The DRC s Country Assistance Framework: A Big Tent built from Big Ideas?

Transcription

1 The World Bank Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries Group The DRC s Country Assistance Framework: A Big Tent built from Big Ideas? Joint UN-Bank Review of the DRC CAF 30 May 2008 This report was prepared by a joint team from the United Nations and the World Bank.

2 Renata Dwan is Senior Partnerships Adviser in the Division of Policy, Evaluation and Training in DPKO. Jean-Luc Siblot is Associate Director of the UN Development Group Office (UNDGO), where he leads the Crisis and Post-conflict Cluster. Laura Bailey is Senior Operations Officer in the World Bank s Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries Group. This report is an independent review and does not reflect the views of the UN or the World Bank. Any errors are the authors alone. The authors offer sincere thanks to all those who contributed their time, energy, and insights to this Review. Dr. Dwan and Ms. Bailey co-authored another Joint Review in 2006 of Liberia s GEMAP available on the DPKO and World Bank websites. Please send your comments on this report to the Peacekeeping Best Practices Section by e- mail at dpko-pbpuwebmaster@un.org. 2

3 Table of Contents Executive Summary I. Background II. III. IV. Context and Origins of the CAF Elaboration of the CAF Enabling Factors for the CAF V. Observations and Lessons Learned VI. Conclusion Annex A: Annex B: Annex C: Annex D: Summary of Key Dates CAF Table of Contents Terms of Reference List of Interviewees 3

4 Acronyms ADB CAF CAS CIAT CIDA DFID EC IMF PAP PCNA PRSP SIDA SRSG UNCT UNDAF UNDGO UNDP USAID WBG African Development Bank Country Assistance Framework Country Assistance Strategy International Committee in Support of the Transition Canadian International Development Agency Department for International Development European Commission International Monetary Fund Priority Action Plan Post Conflict Needs Assessment Poverty Reduction Strategy Programme Swedish International Development Agency Special Representative of the Secretary-General (UN) United Nations Country Team United Nations Development Assistance Framework United Nations Development Group Office United Nations Development Programme US Agency for International Development World Bank Group 4

5 Executive Summary The Country Assistance Framework (CAF) for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a common strategic approach to recovery and development assistance agreed by a broad group of international partners in the postelectoral period from 2007 to 2010 (a big tent ). The CAF has also been described as a framework for big ideas, through which 17 international partners mobilized to identify key priorities for peace consolidation and recovery in DRC. The CAF was a response to a fluid political environment in the lead-up to the DRC s first national elections in 25 years in Although it did not originate in the Paris Declaration on Harmonization, it has subsequently been described as an example of the Paris Declaration in action. The CAF was a joint initiative of the World Bank and the United Nations and was open to all international partners in the DRC. Discussions built on existing strategic documents (PRSP) to identify priorities. DRC national authorities were not involved in its elaboration. Linking the CAF to the priorities of the new Government was essential to its adoption, achieved through the jointly agreed Plan des Actions Prioritaires (PAP). The establishment of a common diagnosis and agreement on priorities by international partners was facilitated by a number of factors, including: A common starting point. By the second half of 2006, most international partners were at the same point in their aid programming. A domestic policy vacuum. Recovery and development planning during the transitional period had been affected by ongoing security and humanitarian crises in DRC. Planning was also constrained by the short-term orientation of the transitional Government and the extended election process. A legacy of coordination. Most partners viewed coordination, however difficult and time-consuming, as critical for the consolidation of peace and development in DRC. The legacy and context of coordination in DRC made a strategic initiative possible and shaped its elaboration as a light and relatively noninstitutionalized process. The CAF provides a broad strategic framework that serves as the basis for individual partner planning and programming processes. Substantive policy leadership. The CAF was focused on substance and brought together a diverse group of partners around a limited number of policy priorities. This was largely a function of the 5

6 leadership provided by a small team from the UN Integrated Office and the World Bank that mobilized the CAF process. Effective process management. Leadership was critical to channeling a debate on big ideas into a common strategic framework. Key features of CAF s management included the convening of a relatively intense and inclusive in-country discussion at technical and working levels that focused on substance and was supported by the provision of background empirical and analytical data. In addition, the UN and World Bank actors devoted significant effort to managing internal discussions within their respective institutions so as to establish consensus on priorities and a unified position vis-à-vis partners. This was particularly noteworthy in the case of the UN, bringing together all 18 UN actors under the coordination of the UN Integrated Office. The CAF experience to date in the DRC offers some considerations that may be applicable to other strategic coordination and planning efforts, particularly in countries emerging from conflict. Individuals matter but institutional buy-in is critical to adoption and implementation. Multilateral institutions can exert a powerful pole of attraction where coherent and cohesive. The development of strategic approaches may be facilitated by incountry processes. Clarity on the goal and outcome of strategic coordination exercises is critical. However, the elaboration of a strategic coordination framework does not automatically translate into coordination in implementation. Fostering national engagement and commitment by bringing national actors in at the right time and in the right way is essential to implementation. 6

