Crisis prevention measures can help prevent setbacks to the development efforts undertaken by individual countries and Development Cooperation (DC) actors.

In many parts of the world, crises, conflicts and disasters are responsible for hunger, large-scale refugee flows, destruction and suffering. Year after year, more than 500,000 people are killed in armed conflicts. More than 21 million people are currently fleeing their homes. Crises, conflicts and disasters destroy people’s livelihoods, cause severe psychological and physical harm, and take an enormous economic toll, both on individuals and national budgets.

GTZ therefore places importance on systematically anchoring crisis prevention as a cross-cutting theme in the various activity areas of German Development Cooperation. One key feature is the further development of practice-relevant concepts and instruments for integrating crisis prevention, conflict transformation and peace development into the work of German Development Cooperation. This also involves working on related themes such as small arms control, security sector reform and disaster preparedness.

So for us, crisis-preventive reconstruction does not stop at the rehabilitation and reconstruction of physical infrastructure. We also back the development of measures to prevent violence and new conflicts, in effect aiming for processes of societal reconciliation. This approach integrates the various groups affected by the conflict and is designed to gradually break the vicious circle of escalating violence.

We can take as an example the Afghan government’s National Solidarity Programme (NSP) for national reconstruction, planned and coordinated by GTZ. The NSP is targeting up to 15,000 Afghan communities, which are being advised by local and international non-governmental organisations on how to plan and implement small measures. The implementation of these measures in communities throughout the country is not only bringing the first visible benefits for peace in many areas. By involving the population, these measures also sow the seeds for economic rebirth as well as creating forums for reconciliation and social equality.

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