance and acquiescing in elite bargains.  A blended model may offer a way ahead.  By way of example we have been working in the Palestinian camps of Lebanon for over a decade, seeking to improve governance and stability whilst enhancing youth opportunity and agency.  Impacting governance head on is a challenge when the space is contested between unaccountable and unelected competing armed factions.  As such, in order to proceed in a conflict sensitive way we have sought to empower youth networks and enhance community consultation processes and transparency in order to deliver programming through local, credible informal youth groups and civil society actors. The result has been tangible improvements to service delivery and a non-confrontational.