1
Mid-term Evaluation of the International Peace and Prosperity Project’s Work in Guinea-Bissau
(October 2004 – February 2006)
Prepared for the International Peace and Prosperity Project,
Ottawa, Canada
An Early Response Project
of the
Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation
By Paz Buttedahl, Ph.D. and Rosemary Cairns, M.A.
RoyalRoadsUniversity
Victoria, B.C., Canada
April 2006
1. Introduction
2. The International Peace and Prosperity Project
a) Guinea-Bissau: A Test Case
b) Finding the IPPP Niche
c) A Base for Action
d) Reconciliation as a Way Forward
e) The Citizens Goodwill Task Force
f) The Second Round Campaign
g) The Challenges of Army Reform
h) Expanding Its Network of Relationships
i) Taking Practical Action to Realize A New Future
j) Finding the Resources
3. Assessing the Results of IPPP’s Work
a) The Value of Flexibility
b) Relationship-building with the Army
c) The Value of Short-term Actions
d) The Challenge of Building Capacity
e) The Importance of Rural Agricultural Development
f) Assessing Achievement
4. The Potential for an Expanded IPPP
References:
1. Introduction
The International Peace and Prosperity Project is a unique citizen-initiated attempt to deal effectively with factors contributing to state failure through a rapid, flexible, and collaborative approach that mobilizes local and international resources and skills to set a weak state on the road to peace and prosperity for all of its citizens. Begun in 2004 as a pilot project in the troubled West African state of Guinea-Bissau, the IPPP now is exploring whether its evolving model has possible application in other potentially-failed states.
As IPPP noted earlier this year, “Guinea-Bissau is a microcosm of the circumstances in the marginalized parts of the developing world [and] thus a test case of whether the leading actors in the international community are truly able to respond to the renewed post 9/11 anti-poverty and broader development agenda that they have set for themselves, even where the opportunities to do so are likely to bear real fruit.”[1]
This mid-term evaluation builds on earlier internal and external studies of IPPP’s activities, philosophy and learning to produce an overarching statement of lessons learned and recommendations for the project’s work in Guinea-Bissau as well as possibilities of replicating this work elsewhere. The evaluation, based on external review of project documentation and correspondence, has been carried out by a team that has extensive experience in human security and peacebuilding analysis and community development and earlier study of Guinea-Bissau.
Evaluating a project at a distance inevitably means that more questions are asked than are answered, due to lack of access to informants; however, given IPPP’s action-oriented research focus and the project’s mid-point status, these questions may feed effectively into its evolving model as well as its ongoing work in Guinea-Bissau. This evaluation begins with a narrative summary of IPPP’s first 16 months of activity (October 2004-February 2006), compiled from project documentation and selected email correspondence supplied by IPPP. Additional information from other sources has been included where it appears relevant and helpful.
2. The International Peace and Prosperity Project
IPPP grew out of the observation that despite extensive study of state failure, the international community often does not respond early enough, or effectively enough, to the catalysts or triggers that often set off violence in poor and politically unstable countries. In 2002, retired American business executive Milt Lauenstein invited a small, multinational group of specialists to help him design a small project to reduce such violence and bloodshed. The group identified effective early action on threats to a fragile state whose development potential was being hampered by political instability and social deterioriation as a project that could add value to existing international aid practice and development strategies.
The group suggested that working closely with individuals and organizations to manage social and political tensions peacefully, strengthen the state’s institutional capacity for development, and identify the country’s vulnerabilities, strengths and opportunities could help local and international actors focus on building a prosperous and peaceful future. Thus the IPPP approach was born – collaborative, research-based, action-oriented, strategic, flexible and catalytic, working with existing local and international capacities to create a shared, coherent, indigenously-designed and adequately-resourced approach that would move a country away from unproductive tension and thus achieve maximum peacebuilding and development effectiveness in a weak state.
a) Guinea-Bissau: A Test Case
Based on work being done through a Canadian university[2] to identify conflict risk that could facilitate effective early international response, IPPP chose to work in Guinea-Bissau, a small multi-ethnic West African country whose post-independence economic and social progress had been severely interrupted by a 1998-1999 conflict that destroyed much of its infrastructure and drove away donors on whose aid it was heavily reliant. Agricultural development in its 90,000 tiny rural villages or tabanças anchored its fragile economy, but in the 1990s, many people had been reduced to the “one-shot diet” – one meal a day – as the country turned from food producer to food aid recipient.[3] Extreme poverty, high income inequality, low human development, few businesses, low private and foreign investment, high state debt, and government reliance on aid[4] to pay soldiers, teachers and other public servants, left Guinea-Bissau vulnerable to recurrent social and political tensions that could spark destructive ethnic violence and destroy its fragile post-1999 recovery.
