Post-conflict Angola: sustainable peace assessment

and risk mapping Create awareness of the challenges of

creating a sustainable peace in Angola and the issues, opportunities and constraints for

Angola 3 years after the ceasefire.

Development Workshop

Luanda - April 2005

Objectives

• Analyse social changes in Angola during the conflict

• Analyse the post-conflict processes, such as DDR (demobilisation, disarmament, re-integration) and 4Rs (repatriation/return, re-integration, rehabilitation, reconstruction)

• Analyse impact of these on people’s poverty vulnerability

• Assess the risks for conflict• Consider implications for post-conflict

programmes

Methodology

• Field work in 4 Provinces

• Benguela, Moxico, Zaire, Huambo

• Analysis of recent studies (many of them as yet unpublished)

• Re-analysis of data from recent studies

DDR

Demobilisation, DisarmamentRe-integration

DDR

• As with many DDR programmes, demobilisation and disarmament have been carried out, but there is a big question mark about re-integration.

• The re-integration programmes took more than two years to get underway

• No clear data on where the demobilised have moved to, but clear indications that a great many have not gone to their “areas of origin”

• Very difficult situation of those forcibly recruited as underage soldiers, especially females.

Return of refugees and the displaced

Return of refugees and the displaced

• Only part of these groups have returned to their “area of origin”

• Data from Huambo Province suggests that almost half of people in the Province have not retruned to their “area of origin”

• There are still people living in former IDP camps, and there has been continued growth of population of cities and small towns.

Return to areas of origin ?

• There has been (and is) return to rural areas (but this is arduous and happening slowly)

• Much “return” is to cities and small towns, or to areas that are not “areas of origin”

• This is especially true for those who have been “displaced” for many years

• “We are no longer IDPs but we are just living like displaced people”

Why slow return?

• Investment needed to return to areas of origin (level of destruction, lack of infrastructure)

• Impoverishment, do not have this capital

• Waiting until after elections

• No longer have an area of origin

• Land-mines

Return of refugees and the displaced

• Very difficult situation of refugees returning to remoter Provinces of Angola

• Landmines and destroyed infrastructure make it extremely difficult for them to return to “areas of origin”

• They are still in temporary settlements around towns (such as Mbanza Kongo, Luena, Luau)

• There is now very little aid (food aid and “non-food items), and little opportunity for developing a livelihood strategy in such conditions

• Conditions of refugees much below what they had in camps in exile, and what they were led to expect when they were persuaded to return

Re-integration

• Re-integration is a questionable concept in context of Angola where there is no longer a framework into which people can re-integrate

• Mandate-based agencies focus on displacement and on refugees

• Make assumptions that these groups are returning home and that they are managing to re-integrate

• Both of these assumptions are questionable

Loss of assets

• For most people, the most important impact of war has been loss of assets, and not displacement

• There are significant numbers whose assets were looted but were unable to flee

• There are some, on the other hand, who managed to flee before direct impact of conflict and who managed to keep some of their assets

Economic re-integration

• Re-integrating into an abnormal context• Many people have no assets• Family is main source of assistance (credit, land)• Church, community, State, aid organisations are

less important (especially in a context of dramatically less aid)

• But families are also poor. And there are those who have lost contact with family

Re-establishing rural livelihoods

Re-establishing rural livelihoods

• Those who have returned to rural areas have experienced great difficulty in re-establishing a rural livelihood

• Extreme shortages of tools and seeds• Difficulties of re-clearing abandoned fields• Few assistance programmes• There are many people who cannot return to a rural area

of origin (moved away many years ago, have lost contat with family, fear conflict in area of origin, lack of land in area of origin)

• But only very few, small programmes to assist such people with allocation of land

Other livelihood strategies

• Low-paid, odd-jobs• Weeding and cultivating other’s fields• Carrying sacks in market places• Pounding grain• Pay less than one dollar per day• Barely sufficient to survive, often eat only one

meal per day, does not allow any accumulation of assets

• Important survival strategy for those who have no access to land and no other assets, living in former IDP camps or around towns and cities

