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While countries ravaged by war make the headlines, their recovery from violent upheaval is a story rarely covered.  Yet, economic recovery is a formidable challenge facing these devastated nations, and is the subject of a sweeping new report released today by UNDP.

The report, Post-Conflict Economic Recovery: Enabling Local Ingenuity, is a comprehensive analysis focusing on three critical factors:  the importance of local ingenuity to guide recovery, the state’s role in promoting this ingenuity, and the policies needed to rebuild battered economies and reduce the risk of conflict recurrence. The study cites examples of countries that have succeeded in rekindling post-conflict economies and those that continue to flounder, discussing the foundations that are so vital to foster post-conflict economic recovery.

“This holistic view of post-conflict recovery is based on experience UNDP has gained working in many countries around the world, many of them devastated by violent conflict,” said UNDP Administrator Kemal Derviş. “It has enabled us to reconsider our role in helping countries to build back better after months, years or decades of conflict.”

Providing a fresh look at the challenges facing countries emerging from conflict, the report emphasizes that recovery programming must be based on sound understanding of local dynamics. Without such a foundation, policies aimed to help may inadvertently exacerbate tensions. Conflict does not destroy local economies, it transforms them.  It introduces new – and frequently positive – economic opportunities for women.  It can also fuel inequities among different groups and minorities.  The first lesson for the international community in post-conflict recovery is therefore to do no harm by promoting actions that lower the risk of conflict recurrence and fuel positive economic activity.

A second crucial lesson is that local actors must lead recovery. Even after years of conflict, war-torn communities possess human and other resources that can support recovery, and it is often through local efforts that economies are rebuilt. The report not only recognizes that local actors can drive recovery,  it also encourages the international community to focus its efforts on  working with and building on the activities of local communities and institutions.

The study also examines the role external partners should play when it comes to post-conflict recovery. It calls upon international partners to support debt relief, which provides much-needed breathing space in the early post-war years; to generate employment, which is the best way to ensure that economic growth benefits the majority of the population; and to support national efforts to rebuild the capacity of the state and secure its legitimacy.

“Post-conflict recovery is not about restoring pre-war economic or institutional arrangements,” said Derviş.  “It is about investing in people and institutions in ways that redress the factors that may have led to the conflict in the first place. The end of a conflict presents a small window of opportunity to address pre-war distortions and launch sustained economic recovery and development,” he added.