However, Guinea-Bissau’s history also showed signs of hope. Its people had fought hard for a decade to achieve their independence – so hard, in fact, that they helped restore democracy to the colonial power that had ruled them for more than 500 years. They had greatly improved on the poor human development legacy of the colonial era, although this was still very low.[5] Unlike neighbouring states, its people had never turned on one another in bloody internecine war and, in fact, civil society had played a key role in peacefully resolving the 1998/99 conflict, which removed a long-serving President, and a peaceful 2003 coup, which removed his successor. While the coordinated and integrated forward movement in key sectors that was needed seemed out of reach due to severe economic crisis, political rivalries among its small elite leadership, and military instability, Guinea-Bissau had reached out for help when it was offered. When the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) began work in 2002 to create a comprehensive, integrated and coordinated approach to support for African countries emerging from conflict, for example, Guinea-Bissau was the first country to ask ECOSOC to create such an advisory group.[6]
Guinea-Bissau’s most capable leader, agronomist and PAIGC founder Amilcar Cabral, had been lost to the country only months before independence was declared. His assassination in Guinea set off a chain of purges within PAIGC that regularly reduced the country’s small leadership pool, especially because PAIGC and FARP, its armed wing, had provided the only education and leadership training available to most of the country’s citizens. His half-brother, Luis, became President, in September 1973 and led the country until he was removed in a coup led by João Nino Vieira, the former head of FARP, PAIGC’s armed wing, who had served as Prime Minister since September 1978. Vieira subsequently held the Presidency for almost 20 years until he was forced into exile in 1999 after he attempted to remove the army chief of staff.[7]
In the 2000 election, Kumba Yala, who was defeated by Vieira in the country’s first multi-party presidential election six years earlier, rallied his Balanta supporters and won a large majority. Despite having a competent core of cabinet ministers, Yala proved an unpredictable and erratic leader who did not effectively manage military-government relationships or the economy, and he was removed, to popular relief, in a bloodless coup in the fall of 2003[8] and agreed not to seek office for five years. Two weeks later, respected businessman Henrique Rosa became interim president. Rosa worked with the National Assembly elected in the spring of 2004 to deal with the country’s many economic and social challenges including finding funds to hold a new presidential election in 2005. In the fall of 2004, as IPPP was beginning its work, both Yala and Vieira were rumoured to be seeking a return to the country’s top office. Given past history, there was concern that Yala might stir up his Balanta supporters to win election, and that the army might once again become involved in the political process. The Presidential election thus represented a potential trigger for violence.
b) Finding the IPPP Niche
The threats to Guinea-Bissau’s tenuous stability came into sharp focus even as the IPPP team was planning its first visit to Guinea-Bissau. In early October 2004, the army’s chief of staff and its head of human resources were killed in a dispute over salaries that had not been paid to soldiers who had served in a UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia. Despite the increased tensions that resulted, the five-person IPPP team decided to go ahead with its visit in mid-October after consulting with local people. Although senior government and army officials were not available, the team met with a wide range of individuals and organizations, facilitated and guided by the team’s local NGO contacts that included a civil society leader. Representatives of the nongovernmental peace and development communities, businesses, international institutions, political actors, and diplomats shared their views, and the team visited the northern border region, destabilized by long-running conflict within Senegal’s southern Casamance region, that was a trigger for the 1998/99 conflict in Guinea-Bissau.
During its meetings, the IPPP team focused on action-oriented questions: what were the basic social, cultural, economic and institutional conditions? How were these concerns being addressed by existing in-country capacity? What programs, projects, policies or other activities being carried out by government, domestic civil society, international NGOs and international IGOs addressed these concerns? What significant and needed activities could IPPP contribute that would add real value in helping Guinea-Bissau build its stability and capacity so as to make progress toward prosperity?[9]
The trip was cut short by rumours that a coup was planned for October 23-24, and IPPP was asked to sound an international alert. This early request helped crystallize one of the useful roles that IPPP has subsequently played – informing the wider audience outside Guinea-Bissau of the country’s challenges and progress. Thus, in addition to its October email alert to key actors and supporters, the IPPP team began preparing a larger document that would begin to gain wider international attention and support for the country’s efforts to move forward. This document, entitled “Mission Possible: A Ripe Opportunity to Avert Violent Conflict and Achieve Sustainable Peace in Guinea-Bissau”, reviewed the most urgent threats to stability and outlined a possible collaborative strategy for addressing them.
