Due to the complex interaction of corruption and conflict, the nascent partnership between peacebuilders and anti-corruption activists is crucial. The PBF-session “A Double Challenge for Peacebuilders: Exploring the Vicious Circle of Corruption and Conflict” hosted by BMZ will explore the interlinkages between corruption and conflict from a peacebuilder’s perspective and suggests how the peacebuilding community can contribute to addressing the vicious circle.

A new partnership between peacebuilders and anti-corruption activists?

In December 2019, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Transparency International Germany, the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre and GIZ already hosted an international conference, which brought together anti-corruption activists and peacebuilders. Participants have called for closer collaboration amongst both groups to improve mutual understanding and learning, as well as for a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach. Minutes of the BMZ Conference can be found here. In December 2020, a session at the International Anti-Corruption Conference, sponsored by GIZ and U4, continued the conversation and highlighted perspectives of anti-corruption experts. Additionally, GIZ commissioned a review of literature on anti-corruption in fragile settings.

With the session at the FriEnt Peacebuilding Forum, we will now turn towards the peacebuilding perspective. We argue that peacebuilding and conflict prevention need to pay more attention to corruption and join forces with actors promoting transparency, accountability and good governance. While the interlinkages of corruption and conflict are nothing new to peacebuilding practitioners, it is urgent that siloed donor approaches to both challenges end and a new partnership is forged.

Addressing the vicious circle of corruption and conflict

Corruption is both an underlying cause and a driver of conflict. A self-perpetuating vicious circle is best suited to understand the complex system of corruption and violent conflict as well as its damaging effects on state-society relations. Given the destructive and dynamic relationship between these two multi-dimensional phenomena, cause and effect become blurred. Corruption and conflict often feed and fuel each other. Let us consider one example: weak state institutions without effective checks and balances invite predatory, corrupt behaviour. As a consequence, service delivery is diminished, and the state is increasingly perceived as unresponsive to the population’s needs. The resulting frustration fuels populist narratives of exclusion and supports mobilization of militant opposition groups. With growing insecurity, state resources are withdrawn from the affected areas and the few, underpaid public officials in service in such hostile context often (have to) use the remaining resources to secure their families’ physical safety and well-being by creating clientelistic safety nets and accommodate the needs of their constituencies.

In systems thinking, this is called a positive feedback loop. In the reality of local peacebuilders, it is often an every-day phenomenon. So far, donors and international agencies supporting peacebuilding have often felt that addressing the system of corruption and conflict is not in their mandate. It should be left to the colleagues from the governance department – just as the governance experts point to peacebuilders to address violent contestation and insecurity. Both very often still work in parallel without joining hands, as Prof. Diana Chigas of the Fletcher School at Tufts University points out in a recent blog post at the Corruption in Fragile States Blog, which opens a new space for dialogue among both communities. We hope that the discussion at the Peacebuilding Forum will contribute to such a change.

Identifying potential peacebuilding contributions

At the Forum, we will discuss potential peacebuilding contributions to break the vicious circle. We can think of several steps that peacebuilders can take. Among them are the following:

• Integrate more granular and dynamic political economy analysis power mappings into conflict and peacebuilding analysis
• Reflect on the political economy of peacebuilding and peacemaking and their potential contributions to fuel corruption, insecurity and violent conflict
• Help to yield the inclusive and cohesive potential of social accountability measures with accompanying local peacebuilding and social cohesion measures
• Support coalition building of peacebuilders and anti-corruption activists and support risk management and protection for activists in insecure contexts
• Foster trust among stakeholders as well as in state-society relations and facilitate the creation of joint visions for a future peace economy
• Promote more unity among stakeholders against corruption through inclusive social dialogue addressing the need for accountability and transparency and promoting governance and justice reforms
• Support the transformation of social norms that create an enabling environment for corruption towards such social norms that foster integrity and identify corruption as criminal offences.

Can you think of other contributions? Or do you feel that there are important obstacles for peacebuilders to join the fight against corruption? How could we address these? We want to hear your thoughts – please come and join us at the session “Corruption and Conflict – Breaking the Vicious Circle from a Peacebuilding Perspective” on Thursday, April 29th 2021 at 2-3.30 pm.