7 Note: A draft of this review was shared with CAF partners. Comments received included the following observations: The CAF, and the Government s PRSP, set the stage for the Priority Action Plan (PAP), which in turn facilitated further coordination and harmonization among development partners and with the Government. However, as of May 2008, these processes have not yet translated into faster recovery for the DRC. Did the CAF focus too much on donor coordination and harmonization and less on country factors that may have enhanced its rapid launch? In the period post-caf should partners have devoted more attention to strengthening national ownership of the PAP? Was the results framework too ambitious given the DRC's weak policy, institutional and absorptive capacities? It will be useful to reflect on these issues going forward, in order to take timely corrective measures in the CAF partnership, step up implementation, and ensure that it delivers on the promise implicit in this joint endeavor. In retrospect, CAF partners also noted that the scope and extent of China s assistance to the DRC may have not been adequately factored into the CAF design and preparation, and it could have been beneficial to further deepen China's participation into the CAF process, taking into account the magnitude of its engagement in the DRC. 7

8 I. Background The Country Assistance Framework (CAF) for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) articulates the common strategic approach by a critical mass of international partners with regard to recovery and development assistance to DRC in the post-electoral period from 2007 to The CAF has also been described as a framework for big ideas, through which DRC s international partners were mobilized to debate substance as much as process. It identifies priority areas for recovery and development in DRC around which those involved commit to harmonize approaches, and sets out a common results matrix to facilitate coordination of strategies and programming. In bringing development aid into one single framework, the CAF is projected to encompass over 95 percent of official development assistance. At the time of its completion, 17 partners were involved in the CAF, including the World Bank Group (WBG), the United Nations (UN) system, the European Commission (EC), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the African Development Bank (ADB), as well as key bilaterals: Belgium (Belgian Cooperation), Canada (Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA), France (French Cooperation), Germany, Japan, China, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Sweden (Swedish International Development Agency, SIDA), the United Kingdom (Department for International Development, DFID), and the United States (US Agency for International Development, USAID). These discussions, according to many, produced a level of coherence and buyin that coordination for coordination s sake rarely achieves. The CAF connects economic development assistance to the broader political and peacebuilding agenda, provoking participants to articulate the critical challenges facing DRC and to identify priority interventions that can bring tangible benefits to the population, support the extension of state authority, and assist in consolidating peace. Once established, the CAF provided the basis for the Priority Action Plan (PAP), a mutual accountability framework agreed by the government with international partners in October 2007 to cover early recovery activity over 18 months. The broad participation and substantive focus on tangible outcomes has generated interest in the wider international community in the CAF. In February 2008, at the request of the respective DRC country offices, a team from the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the World Bank, and the UN Development Group Office was mobilized to review the process that led to the CAF in order to: identify factors, and lessons that might be shared with other countries where robust collaboration is required or envisaged; inform policy discussions on aid reform and harmonization, in particular in the context of post-crisis transition; and reflect on the CAF s role in framing international partners stance in the emerging dialogue with the newly-elected Government. 8

9 II. Context and Origins of the CAF The CAF was a response to a highly fluid and uncertain political context in the DRC. The 2006 elections brought to an end an extended transitional period during which some indicators of recovery actually declined in DRC. 70% of all Congolese live below the poverty line, only one out of two school-aged children attends school, and one out of every five children dies before their fifth birthday. Growing concerns over governance and public finance management were the subject of sometimes contentious discussions among national actors and international partners in the last year of the transition. Donors confronted the need to begin planning for the post-election period in a fragile and uncertain political landscape. Many were due, or overdue, to create new country strategies with the Bank and the UN system both under significant time pressures and many bilateral partners were eager to think beyond humanitarian crisis aid towards stabilization, recovery and development. Although the transitional government and parliament approved a Poverty Reduction Strategy Programme (PRSP) in July 2006 as one of their last pre-election actions, progress on implementation planning effectively stopped during the extended election period. In the immediate aftermath of the announcement of Joseph Kabila s victory in November 2006, the attention of DRC s political elite was further focused on negotiations for the formation of the new Government. In a politically uncertain environment a joint strategy framework, building on the five pillars identified in the PRSP, appealed to DRC s partners as a way of mitigating risk while, at the same time, preparing the way for partners to effectively engage in substantive dialogue with the new Government on pre-identified and pre-agreed issues as soon as it was formed. The CAF did not originate from an effort to implement the Paris Declaration on Harmonization, but it has subsequently been described by many of those involved as a concrete example of the Paris Declaration in action. Assistance to DRC is characterized by the paradoxical combination of a relatively large number of donors (more than 20 agencies provide assistance through a broad range of governmental and non-governmental operational partners) and a relatively limited total amount of assistance (around US$800 million in annual disbursements). Many donors have recently returned to the DRC after a gap of more than a decade. The sheer scale of DRC s needs and size (2.3 million square kilometers and an annual GDP of around US$15 per capita) provoked realism among partners as to the challenges facing the country. Yet the experience of coordination among international partners as well as with national authorities during the transitional period from 2003 to 2006 had been politically fractious and cumbersome. The CAF was not, therefore, an automatic or inevitable process but the result of a deliberate effort by international partners to take a new approach to supporting DRC s transition from conflict to sustainable peace and development. 9

