Post-Conflict Peacebuilding
Don’t put the cart before the horse
Twenty years ago United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali proclaimed his Agenda for Peace, in which he put the relation between development and peace in a new perspective [1].Three years earlier the Cold War had come to an end. Those three years had been a period of relief, hope, and new ideas. Instead of investing in an arms race and risking destruction, resources could be allocated towards poverty reduction and the preservation of the earth, in short: sustainable global development. At the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, Rio de Janeiro, 1992) a consensus agreement was reached regarding a common program: Agenda 21,a priorityagenda for the century ahead [2].It was a program of action, introducing new political and legal frameworks to contain climate change, biodiversity loss and desertification. New values were introduced: human development, sustainable development, the principle of precaution, and common but differentiated responsibilities.
Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace, launched in the same year,made the new thinking complete by introducing a similar framework to contain violent outbreaks of conflicts within countries due to development deficits.In this Agenda a distinction was introduced between preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace-building. Preventive diplomacy was defined as action to prevent disputes between parties from arising, escalating and spreading. Peacemaking was meant to bring hostile parties to agreement, through peaceful means. Peacekeeping had the same objectives as preventive diplomacy and peacemaking, but this time by deploying a UN presence in the field, including military personnel. Finally, peacebuilding was considered a post-conflict exercise, supporting structures which could solidify peace, avoid a relapse into conflict and prevent the recurrence of violence [3].While preventive diplomacy seeks to avoid the breakdown of peaceful conditions, peacebuilding is meant ‘to forestall a re-emergence of cultural and national tensions that would spark renewed hostilities. Without such efforts’, Boutros-Ghali once said, ‘no peace agreement is likely to last for long’[4].
This implied that peacebuilding had to take place in close relation todevelopment. After all, the aim was, ‘in the largest sense, to address the deepest causes of conflict: economic despair, social injustice and political oppression’ [5]. So, post-conflict peacebuilding could take the form of concrete projects contributing to mutually beneficial social and economic development, for instance in the field of agriculture, transportation, water and energy resources, education and culture [6]. Once peacemaking and peace-keeping would ‘have achieved their objectives, only sustained, cooperative work to deal with underlying economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems can place an achieved peace on a durable foundation’ [7].
Challenging the consensus
Both Agenda 21 and the Agenda for Peace were phrased in rather ambitious language. In the Agenda for Peace reference was made to ‘(an) increasingly common moral perception that spans the world’s nations and peoples, and which is finding expression in international laws’ [8]. Both documents expressedsuch a new common moral perception. However, after 1992 the new spirit gradually faded away. National and international development policies came under the pressure of another emerging consensus: the Washington consensus. This had consequences for both development and peace.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall the iron curtain had been torn. All political, ideological and physical borders between East and West were fading away. This gave a boost to a new wave of globalization and cleared the way for neo-liberal policies in the North - both East and West - and in the South. Public policies had to give way to market forces. Like before, in the period of structural adjustment, social objectives came under the pressure of economic criteria, andinequalities increased.
The end of the Cold War between East and West had also consequences for the South.Before 1989 geopolitical strategies of East and West, both aiming to preserve their respective sphere of influence in the North as well as in the South, had stifled power relations, not only internationally, but also within countries. During the Cold War any form of internal political change which was perceived as a possible threat to the geopolitical status quo, and which could alter spheres of influence,had been made impossible by the big powers. This was no longer the case after 1989. Soon conflicts which had already existed for a long time within individual countries, but which could not manifest themselves due to pressure from outside, escalated into widespread and deep violence.
So, the Agenda for Peace found itself in difficulties. The new proposals concerning peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding had not yet been fully agreed by the UN. The relevant institutions did not have the capacity to prevent an outbreak of violence in countries such as the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda and Sudan. It was simply too much at the same time. The major powers in the Security Council of the United Nations were reluctant to share their intervention power and to make the resources available
for peacekeeping. Peacebuilding, seen as a post-conflict exercise, hardly came off the ground.
Soon thereafter in both fields, development and peace, efforts were made to revive the ‘increasingly common moral perception’ of the early nineties. At the World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995) consensus was reached on the need to put people at the centre of development, on paper anyway. World leaders agreed to make the conquest of poverty, the goal of full employment and the fostering of stable, safe and just societies their overriding objectives [9]. Boutros-Ghali himself presented two other Agenda’s: the Agenda for Development in 1994 [10], and the Agenda for Democratization in 1996 [11].The formerwas soon overshadowed by the Copenhagen consensus. The latter was more a position paper than an Agenda. It was considered controversial, did not receive consensus approval and was shelved.
