Regional, international collaboration stressed to foster stability, rule of law across globe

The regional and international coordination and collaboration to nurture stability and the rule of law across the globe is greater than ever, according to a World Bank Policy Research Report.

The report released on Thursday stressed the need of the combined efforts as fragility, conflict and violence in different countries and areas threaten to reverse decades of progress and development.

The dramatic reductions in the costs of trade, travel and communication technologies over the years increasingly driven conflict, crime and violence across borders, according to the report titled 'Violence without Borders: The Internationalization of Crime and Conflict'.

Impact flows both ways: instability and failure to enforce laws in one country can have dramatic effects on neighbouring countries, and events or forces outside a country can influence stability and security within, the report finds.  

"This report documents how, in an increasingly interconnected world, countries have a growing stake in each other's fate," said World Bank Group Deputy Chief Economist Aart Aart Kraay.

"Political and social stability and a country's ability to enforce the rule of law have implications not only for that country but its neighbouring countries and their people," Aart Aart Kraay added.

By 2030, it is estimated that up to two-thirds of the world's extreme poor will live in fragile and conflict-affected situations, and the recent replenishment of the International Development Association, the World Bank's fund for the poorest, doubles financial commitment to such areas.

Violence without Borders documents the extent to which conflict, crime, and violence have become internationalized in recent years. The number of civil wars has increased since 2010, and 40 percent of these now involve foreign intervention.

Incidents of transnational terrorism have gone up significantly since 2010. Illicit transnational activities, including human trafficking, production and trafficking of narcotics, trade in illegal wildlife products, and small arms and marine piracy, are also on the rise.

Refugees are likely to travel farther, less likely to settle in an adjacent country, and are spread more evenly across destination countries.

"The internationalization of both the causes and consequences of violence means that stability needs to be reconceptualized as a bilateral, multilateral or even global public good," said World Bank Senior Economist Quy-Toan Do, the report's main author.

"Given that different players have different incentives, international institutions can play a critical role in stabilizing domestic fragility by moving settlement of disputes away from battlefields and toward global platforms," added Quy-Toan Do.

Although this report was completed before the spread of coronavirus, its findings are highly relevant to the current pandemic.

Like the forms of violence analyzed in the report, infectious diseases such as COVID-19 cannot be contained within borders, further highlighting the global impact of policies implemented within each country.

The benefits of international cooperation and shared global strategies as noted in this report are necessary to help address and mitigate the consequences of global threats from security to health.

The report calls for collecting data and knowledge to support evidence-based policy-making, ensuring that countries receive assistance in implementing policies aimed at reducing internal conflict and crime; and providing a forum for international policy coordination aimed at reducing conflict and crime.