CJL’s Newest Blog Series

The reciprocal relationship between violent conflict and corruption has been explored by researchers and practitioners for several decades. The destructive war in Yemen, the 26-year civil war in Sri Lanka, the End SARS movement in Nigeria and the recent Beirut blast are evidence of the complex relationship. It is increasingly clear to all those who work on conflict – be they peacebuilders, aid workers, Embassy staff or members of national governments — that corruption extracts high costs from states emerging from violent conflicts. The 2011 World Development Report on Conflict, Security and Development by the World Bank states, “Corruption […] has doubly pernicious impacts on the risk of violence, by fueling grievances and by undermining the effectiveness of national institutions and social norms.”

Despite the clear connections, it is rare to find peacebuilding agencies incorporating anti-corruption approaches. Equally, anti-corruption programs generally do not draw from peacebuilding approaches in their efforts to diminish abuse of power for personal gain, even in conflict contexts.  Conflict-sensitivity, for instance, is a widely applied frame for much development in conflict work, yet receives scant attention in the anti-corruption field.

As an initial contribution to bridging the silos of peacebuilding and anti-corruption research and practice, we are delighted to launch “Abusing Power: Corruption & Conflict,” a series of posts on CJL’s Corruption in Fragile States Blog. This series will feature new research and perspectives on the relationship between conflict and corruption from CJL along with guest posts from leading experts and practitioners.

We invite you to join the conversation and are always looking to highlight new research on the conflict-corruption nexus. Please reach out if you would like to discuss contributing a blog post.