Development Workshop recognised that is was important to understand progress with the post-conflict processes, and their viability and sustainability, and to identify any problems with implementation of these processes. Development Workshop recognised that it is particularly important to monitor progress, and to understand the dynamics of and challenges to peace, in areas distant from the capital where the challenges are greatest, where the capacity to implement some of the post-conflict processes is probably weakest and where a lack of progress may go unnoticed. Only if progress is monitored, and the dynamics of and challenges to peace understood, will it be possible to advocate actions that support peace-building. Therefore during 2004 and 2005 Development Workshop has been carrying out an assessment of post-conflict Angola, the outlook for sustainable peace and future risks. This has been done through a review of existing recent research and situation reports, interviews with key informants, visits to four Provinces and localised case studies in these four Provinces. Supported by: International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa (NIZA) Christian Aid (UK). http://dw.angonet.org/content/post-conflict-risk-mapping-2004-2006

1. Post-conflict Angola:
sustainable peace assessment
and risk mapping
Create awareness of the challenges of
creating a sustainable peace in Angola and
the issues, opportunities and constraints for
Angola 3 years after the ceasefire.
Development Workshop
Luanda - April 2005

2. Objectives
• Analyse social changes in Angola during the
conflict
• Analyse the post-conflict processes, such as
DDR (demobilisation, disarmament, reintegration) and 4Rs (repatriation/return, reintegration, rehabilitation, reconstruction)
• Analyse impact of these on people’s poverty
vulnerability
• Assess the risks for conflict
• Consider implications for post-conflict
programmes

3. Methodology
• Field work in 4 Provinces
• Benguela, Moxico, Zaire, Huambo
• Analysis of recent studies (many of them
as yet unpublished)
• Re-analysis of data from recent studies

4. DDR
Demobilisation,
Disarmament
Re-integration

5. DDR
• As with many DDR programmes, demobilisation
and disarmament have been carried out, but
there is a big question mark about re-integration.
• The re-integration programmes took more than
two years to get underway
• No clear data on where the demobilised have
moved to, but clear indications that a great many
have not gone to their “areas of origin”
• Very difficult situation of those forcibly recruited
as underage soldiers, especially females.

6. Return of refugees and the
displaced

7. Return of refugees and the
displaced
• Only part of these groups have returned to
their “area of origin”
• Data from Huambo Province suggests that
almost half of people in the Province have
not retruned to their “area of origin”
• There are still people living in former IDP
camps, and there has been continued
growth of population of cities and small
towns.

8. Return to areas of origin ?
• There has been (and is) return to rural
areas (but this is arduous and happening
slowly)
• Much “return” is to cities and small towns,
or to areas that are not “areas of origin”
• This is especially true for those who have
been “displaced” for many years
• “We are no longer IDPs but we are just
living like displaced people”

9. Why slow return?
• Investment needed to return to areas of
origin (level of destruction, lack of
infrastructure)
• Impoverishment, do not have this capital
• Waiting until after elections
• No longer have an area of origin
• Land-mines

10. Return of refugees and the
displaced
• Very difficult situation of refugees returning to remoter
Provinces of Angola
• Landmines and destroyed infrastructure make it
extremely difficult for them to return to “areas of origin”
• They are still in temporary settlements around towns
(such as Mbanza Kongo, Luena, Luau)
• There is now very little aid (food aid and “non-food
items), and little opportunity for developing a livelihood
strategy in such conditions
• Conditions of refugees much below what they had in
camps in exile, and what they were led to expect when
they were persuaded to return

12. Re-integration
• Re-integration is a questionable concept in
context of Angola where there is no longer a
framework into which people can re-integrate
• Mandate-based agencies focus on displacement
and on refugees
• Make assumptions that these groups are
returning home and that they are managing to
re-integrate
• Both of these assumptions are questionable

13. Loss of assets
• For most people, the most important
impact of war has been loss of assets, and
not displacement
• There are significant numbers whose
assets were looted but were unable to flee
• There are some, on the other hand, who
managed to flee before direct impact of
conflict and who managed to keep some
of their assets

14. Economic re-integration
•
•
•
•
Re-integrating into an abnormal context
Many people have no assets
Family is main source of assistance (credit, land)
Church, community, State, aid organisations are
less important (especially in a context of
dramatically less aid)
• But families are also poor. And there are those
who have lost contact with family

15. Re-establishing rural livelihoods

16. Re-establishing rural livelihoods
• Those who have returned to rural areas have
experienced great difficulty in re-establishing a rural
livelihood
• Extreme shortages of tools and seeds
• Difficulties of re-clearing abandoned fields
• Few assistance programmes
• There are many people who cannot return to a rural area
of origin (moved away many years ago, have lost contat
with family, fear conflict in area of origin, lack of land in
area of origin)
• But only very few, small programmes to assist such
people with allocation of land

