Special Report: Why some new countries are more equal than others
By Peter Apps
Dec 6, 2012 10:38am EST
(Reuters) - Not all new countries are really new. Some are born almost fully
formed; others have to start from nothing.
That difference is crucial to a new nation's chances of success.
More than half the youngest nations in the world were born or reborn after
the collapse of communism in Europe and had existed as independent states as
far back as the Middle Ages. Most regained independence with established
institutions - courts, banks, police forces, schools - and skilled people to
run them.
After an initial decade or so of wrenching economic change, places such as
Croatia, Estonia and Slovenia began to boom, boosted by the promise of
membership of the European Union. Former communist states such as the Czech
Republic have come through the global financial crisis in better shape than
richer neighbors.
At the other end of the spectrum are far poorer young nations such as South
Sudan, Eritrea and East Timor, all born following armed struggle and
boasting far fewer institutions and far fewer of the type of skilled
bureaucrats countries need if they are to prosper.
South Sudan, whose first year Reuters has chronicled in a series of special
reports, is the most extreme example of that. When it won a measure of
autonomy from Sudan in 2005, its roster of organized, national institutions
began and ended with its army.
The desire to secede was understandable. Most Southern Sudanese had - and
have - profound ethnic and religious differences with their former rulers in
Khartoum, who alternately neglected or fought the south.
But when it gained full independence last year, just one in four South
Sudanese adults could read or write; only two percent of children are
enrolled in secondary education. It still has only 300 km (186 miles) of
paved roads. Over a quarter of the population will require food assistance
this year.
If South Sudan's more developed neighbors - places such as Ethiopia and Chad
- are any measure, the newest nation on the planet will have to rely on the
United Nations and aid groups for years to come, even if it develops quickly
and smoothly.
"In the case of South Sudan, you don't reconstruct, you don't rebuild, you
start from scratch," Hilde Johnson, the U.N. Secretary General's Special
representative for South Sudan, told Reuters just before the first
anniversary of independence in July.
WINNING TRAITS
A Reuters examination of more than a dozen key indicators in the 31 nations
founded or reconstituted since 1990 shows just how steep a climb South Sudan
faces (see chart for six key indicators).
Almost all the most successful new countries had a welter of winning traits
from the start: stable and often generous neighbors, strong institutions,
homogenous and well educated populations, and relatively low corruption.
The best performing - places such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Lithuania, and Estonia, as well as the single most successful, a reunited
<
http://www.reuters.com/places/germany> Germany - have been those with the
longest prior experience of nationhood and centralized government. They are
also, strikingly, countries with more limited natural resources of their
own, and economies built on commerce and trade.
On measures including life expectancy, perceptions of corruption, education,
press freedom and the rule of law, the former communist nations of Eastern
Europe have generally improved more than new countries elsewhere.
In contrast, resource-rich states such as
<
http://www.reuters.com/places/russia> Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and
Kazakhstan have performed well on aggregate figures such as GDP per capita,
but rank close to the bottom when it comes to effectiveness of government,
rule of law and transparency. This is unsurprising. Economists have long
known that the combination of weak institutions and easy cash can be
particularly destructive.
One of the worst performing new countries by many measures is
<
http://www.reuters.com/places/yemen> Yemen, a fusion of two struggling
states with a dysfunctional economy and little tradition of effective
government. While the country has begun to tap its reserves of natural gas,
corruption and one of the fastest growing populations in the world are
likely to keep its people poor.
It's not all bad news. Many of the very poorest young states have seen
improvements in income and health over the past couple of decades. Even when
international aid has not been able to keep the country stable, it has often
saved lives.
Two of the most troubled, Yemen and Eritrea, have experienced significant
improvements in life expectancy. Infant mortality has fallen in all of the
newest 31 nations, and children are spending more time in school. Even in
Somalia, generally regarded as the world's most troubled state,
international handouts have kept child mortality from rising sharply.
And there are exceptions to these trends.
Development experts hope that East Timor may join the short list of
developing nations to escape the resource curse - in which natural resources
hurt growth rather than boost it.
