Civil-Military Working Paper 11/2010: Understanding what we’re saying – Dilemmas of the UN’s peacebuilding paradigm

Introduction

The most recent output by the UN Secretariat on the relationship between peacekeeping and peacebuilding describes peacekeeping, in its contemporary, multi-dimensional form, as an instrument applied in support of a larger peacebuilding process. Through the paradigm envisioned by the Secretariat, peacebuilding can arguably be understood as the organising principle that guides UN intervention – at all stages of the conflict cycle – in countries in crisis. The UN’s shift towards this peacebuilding paradigm, however, has operational and institutional implications for how the UN mandates, organizes and implements its peace and security efforts in the field. Some of these implications remain unacknowledged by the international community. As a result, the architecture supporting the UN’s peace and security activities stays wedded to an outdated Cold War-era peacekeeping logic.

The first section of this paper underlines the importance of conceptual and linguistic clarity to forge resilient agreements and develop effective strategy. Section two describes the evolution of the concept of peacebuilding in the UN and how peacebuilding relates to peacekeeping. The final section outlines some important but underacknowledged implications of (and contradictions in) the UN’s present understanding of peacebuilding.

Conceptual clarity is important

Certain definitions can be notoriously difficult to agree on; peacebuilding is one of them. A concept that is relatively new or one that changes over time and place as the understanding of it evolves can pose an even greater challenge. So we should not be surprised that peacebuilding, a relatively young concept, and one that is evolving, still creates confusion. Is peacebuilding a tool at the disposal of the UN Security Council or the Peacebuilding Commission – something the UN does? Or do others, such as local institutions, do it? Is it a stage in the conflict cycle during which a certain type of intervention is warranted? If so, is that stage before a conflict, during a conflict or after a conflict? How does peacebuilding differ from state-building or nation-building?

Peacekeeping, of course, can be similarly confounding. When we say ‘peacekeeping,’ do we mean traditional peacekeeping, multi-dimensional peacekeeping, peace support operations, peace enforcement, counterinsurgency, or all of the above? Despite their obvious differences in mandate, resources, scope, methods, and goals, ISAF in Afghanistan, UNPROFOR in the former Yugoslavia, UNFICYP in Cyprus, and MONUC in the Democratic Republic of Congo were all called peacekeeping operations.

Clarity, however, is crucial. Confusion over language and meaning continue to complicate discussions over important subjects inside the UN (e.g. terrorism, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and robust peacekeeping). Often, disagreements in the General Assembly’s Special Committee on Peacekeeping or the Security Council are papered over with imprecise language, rather than faced head on. Lack of clarity or agreement on language can set off a chain of events that makes the enormous challenge of helping to build a just and sustainable peace even more difficult.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Security Council has often managed to come to agreement on a resolution by one of two methods: a) using ambiguous or vague language, or b) including everyone’s wishes into one lengthy mandate – the so-called ‘Christmas tree’ resolution. The latter method has been most common of late; from 2002 to 2009 the average word count in Security Council resolutions rose from 586 to 1,675.¹ Similarly, it is often pointed out that resolutions renewing the mandate for MONUC and now MONUSCO include more than 40 mandated tasks for the resourced-stretched and politically-compromised UN mission. Overly descriptive mandates and their flip side, ambiguous mandates (seen throughout the 1990s), reduce the likelihood of clear and strategic direction given to the Secretariat. Poorly-crafted mandates of course create their own challenges for the SRSG, the Force Commander, and the rank-and-file in the field. This says nothing about outside observers, the media, and host populations, who rarely understand what the United Nations is doing, wants to do, or is able to do in post-conflict settings.²

The UN Secretariat has made repeated efforts to explain peacebuilding. However, each document it has produced on the subject since its first mention in Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali’s “Agenda for Peace” of 1992 paints a slightly different picture of an evolving concept.³ The latest effort, and perhaps the most explicit in its goal of clarity, was a four-page non-paper circulated to all UN Member States in October 2010, entitled “Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding: Clarifying the Nexus.”⁴ In it, the Secretariat rightly notes that “different constituencies continue to use the term ‘peacebuilding’ in ways that may diverge from each other and from the concept as articulated in reports of the Secretary-General.” This divergence results partly from the concept having evolved over the last two decades, but also from unresolved differences among actors and institutions regarding the exact nature of peacebuilding and the roles of peacebuilders.⁵

What is the difference?

