Person:
Harborne, Bernard
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Conflict,
Social Development
Degrees
Departments
Social Development Global Practice
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Bernard Harborne is a Lead Technical Specialist in the Social Development Global Practice of the World Bank. He joined in 2004 as the lead conflict adviser for Africa, including time as Country Manager in Côte d’Ivoire. In various positions, he has led the World Bank’s work on conflict assessments, engagement in peace processes (five to date), and the integration of geo-spatial data into risk analytics. He has authored/ co-authored five country engagement strategies, most recently during the crises in Central African Republic, Libya and South Sudan. He has managed projects for the demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants as well as local and community driven-development in conflict-affected countries. He is the lead on the World Bank’s security sector work and was the principal author of the sourcebook, Securing Development: Public Finance and the Security Sector, 2017. Before the World Bank, he worked and lived for over a decade in Gaza in the Palestinian Territories and then Cambodia as a human rights lawyer, and for seven years with the UN in Sudan, Somalia and the Great Lakes. He then worked for two years with the UK Government as senior conflict adviser, managing the Africa Conflict Prevention Fund. He has a background in criminal and human rights law, including a master’s in international law, from the London School of Economics, is an adjunct professor and an adviser for the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and the Oxford Research Group.
Publication Search Results
1 - 7 of 7
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Publication
Improving Security in Violent Conflict Settings : Security and Justice Thematic Paper
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011)Acknowledges that security--both physical security and national security--needs to be addressed in contexts ranging from pre-conflict, conflict, to post-conflict, and in both national and local units. Solutions to stemming violence do not follow linear or sequential implementation. Capacity building requires security sector reform, peacebuilding, parliamentary oversight, civil society involvement, financial management, and transitional justice measures. The return of counterinsurgencies in rogue states or rebellions of secessionist movements has focused aid donors on the legitimacy of such groups. In countries like Colombia where disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programs were left incomplete, gang violence has escalated, and in countries like El Salvador violence has mutated across generations into transnational gangs. DDR, a popular set of activities to fund, has the potential to achieve security objectives and social welfare, but requires confidence in the government, community acceptance, a sufficiently strong economy, integration of ex-combatants into new armed forces or national service corps, and community involvement. -
Publication
Breaking the Cycle : A Strategy for Conflict-Sensitive Rural Growth in Burundi
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008)The study on the sources of rural growth in Burundi results from a meticulous work carried out by eminent experts of the World Bank in response to a request of the Government of Burundi. It describes the global environment, which explains poverty aggravation and builds proposals to overcome most binding constraints to growth in Burundi. This study is an important contribution in the fight against poverty, as it identifies ways to resume growth in the rural world, which accounts for 90 percent of employment, represents more than 50 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), and over 80 percent of export earnings. Increasing rural income will have large multiplier effects on the national economy. This will enable breaking the vicious circle of poverty and starting a virtuous circle of economic growth and poverty reduction. The study underlines that reforming export-crop sub-sectors such as coffee, tea, and horticulture will help increase participation in higher value specialty markets. Entering these market segments will increase export revenues and producers' incomes. -
Publication
Securing Development: Public Finance and the Security Sector
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017-05)This book highlights the role played by public finance in the delivery of security and criminal justice services. It seeks to strengthen policy and operational dialogue on security sector issues by providing national and international stakeholders with key information on security expenditure policy and management. The interplay between security, justice, and public finance is still a relatively unexplored area of development. Security and criminal justice are fundamental public goods provided by governments, and they often have significant claims on national budgets. Informed discussions on security sector expenditure policy and management are an essential part of the national budget cycle, through which central finance agencies fulfill their function of contesting sector expenditure proposals in the planning and budgeting process. Integrating the public finance perspective into broader security policy deliberations can significantly help defense, interior, and justice ministries and agencies address effectiveness and efficiency challenges arising in the provision of services in these sectors. Dialogue on security expenditure policy also strengthens international partners’ engagement on security issues, helping them make informed decisions regarding the appropriate level and form of external assistance. This book offers a framework for analyzing public financial management, financial transparency, and oversight, as well as expenditure policy issues that determine how to most appropriately manage security and justice services. It also provides advice on entry points for integrating expenditure analysis into security sector and broader governance reform processes. The book is the result of a project undertaken jointly by staff from the World Bank and the United Nations, integrating the disciplines where each institution holds a comparative advantage and a core mandate. The primary audience includes high-level, technically oriented government officials bearing both security as well as financial responsibilities, staff of international organizations working on public expenditure management and security sector issues, and development practitioners working in an advisory capacity. -
Publication
Jobs, Recovery, and Peacebuilding in Urban South Sudan