East Timor, which split away from <
http://www.reuters.com/places/indonesia>
Indonesia in 2002, has been helped by billions of dollars worth of oil and
gas. With the aid of advisers from model nations such as Norway it has built
up more than $11 billion in a fund created to ensure good management of its
oil and gas money and make sure that its 1.1 million people have something
to live on when the resources run out.
The tiny Indian Ocean state also has powerful friends - in particular
<
http://www.reuters.com/places/australia> Australia, which has provided
troops several times to stabilize the country during periods of unrest.
But even good friends don't guarantee success. For all its support from the
West, and despite rapid economic growth, the former Yugoslav Republic of
Kosovo has struggled with corruption and organized crime. It doesn't help
that the country still exists in a state of legal limbo, un-recognized by
Moscow or Beijing and heavily dependent on the UN, EU and NATO for aid and
protection.
BUILDING COUNTRIES
The kind of massive aid and institution-building efforts deployed in South
Sudan over the past few years show particularly mixed results, even in
countries that are not starting from scratch. A multibillion-dollar aid and
military mission to Somalia in the early 1990s did little to stop it falling
deeper into chaos (though in the past few months it has finally shown signs
of progress, in part thanks to an African peacekeeping mission).
Peacekeepers, development experts and billions of dollars of aid in the
Democratic Republic of <
http://www.reuters.com/places/congo> Congo and
Haiti continue to struggle to keep the peace and even basic services
running.
Writing in Britain's Guardian newspaper last week, Richard Dowden, head of
the London-based Royal African Society, argued that Congo has been hurt most
by its politics. "Aid has probably made things worse by offering development
which may never be delivered," he wrote. "There is no state capable of
delivering it. If ever there was a case for a country to be under a UN
mandate, it is Congo. The United Nations' current half-baked,
ill-thought-out mandate was cruelly exposed last week as UN troops stood
back to allow rebels to take the city of Goma in eastern Congo."
The United States and other powers supported the birth of South Sudan not
because they thought the country had brilliant prospects but because
independence looked better than the alternative: the continuation of a
decades-long civil war that had claimed some 2 million lives. The southern
rebels and their Western backers - including evangelical churches and
campaigners in Washington DC - had made a convincing argument that South
Sudan deserved to be free.
But freedom brings fresh challenges.
"The international community can't build countries," says John Temin, a
veteran former humanitarian worker and now head of the Sudan project at the
United States Institute for Peace, a U.S. government-funded think tank.
"Countries have to build themselves. We can only help. We are getting very
good at stopping people from dying, but we're not good at building
institutions."
South Sudan's deputy health minister, Dr. Yatta Lori Lugor, believes the
problem often lies with those seeking to help as much as those receiving
aid. "In general (non-governmental organizations) help but some of them come
just for themselves," he said. "This is very frustrating."
Can South Sudan, the world's 193rd country by the United Nations' count,
prosper? In its first 16 months it has come close to war with its old
masters and rivals in Khartoum, seen several ethnic massacres, the biggest
of which killed more than 800 people, and had to survive without 98 percent
of its income Amid an oil-industry shutdown.
Such problems are to be expected, according to John Christofides, a former
head of the United Nations Department of Peace Keeping Operations' South
Sudan team and now in charge of all other peacekeeping operations in Africa.
When it comes to nation-building, "you often find the operation will be in
the country much longer than you expected."
For Garang Kuach, the County Commissioner for Aweil West, that misses the
point.
"This is our land," he said, standing in Freedom Square, a patch of dusty
earth in the town of Gok Machar, half an hour's drive from the border with
Sudan. "You cannot say it is yours. (Independence) is better for us. It
gives us freedom."
(With reporting by Amna Bagadi, Costas Pitas, Clare Hutchison, Sophie Walker
and Sara Ledwith in London, and Hereward Holland in Gok Machar, South Sudan;
Edited by Simon Robinson)
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Received on Thu Dec 06 2012 - 15:10:58 EST
