Submission to the inquiry into the role of Australia's international development program in preventing conflict

This submission to the inquiry into the role of Australia's international development program in preventing conflict draws upon a recent detailed report from the Development Intelligence Lab on this same topic.

In this submission, we focus first on ‘the strategic use of Australia's international development program to prevent conflict in the Indo-Pacific’ (ToR 2), including offering a specific policy model matched to Australia’s circumstances.

We then address 'options for effective support through Australia's aid program in pre-conflict and/or post-conflict zones' (ToR 3). At present, conflict prevention is implicitly mainstreamed in Australia’s development program; we provide a menu of options to step up this approach.

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Key Recommendations

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1. Explicitly adopt a three-pillar national conflict-prevention framework in order to address the full spectrum of interstate and intrastate conflict risks.

Australia should formally articulate and operationalise a deterrence–diplomacy–development framework as the backbone of its conflict prevention policy. This should recognise Australia's interest in reducing both interstate and intrastate conflict risks, and that a range of tools must be leveraged to do so.

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2. Establish a central authority to coordinate conflict prevention across government.

Without a central authority, integration across pillars will remain rhetorical, and both interstate and intrastate conflict prevention efforts will be less than their sum parts.

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3. Reposition development as a core conflict prevention tool by starting targeted pilot partnerships now.

In regional countries experiencing fragility and instability, Australia’s development program should be used as a frontline tool for preventing conflict. Government should identify 2-3 key partner countries where this approach should be piloted immediately, with specified funding and performance monitoring.