10 III. Elaboration of the CAF The idea of a common strategy was a joint initiative of the World Bank and the United Nations in DRC After animated discussions on collaboration at a regional UNDP-World Bank conference in South Africa in February 2006, the UN Integrated Office 1 in the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC (MONUC) and the World Bank (country team) agreed to set aside parallel preparations of their respective country strategy documents (UNDAF and CAS) in favor of a joint strategy. The combining of these respective strategy documents provided the title for the country assistance framework, or CAF). The UN Integrated Office agreed to assume responsibility for coordination of UN actors present in DRC (18 funds, agencies and programmes) in the elaboration of a common strategic framework. Discussions were initiated in-country between the World Bank and the UN Integrated Office, with the latter engaging additional consultant support to assist in developing policy ideas for a possible joint strategy. Over the course of the spring and summer of 2006, several key bilaterals joined, including the UK, USA, Belgium, and the European Commission (EC). Joint discussions had been already underway by a group of donors including the Bank, the UN, and the EC on key governance challenges and a proposed Governance Compact to be negotiated with the outgoing transitional Government. Although there was broad agreement among donors that governance was an issue of concern in the DRC, there was not full consensus on the proposed Compact, not least in the face of reluctance from some DRC stakeholders towards the initiative. The CAF offered an alternative framework to address governance issues, and the substance of the Compact discussions contributed to the governance components of the subsequent CAF document. Discussions built on existing strategic documents (PRSP) to identify priorities for the delivery of a peace dividend and the initiation of sustainable development in the postelection environment From the outset, the CAF was presented as a substantive initiative rather than a process about harmonization. International partners were encouraged to frame the debate not as what should (we) do but what needs to be done with what we have, opening the door for a discussion that focused on defining the substantive challenges of consolidating DRC s fragile peace by delivering an early peace dividend to the population while laying the basis for sustainable development. A logical starting point for discussions was the PRSP, and the five areas (pillars) set out in this broad strategic agenda: (i) promoting good governance and consolidating peace; (ii) consolidating macroeconomic stability and economic growth; (iii) improving access to social services and reducing vulnerability; (iv) combating HIV/AIDS; and (v) promoting community dynamics. However, there was agreement amongst CAF partners that further prioritization of the needs identified in PRSP was required. The need to further prioritize guided subsequent efforts, and attention narrowed relatively quickly to health, education and transport in a series of frequent and lively discussions. 1 The IO is responsible for coordinating the UN Country Team within the integrated UN mission. 10

11 Management of the process was a key feature in the elaboration of a common strategy The CAF s initial proponents in the World Bank and the UN Integrated Office sought to gather momentum by convening a discussion among partners that was explicitly focused directed towards finding the big ideas providing background empirical and analytical data to facilitate discussion and debate on what the most urgent needs and/or most significant potential priority activities were facilitating a relatively intense series of meetings and discussions to produce eventual agreement on diagnosis and proposed solutions managing nested negotiations within respective institutions so as to establish a unified position and engage on this basis with partners. Those nested internal processes were most intensive within the UN system, where CAF working groups were established by the UN Integrated Office and negotiations undertaken on the proposed substance of the CAF as well as on issues such as designation of in-country agency lead for specific sectors, headquarters involvement, and positioning of the CAF vis-à-vis agencies executive boards or individual strategic planning processes. In all, six retreats and workshops of the UN country team were held over a 12-month period with the specific purpose of advancing the process of substantive negotiation and formulation of one UN position. The majority of CAF discussions were conducted in-country among the technical development experts concerned, with relatively little engagement of the political/diplomatic officials of the donors involved. Periodic meetings were held in capitals of key partners either to channel needed headquarter inputs or to provoke action to overcome a bottleneck. At one point in late 2006, for example, UN Integrated Office and World Bank country team staff convened a small technical retreat in Washington DC to hammer out substantive issues. These offline UN-Bank discussions helped forge a joint leadership that was critical both in attracting more bilateral partners into the process and in building consensus around the proposed common diagnosis and way forward. The turning point in building a critical mass of support was a December 2006 meeting in Brussels of all CAF actors where there was lively debate on the key priorities for aid strategies in the DRC. Discussion was facilitated by the preparation of background papers and analyses by the UN Integrated Office, the World Bank and those bilateral donors acting as leads in the sectors under discussion. These background papers, in turn, served as the basis for subsequent CAF documentation coordinated and prepared by the UN Integrated Office and the World Bank. By mid-january 2007, discussions 11

