Peacebuilding theory and the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission: implications for non-UN interventions

Abstract

The extensive experience of the United Nations in peacekeeping and peacebuilding is beginning to reap rewards in terms of lessons learned and improved peacebuilding practice. Evolving peacebuilding theory and ideas about best practice to promote sustainable peacebuilding have been boosted by the creation of the UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC). This paper reviews sustainable peacebuilding theory and the potential contribution of the PBC to addressing some of the challenges faced by non-UN interventions such as the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), as well as the US-led interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. We argue that the adoption by non-UN interventions of peacebuilding principles and best practice could increase their legitimacy, accountability, transparency, integration and effectiveness.

Keywords:

• peacebuilding
• United Nations
• RAMSI

Acknowledgement

Significant preliminary research assistance for this article was provided by Joseph Toman whose report ‘An Assessment of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission in Theory and Practice’ was produced in 2007 while he was an intern with the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney. The authors wish to thank Nic Maclellan and Joseph Toman for their contributions to the research for this paper.

Notes

1 Ken Macnab, ‘Peace with Justice’, 2003 Annual Report of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (Sydney: CPACS, University of Sydney, 2003), 9.

2 In some cases, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and East Timor, UN and non-UN missions may co-exist in the one intervention context. The relationship between these various missions, whether run by ‘coalitions of the willing’, regional organisations or the UN, is an area of further study not covered directly in this article. The argument in relation to coordination and integration of peacebuilding efforts, however, is clearly relevant.

3 United Nations, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (New York: United Nations, 2000); United Nations, High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (New York: United Nations, 2005); and United Nations, World Summit Outcome (New York: United Nations, 2005).

4 ‘The mistakes that the Administration made in nation-building in the first term were, first of all, to discard or un-learn the cumulative knowledge that the US Government acquired during the 1990s’, former Assistant Secretary of State, Susan Rice, in Brookings Institution, ‘The U.S. and U.N. Roles in Nation-Building: A Comparative Analysis’, A Brookings Briefing (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, February 18, 2005), 19.

5 The term nation-building has been interpreted differently by different actors. The RAND Corporation's study, which examines the American experience with nation-building, defines it as the ‘use of armed force in the aftermath of a crisis to promote a transition to democracy’. James Dobbins et al., The UN's Role in Nation-Building: From the Congo to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2005), xv. By contrast, others, for example Oxfam, define it as an approach to building a nation. In this sense, it is closer to the definition of peacebuilding. Alternatively, Mark Berger conflates nation-building with state-building. He says they encompass formal military occupation, counterinsurgency, peacekeeping, national reconstruction, foreign aid and the use of stabilisation forces by intervening power(s). Berger, ‘From Nation-Building to State-Building: The Geopolitics of Development, the Nation-State System and the Changing Global Order’, Third World Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2006): 5–25. The definition used in this paper most resembles Berger's definition, as we regard nation-building and state-building as synonymous and contrast both with the broader mandate of peacebuilding.

6 Roland Paris, At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Oliver P. Richmond and Jason Franks, ‘Liberal Peacebuilding in Timor Leste: The Emperor's New Clothes’, International Peacekeeping 15, no. 2 (2008): 185–200.

7 Roger MacGinty, No War, No Peace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 10.

8 Oliver P. Richmond, The Transformation of Peace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 178.

9 Richmond and Franks, ‘Liberal Peacebuilding in Timor Leste’, 198.

10 Jessie Sutherland, Worldview Skills: Transforming Conflict from the Inside Out (Canada: Worldview Strategies, 2005), 46.

11 Dobbins et al., The UN's Role in Nation-Building: James Dobbins et al., America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2003).

12 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace 1995, 2nd ed. (New York: United Nations, 1995), 46.

13 United Nations, An Inventory of Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Activities (New York: United Nations, 1996). For a comprehensive overview of peacebuilding activities, see also Ho-Won Jeong, Peacebuilding in Postconflict Societies: Strategy and Process (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005). Jeong divides these activities into four categories: security and demilitarisation, political transition, development and reconciliation and social rehabilitation.

14 United Nations Security Council, ‘Statement by the President of the Security Council’, S/PRST/2001/5 (UN Security Council, February 2001).

15 United Nations, Executive Office of the Secretary-General, Inventory of United Nations Capacity in Peacebuilding (New York: United Nations, 2006).

16 See Wendy R. Lambourne, ‘Justice and Reconciliation: Post-Conflict Peacebuilding in Cambodia and Rwanda’ (PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2002) and Luc Reychler, ‘Violence Prevention and Peace Building: A Research Agenda’ (unpublished paper, University of Leuven, April 2006) for overviews of peacebuilding research and theory development.

17 Elizabeth M. Cousens and Chetan Kumar, eds., Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001).

18 Stephen J. Stedman and Donald Rothchild, ‘Peace Operations: From Short-Term to Long-Term Commitment’, International Peacekeeping 3, no. 2 (1996): 17–35.