17. Other livelihood strategies
•
•
•
•
•
•
Low-paid, odd-jobs
Weeding and cultivating other’s fields
Carrying sacks in market places
Pounding grain
Pay less than one dollar per day
Barely sufficient to survive, often eat only one
meal per day, does not allow any accumulation
of assets
• Important survival strategy for those who have
no access to land and no other assets, living in
former IDP camps or around towns and cities

18. Other livelihood strategies
• Exploiting natural resources, such as wood (for firewood
or charcoal), building materials, plants for medicines and
drink-making
• In more remote areas of the country, the demand is very
limited and marketing difficult, though this is where the
resources are more abundant
• In western part of Angola, supplies are limited and
already signs of over-exploitation (eg de-forestation in
Central Plateau and around main towns)
• Competition and conflict between neighbouring
settlements over access
• Returns can be low, as many people are seeling wood
and charcoal as a livelihood strategy

19. Other livelihood strategies
• Informal trade
• Requires some capital for initial purchases
• Those with most capital trade in higher value goods and
over longer distances, have higher returns
• Those with least capital have low returns due to intense
competition among those tradng in low-value goods and
over short distances
• However popular opinion is that trade is more likely to
help them to re-accumulate assets than peasant farming
or odd-jobs
• People who have workied in this sector have
accumulated many skills. Informal trade is more
important than formal trade and has more potential

20. Other livelihood strategies
• Formal employment
• Divided between low-income, low-skill formal
employment (barely enough for survival) and
high-income formal employment
• The overall low education levels means that
those with skills are in high demand (or can sell
their skills abroad)
• Much of public sector workforce (especialy
outside Provincial capitals) have low skill levels.

21. Livelihood strategies
• Difficulties of developing livelihood strategies in
most areas of the country
• Leads to continued attraction (especially for
young people) of a few areas: the major cities,
the diamond areas, the oil production areas
• These are also the areas where basic services
are least bad
• Cabinda and the Lundas continue to be highly
militarised, conflictual relations over access to
the resources

22. Basic services are non-existent in many areas

23. Conflict risks
• Access to resources appears to be an area of potential
conflict
• Access to rural land is not yet a widespread area of
conflict, as it is still difficult to develop a livelihood from
agriculture. Also customary institutions have survived
and manage conflict over land sucessfully within
communities
• However research indicates the extreme weakness of
the official institutions that manage land allocation at a
higher level, among communities and between informal
and formal sectors. There are overlapping
responsibilities and very low level of capaicty to register
land tenure and ensure access conditions are met.

24. Conflict risks
• Rural land conflict could become more widespread if
conditions for development of agriculture were created.
• However there appears to be a higher risk of conflict
over access to urban land and land with other resources
• These are areas where people perceive that it is possible
to develop a livelihood. A house in an urban area is a
dwelling, a place to store goods for trade, a small
workshop
• It is in urban areas that the formal economy is growing.
This is likely to create conflict between formal and
informal land users.
• The institutions to manage land access and conflicts are
just as weak in urban areas.

25. Conflict risks
• Over identity
– People of different origins now living close
together
– Some Angolans see this as positive, creating
an Angolan identity
– But are in possible competition over access to
resources
– Lack of policies and capacities to manage this
social integration

26. Social re-integration
• Re-integrating into an abnormal context of
weakened social fabric
• Significant population movements over
last 40 years
• People are various origins “re-integrating”
side-by-side

27. Conflict risks
• There is not necessarily polarisation between people
who were with the different sides in the war, or along
ethnic lines. Other polarisations might be developing.
• For example, people who were refugees have developed
an identity that is different from the people of the same
group who stayed behind: developed new skills, had
better education opportunities, joined new churches, use
different languages, wear different clothes.
• The different groups are all vulnerable in some way, but
each group perceives its own vulnerabilities and not the
vulnerabilties of the other group.

28. Conflict risks
• Example of various groups forced to settle
(temporarily ?) around Luena.
• Refugees are of various ethnic origins, but have
developed their own social cohesion from living together
in exile.
• They consider themselves to be vulnerable because
situation in Angola is not what led to believe when in
camps in Zambia, aid is much less than what led to
believe and than what received when first went to
Zambia, believe that residents have better links to the
authorities, have been forced to store their assets in
precarious stores at the border

29. Conflict risks
•
•
•
•
•
•
Perceptions of residents:that refugees had access to education in exile,
that received better aid in exile,
that aid agencies do not assist residents because they were not
displaced (even though many residents have also lost most of their
assets)
that refugees have learnt how to use the aid system while they were
in exile
that refugess have acquired non-Angolan identities (and values).
It is these polarisations, exacerbated by high levels of competition
(and potential conflict) for access to land, water points, jobs, training
courses and aid, that may be more important than the better-known
ones (ethnic, political, coast versus the interior).

