Knowledge Review on Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Transitional Development Assistance

Project Background

The world is an increasingly violent place. The number and intensity of all major conflict types is increasing. Many of these wars are highly destructive. This requires, not only, efforts to resolve and end those conflicts but also calls for an increasing need to rebuild countries and societies when conflicts end. Especially at a time when budgets for international intervention are shrinking, this makes it a key moment to reflect on what is known to work, what might not work so well, and where key knowledge gaps emerge.

Project Objectives

To address these questions, ISDC’s Peacebuilding Program will conduct a structured literature review that seeks to understand the knowledge status quo across the range of interventions typically funded under BMZ’s Transitional Development Assistance (TDA). The review focuses on intervention types most commonly funded under TDA, including: WASH infrastructure, Health and MHPSS infrastructure, Economic / Livelihoods infrastructure, Education infrastructure and Social infrastructure. The work focusses on academic, grey and agency literatures produced in key recipient countries of TDA, as well as other comparable, highly fragile, settings, in order to understand the knowledge that has been produced, what it says about effectiveness, and where key gaps emerge.

The review considers direct impacts of TDA (e.g., improving access to, or perceptions of quality of infrastructure); downstream effects (e.g., the impact of WASH infrastructure on the spread of infectious diseases, or the impact of Education infrastructure on attendance or achievement in school); and longer-term social effects (e.g., the potential that reconstruction can reduce risks of conflict traps). The review will be based on key-word searches of databases of academic and grey literature, as well as reviews of the document libraries of major implementors in the field. The aim is to produce a compendium of knowledge that supports future decision-making and policy choices.