Needs Versus Expediency: Poverty Reduction and Social Development inPost-Conflict Countries

This chapter explores the issues around the need to strengthen and sustain peace in post-conflict societies. These issues include the amount of focus to be given to absolute poverty reduction versus broader social inclusion, including the reduction of inequality. The chapter sets out a framework that can help country-level policy and action, then moves on to address specific interventions: health, education, livelihoods, and social protection, reviewing the (often limited) evidence available, and drawing out some tentative recommendations for sequencing. This provides the basis for a discussion of the politics of post-conflict inclusion, which delves deeper into the issues around crafting a politics of recovery that also embraces the needs of the poor. A final section concludes that a ‘first best’ outcome for poverty and human development is unlikely, as the political economy of recovery will impose powerful constraints