Other livelihood strategies

• Exploiting natural resources, such as wood (for firewood or charcoal), building materials, plants for medicines and drink-making

• In more remote areas of the country, the demand is very limited and marketing difficult, though this is where the resources are more abundant

• In western part of Angola, supplies are limited and already signs of over-exploitation (eg de-forestation in Central Plateau and around main towns)

• Competition and conflict between neighbouring settlements over access

• Returns can be low, as many people are seeling wood and charcoal as a livelihood strategy

Other livelihood strategies

• Informal trade• Requires some capital for initial purchases• Those with most capital trade in higher value goods and

over longer distances, have higher returns• Those with least capital have low returns due to intense

competition among those tradng in low-value goods and over short distances

• However popular opinion is that trade is more likely to help them to re-accumulate assets than peasant farming or odd-jobs

• People who have workied in this sector have accumulated many skills. Informal trade is more important than formal trade and has more potential

Other livelihood strategies

• Formal employment• Divided between low-income, low-skill formal

employment (barely enough for survival) and high-income formal employment

• The overall low education levels means that those with skills are in high demand (or can sell their skills abroad)

• Much of public sector workforce (especialy outside Provincial capitals) have low skill levels.

Livelihood strategies

• Difficulties of developing livelihood strategies in most areas of the country

• Leads to continued attraction (especially for young people) of a few areas: the major cities, the diamond areas, the oil production areas

• These are also the areas where basic services are least bad

• Cabinda and the Lundas continue to be highly militarised, conflictual relations over access to the resources

Basic services are non-existent in many areas

Conflict risks

• Access to resources appears to be an area of potential conflict

• Access to rural land is not yet a widespread area of conflict, as it is still difficult to develop a livelihood from agriculture. Also customary institutions have survived and manage conflict over land sucessfully within communities

• However research indicates the extreme weakness of the official institutions that manage land allocation at a higher level, among communities and between informal and formal sectors. There are overlapping responsibilities and very low level of capaicty to register land tenure and ensure access conditions are met.

Conflict risks

• Rural land conflict could become more widespread if conditions for development of agriculture were created.

• However there appears to be a higher risk of conflict over access to urban land and land with other resources

• These are areas where people perceive that it is possible to develop a livelihood. A house in an urban area is a dwelling, a place to store goods for trade, a small workshop

• It is in urban areas that the formal economy is growing. This is likely to create conflict between formal and informal land users.

• The institutions to manage land access and conflicts are just as weak in urban areas.

Conflict risks

• Over identity– People of different origins now living close

together– Some Angolans see this as positive, creating

an Angolan identity– But are in possible competition over access to

resources– Lack of policies and capacities to manage this

social integration

Social re-integration

• Re-integrating into an abnormal context of weakened social fabric

• Significant population movements over last 40 years

• People are various origins “re-integrating” side-by-side

Conflict risks

• There is not necessarily polarisation between people who were with the different sides in the war, or along ethnic lines. Other polarisations might be developing.

• For example, people who were refugees have developed an identity that is different from the people of the same group who stayed behind: developed new skills, had better education opportunities, joined new churches, use different languages, wear different clothes.

• The different groups are all vulnerable in some way, but each group perceives its own vulnerabilities and not the vulnerabilties of the other group.

Conflict risks

• Example of various groups forced to settle (temporarily ?) around Luena.

• Refugees are of various ethnic origins, but have developed their own social cohesion from living together in exile.

• They consider themselves to be vulnerable because situation in Angola is not what led to believe when in camps in Zambia, aid is much less than what led to believe and than what received when first went to Zambia, believe that residents have better links to the authorities, have been forced to store their assets in precarious stores at the border

Conflict risks• Perceptions of residents:-• that refugees had access to education in exile,

that received better aid in exile, • that aid agencies do not assist residents because they were not

displaced (even though many residents have also lost most of their assets)

• that refugees have learnt how to use the aid system while they were in exile

• that refugess have acquired non-Angolan identities (and values). • It is these polarisations, exacerbated by high levels of competition

(and potential conflict) for access to land, water points, jobs, training courses and aid, that may be more important than the better-known ones (ethnic, political, coast versus the interior).