12 were focused on the elaboration of results matrices that were structured on the basis of the five PRSP pillars. These matrices did not include detailed costings for each pillar or specify tasks to be undertaken by each partner. They did not include details of the individual partner contributions to priority goals The CAF was elaborated primarily through discussions among international partners A feature of the elaboration of the CAF was the relative lack of national engagement. To some extent, this was a reflection of the timing and particular political environment in which CAF was initiated. With the focus of the transitional leadership and the DRC s political elite on elections and the recognition that the government was outgoing, there was little perceived value in engaging in formal structured consultations with the transitional government. A second dominant concern was the need to establish consensus among the international partners and ensure that they were on board and prepared to adapt their individual aid strategies and plans accordingly. It was perceived to be easier to build this consensus through prior consultation among international partners before engaging formally with national authorities. Nevertheless, informal channels of communication and existing technical relationships between international partners and state and government institutions were used to keep national actors informed in a general way on the potential joint framework and the direction of substantive working discussions. The UN and the Bank worked with key government ministers to ensure that CAF discussions were not interpreted by the DRC authorities as an effort by donors to gang up and put pressure on the government or dictate its recovery and development priorities. By February 2007, donor discussions on the CAF and its accompanying results matrices were largely complete and ready for consultation with national partners. A number of factors impeded the start of a comprehensive consultation, however and continued work on CAF implementation planning. One element was the delay in the formation of the new Government and the subsequent slow start to the establishment of Government priorities and policies. There was also uncertainty as to the extent to which the new Government would build on the needs and development priorities identified during the transition period. In his inauguration speech in December 2006, President Kabila set out five areas of focus for the Government s recovery strategy ( cinq chantiers), most of which were already included as priorities in the CAF. While most partners applauded the speech for its concrete focus, it left a number of questions as to how the cinq chantiers strategy related to the PRSP framework and the priorities set out in the CAF as well as the emphasis to be placed on key areas, for example, health and education. Another, more practical obstacle to continued progress was a shift in posting for key individuals involved in the CAF in both the UN Integrated Office and the World Bank. As a result, momentum on the CAF stalled for several months arguably at a crucial moment in the post-election transition. 12

13 Linking the CAF to the priorities of the new Government was essential to its adoption by national authorities Between May and June 2007, as concern grew about lack of Government action on key policy questions, efforts were re-invigorated to seek Government engagement with the CAF and obtain support for its adoption and implementation. The UN Integrated Office and the World Bank took up the CAF as a potential framework for a renewed engagement between partners and Government and sought to find a way to link the CAF with the short-term priorities set out by President Kabila in his cinq chantiers. A subset of CAF actions were jointly identified and elaborated as an 18-month Priority Action Plan (Plan d actions prioritaires). The PAP is intended to represent a mutual accountability framework between national and international partners for the consolidation of post-electoral recovery. It also serves as the vehicle through which the priorities elaborated in the CAF are to be implemented. 2 The PAP was validated with Government, donor and civil society representatives 3 at a workshop in Kinshasa on June 24, 2007 while the broader CAF was the subject of a technical consultation across Government in August 2007 coordinated and led by the Ministers of Plan and Finance. It took further time and effort, however, before the Government formally approved the PAP; the plan was formally adopted by the Council of Ministers in October in the lead-up to the Consultative Group meeting held between the Government and international partners in November The Ministry of Planning has been designated responsible for overseeing implementation of the PAP. At the Consultative Group in November, the Government and international partners issued a Joint Declaration pledging their mutual commitment to establishing a coordination structure for implementation of the PRSP, CAF and PAP. In February 2008 the Ministry established 15 Thematic Groups intended to serve as the institutional framework for substantive sectoral coordination and programming. Each Group is to be chaired by the relevant government entity, supported by an identified donor partner with an overarching monitoring and coordination function to be carried out by the Ministry of Plan. As the CAF document and matrices do not spell out the detailed costings for each pillar, nor do they allocate division of labor in terms of partner, the roll-out of the individual partner contributions to the larger CAF goals is still very much a work-inprogress to be elaborated and agreed in these Thematic Groups. 2 Care was taken during finalization of the PAP to ensure consistency between the actions in it and the benchmarks for monitoring MONUC progress (and eventual drawdown). 3 The same non-state actors were involved who had participated in the PRSP s consultative process. 13

