Authorized to rebuild? Who governs reconstruction in conflict-affected states in 2026?
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Article summary
Notes from the Civil Society Policy Forum on 14 April titled, Authorized to rebuild? Who governs reconstruction in conflict-affected states in 2026?. This panel discussed how, globally, post-war reconstruction is increasingly governed before rebuilding even begins. Upstream sequencing now links security stabilization, fiscal reform, and “readiness” benchmarks into a single reconstruction logic shaping how economies are rebuilt and who benefits. As IFIs redesign Fragility, Conflict, and Violence strategies and donors coordinate upcoming recovery frameworks, this panel asked: who sets these social and economic rules for reconstruction? Drawing on regional and global experiences, speakers examined civil society proposals for more equitable recovery pathways.
Moderator:
- Nabil Abdo, Senior Policy Advisor, Oxfam.
Speakers:
- Sahar Mechmech, Inclusive Economies Manager, TIMEP.
- Xavier Devictor, Advisor for FCV, World Bank.
- Nur Arafeh, PhD. Fellow, Malcolm H Kerr Carnegie Middle East
- Karam Shaar, Syrian Political Economist, Karam Shaar Advisory.
- Sarah Anne Rennick, Deputy Director, Arab Reform Initiative.
- Hossein Cheaito, Equitable Economic Recovery Programme, AWC.
A recording from this session can be found online here.
Nabil: Opening comments and panelist introductions.
Nur: We are framing this around counter-insurgency and disaster capitalism. A vision of Gaza that creates two Gazas: turning into a ‘green’ and ‘red’ zone, divided by a yellow line created in the ceasefire, one controlled by Hamas, and one by Israel’s military. Reconstruction would only proceed in the Israeli-controlled zone. The key point is the underlying logic – it seeks to win the hearts and minds of the population, discouraging them from supporting insurgents. In this framework, reconstruction is not a right but a reward for compliance. These reconstruction proposals have been developed and promoted by the US and Israel.
We are also seeing dynamics that resemble Naomi Klein’s idea of ‘disaster capitalism’, used to push through transformation during times of crisis, that might not usually be viable. Some of the proposals of the reconstruction of Gaza contain an externally-led body, the ‘Board of Peace’. It creates a question of sovereignty, over financing and governing. Reconstruction becomes a vehicle for external interests.
Where does the Bank fit into this? The instrument for reconstructing Gaza, the Financial Intermediary Fund was created… What’s notable is that the World Bank Group (WBG) assigned itself the role of the limited trustee – it holds no responsibility for how funds are used once transferred. This is a departure from how the WBG usually acts in such circumstances.
Nabil: What does this reveal in terms of the WBG’s Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV) strategy? Does it expose a contradiction between global strategy and on the ground?
Hossein: I want to express solidarity to the people of Lebanon. To start from the ground in Lebanon, that’s where the problem of how we frame reconstruction lies. It’s not post conflict, since early March, the country has entered a new phase of large scale conflict. More than one million people displaced, roughly a fifth of the population. The central question is not how we will rebuild houses, but how we grapple with the entire eco-system. These dynamics of resettlement are determining who will return, where reconstruction will be permitted, and what forms of economic and social life will be viable. The FCV framework that is being refreshed identifies delivery pathways and opportunities…but the thing about Lebanon is that these pathways are already defined, through the war, territorial control, and population management. We hear this from US and Israeli officials, which is about essentially extending displacement.
The state is debilitated. The state will therefore be reliant on WBG financing. It does align with the FCV’s differentiated approach, but essentially these criteria, any reconstruction that ignores the political economy and dynamics at play in Lebanon will undoubtedly fail. As the WBG is working on the strategy, it will have to grapple with this. There are three main things the WBG and FCV unit must focus on: the politics of return and territorial control, jobs creation is important, yes, and strengthening the private sector, but also this can’t happen in a vacuum.
Finally, who is bearing the cost of reconstruction? Even that which is more passive and informal, being passed on to households and income, taking on debt. They risk reinforcing a model that is informally financed.
Nabil: Are we witnessing a new model we can generalise globally?
Sarah Anne: We’ve seen increasing dispossession of local agency in peacebuilding. Reconstruction is increasingly a tool of subordination, control and extractivism. What gets reconstructed, who decides, what serves external actors. The rise of transactional diplomacy under the Trump administration. Reconstruction isn’t just about infrastructure, it’s also political systems, social protection, public systems. Tracing dispossession and peace activities that will address inequalities and increase sustainability, this has been an ongoing process for years.
