Parallel Sessions III

B) Development, Governance and Security in Central Asia

Conveners
Jörn Grävingholt, German Development Institute (DIE), Bonn, Germany
Conrad Schetter, Center for Development Studies (ZEF), Bonn, Germany

Chair:
Shirin Akiner, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, U.K.

Speakers:

Andreas Heinemann-Grüder, Bonn International Conversion Centre (BICC), Bonn, Germany
Jörn Grävingholt, German Development Institute (DIE), Bonn, Germany
Conrad Schetter and Bernd Kuzmits, Centre for Development Studies (ZEF), Bonn, Germany
Gunda Wiegmann, Institute for East European Studies, Free University Berlin, Germany

Abstract:

Since allied forces entered Afghanistan in 2001 and ousted the Taliban regime the international significance of Central Asia increased drastically. Foreign assistance to the region has mainly come along two lines: military engagement and development aid. Often enough, however, both elements have proven to be at odds with each other rather than forming a coherent overall strategy. The panel proceeds from the proposition that external military and/or terrorist activities as well as organised crime (drug trafficking etc.) constitute a serious threat to the region's security ("hard security concern"). However, regarding long-term crisis prevention the main challenge for the political regimes in the region is to overcome blatant deficits in governance, democracy, and human rights. To date, the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia form a bad-governance cluster of a kind hardly to be found in any other part of the world (overtaking, by some measures, even the notoriously undemocratic Arab world).
The panel is supposed to scrutinise the interaction of governance, security and external engagement on three different levels: the local level, the national level and the regional level. The guiding question is what international donors can or cannot do in order to promote better governance and security in the region and what they should know about the structures of the societies and regimes in order to improve their policies. Session Report

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10th General Conference