Decentralization and Local Governance in Asia and the Pacific

Conflict and Post-Crisis Situations

In post-conflict and crisis situations, well designed decentralized initiatives attuned to the overall national reconstruction efforts, can serve as building blocks in bottom-up recovery strategy. However, local governments and the role they can play in post-conflict and crisis recovery have received relatively little attention to date.
In post-conflict and crises situations societies are institutionally weak: they are socially fragmented, psychologically fractured and physically devastated, requiring efforts to simultaneously restore people’s confidence and satisfy their basic need for public services including security. Typically these situations also involve weak central government, and poor service provision to the citizenry.

Although decentralized governance initiatives are not a panacea in post-conflict and crisis settings, as in peacetime conditions, a decentralized network of local institutions and individuals, linked to in humanitarian and recovery operations, can be seen as an opportunity to re-establish government services, mobilize and engage communities in reducing alienation and conflict, further democratic processes and demonstrate the responsiveness of public institutions.

APRC engages in the interface between Decentralized Governance and Crisis Prevention/Recovery to support the important role local governments can play, as well as the challenges decentralized initiatives present in post-conflict and crises situations.

In June 2009 UNDP Asia-Pacific Regional Centre and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia Pacific jointly held a technical workshop on Local Service Delivery in Conflict Affected Areas. This seminar drew on examples from regions in the Asia Pacific where the functions of local institutions have been disrupted as a result of an ongoing conflict, a post conflict or simply an insecure community setting that threatens people’s security and physical integrity and disrupts their livelihoods.

The objective of the seminar was to analyse the role of devolution of power and local democratic institutions in peace-building by focussing on the process of improving the delivery of basic services in conflict affected countries. It examined the degree to which this process reinforces local democratic institutions and identified effective tools and policies for peace building.

The following papers analyze and distill lesson learnt on important issues from the seminar:

• Local Governance and Basis Service Delivery in Conflict Affected Areas. The knowledge product presenting the lessons emerging from the conference
• Background paper for the conference: Local Democracy and Peace Building in Asia: Devolution Arrangements and Power Sharing in Local Government Councils, Henrik Fredborg Larsen, Nadia Selim
• Additional background paper on Basic Services Delivery in Conflict Affected and Fragile Areas by Steve Commins

RCB also support countries in conflict and recovering from conflict and natural disasters in Asia, including those affected by the 2004 Tsunami.

The following papers analyze some of these important issues:

• Local Governance in Tsunami Recovery: Lesson Learned and Emerging Principles, January 2006.
• Governance in Post-Conflict Situations: Decentralized Governance; UNDP and Chr. Michelsen Institute. 2004. Background Paper for Working Group Discussions. Bergen Seminar Series, Bergen, 5-7 May.