19 Caroline A. Hartzell, ‘Explaining the Stability of Negotiated Settlements to Intrastate Wars’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 43, no. 1 (1999): 3–22.

20 Rolf Schwarz, ‘Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: The Challenges of Security, Welfare and Representation’, Security Dialogue 36, no. 4 (2005): 429–46.

21 Kirsti Samuels, ‘Post-Conflict Peace-Building and Constitution-Making’, Chicago Journal of International Law 6, no. 2 (2006): 663–82.

22 Alan Bryden, Timothy Donais, and Heiner Hänggi, Shaping a Security Governance Agenda in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, Policy Paper No. 11 (Geneva: Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, November 2005).

23 Paris, At War's End.

24 Luc Reychler, ‘Peace Architecture: The Prevention of Violence’, in The Social Psychology of Group Identity and Social Conflict, ed. Alice H. Eagly, Reuben M. Baron, and Hamilton V. Lee (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2004), 133–46; and Reychler, Democratic Peace-building and Conflict Prevention: The Devil is in the Transition (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999).

25 Luc Reychler, ‘Challenges of Peace Research’, International Journal of Peace Studies 11, no. 1 (2006): 1–16.

26 Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace Operations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 337–42.

27 John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997), 20.

28 John Paul Lederach, ‘Journey from Resolution to Transformative Peacebuilding’, in From the Ground Up: Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuilding, ed. Cynthia Sampson and John Paul Lederach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 45–55.

29 Reychler, ‘Challenges of Peace Research’.

30 Rama Mani, Beyond Retribution: Seeking Justice in the Shadows of War (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2002), 15.

31 J. Chopra and T. Hohe, ‘Participatory Peacebuilding’, in Building Sustainable Peace, ed. Tom Keating and W. Andy Knight (Alberta, Canada/Tokyo: University of Alberta Press/United Nations University Press, 2004), 241–61.

32 Lederach, ‘Journey from Resolution to Transformative Peacebuilding’, 55.

33 Reychler, ‘Challenges of Peace Research’.

34 ‘In the context of regeneration and peacebuilding, the concept of civil society can be understood as building trust, cooperation, compromise, inclusion and pluralism through non-state associations of all kinds’. Michael Pugh, ed., ‘The Social–Civil Dimension’, in Regeneration of War-torn Societies (London: Macmillan Press, 2000), 121.

35 Catherine Barnes, ‘Governments & Civil Society Organisations: Issues in Working Together Towards Peace’, discussion paper for GPPAC Strategy Meeting, (The Hague: European Centre for Conflict Prevention, October 2006), 25.

36 Mashood Issaka and Batabiha Bushoki, Civil Society and Democratic Transitions in the DRC, Burundi and Rwanda (New York: International Peace Academy, 2005).

37 Barnes, ‘Governments & Civil Society Organisations’.

38 Pugh, ‘The Social–Civil Dimension’, 129.

39 Barnes, ‘Governments & Civil Society Organisations’, 11.

40 Issaka and Bushoki, Civil Society and Democratic Transitions, 7.

41 Ibid., 8.

42 Espen Barth Eide et al., Report on Integrated Missions: Practical Perspectives and Recommendations, Independent Study for the Expanded UN ECHA Core Group (Oslo: NUPI, May 2005).

43 Eric Stover and Harvey M. Weinstein, eds., ‘Conclusion: A Common Objective, a Universe of Alternatives’, in My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 323–42.

44 Reychler identifies a narrow disciplinary mindset as a conceptual impediment to developing a comprehensive understanding of sustainable peacebuilding architecture. Reychler, ‘Challenges of Peace Research’.

45 Robert Ricigliano, ‘Networks of Effective Action: Implementing an Integrated Approach to Peacebuilding’, Security Dialogue 34, no. 4 (2003): 445–62.

46 Mark J. Mullenbach ‘Reconstructing Strife-Torn Societies: Third Party Peacebuilding in Intrastate Disputes’, Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding in Post-War Societies: Sustaining the Peace, ed. T. David Mason and James D. Meernik (London: Routledge, 2006), 53–80.

47 Reychler, ‘Challenges of Peace Research’.

50 United Nations, United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (New York: United Nations, 2005), http://www.un.org/peace/peacebuilding/index (last accessed May 21, 2007).

48 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1645 of December 20, 2005 and United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/180 of December 30, 2005.

49 Kofi Annan, In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All (New York: United Nations, 2005).

51 United Nations, Organization Chart of the United Nations (New York: United Nations, 2005), http://www.un.org/aboutun/chart.html (last accessed May 22, 2007).

52 United Nations, Organizational Committee of the Peacebuilding Commission, http://www.un.org/peace/peacebuilding/membership (last accessed May 22, 2007).

53 United Nations, Report on the Work of the Peacebuilding Commission, Sixth Final Revised Draft (New York: United Nations, June 26, 2007), 3.

