Paul Collier's new rules for rebuilding a broken nation

33,727 views ・ 2009-06-24

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00:16
I'm going to talk about post-conflict recovery
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and how we might do post-conflict recovery better.
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The record on post-conflict recovery is not very impressive.
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40 percent of all post-conflict situations,
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historically, have reverted back to conflict within a decade.
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In fact, they've accounted for half of all civil wars.
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Why has the record been so poor?
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Well, the conventional approach
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to post-conflict situations
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has rested on, on kind of, three principles.
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The first principle is: it's the politics that matters.
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01:02
So, the first thing that is prioritized is politics.
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Try and build a political settlement first.
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And then the second step is to say,
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"The situation is admittedly dangerous, but only for a short time."
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01:16
So get peacekeepers there, but get them home as soon as possible.
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So, short-term peacekeepers.
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And thirdly, what is the exit strategy for the peacekeepers?
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It's an election.
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That will produce a legitimate and accountable government.
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So that's the conventional approach.
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I think that approach denies reality.
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01:42
We see that there is no quick fix.
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There's certainly no quick security fix.
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I've tried to look at the risks of reversion to conflict,
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during our post-conflict decade.
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And the risks stay high throughout the decade.
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01:58
And they stay high regardless of the political innovations.
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Does an election produce an accountable and legitimate government?
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What an election produces is a winner and a loser.
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And the loser is unreconciled.
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The reality is that we need to reverse the sequence.
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It's not the politics first;
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it's actually the politics last.
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The politics become easier as the decade progresses
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if you're building on a foundation
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of security and economic development --
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the rebuilding of prosperity.
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Why does the politics get easier?
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And why is it so difficult initially?
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Because after years of stagnation and decline,
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the mentality of politics is that it's a zero-sum game.
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If the reality is stagnation,
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I can only go up if you go down.
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And that doesn't produce a productive politics.
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And so the mentality has to shift from
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zero-sum to positive-sum
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before you can get a productive politics.
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You can only get positive, that mental shift,
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if the reality is that prosperity is being built.
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And in order to build prosperity, we need security in place.
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So that is what you get when you face reality.
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But the objective of facing reality
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is to change reality.
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And so now let me suggest
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two complimentary approaches
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to changing the reality of the situations.
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The first is to recognize the interdependence
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of three key actors, who are different actors,
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and at the moment are uncoordinated.
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The first actor is the Security Council.
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The Security Council typically has the responsibility
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for providing the peacekeepers
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who build the security.
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And that needs to be recognized,
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first of all, that peacekeeping works.
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It is a cost-effective approach.
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It does increase security.
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But it needs to be done long-term.
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It needs to be a decade-long approach,
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rather than just a couple of years.
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That's one actor, the Security Council.
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The second actor, different cast of guys,
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is the donors.
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The donors provide post-conflict aid.
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Typically in the past,
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the donors have been interested in the first couple of years,
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and then they got bored.
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They moved on to some other situation.
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Post-conflict economic recovery
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is a slow process.
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There are no quick processes in economics
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except decline.
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You can do that quite fast.
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(Laughter)
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So the donors have to stick with this situation
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for at least a decade.
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And then the third key actor
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is the post-conflict government.
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And there are two key things it's got to do.
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One is it's got to do economic reform,
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not fuss about the political constitution.
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It's got to reform economic policy.
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Why? Because during conflict
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economic policy typically deteriorates.
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Governments snatch short-term opportunities
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and, by the end of the conflict, the chickens have come home to roost.
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So this legacy of conflict is really bad economic policy.
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So there is a reform agenda, and there is an inclusion agenda.
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The inclusion agenda doesn't come from elections.
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Elections produce a loser, who is then excluded.
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So the inclusion agenda means genuinely
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bringing people inside the tent.
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So those three actors.
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And they are interdependent
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over a long term.
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If the Security Council doesn't commit to security
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over the course of a decade,
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you don't get the reassurance which produces private investment.
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If you don't get the policy reform and the aid,
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you don't get the economic recovery,
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which is the true exit strategy for the peacekeepers.
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06:22
So we should recognize that interdependence,
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by formal, mutual commitments.
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The United Nations actually has a language
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for these mutual commitments, the recognition of mutual commitments;
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it's called the language of compact.
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And so we need a post-conflict compact.
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The United Nations even has an agency which could broker these compacts;
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it's called the Peace Building Commission.
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It would be ideal to have a standard set of norms
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where, when we got to a post-conflict situation,
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there was an expectation of these mutual commitments
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from the three parties.
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So that's idea one:
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recognize interdependence.
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07:10
And now let me turn to the second approach, which is complimentary.
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And that is to focus on a few critical objectives.
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Typical post-conflict situation is a zoo
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of different actors with different priorities.
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And indeed, unfortunately, if you navigate by needs
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you get a very unfocused agenda,
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because in these situations, needs are everywhere,
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but the capacity to implement change is very limited.
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So we have to be disciplined and focus on things that are critical.
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And I want to suggest that in the typical post-conflict situation
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three things are critical.
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One is jobs.
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One is improvements in basic services --
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especially health, which is a disaster during conflict.
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08:03
So jobs, health, and clean government.
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Those are the three critical priorities.
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So I'm going to talk a little about each of them.
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Jobs.
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What is a distinctive approach
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to generating jobs in post-conflict situations?
