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Delivering water services during protracted armed conflicts: How development agencies can overcome barriers to collaboration with humanitarian actors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2020

Edoardo Borgomeo Open the ORCID record for Edoardo Borgomeo [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

This note discusses the challenges of water service delivery before, during and after protracted armed conflict, focusing on barriers that may impede successful transition from emergency to development interventions. The barriers are grouped according to three major contributing factors (three “C”s): culture (organizational goals and procedures), cash (financing practices) and capacity (know-how). By way of examples, the note explores ways in which development agencies can overcome these barriers during the three phases of a protracted armed conflict, using examples of World Bank projects and experiences in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. Before the crisis, development agencies need to work to prevent armed conflict. In a situation of active armed conflict or when conflict escalates, development agencies need to remain engaged as much as possible, as this will speed up post-conflict recovery. When conflict subsides, development agencies need to balance the relative effort placed on providing urgently needed emergency relief and water supply and sanitation services with the effort placed on re-establishing sector oversight roles and capacity of local institutions to oversee and manage service delivery in the long term.

Keywords

water serviceshumanitarian–development dividewater and habitatwater warswater conflictWorld Bank
Type
Humanitarian-development nexus
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 101 , Issue 912: Protracted conflict , December 2019 , pp. 1067 - 1089
Copyright
Copyright © icrc 2020

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Footnotes

*

The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this note are entirely those of the author. They do not represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the executive directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. The author would like to thank Anders Jägerskog, Dominick de Waal, Michael Talhami, the anonymous reviewers and the editorial team of the Review for their comments, which greatly improved this note.

References

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22 Fiduciary control ensures that development funds are transparently used for the intended purposes, that they achieve value for money, and that they are accounted for. In fragile contexts, countries are often not able to guarantee this fiduciary control, which increases the risk of corruption and inappropriate use of development funds.

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29 See the UN's “Deliver Humanitarian Aid” web page, available at: www.un.org/en/sections/what-we-do/deliver-humanitarian-aid/.

30 For more details on UNRWA's work, visit the UNRWA website at: www.unrwa.org/who-we-are.

31 “Other situations of violence” are situations in which acts of violence are perpetrated collectively but which are below the threshold of armed conflict according to the ICRC. See ICRC, “The International Committee of the Red Cross's Role in Situations of Violence Below the Threshold of Armed Conflict”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 96, No. 893, 2014Google Scholar.

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37 World Bank and UN, above note 10, p. 250.

38 The countries that the World Bank Water and Sanitation Program worked in were the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan and Zimbabwe.

39 World Bank and UN, above note 10, p. xviii.

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41 Several development agencies have produced guidelines for understanding and applying conflict sensitivity approaches in their interventions, including the “do no harm” approach. See, for example, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, “Conflict Sensitivity in Programme Management”, Stockholm, 2017; Conflict Sensitivity Consortium, “How-to Guide to Conflict Sensitivity”, UK Department for International Development, London, 2012.

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45 Ibid.

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55 See World Bank, “Eight Countries Eligible for new IDA Financing to Support Refugees and Hosts”, 16 November 2017, available at: https://reliefweb.int/report/world/eight-countries-eligible-new-ida-financing-support-refugees-and-hosts.

56 For a list of projects supported so far, see the Global Concessional Financing Facility website, available at: http://globalcff.org/supported-projects/.

57 S. Devarajan, above note 14.

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