Challenges of post-conflict recovery

Angola’s post-conflict recovery period presents a new set of challenges to both the government and development agencies, according to a recent report by CARE International. Over 1.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) have exchanged the relative security of the IDP camps and food aid for the risks associated with returning home to rebuild their lives. More than 400,000 former UNITA soldiers and their dependents are also looking to be resettled. “Among returning IDPs, food insecurity is likely to become more widespread, and many returnees will have difficulty establishing viable livelihoods. The population currently on the move is abjectly poor. Almost without exception, returnees lack sufficient food stocks, seeds,tools and livestock to return to anything that remotely resembles normal agricultural production,” the CARE report said. They are also returning to areas where the local economy has collapsed, with farm-to-market roads in a deplorable state, and the threat of land mines limiting mobility. The CARE report, “Food Security Challenges in Post-Conflict Angola”,noted that even if food becomes available in local markets, most households will not have the buying power to acquire it, and food security will continue to be a serious concern through 2003. “Seeds, tools and access to animal traction are among the immediate needs,” Douglas Steinberg of CARE Angola, one of the authors of the report, told IRIN. “In the medium term, access to other services to rebuild their communities, like health and education, will be required." In newly accessible areas, many of which were under the control of UNITA, “material deprivation and extreme vulnerability combine with fear and uncertainty about the future”, the report commented. For urban Angolans, poverty and lack of social services are among the most pressing concerns. A household survey of the capital Luanda and five other cities in 1995 indicated that 70 percent of households lived below the poverty line. “The assumption is that now the war is over people will go home [to their places of origin] but I don’t think that will be the case,” said Steinberg. “The urban population will remain and their needs will have to be addressed.” Those needs include skills development and micro-finance projects as part of community-based poverty alleviation programmes. In Luanda an estimated 54 percent of all households are linked to the informal economy, particularly female-headed households. However, while the informal sector accounts for the largest share of the urban workforce, the poorest find it difficult to secure the capital to enter it, the CARE report noted. “Urban services are a big problem, and personal security is another. There are lots of small arms, which are easily trafficked and reports of gangs being formed in the periphery areas. If that’s starting to happen, it’s hard to reverse that trend,” said Steinberg. Humanitarian and development assistance will be focussed directly on grassroots communities in the immediate future, partly as a consequence of concerns over corruption and government capacity, the CARE report stated. According to the report: “Were the government to fully account for its resources and allocate them to meet Angola’s humanitarian and development needs, the Angolan people would face a radically different future. Until the government assumes its responsibility, few are willing to fill the gap. In either case, external funding is likely to diminish over time, particularly as Angola transitions from an emergency to a development context.”