Ostriches, wise old elephants and economic reconstruction in Mozambique

Abstract

The UN's support for democracy and elections in Mozambique, as part of the multidimensional follow‐up to the ONUMOZ peacekeeping operation, will not establish lasting stability. The involvement of the international community is at odds with itself in its failure to address underlying development problems in a coherent and consistent way. In spite of its rhetorical emphasis on long‐term development, the UN's resources are increasingly channelled into emergencies and peacekeeping. Moreover, there is a disjuncture between the UN's developmental goals and the policies of the Bretton Woods institutions which pressure the Mozambique Government to conform to structural adjustment objectives. Without attention to human security based on long‐term economic development, Mozambique's new political process and apparatus will be undermined, and the efforts of the peacekeepers will have been to little purpose. The risk for the international community of playing the ostrich by burying its head, rather than the wise old elephant who tends her herd, is that eventually the growing social disintegration of a whole continent could result in vast human migrations, heading for the centres of wealth and stability.