When coined in 1992, ‘post-conflict peace-building’ was defined by the UN as “action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict.”⁶ Since then, three significant modifications have been made to that definition: a) the temporal scope of peacebuilding has broadened to encompass all stages of the conflict cycle (thus peacebuilding can also be conflict prevention); b) an emphasis has been put on national ownership of and responsibility for the peacebuilding process; and c) the goal has become a peace that is described as self-sustaining.

One can deduce the UN’s conception of self-sustaining peace from the description of peacebuilding priorities in the September 2010 DPKO non-paper.⁷ The document explains that peacebuilding priorities typically include supporting “(i) basic safety and security including protection of civilians and rule of law, (ii) inclusive political processes, (iii) delivery of basic services, (iv) restoring (sic) core government functions, and (v) economic revitalisation.” Although the UN’s actual priorities are said to differ from place to place, in reality, the UN often tries to address all of these areas when it has an integrated peacekeeping mission on the ground. As such, this paradigm becomes rather comprehensive and ambitious in its scope. This may be unsurprising, given the inherent tendency of a bureaucracy to expand its mission over time; the UN is certainly no stranger to this phenomenon. However, and importantly, it is also an acknowledgement of the intrinsic complexity and enormous difficulty of preventing conflict (or its resurgence): because we don’t know what exact combination of factors prevents a return to violence in a given context, we tend to work on all of them. The broader the scope of potential action is, however, the more difficult it becomes to set priorities, adjust methods to local context, and determine achievable objectives.⁸

If peacebuilding is a process, led by national actors and supported by the United Nations, with the goal of creating the conditions for a self-sustaining peace, what then is peacekeeping? In the new peacebuilding paradigm at least, peacekeeping is an instrument that aids in this process of peacebuilding. Given the broad definition of peacebuilding adopted by the UN Secretariat, literally no task of today’s peacekeepers falls outside of peacebuilding’s scope. Unlike the days of traditional peacekeeping, peacekeepers are now ‘early peacebuilders’ that ‘enable,’ ‘articulate,’ or ‘implement’ peacebuilding activities. The 2010 ‘Nexus’ non-paper describes in detail the role peacekeepers play to support each peacebuilding priority.

Implications and dilemmas of the peacebuilding paradigm

The landmark shift away from traditional peacekeeping and toward multidimensional peacekeeping operations with a focus on peacebuilding began in the early 1990s. The shift reflected both a growing appreciation of the complex, underlying causes of conflict, as well as an acknowledgement of the high rate of recidivism among conflict-affected states. However, the embrace of the peacebuilding paradigm continues to expose a number of conceptual and operational dilemmas for the international community as it struggles to build lasting peace under difficult circumstances around the globe. Despite many years of evolving peacebuilding practice in peacekeeping operations, many of these dilemmas still go unacknowledged.

The first dilemma related to the use of peacekeepers as peacebuilders is whether the goals and methods of peacebuilding and the goals and methods of peacekeeping are even compatible. Peacekeeping was invented as a tool for ensuring a so-called ‘negative peace’ (absence of war) among parties to a conflict, which requires stabilisation and ensuring the status quo. (Presumably, although they are now called ‘early peacebuilders,’ a goal of peacekeepers is still to provide safety and stability.) Peacebuilding seeks to create the conditions for a ‘positive peace’ in a society at large by addressing and transforming underlying circumstances that led (or may again lead) to conflict. Unfortunately, progress toward stabilization (peacekeeping) can jeopardise transformative (peacebuilding) goals. At the same time, any transformation of underlying structures or circumstances also runs the risk of helping de-stabilize. This is partly why peacekeepers in Lebanon, for example, are not given peacebuilding tasks.⁹

Tension can occur between the various objectives of a UN peace operation for a number of reasons, often because the UN is mandated to do more than it can actually do. As discussed above, the UN Security Council has had the tendency in recent years to create long, overly-descriptive mandates. Such mandates can include goals that are seemingly contradictory, and can lead to incoherent strategies implemented in the field. This is perhaps best-known in the case of the DRC, where a UN mandate to protect civilians is contradicted by its other mandate to work closely with and support the DRC government (and its armed forces, who are often the perpetrators of violence against civilians). It is not difficult to see how each of these two goals of the UN in the DRC could compromise the other. It also begs the question of whether there needs to be a ‘peacebuilding space,’ similar to the concept of ‘humanitarian space.’