14 IV. Enabling Factors for the CAF The development of a common diagnosis and agreement on priority results by 17 international partners was facilitated by a number of converging factors. Common starting point A domestic policy vacuum A legacy of coordination By the second half of 2006, most international partners in the DRC were at the same point in their aid programming. Many multilateral and bilateral partners were dependent on the finalization of the PRSP to be able to move forward in designing and implementing their individual country strategies. Some, such as Sweden, were returning to DRC after a gap of more than a decade with few established programs or institutional links. Others, such as the UK, were beginning to plan for a significant increase in bilateral assistance. Discussion about a joint strategy framework was initiated at a time when the majority of international partners faced a similar strategic task. This sparked interest but also minimized institutional obstacles for individual partners to engage in the elaboration of a common strategic approach. Recovery and development planning during the transitional period had been affected by ongoing security and humanitarian crises, particularly in eastern DRC. But planning was also constrained by the short-term orientation of the transitional Government and by its institutional structure, which was directed more at reconciling former conflict parties than facilitating coherent policymaking. The extended election process further paralyzed policymaking efforts. Many national and international partners were concerned at the lack of a peace dividend for the population in the DRC, four years after the Sun City peace agreements and in the face of the country s immense potential wealth. There was agreement that failure to deliver benefits to a war-weary population could threaten the consolidation of peace. The CAF grew out of a common assessment that the first elections in 25 years in the DRC offered the potential of overcoming the inertia of the transitional period while also leading to heightened public expectation for demonstrable change in the near term. The creation of the International Committee in Support of the Transition (CIAT) in DRC in 2004 established an institutionalized mechanism for coordination between international partners and national authorities under the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) between Although the CIAT did contribute to regularizing consultation among partners, it was oriented more toward political and security sector reform issues than on recovery and development, and it failed to significantly affect preferences among partners as well as the Government to deal through bilateral channels. Moreover, transitional authorities strongly resented the CIAT, which, they believed, undermined DRC s national sovereignty. While a number of partners were initially reluctant to embark on new coordination efforts, mounting concerns over governance and economic mismanagement during 2006 led to discussions on a possible institutional mechanism among partners and the Government to promote governance (the Governance 14

15 Compact). However difficult coordination had proved to be in DRC, it appeared increasingly necessary for progress in key areas. This legacy and context made possible an initiative for a coordinated approach but also shaped the way in which this was understood and elaborated as a light and relatively non-institutionalized process. A coordinated, rather than joint, strategy Substantive policy leadership Effective process management Substantial debate in the early stages of CAF s elaboration was devoted to the question of whether international partners needed a fully elaborated joint strategy; it took considerable time before agreement was reached that a comprehensive joint strategy document would be resource and time-intensive and add an additional layer onto already complex individual bureaucratic procedures. Instead, the CAF champions opted for a document that would provide an overall coordinated framework that each partner could use as the basis for the elaboration of individual planning and programming documents and their passage through respective bureaucratic processes. This approach would allow partners to complement the priorities outlined in the CAF with additional chapters if institutionally required; the value was thus in the light process, while the risks of this lightness could emerge as partners worked to ensure commitment, buy-in and oversight as the CAF period went forward. One of the unique features of the CAF was its substantive focus: participants describe open and often intense exchanges on DRC s most immediate needs and how those needs could best be met. For some, the debate focused on content of the proposed priorities of education and health; for others, it was less about these specific priorities and more a question of finding the most appropriate vehicle for delivering a peace dividend to the population. The fact that a diverse group of partners could gather around a limited number of policy priorities was in large part a function of the intellectual leadership provided by the small team from the UN Integrated Office and the World Bank who mobilized the process behind the CAF. These individuals identified policy challenges, provided empirical evidence and convincing arguments, and helped create a sense of momentum among participants that the priorities identified in the CAF were critical to consolidating peace, providing a peace dividend, and taking early steps toward medium-term development. Leadership extended to the management of the CAF process. A discussion about the fundamentals and priorities for peace in DRC risked going in multiple and/or non-operational directions. The leadership provided by the UN Integrated Office, according to every interlocutor, was critical in keeping discussions focused and channeling a debate on big ideas into common strategic framework document. This was facilitated by restricting CAF discussions to a relatively small group of individuals, which helped to forge a sense of community, build consensus and allow those involved to adapt their positions. Even as the number of partners involved in CAF grew, most institutions were represented by only one or two individuals. This was particularly striking in the case of the United Nations which, 15

