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Working Paper
The Political Economy of Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
Lessons from El Salvador
This paper develops and tests five hypotheses regarding the economic causes
of complex humanitarian emergencies (CHEs). We argue that: (1) such
emergencies, involving large-scale deaths and population displacements, are
most likely to occur when growth is slow, negative, or falls far short of
expectations; (2) the likelihood of emergency rises further when society
cannot achieve a consensus over how to distribute the burden of adjustment
to this growth failure; (3) the difficulties of burden-sharing are aggravated
when there are sharp pre-existing class and/or ethnic inequalities, some of
which may have actually helped trigger the crisis by creating conflict and
thereby slowing growth; (4) problems are exacerbated when external actors
intervene on one side in the ongoing distributional struggles; and (5) the
resulting social upheaval deters investment and slows growth, setting in
motion in a 'vicious circle' in which political and economic crises exacerbate
each other.
The civil wars of the 1980s in the Central American countries of El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Nicaragua provide evidence in support of each of these
hypotheses. Longstanding tensions arising from deep economic inequities,
particularly in the distribution of land, provided the tinder for political
violence, macroeconomic crises added a spark, external intervention fueled
the wars, and armed conflict propelled a downward economic spiral. The
paper develops these themes with a particular focus on the case of El
Salvador.
An understanding of these causal chains is important not only to improve the
international community's ability to anticipate complex humanitarian
emergencies, but also to devise successful post-conflict economic policies
for building peace. Peace accords can initiate a 'virtuous circle,' in which the
consolidation of peace supports economic development and vice versa. For
this positive process to be sustained, domestic and international actors must
confront the fundamental factors behind conflict-driven emergencies. While
a more active role by external assistance actors may appear to intrude on
national sovereignty, CHEs are often human-made disasters that impose high
costs on the international system; as such, the international community has a
responsibility to act to address the root causes of civil conflict and the
resulting emergencies.