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And why are jobs so important?
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Jobs for whom? Especially jobs for young men.
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In post-conflict situations,
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the reason that they so often revert to conflict,
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is not because elderly women get upset.
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It's because young men get upset.
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And why are they upset? Because they have nothing to do.
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And so we need a process of generating jobs,
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for ordinary young men, fast.
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Now, that is difficult.
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Governments in post-conflict situation
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often respond by puffing up the civil service.
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That is not a good idea.
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It's not sustainable.
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In fact, you're building a long-term liability
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by inflating civil service.
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But getting the private sector to expand is also difficult,
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because any activity which is open to international trade
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is basically going to be uncompetitive
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in a post-conflict situation.
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These are not environments where you can build export manufacturing.
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There's one sector which isn't exposed to international trade,
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and which can generate a lot of jobs,
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and which is, in any case, a sensible sector
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to expand, post-conflict,
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and that is the construction sector.
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The construction sector has a vital role,
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obviously, in reconstruction.
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But typically that sector has withered away during conflict.
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During conflict people are doing destruction.
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There isn't any construction going on. And so the sector shrivels away.
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And then when you try and expand it,
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because it's shriveled away,
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you encounter a lot of bottlenecks.
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Basically, prices soar
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and crooked politicians then milk the rents from the sector,
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but it doesn't generate any jobs.
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And so the policy priority is to break the bottlenecks
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in expanding the construction sector.
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What might the bottlenecks be?
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Just think what you have to do
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successfully to build a structure, using a lot of labor.
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First you need access to land.
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Often the legal system is broken down
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so you can't even get access to land.
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Secondly you need skills,
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the mundane skills of the construction sector.
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In post-conflict situations we don't just need Doctors Without Borders,
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we need Bricklayers Without Borders,
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to rebuild the skill set.
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We need firms. The firms have gone away.
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So we need to encourage the growth of local firms.
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If we do that, we not only get the jobs,
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we get the improvements in public infrastructure,
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the restoration of public infrastructure.
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Let me turn from jobs to the second objective,
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which is improving basic social services.
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And to date, there has been a sort of a schizophrenia
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in the donor community,
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as to how to build basic services
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in post-conflict sectors.
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On the one hand it pays lip service
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to the idea of rebuild an effective state
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in the image of Scandinavia in the 1950s.
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Lets develop line ministries of this, that, and the other,
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that deliver these services.
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And it's schizophrenic because in their hearts
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donors know that's not a realistic agenda,
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and so what they also do is the total bypass:
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just fund NGOs.
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Neither of those approaches is sensible.
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And so what I'd suggest
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is what I call Independent Service Authorities.
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It's to split the functions of a monopoly line ministry up into three.
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The planning function and policy function stays with the ministry;
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the delivery of services on the ground,
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you should use whatever works --
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churches, NGOs, local communities,
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whatever works.
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And in between, there should be a public agency,
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the Independent Service Authority,
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which channels public money,
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and especially donor money,
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to the retail providers.
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So the NGOs become part of a public government system,
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rather than independent of it.
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One advantage of that is that you can allocate money coherently.
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Another is, you can make NGOs accountable.
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You can use yardstick competition,
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so they have to compete against each other
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for the resources.
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The good NGOs, like Oxfam, are very keen on this idea.
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They want to have the discipline and accountability.
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So that's a way to get basic services scaled up.
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And because the government would be funding it,
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it would be co-branding these services.
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So they wouldn't be provided thanks to
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the United States government and some NGO.
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They would be co-branded
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as being done by the post-conflict government, in the country.
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So, jobs, basic services, finally, clean government.
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Clean means follow their money.
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The typical post-conflict government is so short of money
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that it needs our money
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just to be on a life-support system.
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You can't get the basic functions of the state done
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unless we put money into the core budget of these countries.
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But, if we put money into the core budget,
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we know that there aren't the budget systems with integrity
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that mean that money will be well spent.
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And if all we do is put money in and close our eyes
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it's not just that the money is wasted --
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that's the least of the problems --
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it's that the money is captured.
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It's captured by the crooks who are at the heart of the political problem.
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And so inadvertently we empower the people who are the problem.
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So building clean government means, yes, provide money
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to the budget,
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but also provide a lot of scrutiny,
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which means a lot of technical assistance that follows the money.
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Paddy Ashdown, who was the grand high nabob of Bosnia
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to the United Nations,
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in his book about his experience, he said,
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"I realize what I needed
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was accountants without borders,
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to follow that money."
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So that's the -- let me wrap up,
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this is the package.
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What's the goal?
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If we follow this, what would we hope to achieve?
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That after 10 years,
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the focus on the construction sector
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would have produced both jobs
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and, hence, security --
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because young people would have jobs --
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and it would have reconstructed the infrastructure.
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So that's the focus on the construction sector.
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The focus on the basic service delivery
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through these independent service authorities
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would have rescued basic services
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from their catastrophic levels,
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and it would have given ordinary people
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the sense that the government was doing something useful.
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The emphasis on clean government
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would have gradually squeezed out the political crooks,
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because there wouldn't be any money
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in taking part in the politics.
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And so gradually the selection,
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the composition of politicians,
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would shift from the crooked to the honest.
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Where would that leave us?
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Gradually it would shift
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from a politics of plunder
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to a politics of hope. Thank you.
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(Applause)
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