Large-scale investments in fragile states – in Latin America, Africa, the former Soviet Union and Asia – have increasingly become magnets for conflict that undermines business, development and security. International policy has so far responded to these challenges with regulation, state-building and institutional reform, but with poor and often perverse results. Caught up in old ways of thinking about conflict and fragility, and an age-old fight over whether multinational corporations are good or bad for peaceful development, it leaves business-related conflicts in fragile states to multiply and fester.

Surveying a new strategic landscape of business and conflict, the authors conclude that neither company shareholders nor advocates for peaceful development need, or should, accept the growing cost of business-related conflict in fragile states. Drawing on decades of experience from mainstream conflict prevention and violence reduction efforts, as well as promising company practice, they show that even acute conflict is manageable when dealt with pragmatically, locally and on its own terms.

Speakers

• Dr Brian Ganson, Extraordinary Associate Professor and Head of the Africa Centre for Dispute Settlement at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, Cape Town
• Dr Achim Wennmann, Senior Researcher, Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, and Executive Coordinator of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, Geneva

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