Distributed widely in February 2005, this document fed into a one-day roundtable that was held in WashingtonDC the following month. Arranged by IPPP through the Alliance for International Conflict Prevention and Resolution (AICPR), the round table session was attended by two people from Guinea-Bissau and the country’s consul in the US capital who participated actively.[10] This blend of active local participation, and outreach to external actors, gradually built a two-way network of support and interest[11] that has often had ripple effects far beyond the initial splash of meetings and reports.
c) A Base for Action
After its initial visit to Guinea-Bissau in October 2004, the IPPP team prepared a report summarizing what they had learned, identifying the concerns, strengths and actions already underway, and identifying the next steps IPPP planned to take. They “reported back”, sending the report to those they had interviewed in Guinea-Bissau, and “reported out” - to external agencies working in or interested in Guinea-Bissau and to IPPP’s own network[12]. As well as identifying opportunities for lobbying and advocacy that IPPP regularly followed up, this process modelled a constructive communication process and began the process of sharing information widely, and horizontally as well as vertically, both within Guinea-Bissau and within various external agencies with an interest or stake in the country.[13]
As the IPPP team discovered in October, there was a general consensus about the country’s problems and how these should be addressed, and a number of people and groups – local and international - were already active in peacebuilding and development. Two chambers of commerce were mobilizing the small but determined private sector, a new Western Union office had been established, and one Mauritanian and two Senegalese banks planned to being operating in 2005, and a Portuguese company had been contracted to rehabilitate the airport. A local NGO was employing former soldiers in a de-mining program, and international NGOs were carrying out community-based education, social service, refugee assistance and economic development activities with USAID funding.
Work was underway on electoral reform and human rights and the small but active nongovernmental community, with strong female leadership, was holding dialogues with mid-rank military officers, working to build schools and mobilize women in public issues. The Ghana-based Western African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), which had mobilized women during the 2004 National Assembly elections, was opening an office in November through which WANEP-trained monitors would take part in the ECOWAS[14] “early warning” system that would start up early in 2005. The Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP) was following up its earlier government-army mediation by sending unarmed monitors. The UN Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNOGBIS) was led by a former soldier[15] knowledgeable in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) and had run reconciliation workshops with community and military representatives, but the office’s mandate was up for review in December. The UN Development Program (UNDP) also was active.
“Before and during the Scouting Trip to Guinea-Bissau, we were encouraged to focus on action. We were encouraged to look seriously at the need to reform the military. We were encouraged to consider the economic needs of the country and think of ways to respond to those. We also wanted to build on what is known and what exists of promise, including efforts to stimulate the economy and bolster community-based efforts at building a vibrant civil society.”[16]
d) Reconciliation as a Way Forward
Following its visit, IPPP created a small seed grants fund to allow it to meet needs as they became evident, which proved to be a far-sighted development that shortly would play a key role in galvanizing local activity, and made plans to meet with the newly-appointed head of the armed forces. General Tagme Na Wai had surprised many observers by pledging to keep the army out of politics and to work towards reconciliation in the army. During their January meeting, the IPPP team was impressed by his candor and concern for his soldiers and this contributed to IPPP’s decision to place a new importance on reconciliation as a solid foundation for building peace and prosperity. IPPP found itself focusing on reconciliation as both a precondition, and a uniting theme, for helping Guinea-Bissau move forward, even if this did not seem as direct a route as the detailed action planning IPPP had thought would be the next step. This soon led into two activities that would have an impact on the election – the creation of the citizen-driven task force to work on the election campaign, and activities to support the army’s neutrality by helping to address the poor living conditions of its soldiers and thus facilitating reconciliation.
In February 2005, IPPP prepared and circulated a concept paper outlining the idea of a Year of Reconciliation and Renewal as a possible umbrella theme for a variety of peacebuilding and conflict resolution activities.[17] The idea was welcomed warmly enough that IPPP director Ben Hoffman went to Guinea-Bissau in April to meet with stakeholders and explore the possibilities.[18] While he hoped to form a steering committee that would develop practical steps across a range of issues and sectors, he found stakeholders had a more immediate focus – ensuring a peaceful election process.
That was because the situation had rapidly become critical, as IPPP explained in another international alert issued on April 11, 2005. Three former presidents were among the potential candidates. Malam Bacai Sanha represented the ruling PAIGC party; Yala, despite his earlier agreement to stay out of politics, had announced himself as the PRS candidate before thousands of cheering supporters; and Vieira, who had been living in Portugal for the past six years, descended from a helicopter and announced to a political rally in the Bissau sports stadium that he was an independent candidate. It became increasingly evident that political leaders had been trying to stir up ethnic rivalries, and Tagme Na Wai’s determination to keep the army out of politics left him feeling alone and under great pressure.[19] The country was facing three triggers of potential violence within a very short period of time – the Supreme Court ruling on candidates’ eligibility in late April, the expiry of the interim presidency in May (only Yala’s party had refused to extend it until the election), and the election in June.