Development and Conflict Prevention: Reflections on Rwanda: An Interview with Professor Peter Uvin (Interview‪)‬

Development assistance organizations are paying greater attention to the causes of conflict, asserting a link between poverty and violence and affirming the potential of designing more conflict prevention sensitive development policies and programs. The Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues at the University of British Columbia and the Canadian International Development Agency recently hosted the Vancouver Roundtable on Development, Conflict and Peace building: Responding to the Challenge, on February 14-15, 2002, where invited experts explored the possibilities of linking development and conflict prevention more effectively. Noted for his extensive field experience in following up the OECD-DAC Guidelines on Conflict, Peace and Development in 1999, as well as recent articles in 2001 and 2002 and a book in 1998 on the role of the international development agencies in Rwanda, invited Roundtable participant Professor Peter Uvin of Tufts University agreed to be interviewed by IIR Liu Centre post-doctoral fellow Erin Baines to elaborate his framework for taking action, presented at the Vancouver Roundtable. Given that each conflict situation is "too different, too unique, too idiosyncratic to generalize across cases, " as you wrote in "Some Reflections of Good Donor Practice," what can we expect from a Canadian strategic response to the issue of development and conflict prevention?