The neoliberal state-building process has started to shift, stability becomes more important: counter-insurgency, clamping down on domestic threats and to an extent civil society. With an emphasis on the free market economy, this plays into the hands of elites. With the move to multipolarity and retraction of Western order, we are seeing competing authoritarian international order. The approach favours an escalation of conflict initially, displacement, colonial dynamics, to move towards reconstruction that focuses on ‘peace’.
The Twenty Point Plan under the Trump administration shows post-war reconstruction focuses on ways in which the US, Israel and their cronies can benefit. There is also a privatisation of reconstruction. Palestinian voices are pushed out, but also international organisations, in favour of private sectors. The higher education in Gaza needs to be focused on, to provide knowledge about and for itself. There wouldn’t be a possibility for Palestinians to have this type of authority over themselves because the decision-making has been moved outside.
Nabil: Reconstruction is not just physical, it’s also social and political. In Syria today…we’re seeing removing subsidies, changing tax systems, downsizing public services. Who is deciding this trajectory?
Karam: Interested in the Rwandan model of reconstruction: opening the country to the international economy, noticing the authoritarian aspect. Firstly, what is happening? We know there are significant tax cuts, the system has been flipped on its head to favour the rich and also exempt the poor. Tariffs have been reduced considerably. Subsidies have been removed for the most part, obsession with foreign direct investment. It’s a sad focus on the ‘trickle down’ approach. There is also an emergence of parallel state institutions (aside from the government), that answer directly to the president. The recent national budget has not mentioned the Sovereign Fund (which should deal with assets from the Assad era). In Syria, the approach is top down also in the government itself. The national agenda for recovery was barely consulted on.
When consulting on tax reform etc, the ministry of finance gave an email address only. The role of the WBG and IMF are just being told what to do in Syria, their role is cursory. FCV does not really have a role in the approach. In Syria, you feel the government is moving towards the idea, if you want representation, we are actually slashing taxes, so society has less representation.
I fully understand the temptation to use ‘shock therapy’, it’s tempting to reinvent Syria, but it just doesn’t happen this way. If we look at Rwanda, it took six years for the vision to emerge.
Nabil: One of the persistent distortions in reconstruction, we only hear about capital flows. Where do you see the burdens of reconstruction being displaced to? What does it reveal about the gendered impact of reconstruction?
Sahar: We know the WBG has its own gender strategy, gender seems to be completely absent from the refresh of the FCV strategy. While we hear it’s on top of the existing strategies, when we talk about gender mainstreaming, we want gender to be built into all processes. There are gendered effects to conflict itself, and they don’t cease to exist when we move to reconstruction. In Lebanon and Gaza, places of shelter are often hospitals and schools, access to these services is restricted, so the gap in care is put to women and girls. There are fewer resources to provide care. This burden means women are less able to work formally and provide income. There is a prioritisation of gender-blind private sector rebuilding. Reconstruction in Lebanon in the 90s, the result has been ‘disaster capitalism’ – elite capture, all the while failing to bring around the promised competitive markets.
We know all the financing poured into these rebuilding of physical assets means job creation, which comes with gendered distribution, gender gaps in labour markets are already deep in the MENA region, and they are deepened. We are talking about lasting detrimental impacts that come in contrast with the Bank’s jobs agenda.
We propose a care-work position that boosts the Bank’s focus. Robust social spending on services and safety nets. We are talking about building public buy-in and credibility for governments, preventing non-state and bad faith state actors from chipping away at the legitimacy of governments. Boosting social protection is fast and easy and creates stability. I insist on universal social protection rather than targeted, in conflict settings we are talking about high levels of need, and limited ability of states to set up registries. Universal options allow the Bank to decrease exclusion errors, and really supports its own job agenda. Today we’re asking the Bank to be coherent with itself and shareholders to deliver on the jobs agenda it has set for itself.
Nabil: There is a theme of invisible impacts.
Xavier: Let me start with three points: the regions are going through a difficult period involving tremendous suffering. I am not the right person to discuss high-level geopolitics, but I will be happy to respond to the points in terms of reconstruction. A long time ago, when I started at the Bank, our chief legal counsel was an Egyptian Bank, he liked to say we are the World Bank, not the World Government. We can support processes but not drive processes.
On the FCV strategy, taking the point on the fact we had mistakenly omitted the important paragraphs on gender. It’s not that it’s not in the strategy, it’s just that we should have highlighted it more. It is focused on what the WBG is doing well and what it should change. Most of it is at the country level. How do you get the 99 per cent of the funding that is missing? This is coming from the people themselves, rebuilding their lives personally, from diaspora remittances, the private sector. Among all the geopolitical trends mentioned, it has not been mentioned that both the humanitarian and ODA funding is being reduced. It’s not obvious to me that this trend will be reversed. How do we maximise this money? This is a challenge for many governments. Stronger leadership is key, as well as the inclusion of all segments of society.