16 uncharacteristically, was represented by a single representative - the UN Integrated Office - and presented a common position to partners during CAF discussions. The working-level and in-country focus of discussions further assisted the elaboration of a common strategic approach; this inherently sensitive initiative to define the strategic agenda for recovery was enabled by a process that took place at the working-level and in a low-key manner. 16

17 V. Observations and Lessons Learned The CAF experience to date in the DRC offers some considerations that may be worth reflection in the context of applicability for future strategic coordination and planning efforts, particularly in countries emerging from conflict. Individuals matter but institutional buy-in is critical to adoption and implementation. The CAF experience illustrates the influential role that individuals and individual leadership can play in driving new policy initiatives and in facilitating coordination processes. A small team of actors were responsible for generating the substantive policy proposals in the CAF. The fact that none of these individuals appeared to have vested institutional interests in the proposed policy priorities may have strengthened their leadership influence. The commitment to also lead the process particularly in the case of the UN Integrated Office and in such a way so as to facilitate both a collaborative debate on policy ideas and channel it into an operational framework was critical to CAF s success. The fact that most partners were represented by only one or two individuals further helped to generate trust and build commitment and consensus among all those involved. CAF leadership, however, was time and resource intensive. For the integrated UN peacekeeping mission and Country Team, the CAF illustrates the challenges required in providing substantive as well as process leadership for a strategic coordination exercise. In the case of the UN Integrated Office, substantive policy input was assisted through the hiring of a short-term expert consultant while process management became an almost full time task for the head of the office. For the World Bank, the CAF experience illustrates that collaborative strategy processes may require more time in-country by the CAS strategy team leader, as well as explicit planning on management of the process with in-country Bank leadership, if the team leader is not resident in the country. However well-equipped or skilled, individuals in mission rotate and may take with them the in-house knowledge and commitment of a participating institution. Other priorities compete for attention. It is vital, therefore, that ownership and commitment of an institution in a strategic coordination exercise extends beyond the individual(s) involved, particularly for implementation, when commitments made in this process may run up against individual bureaucratic processes, programming constraints or inertia. This is a particular challenge for the UN system given the multiple and diverse UN agencies present. The greater the perceived distance of an agency or actor from the process of elaboration of a coordinated strategic framework, the more difficult it may be to translate the agreed approach into the UNDAF and individual agency plans. 17

18 For the UN, a potential lesson from the CAF experience is the need to begin planning for implementation at an appropriate early moment in the process and to ensure agency commitment to strategic frameworks, potentially through the creation of a UNCT implementation planning mechanism. In the case of the World Bank, careful links must be made to ensure that task team leaders for individual Bank operations see themselves as part of a larger virtual team. As the lead actor in the crafting of a coordinated strategy may not have much involvement in subsequent implementation operations, care must be taken in ensuring an effective hand-over of responsibilities for representation of the wider institution in a joint process. Multilateral institutions can exert a powerful pole of attraction where coherent and cohesive. One of the driving factors behind the CAF was the joint engagement of the UN and the World Bank. A carefully coordinated approach by these two institutions can facilitate the alignment of political, security, development and humanitarian agendas that is often difficult to achieve in complex environments and serve as a powerful pole of attraction for bilateral partners. In the case of the CAF, the UN Integrated Office offered the potential of incorporating the political and security framework represented by a large UN peacekeeping operation while the World Bank s engagement offered sectoral quality control and analytical soundness. The appeal of the UN-World Bank joint approach was facilitated by the specific nature of the international assistance presence in DRC. The UN and World Bank are relatively large presences in DRC (for the UN in terms of peacekeeping personnel, for the World Bank in terms of commitments) while bilateral presences are, in relative terms still rather small. Equally important, although there is a clear relationship between the DRC and Belgium, the former colonial power, there is no lead donor as, for example in countries such as Sierra Leone or Liberia. The lesson to be drawn from the CAF experience for the UN and the World Bank is that these two multilateral institutions, working effectively together, can serve as an important pole of attraction for international partners in coordinating international approaches in post-conflict contexts. Critical to effectiveness, however, is cohesion of approach in substance as well as process. Cohesion can be facilitated through the identification of focal points and the establishment of a joint position in advance of wider discussions. The development of strategic approaches may be facilitated by incountry processes. The success of the CAF process in initiating a substantive policy discussion was facilitated by those involved, namely in-country experts at the working level. In some ways, it may seem counter-intuitive for technical experts to initiate a broader strategic discussion about priority needs and directions for early recovery and peace consolidation. However, in-country personnel are often more attuned to the need for a peace dividend and to priorities articulated by the population and may be less constrained by bureaucratic processes than their counterparts at headquarters. Joint diagnosis and consensus building may be facilitated by experts working side-by-side on a daily basis, particularly in relation to substantive functional areas. The CAF 18