However, in the same year Boutros-Ghali presented a Supplement to his Agenda for Peace, with proposals to enhance the effectiveness of peace operations, including a transfer of decision-making responsibility concerning post-conflict peacebuilding from the Security Council to the General Assembly, to the Secretary General himself, as well as to bodies belonging to the UN system which were carrying responsibilities in economic, social, humanitarian and human rights domains[12]. Two and a half years later the General Assembly responded by adopting a text which basically came down to a plea for better coördination [13]. It took ten years until the Security Council, acting in concurrence with the General Assembly, established a subsidiary body with the main task of taking care of post-conflict situations: the Peacebuilding Commission. This is an intergovernmental advisory body, not entitled to take effective action itself, but to collect resources for early post-conflict reconstruction and for the development of longer term peace-building strategies.
Boutros-Ghali’s initiatives brought him into conflict with major powers. Members of the Security Council granted him one term only as UN Secretary General. By now he has largely been forgotten. However, in my view Boutros-Ghali deserves to be complimented for his creative initiatives. The significance of his Agenda’s which should not be underestimated, though practical results were meagre.
Peacekeeping
In the mid nineteen nineties a former high official of UN, Erskine Childers, wrote a devastating critique on the practice of UN peacekeeping. In his view peace operations had failed for four reasons: faulty needs assessments, inadequate resources, bad timing, and, above all, ambiguity of mandates [14]. Childers blamed in particular the major powers in the Security Council, and accused them abusing their veto rights. For this reason Childers proposed reforming the UN in order to keep peace operations ‘genuinely multilateral and on behalf of the membership as a whole’ and to ‘develop alternative modalities, equipping the General Assembly with far more extensive – and if necessary operational – responsibility for the maintenance of peace and security, the preservation of mass human rights, and the succor of large segments of populations brought to humanitarian desperation by the tides of war’ [15].
This plea was in line with other proposals by Childers to restore the truly multilateral character of the United Nations, in particular in the field of development. Decisions of the UN concerning peace and development should be as representative as possible for the world community as a whole, more legitimate, more credible in the eyes of the peoples of the world, with a greater chance to be held in respect, and thus more sustainable [16]. Childers’ harsh judgments concerning the non-implementation of the Agenda for Peace were legitimate. However, one might argue that the international community had to learn how to keep peace in situations which had drastically changed since the end of the Cold War.Maybe the failures had been due to teething troubles of the first years. However, I am afraid that present judgments would have to be no less harsh. Since ‘nine-eleven’ the international community has not responded adequately to conflicts of a global reach, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Darfur, Libya, Syria and others. Adequate responses would require rather fundamental reforms. Based on my own experience in international development cooperation as well as peacekeeping, I recently presented reform proposals, which in my view would be both desirable and politically feasible [17]. Reforms of the political and administrative decision making machinery in UN Headquarters and its Agencies should, amongst others,enable peacekeeping, peace building, reconstruction, and development to be integrated into unified field programs. At the end of the day sustainable peace can only be accomplished on the ground.
During the last decade decisions by the Security Council and by UN Headquarters have been focused too much on peacekeeping. Preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peacebuilding have been neglected. Too soon too much emphasis was laid on one option only: peacekeeping missions with military means. The resulting UN interventions were either too late (e.g. in Darfur), too limited (e.g. in Congo), too strongly influenced by the interests of major powers(such as in Afghanistan and Iraq), or afflicting too much collateral damage, such as in Libya. There was always some harm to the peace process itself. The same reasons of failure mentioned by Childers -faulty needs assessments, inadequate resources, bad timing, and ambiguity of mandates - still apply. All these reasons are political, which means that failures were political. Preventive diplomacy and peacemaking, which in the Agenda for Peace had been clearly defined as multilateral political strategies, have not been seriously considered.
Peacebuilding
If, due to prevailing international political circumstances, preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peacekeeping are either absent or bound to fail, we are left with the fourth option: peacebuilding. In essence the concept of peacebuilding is based on the recognition that peace, development and democracy depend on each other. Development by itself cannot guarantee peace. However, without development there will be no peace. And, as Boutros-Ghali said in retrospect, ‘Without peace, there can be no development … Without development there can be no democracy, and without the basic elements of well-being, societies will disintegrate and enter into disputes. Without democracy, no real development can occur. And without such development, peace cannot long be maintained. … (The) young will be restless and resentful. Land will not be productive. People will fight for resources. And creativity will be misdirected, and disorder may prevail’. So, Boutros continued, ‘peacebuildingshould involve efforts to‘support structures to build trust and well-being among peoples ... (and) ... bridges between parties to the conflict. …The concept of post-conflict peacebuilding is the counterpart of preventive diplomacy … On a deeper level, both are contributions to the second stage of work for world peace: development’ [18].
