Evaluating Community-Driven Reconstruction

RECONSTRUCTION IN NORTHERN LIBERIA presented daunting challenges when the International Rescue Committee launched a community-driven reconstruction (CDR) program there in 2006. The area had been racked by civil war since 1989, when Charles Taylor’s rebel group, the NPFL, launched its attack from Cote d’Ivoire. The conflict was devastating, with 85 percent of the local population displaced at some point during the fighting and over four percent killed directly from war-related violence. The conflict was finally brought to an endwith Taylor’s exile, a transition government, a UN peacekeeping mission and elections in 2005. The CDR project, financed by the British government’s Department for International Development (DFID), sought to improve material well-being, reinforce democratic political attitudes, and increase social cohesion. CDR projects like this are being employed in post-conflict situations around the globe. They are a mechanism to disburse development funds rapidly and support the war-to-peace transition by strengthening local communities and rendering decision-making more transparent and accountable. That’s the theory. In fact, although billions of dollars are disbursed on community driven development programs, the evidence that these programs are effective is quite thin. Indeed, many social scientists might contend that the idea that a short-term injection of funds coupled with an imported model for collective decision making would alter local community dynamics—as many aid organizations hope—appears fanciful. Community cohesion and decision-making practices reflect long histories and real distributions of power and wealth; it is plausible that they are not sensitive to short-term external interventions. It is also possible that short-term cash injections in a post-conflict setting could even exacerbate existing social divisions. Evaluating Community-Driven Reconstruction