Second, the increasing use of such a broad peacebuilding paradigm must have implications for how the UN understands its role in the world, and consequently, how it organizes its peace and security related intervention efforts. Although many UN member states would never admit to it as such, peacebuilding is now the organising principle of UN peace and security intervention. The purpose of the UN as framed by its Charter has not changed (to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war), but the post-WWII mindset that penned those words has, of course, been altered. Traditional peacekeeping was, during the Cold War, in part justified as a tool to stabilise conflict among proxy armies of the two major world powers. Today, however, few observers could claim that the goal of the UN Security Council’s interventions in post-conflict countries is the prevention of World War III. Rather, as can be concluded from the most recent Secretariat non-paper, much of the agenda of the Security Council now revolves around, and is guided by, this concept of peacebuilding.

Furthermore, given the broad definition of peacebuilding that has emerged, the UN Secretariat’s various departments now do peacebuilding. If peacebuilding is indeed prevention and is indeed political, the work of the Department of Political Affairs is peacebuilding; likewise for DPKO and DFS, whose peacekeepers are described as early peacebuilders. Given both the UN Security Council and the Secretariat’s orientation toward peacebuilding, peacebuilding is therefore not only a process of building peace in conflict-affected countries, but can also be seen as a de facto organising principle of UN peace and security intervention efforts.

The dilemma here, of course, is that in practice, the UN’s mechanisms, procedures and organisation are not consistent with the UN’s definition of peacebuilding, but rather are relics of the peacekeeping logic of the past. A small, but obvious example is that its new peacebuilding logic does not extend to how it labels its peace operations. During ongoing conflict (e.g. UNAMID) or immediately after the cessation of a conflict (e.g. UNMIS), the UN names its missions ‘peacekeeping.’ Directly following the end of a peacekeeping mandate, the UN will typically call an operation a ‘peacebuilding mission’ (e.g. UNIOSIL).¹⁰ Such terminology hints at – and likely fuels confusion over – the nature and relation of peacekeeping and peacebuilding. It would perhaps be more appropriate to use terms like ‘preventive peacebuilding missions,’ ‘early post-conflict peacebuilding missions’ and ’long-horizon peacebuilding missions.’

A much more critical example of this organisational confusion and the dilemma it creates relates to the fact that to be effective, peacebuilding support requires integrated action. Out in the field, much progress has been made toward the goal of integration, primarily through the adoption of the integrated mission structure, including the multi-hatting of the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General. Yet while the UN is integrating its field presence, it is seemingly uninterested in a similarly integrated headquarters structure. Although processes for coordination have been initiated in New York (e.g. the Integrated Mission Planning Process and the Integrated Operational Teams, etc.), an incoherent and outdated headquarters structure continues to preserve stovepipes in all departments, funds, agencies, and programmes of the United Nations.¹¹ This lack of integration is felt acutely out in the field as different funding mechanisms, personnel policies, and lines of accountability prevent swift and integrated action where and when it is needed. The persistent challenge of implementing effective disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs – in which different parts of the UN have to work together in a synchronized and highly coordinated manner – is evidence of this phenomenon. Reliable and flexible funding of peacebuilding activities is consistently cited as another victim of UN bureaucratic dysfunction. It is the hope; at least, that the creation and increasing use of the Peacebuilding Support Office and the Peacebuilding Fund might help fill gaps in coordination and flexible funding, respectively.

