The United Nations humanitarian chief recently announced that the world faced the worst humanitarian crisis since the end of World War II, with over 20 million people at risk of starvation, due in large part to conflicts in and around the Arab region. National governments and international organizations will need to take drastic steps to halt this escalating humanitarian catastrophe over the next year.
At the same time, those of us who work in the Arab region should also think in the long term. Conflict and food insecurity have longstanding linkages in the Arab region, as research at UN ESCWA has demonstrated. One of the best ways to prevent conflict-related food insecurity is to prevent post-war countries from relapsing back into civil war. All wars end, and it is therefore incumbent to prepare for effective and sustainable post-war peacebuilding, recovery, and transition—particularly in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen.
How should these conflict-affected countries design their post-war strategies? Should they emphasize political reforms? Economic restructuring? Post-war justice? Security and public order? Humanitarian relief and livelihoods? Though it might be tempting to say “all of the above,” post-war governments typically face tight fiscal, capacity, and time constraints. Prioritizing and sequencing their recovery efforts are essential.
To begin answering these questions, I recently published a working paper at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, based in Beirut, Lebanon. In this paper, I conducted statistical analyses on a dataset of all post-war episodes since 1970 to identify risk factors for war relapse. The paper paid particular attention to factors thought to drive patterns of war and instability in the Arab region—such as authoritarianism, youth unemployment, and oil rents.
Table 1 and 2 from the paper introduce a few descriptive statistics on post-war experiences since 1970. Post-war background conditions and policy frameworks are quite diverse. Experiences in the Arab region since1970 are roughly in line with global averages, except in a relative lack of UN peacekeeping mission and democracies after civil wars.
The regression analyses contained in the paper reveal a few key associations. The central findings are that political institutions, military factors, and long-term income growth have the greatest impact on the risk of civil war relapse.
Democracy, elections, and greater numbers of troops per capita are clearly protective factors, substantially mitigating the risk of relapsing back into civil war.
Decentralization and income growth have significant impacts, but these impacts change over time. Decentralization is protective in the initial post-war phase, but substantially increases risk of relapse after approximately month 55. Higher income growth per capita is associated with greater risk of relapse until approximately month 20, and is increasingly protective thereafter.
Among other findings, the analyses undermine several prominent hypotheses about post-war stability: most economic indicators, all measures for ethnicity and culture, and most predetermined factors appear not to contribute to post-war risk, one way or the other, at statistically significant levels.
Notably, measures for income per capita, oil rents, unemployment, youth unemployment, and economic power sharing are uncorrelated with risk of war relapse.
The policy implications of these questions are critical: international organizations, including the United Nations and the World Bank, have repeatedly and emphatically argued that post-war stabilization depends on implementing economic reforms, generating employment, and eradicating poverty; post-war governments have implemented policies reflecting those beliefs.
Instead, the findings here suggest that the development- and humanitarian-centered recovery strategies advocated by the international community should be pursued mainly for their intrinsic benefits, but policymakers should not expect such strategies to generate post-war stability and prevent war relapse on their own.
Conflicts degrade the infrastructure and institutions that enable food security—roads, ports, warehouses, granaries, and the people and programs that implement these systems. Therefore avoiding war relapse will be one effective way to help reduce food insecurity in the Arab region in the future. My research suggests that to avoid war relapses and the food insecurity that would result, post-war planners should focus on improving political institutions, security sector effectiveness, and long-term income growth.
George Frederick Willcoxon is a political scientist working at the United Nations. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations or the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.