Regardig the Rwanda model, compared with other countries in that region, was the strength of leadership in terms of being extremely clear about what they wanted, about asking for it.
Questions and answers
Speaker from Palestine: How can you think of young people as mobilisers? The Arab Spring came from uprising, it’s a sense of agency. Young people are apathetic.
Manar: On the apolitical nature of the development landscape, The peace development nexus, but in practice the work remains siloed, not technical. How do we bridge the gap?
Question from audience: Are there any positive examples where these pitfalls have been avoided in reconstruction?
Marie Clark, Women for Women International: Acknowledging you are not a government but a Bank, there’s a long history of institutional policy, how is conditionality working at this stage in light of criticisms? We’re hearing from women in Gaza and Lebanon that war has been such a mass disabling event, physically and mentally. How can we open up spaces for women?
Speaker from AWC: For Xavier, I would be interested from your own personal experience working in the WBG, how cooperative were the governments in terms of WBG policy? How much cooperation is there?
Xavier: On the mass disabling event, it’s very new, don’t think there are any solutions yet. On the importance of jobs, we share your point and concern. On how we bridge the gap on the nexus gaps – in the countries we work, the government is usually mandating coordination of partners. The less cheeky answer is that in some contexts governments are less capable. It’s important to make sure that whomever is making decisions has credibility. On conditionality, where do we stand on that? Conditions imposed from the outside don’t work. When a government wants to take reform in the right direction, providing financial support to do that does work. How cooperative are governments? Generally, if you impose things it doesn’t work. We can agree the structural adjustment period of forty years ago wasn’t terribly successful.
Sahar: As a former Tunisian youth who was on the street in 2011, it’s a little harsh to say the youth protested but didn’t have the solutions. We went to parliament, the government, IMF and WBG, and the media, to lobby them. They go behind closed doors and come back with something that is contradictory to our proposals.
It is that kind of dismissiveness that creates problems, draws a divide for women and youth. On a point about how the private sector will provide solutions – one aspect that is not being taken into consideration – the fiscal multiplier of things like social protection. The risk prevents people from putting money into things, because they know there are no services for them to fall back on.
Karam: On the peace development nexus. It’s misunderstood much leverage countries have on the IFIs. They listen to civil society because they have to, but don’t really allow them to influence the way they operate.
Sarah Anne: In my experience, working with youth in the region, they are far from apathetic. They are marginalised from processes. They are given the veneer of being included but the decision making happens without them. Creating spaces and including them fundamentally, needs to happen.
The first step on the peace and development nexus is bridging social protection responses, this is inherently about the social contract. That is inherently a political discussion.
Speaker: I have some experience, I worked in Kosovo. Destruction is very quick, reconstruction is a lifetime. Political systems, social capital are destroyed. Social protection and cohesion: WBG doesn’t really understand how to do this, local institutions know. All sorts of bad actors want to come in and act as saviours. In addition to social protection, you also need to create law and order. We saw how this suffered in Afghanistan.
Tim Kaldas: Xavier, you acknowledged gender not being adequately highlighted in the FCV refresh, do you plan to remedy that? Given the outlook report last week, do you think the Bank and Fund should prioritise more robust social spending to help prevent conflict?
Accountability Lab: We talk about foreign investment, do you have thoughts on domestic spending? On the FCV strategy, how is it addressing the absence of local voices?
Mia Tong: How do we define ‘local’ in these contexts?
Nur: We can think of key factors for success: not a top-down approach but bottom-up. They should be in control of reconstruction funds. It is about having people who are accountable to their population controlling funds. Reconstruction is not simply technical, it is highly political. We must make sure we’re addressing the root causes of fragility.
Hossein: The role of domestic businesses needs to be understood more completely. Businesses have been destroyed, they are operating in an impossible environment. War and displacement has shifted supply and demand for these businesses. The language of FCV frameworks mean they engage with businesses through a very narrow lens, without accounting for the conditions they’re operating in.
Xavier: I didn’t say gender wasn’t adequately addressed, I meant the paragraph could have been included. Gender remains included. I don’t deny the role that social policy should play, but how to finance it.
Nabil: Thanks to all the panelists. My summary is that any reconstruction process not rooted in national sovereignty is not legitimate.