Finally, in addition to the dilemmas regarding the Secretariat’s organisation and its implementation of peacebuilding mandates, a further dilemma regards who defines what is to be implemented and how those mandates are decided. We are told that the peacebuilding process should be locally-led, that it varies greatly depending on the local context, and that success is highly dependent upon local actors. Given that the UN Security Council is composed of member state governments (a third of which come and go each year, some of which are non-democratic, and all of which may have self-interest in a specific peacebuilding process), both the Council’s legitimacy and its ability to develop effective peacebuilding support mandates has been questioned. Indicative of this problem is the tendency of the Council to draft long and complicated mandates with scores of un-prioritised tasks for the UN mission to carry out. Critics also point out that effective peacebuilding requires a long-term commitment and a strategy of decades, not years. Due to procedural and funding issues, the Council is forced to do its strategizing in six-month to one-year intervals. Some have thus suggested an increased role for the Peacebuilding Commission, in partnership with mission leadership and the host government, in developing peacebuilding support strategies.

Conclusion

Moving forward, the UN Secretariat continues to work toward better coordination, integration and more thoughtful peacebuilding strategies. For its part, the Security Council has committed to drafting smarter mandates through better consultation with relevant stakeholders, troop- and police-contributing countries, and the Peacebuilding Commission. Along with this important work, however, UN Member States should not forget about the broader conceptual and institutional questions raised by the UN’s stated peacebuilding paradigm. Honest discussions should continue inside and outside the UN regarding: the structure and mechanisms of the UN Secretariat, the engagement and role of the Peacebuilding Commission vis-à-vis the Security Council, the proper use of military as participants in and alongside peacebuilding activities, as well as the innate contradictions between the goals of peacekeeping and peacebuilding.

Endnotes

1. ←Numbers generated from IPI research included in the background paper for the 2009 “Hitting the Ground Running” workshop held for the members of the UN Security Council.
2. ←This lack of understanding is particularly harmful in the context of peacekeeping operations with protection of civilians (PoC) mandates. Host populations seeking protection are often tragically unaware of the low or inconsistent level of protection the deployment of a peacekeeping force with a PoC mandate actually offers.
3. ←Call and Cousens note that the word ‘peacebuilding’ actually dates back to Johan Galtung’s 1975 essay, “Three Approaches to
4. ←Peace: Peacekeeping, Peacemaking and Peacebuilding.” See, Charles Call and Elizabeth Cousens, “Ending Wars and Building Peace,” IPA Coping with Crisis Working Paper Series, March 2007,
5. ←“Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding: Clarifying the Nexus,” UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and UN Department of Field Support non-paper, September 2010.
6. ←For a discussion of different interpretations of peacebuilding by different actors and institutions see “Peacebuilding: what is in a name?,” Michael, Barnett, Hunjoon Kim, Madalene O’Donnell, and Laura Sitea, Global Governance, Vol. 13, No. 1, January, 2007.
7. ←Report of the Secretary-General, Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peace-keeping, A/47/277, June 17, 1992, para 21, p. 6.
8. ←This was earlier stated in the Report of the Secretary-General on Peacebuilding in the Immediate Aftermath of Conflict, (A/63/881–S/2009/304), June 2009.
9. ←See Mats Berdal, Building Peace after War, Routledge, NY, 2009.
10. ←One alternative critique of the peacebuilding paradigm is that peacebuilding, as conceived by the UN, the IFIs, and Western aid agencies, is not, in fact, transformative, but rather it tends to stabilize and reinforce the pre-existing socio-economic power structures that led to conflict. If this is the case, one might assume that using peacekeepers as peacebuilders will make the transformation of social, economic and power structures even less likely. For more on this critique, see “Peacebuilding does not build peace,” Tobias Denskus, Development in Practice, Volume 17, Numbers 4-5, August 2007.
11. ←There are, of course, exceptions to this pattern (e.g. the preventive deployment of peacekeepers in Macedonia, the preventive peacebuilding office in Guinea-Bissau, and the open-ended duration of a peacekeeping mission in Cyprus), which only create further confusion.
12. ←Former head of the UN mission in Nepal, Ian Martin, recommends the merger of DPKO, DPA, and the Peacebuilding Support Office in his article, “All Peace Operations are Political: a Case for Designer Missions and the Next UN Reform,” Review of Political Missions, NYU Center on International Cooperation, 2010.