19 process points to the need for deeper reflection about the locus for generation of coordinated strategic approaches and frameworks and suggests that incountry processes may be well suited to the identification of policy priorities on key challenges in post-conflict states. At the same time, a potential lesson from the CAF is that earlier and welltimed strategic engagement of capitals and/or headquarters may have accelerated the lengthy elaboration process in-country. In such contexts, senior-level and/or capital engagement at relevant moments may send a useful signal of intent and commitment to national and international partners that can facilitate overcoming obstacles in detailed negotiation processes, as the meeting hosted by the EU in December 2006 demonstrated with regard to CAF Periodic headquarters engagement may also help generate momentum for implementation, facilitate government buy-in and prevent opt-outs at the individual as well as institutional level. Clarity on the goal and outcome of strategic coordination exercises is critical. However, the elaboration of a strategic coordination framework does not automatically translate into coordination in implementation. The CAF process demonstrated the importance of early clarification of the goal and outcome of a strategic coordination exercise. The CAF is not a joint strategy but a coordinated strategic framework: a fully joint strategy document would have had to meet the bureaucratic and procedural requirements of each of the partners involved a difficult, if not impossible goal to achieve among such diverse bilateral and multilateral partners. Focus, rather, on elaboration of a coordinated framework enabled all partners, despite their respective planning and programming processes, to engage in a strategic coordination exercise and to focus on substance therein. Related to above, part of the appeal of the CAF for those involved was that it did not come with a heavy institutional architecture, leaving each partner relatively free to translate common diagnosis and strategic priorities into individual programs of assistance. Comparative little effort was devoted to consideration of implementation issues during the CAF elaboration process and no mechanisms for planning or coordination of implementation were established. The need for national engagement and management may have been a contributing factor to delaying focus on the modalities of implementation, as were the constraints posed by individual staffing and work commitments. Lack of advance planning has been raised by some partners as one of the factors behind the slow progress in CAF implementation, although others believe that the CAF, as an enabling strategic framework, was never meant to be an implementation tool. Regardless of views on the extent to which the CAF could or should serve as an operational tool, the CAF experience points to the importance of ensuring that substantive strategic policy discussions are accompanied by consideration of their translation into implementation plans and modalities. Equally, consideration is required as to how coordination among partners can be sustained. The early initiation of implementation discussion/planning may 19

20 have been facilitated by the creation of a small Secretariat to support the CAF, ideally based in a key ministry (such as Planning) or, failing that, in one of the multilateral institutions involved. National engagement and commitment to a coordinated strategic approach is essential to implementation. Although nominally built on the PRSP, the CAF is very much a framework for and by partners. Given the absence of an elected government during early and critical phases of discussion among partners, and the perceived urgency to put in place recovery and development strategies, most of those involved believed that the elaboration of the CAF could be undertaken by international partners using the PRSP as the starting point to ensure alignment with national priorities. The risk of such an approach, however is that if not managed properly, the negotiation of a coordinated strategic approach could be interpreted by national actors as an effort to gang up or pressure national authorities into particular policies. In the case of the CAF, partners communicated regularly with officials in the ministries concerned, particularly finance, planning, health and education about the process underway and ensured, therefore, that the CAF did not come as a surprise to ministry officials. The extent to which national actors are informed and aware of a strategic coordination exercise is, in turn, likely to shape their engagement therein. National engagement is critical to translating a coordinated strategy into actionable deliverables. To this extent, the effort made to facilitate the elaboration of the new Government s agenda into a priority action program (the PAP) that also reflected the CAF was critical for the success of the exercise. That this took place six months after the completion of CAF discussions and the presentation of Kabila s cinq chantiers may reflect the impact of lack of earlier national involvement in the elaboration of the CAF. The time lag is also cited by some actors as one factor behind the slow implementation of partner programs launched under the CAF umbrella. The CAF experience suggests that early and broad engagement of national authorities is critical to ensure national buy-in, to enable the translation of a strategic agenda into operational programs, and to ensure that a coordinated approach is maintained during implementation. This is particularly critical in contexts where an elected government is in place throughout the process of elaborating the strategic framework. Beyond government partners, one of the questions raised by the CAF experience is the extent to which substantive policy discussions would have been further enriched by the involvement of Congolese technical experts (including ministry officials) as well as civil society and non-state actors, who bring relevant knowledge and experience from provincial and local levels to which Kinshasa-based partners often have little access. In terms of process, many partner strategies require consultations or validations with non-state actors, and consideration must therefore be given to the timing, level and 20

