Public services can only be fully and efficiently delivered through solid and reliable governance mechanisms. The OECD develops tools to help citizens hold their governments to account in meeting their development goals. It also helps the Development Assistance Committee’s Governance Network (GOVNET) to support countries’ efforts to curb inequalities and exclusion, to respond to challenges such as rising authoritarianism and threats to democracy and human rights, and to benefit from the digital transition.
Governance and peace for development
The OECD works to help middle- and low-income countries strengthen their governance mechanisms, to improve the delivery of public services, meet their development goals and achieve the overall aim of poverty reduction. The OECD also promotes policies focused on preventing the outbreak of conflict and sustaining local and regional peace tracks.
Key messages
The OECD supports the work of the International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF), which brings together Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members and multilateral agencies searching to help prevent and mitigate conflicts in developing countries and strengthen resilience to shocks. The Organisation supports stronger co-ordination, financing and programming by all development partners, and also tracks financing flows to the most fragile contexts.
The OECD’s innovative tools and spatial analyses help policy makers to better understand regional security challenges in North and West Africa. Its Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi) maps the geographical evolution of conflicts over time, including in border regions and across urban and rural areas. Combined with detailed analysis of stakeholders, this multi-dimensional, visual tool helps decision makers to better take into account spatial and political contexts
Context
Conflict trends in North and West Africa
The Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi) leverages over 60,000 violent events over 1997-2023 from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) project, across 21 countries in North and West Africa. Conflict is classified in each 50 X 50 km cell by combining intensity and concentration. Dark blue cells indicate major hotspots: Nigeria accounts for 45% of all fatalities between 2021-23; in the Central Sahel, community conflicts, coups d’état and terrorist violence are overlapping, with violence subsuming borderlands and spreading to coastal countries including Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea and Togo. High-intensity violence also affects the Lake Chad region.
Official development assistance (ODA) to peace
ODA dedicated to peace in fragile areas has been decreasing in terms of volume and percentage: in 2022, this figure fell to less than 10% of total ODA – a sixteen-year record low. These historically low levels of financing do not appear to be commensurate with mounting peacebuilding needs, with 2022 witnessing the largest number of violent conflicts since 1946. Peace ODA investments that are conflict-sensitive and appropriately tailored to the context can positively shape pathways towards peace. Empirical research finds that post-conflict countries that have not relapsed received a significantly higher percentage of peace ODA than ones that did relapse.
Official development assistance (ODA) to support forcibly displaced people
ODA provided for refugee situations in low- and middle-income countries has been decreasing in recent years and stands below 6% of total ODA. By contrast, aid provided in support of refugees hosted in donor countries has been rising sharply in recent years both in volume and as a proportion of ODA.
