Post-conflict infrastructure rehabilitation requirements

Abstract

Post-disaster relief and reconstruction are always complex and challenging, requiring an integrated infrastructure and community rehabilitation process. These challenges are even more pronounced in post-conflict situations, where combatants must be reintegrated into normal community life, reconciliation progressed and confidence in institutions restored. When the conflict is prolonged, the transition to normalcy is yet more challenging to a generation or more of the working-age population who have not experienced normal working life prior to the conflict. As integrated systems, the infrastructure needs not only to be rehabilitated within the overall rehabilitation of society but also to provide a vehicle to facilitate the reintegration of the population and the socio-economic transition of the productive capacity of society. Infrastructure rehabilitation is as much about how it is used and owned by the community as the restoration of functionality. This paper explores the nature of post-conflict rehabilitation today, discusses how the existing transition paradigms apply and identifies how the paradigms may better deliver post-conflict infrastructure rehabilitation.