21 output of such consultation exercises in the context of elaboration of a coordinated strategic approach such as the CAF. 21

22 VI. Conclusion Is the CAF a potential model for strategic coordination in postconflict contexts? The purpose of this review was to examine how the CAF came into being. It remains too early to assess the impact of the CAF on the delivery of effective assistance in post-conflict contexts as well as on the activities of assistance actors and aid harmonization efforts in such environments. Nevertheless, even at this initial stage the CAF experience in DRC points to broad consensus among those involved of the value of an effort by bilateral and multilateral partners to establish first, a common diagnosis on priority needs for the consolidation of peace and recovery in post-conflict environments and, second, to identify priority goals and activities for international assistance efforts that target these needs. In many respects, the origins of the CAF illustrate the specific requirements of post-conflict contexts. The extensiveness of needs, the limited timeframe in which to deliver dividends that can contribute to shore up a peace process and the absence or distortion of development activities demand a substantial, prioritized and coordinated response. The decision by partners to embark on a strategic coordination exercise in DRC in 2006 may point to the weakness or absence of planning frameworks in facilitating the identification of critical priorities for post-conflict assistance: in the DRC context, at least, early planning exercises did not produce strategic prioritization. The success of the CAF in achieving these prioritization goals would appear to indicate the value of a light coordination process in facilitating a focus on strategy and substance, as well as in attracting a diverse range of partners. This lesson resonates with UN and World Bank efforts to revise the post-conflict needs assessment (PCNA) process, a joint planning tool intended to facilitate the identification of priorities for post-conflict aid that has been used in a number of post-conflict environments. One of the questions raised by the CAF is at what point in a post-conflict environment partners can elaborate a coordinated strategic approach. It would seem clear that the earlier this can take place, the greater likelihood of early delivery and impact of assistance. Yet the CAF was initiated four years after the signing of a peace agreement and built on earlier assessments, discussions and coordination experiences. It is unclear from the CAF experience in DRC whether a certain time lag is inevitable before partners develop sufficient trust and knowledge to enable a strategic coordination exercise. What the CAF does indicate, however, is the importance of a catalyst to initiate any such process and the critical significance of leadership throughout. In light of current discussions on aid harmonization, on international coordination in post-conflict contexts and on the need for earlier and faster support to post-conflict recovery are helping to create a conducive policy environment for strategic coordination. At the same time, there were a number of conditions critical to the success of the CAF which may be difficult to 22

23 reproduce in other contexts. Key among them are the relative weight of the UN and the World Bank in DRC; the relative absence of a dominant donor; the willingness of all UN actors to engage as one under the coordination of the UN Integrated Office; and the relative lack of national opposition to the process linked, in turn, to the strategic opportunity presented by the election of the DRC s first post-conflict government. In reproducing strategic coordination exercises in other contexts, consideration may be given to, inter alia, the value of in-country-led exercises; the importance of individual leadership to mobilize processes and link institutions; the value of early empirical data and analysis in elaborating a common diagnosis; the need for technical and/or support capacities to serve and sustain a strategic coordination exercise; and, critically, the importance of bringing in national actors at the right time and in the right way so that they are fully engaged in a strategic coordination process. 23

24 ANNEX A: Summary of Key Dates 02/2006 UNDP-WB Johannesburg conference at which joint strategy first proposed 05/2006 Meeting on draft Governance Compact, Washington DC 07/2006 Meeting on draft Governance Compact, Brussels 07/2006 PRSP approved by DRC Government of National Unity and Transition 07-08/ 2006 UN and WB begin discussions with key bilateral partners 11/2006 UN and WB staff begin preparation of CAF issue papers 11/2006 Kabila presidential election victory announced 12/2006 Kabila inauguration speech outlining key priorities ( Cinq 12/2006 Chantiers ) CAF issue papers presented and discussed at donor meeting in Brussels 01/2007 Five CAF action matrices developed, aligned to five PRSP pillars 02/2007 Government consultations on the draft CAF begin 06/ month PAP prepared and vetted with GoDRC and civil society 08/2007 Ministers of Planning and Finance launch CAF technical consultations 10/2007 PAP adopted by the Council of Ministers 11/2007 Consultative Group meeting 02/2008 Ministry of Planning establishes 15 thematic groups to coordinate PAP implementation 24