Microfinance in the Wake of Conflict: Challenges and Opportunities

This paper provides an overview of the rapidly evolving practice of microfinance and microenterprise development in post-conflict situations, and documents the surprisingly few preconditions these programs consider essential to initiate a microenterprise development program. These include a reasonable amount of:

• Security or stability of access;
• Reemergence of some market activity;
• Certain assurance that, when refugees or internally displaced persons are the focus, they will remain in place long enough for programs to make and recover loans (18 months is the common benchmark).

In addition to these criteria are a set of preferable conditions that greatly facilitate implementation, but that programs have done without in the short term. Among these are a functioning banking system, the absence of hyperinflation, a certain population density (desired for both scale and security reasons), social capital, a skilled workforce, and a favorable policy environment. The paper discusses:

• Need to find quick solutions (and the longer term institutional problems of this);
• Most appropriate groups of candidates for loans;
• Need to rebuild trust between recipients;
• Staff security issues;
• Role of advocacy in a situation without centralized authorities.