Institutions

Institutions• Research indicates the survival of customary rural institutions that

have regulated rural life. But there are some important differences between areas.

• Their main positive feature is that they revolve around some form of Council bringing together important people in the community.

• A weakness is that the colonial system (and the post-independence one) has focused on the individual leader (usually the soba) and not on the accountable and democratic aspects. Local government administrations tend to use leaders to transmit messages to communities, while being unable to resolve the problems communities present to the administartions through the leaders.

• Another weakness is that customary rural institutions tend to exclude women and young people, and to exclude outsiders (while there are now many outsiders in communities). There are however some signs of change.

Institutions

• It has been shown that conflict, in many countries, weakens institutions.

• This is true in case of Angola, most obviously at the level of local government administrations.

• Rural customary institutions have survived. Informal, urban institutions (such as to organise market places or the peri-urban land market) have developed.

• These are percieved by decision-makers as “illegal” or “anarchic” but they have been allowed to continue during the war.

Institutions

• There is a risk that government, in trying to restore legality, will impose laws that ignore functioning, informal mechanisms that have worked satisfactorily (while capacity to implement formal system is still weak)

• Period of most rapid erosion of formal institutions was post-1992, when conflict coincided with a failed transition to a market economy, producing a free-market without rules

• Eg Artisan fishing people say that mid-1990s was when institutions broke down in protecting them from mechanised, large-scale trawler fishing.

Further conflict risks

• “Traditional” conflict resolution remain in some areas, but potential conflicts now are beyond the normal competence of such mechanisms

• Problem remains one of weakness of mechanisms at a higher level

• Lack of capacity in Government, so risk that recreating “rule of law” removes informal mechanisms in which people have invested without creating a functioning formal system

Further conflict risks

• Angola is a low-income oil producer. • It is now apprecaited that such countries have

high risks: high expectations but income insufficient to meet these expectations.

• High inequality between the minority with skills for formal economy and the rest

• Low levels of trust in institutions (as evidenced by people retaining arms as an insurance policy and accusations of witchcraft in rural areas)

International actors

• High level of interest in Angola’s resources• Low capacity to engage with complexity of

current situation• Focus on “corruption” as a get-out clause, that

avoids dealing with a post-conflict complex emergency

• Tendency still to see solution in completing a transition from the post-independence State, ignoring the problems created by that tranisition

• Drastic fall in aid

International actors

• Some recent programmes (such as World Bank LICUS) that do focus on problems of weak states

• As yet unclear whether these programmes will set up parallel institutions so as to try to deliver the Millenium Goals as quickly as possible

• Or whether will focus on the long and complex processes of helping to rebuild institutions

Implications

• Conflict sensitivity required in development: economic development itself may create conflicts

• Reconstruction needs to deal with people’s vulnerabilities:-

• Low levels of material capital; loss of assets and inability to re-accumulate them

• Low levels of social capital; due to population movements, erosion of communities, families, trust

• Low levels of human capital; lack of educational opportunities and skills

• Low levels of institutional capital; erosion of institutions and trust in institutions

Implications

• Opportunities to rebuild assets and skills need to be widely spread to prevent access to them creating conflicts

• Rebuilding of institutions is a long-term and difficult task, but avoiding it creates high risks

• Reconstruction will involve a great deal of learning-by-doing. This is uncharted territory, which requires pilot projects linked to information gathering and analysis and monitoring.

• This in turn implies rebuilding the research capacity in Angola.

Opportunities

• Survival of rural customary institutions is an opportunity. There is a potential to use them as the basis for a more democratic and accountable local governance.

• There is some awareness in Government that local administration needs drastic improvement, that it should be linked to local civil society and that accountability is essential (though there has been almost no experience of this in colonial and post-independence systems)

• The new Land Law is an opportunity (though it is far from perfect). There is some awareness of the need to build Government capacity and how difficult a task this will be. There are opportunities for pilot projects that will help to address the weaknesses in the Land Law.