30. Institutions

31. Institutions
•
Research indicates the survival of customary rural institutions that
have regulated rural life. But there are some important differences
between areas.
• Their main positive feature is that they revolve around some form of
Council bringing together important people in the community.
• A weakness is that the colonial system (and the post-independence
one) has focused on the individual leader (usually the soba) and not
on the accountable and democratic aspects. Local government
administrations tend to use leaders to transmit messages to
communities, while being unable to resolve the problems
communities present to the administartions through the leaders.
• Another weakness is that customary rural institutions tend to
exclude women and young people, and to exclude outsiders (while
there are now many outsiders in communities). There are however
some signs of change.

32. Institutions
• It has been shown that conflict, in many
countries, weakens institutions.
• This is true in case of Angola, most obviously at
the level of local government administrations.
• Rural customary institutions have survived.
Informal, urban institutions (such as to organise
market places or the peri-urban land market)
have developed.
• These are percieved by decision-makers as
“illegal” or “anarchic” but they have been allowed
to continue during the war.

33. Institutions
• There is a risk that government, in trying to restore
legality, will impose laws that ignore functioning, informal
mechanisms that have worked satisfactorily (while
capacity to implement formal system is still weak)
• Period of most rapid erosion of formal institutions was
post-1992, when conflict coincided with a failed transition
to a market economy, producing a free-market without
rules
• Eg Artisan fishing people say that mid-1990s was when
institutions broke down in protecting them from
mechanised, large-scale trawler fishing.

34. Further conflict risks
• “Traditional” conflict resolution remain in some
areas, but potential conflicts now are beyond the
normal competence of such mechanisms
• Problem remains one of weakness of
mechanisms at a higher level
• Lack of capacity in Government, so risk that
recreating “rule of law” removes informal
mechanisms in which people have invested
without creating a functioning formal system

35. Further conflict risks
• Angola is a low-income oil producer.
• It is now apprecaited that such countries have
high risks: high expectations but income
insufficient to meet these expectations.
• High inequality between the minority with skills
for formal economy and the rest
• Low levels of trust in institutions (as evidenced
by people retaining arms as an insurance policy
and accusations of witchcraft in rural areas)

36. International actors
• High level of interest in Angola’s resources
• Low capacity to engage with complexity of
current situation
• Focus on “corruption” as a get-out clause, that
avoids dealing with a post-conflict complex
emergency
• Tendency still to see solution in completing a
transition from the post-independence State,
ignoring the problems created by that tranisition
• Drastic fall in aid

37. International actors
• Some recent programmes (such as World Bank
LICUS) that do focus on problems of weak
states
• As yet unclear whether these programmes will
set up parallel institutions so as to try to deliver
the Millenium Goals as quickly as possible
• Or whether will focus on the long and complex
processes of helping to rebuild institutions

38. Implications
• Conflict sensitivity required in development: economic
development itself may create conflicts
• Reconstruction needs to deal with people’s
vulnerabilities:• Low levels of material capital; loss of assets and inability
to re-accumulate them
• Low levels of social capital; due to population
movements, erosion of communities, families, trust
• Low levels of human capital; lack of educational
opportunities and skills
• Low levels of institutional capital; erosion of institutions
and trust in institutions

39. Implications
• Opportunities to rebuild assets and skills need to
be widely spread to prevent access to them
creating conflicts
• Rebuilding of institutions is a long-term and
difficult task, but avoiding it creates high risks
• Reconstruction will involve a great deal of
learning-by-doing. This is uncharted territory,
which requires pilot projects linked to information
gathering and analysis and monitoring.
• This in turn implies rebuilding the research
capacity in Angola.

40. Opportunities
• Survival of rural customary institutions is an opportunity.
There is a potential to use them as the basis for a more
democratic and accountable local governance.
• There is some awareness in Government that local
administration needs drastic improvement, that it should
be linked to local civil society and that accountability is
essential (though there has been almost no experience
of this in colonial and post-independence systems)
• The new Land Law is an opportunity (though it is far from
perfect). There is some awareness of the need to build
Government capacity and how difficult a task this will be.
There are opportunities for pilot projects that will help to
address the weaknesses in the Land Law.