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-15)After years of conflict, there is an opportunity for peace in South Sudan, but an effective economic recovery process must underpin the political settlement. The aim of this work is to inform policy for more productive urban jobs in peacebuilding and recovery in South Sudan and for first steps toward private sector development. To this end, this report studies the main urban centers of South Sudan, with a focus on those that are part of the partnership for recovery and resilience (PfRR). The goal of this report is to inform policy for the first few steps toward peacebuilding and recovery. Findings in this report are based on data analysis on urban jobs, including the self-employed and household activities that are the norm for most workers. This synthesis report summarizes findings from four technical studies on: (i) urban job activities and welfare outcomes, (ii) the macro-economic framework, (iii) markets and market-based agriculture, and (iv) businesses and non-profit organizations. This synthesis report proceeds as follows: part one, introductory section explains objectives and methodology of the research and gives some country context. Part two discusses empirical findings on: (i) challenges of supporting jobs and livelihoods; (ii) the macro-fiscal environment for jobs; (iii) markets and market-linked agriculture; (iv) jobs in businesses and non-profit organizations, and (v) constraints limiting economic activity. A discussion of policy and operational implications including some costing of recovery concludes the report. -
Publication
Security and Justice Overview: Security and Justice Thematic Paper
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-03)The central theme of the 2011 World Development Report (WDR) is that violent conflict remains a constant threat to human rights, peace and sustainable development. While the nature of violent conflict maybe changing1 its negative impact on poor people in terms of rights violations, public health, forced displacement and diminution of life chances is the same. Critical to establishing peace and the necessary confidence between state and citizen is providing a sense of security, freedom from fear, and the protection of basic rights and entitlements. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship, overlapping and sometimes contradictory, between a range of approaches to security and justice in conflict affected contexts, and to place these efforts within a broader rule of law framework. This, it will be argued, greatly assists in addressing the kind of frictions and blind-spots that commonly exist in making the transition from violence to peace. The paper will then examine some of the instruments and approaches adopted by governments and international partners in addressing the kinds of stresses which result in violent conflict. Finally, it will examine the gaps in the international arena which continue to persist in this area of support. A series of security and justice-themed papers produced for the WDR 2011 outline in more detail the issues, approaches and lessons of the key components including: security, public security in peacekeeping settings, criminal justice, justice and administrative law, and transitional justice. -
Publication
Improving Security in Violent Conflict Settings: Security and Justice Thematic Paper
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-11-01)Violent conflict is the multifaceted and cyclical problem that the international community is trying to grapple with. To date, there has been a clear hierarchy concerning what forms of violence are seen to matter most, with political violence that threatens the state taking pole position. In examining this argument, this paper sets out a number of issues relating to security and justice definitions. It will then examine some of the problems associated with placing conflict into a box-set typology: mass violence associated with war and genocide carries unique features but also spawns new challenges which are often being ignored. The paper will then examine in brief some of the measures used by communities, governmental actors and international partners in contending with violence before outlining some key conclusions and recommendations. In reading this paper two further points need be borne in mind: 1) this does not provide a comprehensive overview of violence and security - that is the role of the World Development Report (WDR) itself, and 2) this paper does not present fresh research, but more an overview, along with the other papers in the security-justice series, of some of the key issues confronting policy makers in the domain of security and development. -
Publication
Social Contracts for Development: Bargaining, Contention, and Social Inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Paris: Agence française de développement, 2021-12-22)Sub-Saharan Africa has achieved significant gains in reducing the levels of extreme poverty in recent decades, yet the region continues to experience challenges across the development indicators, including energy access, literacy, delivery of services and goods, and jobs skills, as well as low levels of foreign direct investment. Exacerbating the difficulties faced by many countries are the sequelae of conflict, such as internal displacement and refugee migration. Social Contracts for Development: Bargaining, Contention, and Social Inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa builds on recent World Bank attention to the real-life social and political economy factors that underlie the power dynamic and determine the selection and implementation of policies. Applying a social contract approach to development policy, the authors provide a framework and proposals on how to measure such a framework to strengthen policy and operational engagements in the region. The key message is that Africa’s progress toward shared prosperity requires looking beyond technical policies to understand how the power dynamics and citizen-state relations shape the menu of implementable reforms. A social contract lens can help diagnose constraints, explain outbreaks of unrest, and identify opportunities for improving outcomes. Social contract assessments can leverage the research on the nexus of politics, power relations, and development outcomes, while bringing into focus the instruments that underpin state-society relations and foster citizen voice. Social contracts also speak directly to many contemporary development trends, such as the policy-implementation gap, the diagnostic of binding constraints to development, fragility and conflict, taxation and service delivery, and social protection. The authors argue that policies that reflect the demands and expectations of the people lead to more stable and equitable outcomes than those that do not. Their focus is on how social contracts are forged in the region, how they change and why, and how a better understanding of social contracts can inform reform efforts. The analysis includes the additional impact of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic on government-citizen relationships.