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2020 FOCUS BRIEF on the World’s Poor and Hungry People October 2007 LAND ISSUES AND POVERTY REDUCTION Requirements for Lasting Peace in Sudan and Afghanistan Gunnar M. Sørbø and Arne Strand During the last decade, an increasing share of responded adequately to the challenge. In foreign aid has been provided to countries coming Afghanistan, postwar reconstruction efforts have out of civil war or experiencing severe conflict. Most been focused on establishing an effective central of these countries—like the Republic of Congo, state that operates under the rule of law and in Sudan, Somalia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia—suffer accordance with principles of transparency and from a combination of conflict, a state in crisis, accountability. While the U.S.–led coalition has underdevelopment, and poverty. Under most invested heavily in military efforts, aid strategies circumstances, poverty is greatly exacerbated by have created a state that depends on foreign funds conflict, but it is also one of a number of factors that and military forces for its survival. In the process, may contribute to violent conflict. Addressing what the role that rural land issues have played in driving Frances Stewart has called “horizontal inequalities” and sustaining internal conflict has been is, therefore, likely to play a role in preventing the insufficiently considered. In Sudan, the international shift from grievance to violence, as well as in community has been drawn into continuous crisis building and sustaining peace in postwar situations. management because of Darfur, as well as the slow In several countries that have suffered from and very difficult implementation of the protracted conflict, however, an approach focused Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in on poverty has been slow