In all official documents the four stages - preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding - are clearly distinguished from eachother. However, the ultimate objective is the same: peace. Moreover, the various functions overlap each other. For instance, should peacebuilding wait until a peacekeeping operation has been finalized successfully or can it start earlier. Moreover, peace building, meant to make peace last, should help avoiding a new breakdown into crisis, and include ways and means of preventive diplomacy.Conceptual indistinctness and practical confusion are unavoidable, unless strict separations are made. However, this way result in undue restrictions on the ground.
According to apath breaking UN study, the so-called Brahimi Report, peace operations were meant to ‘reassemble the foundations of peace and provide the tools for building on those foundations something that is more than just the absence of war’ [19]. To that end peacebuilding was was supposed to include activities in the fields of DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization and Re-integration of former combatants), demining, Rule of Law, police, monitoring of human rights and investigation of abuses, democratic assistance, preparation of elections, anti corruption measures and quick impact projects combatingHIV/Aids and infectious diseases. This is a mouthful, but it is explicitly not meant to imply a broad range of activities. On the contrary, in 2007 the UN Secretary General’s Policy Committeeconcluded that peace-building should comprise ‘a carefully prioritized, sequenced, and therefore relatively narrow set of activities aimed at achieving the above objectives’ [20].
The key word here is ‘narrow’. My own experience, when I was leading the UN Peacekeeping Mission in Sudan (UNMIS, 2004-2007), was rather disappointing. During those years we were effective as peacekeepers, enabling North and South Sudan to maintain the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in Nairobi in 2005. However, we were lacking resources to catalyze a peace dividend. The new state South Sudan would only be established six years later, after a referendum. After decades of war which had made two million victims and displaced another three million, the country had become one of the poorest in Africa. It certainly had economic potential, but in order to realize this potential both nation- and state building had to start from scratch, including the mobilization of own resources. In such a situation there is always a risk to flood a country with foreign assistance, which then will result in new dependencies. However, quite the opposite happened. Funds for demining were only meant to clear mines around our own barracks and the roads we used to monitor the implementation of the peace agreement, not farmer’s lands or school playgrounds. Funding rule of law activities was restricted to lecturing the police, rather than equipping them with some means of communication. Because of the ongoing war since forty years no new investment had taken place in power and water supply and sanitation facilities in the capital, Juba. Directly after the signing of the peace agreement refugees started to return. This resulted in a quadrupling of the population of Juba within a couple of months. No resources were foreseen for a reconstruction of these crucial basic services. In the rural areas no beginning could be made whatsoever with primary education or primary health care. Soon the World Bank and donor countries established offices in South Sudan, but the procedures which they introduced in order to design programs and projects were utterly bureaucratic. Years were wasted, during which the people of South Sudanasked themselves what peace really had in store for them. No wonder that disappointment and frustration got the upper hand. Lack of peacebuilding was not the only explanation, but it did not last long until renewed political, ethnical and criminal violence threatened the security and stability of the new nation.
‘Narrow’ is the opposite of ‘broad’. Peacebuilding, as we have seen, has to be in line with development. Development is broad, comprehensive, and holistic. That is not the same as ‘large’ or ‘much’ or ‘everything at the same time’. On the contrary: development can take place gradually and slowly. But it should be home-grown, not determined by priorities set by the forces outside. Military peacekeeping activities can easily introduce foreign interests, which restrict the domestic ownership of peace, or manipulate parties to a conflict in choosing particular forms of state- and nation building. When this goes hand in hand with ample resources, made available to finance programs of reconstruction and rehabilitation serving foreign interests in particular, this will lead to distortion of the conditions for genuine peacebuilding.
Do No Harm
The examples are well known. In Afghanistan peacekeeping has been connected with the US war against terrorism, in particular against El Queida and the Taliban. This has resulted in strong and unconditional support to one party in the conflict, the Afghani government, and in huge amounts of assistance to regions that are considered unstable. This has become a pull factor for instability, in order to benefit from the assistance. It has fed corruption. Collateral damage through civilian casualties is large. Feelings of revenche have increased. The possibilities for peacebuilding have narrowed. It remains to be seen whether they will still exist, after peacekeepers have left the country. Chances that the country will relapse into violence, the avoidance of which is a central objective of peacebuilding, are far from theoretical.