Official Development Assistance (ODA)
11. Coping with Regional Conflicts
1. Since the end of the Cold War, the international community has been involved in efforts to resolve conflicts in various hot spots around the globe, including Africa, the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, and Haiti, to name a few. Regional conflicts not only cause untold human suffering within the countries where they break out, but also pose an array of serious problems for neighboring countries, in the form of refugee inflows and domestic strains of political, economic, and cultural dimensions.
It is crucial that regional tensions be defused before they develop into full-blown military conflicts. Though varying factors are usually behind the outbreak of any given conflict, human privation and economic confrontation are often common denominators in the equation. ODA therefore has a role to play.
Resolving a conflict will demand various efforts: the initiation of the peace process, with a lasting peace agreement as its goal; humanitarian assistance to refugees and evacuees displaced by warfare; peacekeeping activities designed to assure that all sides abide by the peace accord; and programs of reconstruction, to be initiated after the hostilities have subsided. National reconstruction and development has become an important post-conflict challenge in Bosnia Herzegovina, Cambodia, and the areas administered by the Palestinian Interim Self-Government. However, ODA has an instrumental role to play in addressing that challenge, and Japan has been an active donor in that regard.
2. In regions torn by conflict, reconstruction will demand that members of the international community cooperate closely with each other, and that aid donors tailor their projects to local conditions. Japan for such purposes hosted international conferences on Cambodian reconstruction, and sent an aid survey team to Bosnia immediately after recognizing the new government that had been installed there. Changing conditions, moreover, often demand a fast and flexible response. Japan, for its part has been endeavoring to that end, utilizing reconstruction and development assistance, non-project grants, and Japan UNDP Human Resources Development Fund.
In the years ahead, it will need to make more efforts in the following areas:
- More post-war contribution through sending personnel
- Human resources development and institutional building, such as help in formulating legal frameworks and democratization, and training of experts on the donor side for these purposes.