‘Peacebuilding’ Finds a Home at the United Nations

In 1993, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali signaled the importance of the concept of post-conflict peacebuilding in the landmark An Agenda for Peace. He defined it as “action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid relapse into conflict.” Since then, scholars, international and regional organizations, NGOs, states and other practitioners have attempted to better identify what institutionalizes peace after war and what steps are likely to further the peacebuilding enterprise.

Today, an impressive and growing number of organizations contribute to the cause of ending and preventing deadly conflict and use the concept to frame and organize post-conflict activities. And while practitioners and academics are still making mistakes and learning lessons, at the United Nations the practice of peacebuilding is at least more firmly rooted with the advent of the new UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC).

The creation of the PBC was one of the major achievements of the September 2005 UN Reform World Summit. By advancing integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery, the commission is intended to mobilize resources and catalyze broader efforts within and outside the UN system.

However, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Peacebuilding Commission have also given rise to questions regarding its long-term potential. This is due to:

1. the last-minute bargaining prior to the World Summit that left many important institutional arrangements undefined or postponed to subsequent negotiations; and

2. the PBC’s structure as an advisory body, subsidiary to both the General Assembly and Security Council, with a small secretariat (the Peacebuilding Support Office) and limited financial resources.

The PBC has successfully completed its first year of operations and implemented peacebuilding strategies for its first two country-cases, Burundi and Sierra Leone. The commission has also held important debates on thematic peacebuilding issues. 

Given the myriad sometimes overlapping agencies and programs that come into play in the implementation of peace agreements, it is easy to see the need for more coordinated approaches to post-conflict reconstruction. However, actual coherence and coordination in program delivery often prove elusive. Despite much good will and a system-wide commitment to “integrated approaches” at the UN, field coordination processes commonly have two main outcomes:

1. they result in mere ‘information sharing’ among agencies that otherwise do their own thing; and

2. conversely, they produce a ‘false coherence’ driven by the actor with the most power and resources. (The latter circumstance is a frequent criticism of NATO voiced by NGOs working in Afghanistan.)

Success for the Peacebuilding Commission will depend on its capacity to mobilize resources and commitments from other parts of the international system. 

WFM–Canada recently published a report entitled The New United Nations Peacebuilding Commission: Prospects for Effective Civil Society Contributions, co-authored by Fergus Watt and Ernie Regehr.

The report reviews the establishment of the commission and examines in detail the debate surrounding prospects for effective civil society engagement in the work of the PBC.

Investigations included interviews with UN officials, as well as representatives of permanent missions and civil society organizations, many taking place during visits to the UN in December 2006, February 2007 and March 2007. The report makes two broad recommendations.

Recommendation 1.

Rather than determine separate, detailed rules and modalities for civil society participation in various categories of PBC meetings, the report suggests that a more promising approach would be to elaborate general guidelines for civil society participation.

The June 2007 PBC rules codifying civil society participation arrangements are incomplete and have caused concern among some NGOs. Nevertheless, these rules represent a basis for further elaboration of practical working partnerships. The expectation is that, as the Commission gains experience and credibility within the UN system, such a ‘general guidelines approach’ will evolve. This would be consistent with the otherwise flexible meeting structure of the PBC. Implementation of these general guidelines should be the responsibility of a working committee including the PBC chair, and representatives of the support office and civil society.

Recommendation 2.

The second major recommendation is directed primarily at civil society. It is intended to bridge the large volume of academic and expert peacebuilding knowledge and research with the day-to-day needs of the PBC.

Civil society should develop the means to provide timely, synthesized research and analysis to members of the commission, the support office and other stakeholders. This ‘outreach function’ would mobilize existing knowledge and information. It would be additional and complementary to the documents, position papers and interventions provided by NGOs before and during various PBC meeting configurations.