54 Security Council Report, Special Research Report: Peacebuilding Commission 2007, no. 2 (October 5, 2007), 9.

55 United Nations, 2005 World Summit Outcome: Peacebuilding Support Office Report no. A/60/694 (New York: United Nations, 2006), http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/252/89/PDF/N0625289.pdf?OpenElement (last accessed May 22, 2007); and UN, Report on the Work of the Peacebuilding Commission.

56 UN, Report on the Work of the Peacebuilding Commission, 10.

57 United Nations, Arrangements for Establishing the Peacebuilding Fund Report no. A/60/984 (New York: United Nations, 2006), http://www.ipu.org/splz-e/unga06/fund.pdf (last accessed May 22, 2007).

58 UN, Report on the Work of the Peacebuilding Commission, 10.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid., 12.

61 Wendy Lambourne, ‘Towards Sustainable Peace and Development in Sierra Leone: Civil Society and the Peacebuilding Commission’, Journal of Peacebuilding and Development 4, no. 2 (2008) forthcoming.

62 United Nations Peacebuilding Commission, Provisional Guidelines for the Participation of Civil Society in Meetings of the Peacebuilding Commission, submitted by the Chairperson on the basis of informal consultations, PBC/1/OC/12 (June 6, 2007).

63 Center on International Cooperation (CIC) and International Peace Institute (IPI), Taking Stock, Looking Forward: A Strategic Review of the Peacebuilding Commission, an independent analysis by the NYU Center on International Cooperation (CIC) and the International Peace Institute (IPI), commissioned by the Permanent Mission of Denmark to the UN (April 2008).

64 UN PBC, Report on the Work of the Peacebuilding Commission.

65 Ibid., 10.

66 CIC and IPI, Taking Stock, Looking Forward; and Lambourne, ‘Towards Sustainable Peace and Development in Sierra Leone’.

67 Security Council Report, Special Research Report, 10.

68 In August 2003, on behalf of the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the former UN Development Program Administrator Mark Malloch Brown delivered a message to the 2003 Pacific Islands Forum Meeting, commending the collective action in Solomon Islands led by Australia and New Zealand, http://www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=455 (last accessed June 30, 2008). On 26 August 2003, the then UN Security Council President Fayssal Mekdad issued a press statement warmly welcoming the collective action of PIF countries. United Nations, SC/7853 Press Statement on Solomon Islands by Security Council President (August 26, 2003).

69 The RAMSI Treaty was signed by the Solomon Islands Government (SIG) and all participating countries, i.e. all the countries in the Pacific Island Forum. Australia sought, and achieved, SIG approval of the enabling legislation – the Facilitation of International Assistance Act passed unanimously by Parliament in July 2003.

70 Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands website, http://www.ramsi.org/node/6 (last accessed June 20, 2008). For a thorough analysis on the language used by bureaucrats, politicians and academics and others to describe RAMSI, see Tim Anderson's report The Limits of RAMSI (Sydney: AID/WATCH, April 2008), 12.

71 Dobbins et al., The UN's Role in Nation-Building. Much of the analysis in this paper on RAMSI was taken from the official transcripts of the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade on Australia's involvement in peacekeeping operations in 2007. This committee brought together prominent individuals from the Australian Defence Forces, Australian Federal Police, universities and think tanks, non-government organisations and others. Many of those appearing before the Senate have either been involved in RAMSI or have conducted research on the operation.

72 Solomon Islands country briefing paper, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, November 2007, http://www.globalcollab.org/Nautilus/australia/australia-in-solomon-islands/regional-assistance-mission-to-solomon-islands-ramsi (last accessed June 20, 2008).

73 RAMSI's Participating Police Force is made up of over 220 police from the Australian Federal Police and state police forces. It also includes police contingents from around the region. Elsina Wainwright, ‘Australia's Solomon Islands Commitment: How is it Progressing?’ (presentation to the Sydney Institute, November 29, 2005); and Senator Mark Bishop, trans., ‘Australia's Involvement in Peacekeeping Operations’ (Canberra: Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, July 25, 2007), 18.

74 Assistant Commissioner Mark Adrian Walters (trans.), ‘Australia's Involvement in Peacekeeping Operations’ (Canberra: Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, July 25, 2007), 20; and Professor Elsina Wainwright (trans.), ‘Australia's Involvement in Peacekeeping Operations’ (Melbourne: Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, August 20, 2007), 1.

75 Walters (trans.), ‘Australia's Involvement in Peacekeeping Operations’, 14, 40.

76 AFP Commissioner Mick Kelty, ‘2003 Institute of Public Administration Australia National Conference’ (speech, Brisbane, November 28, 2003), http://www.afp.gov.au/media/national_media/archive_of_speeches/2003/safety_how_it_can_be_achieved_through_collaboration.html

77 John Braithwaite (trans.), ‘Australia's Involvement in Peacekeeping Operations’ (Canberra: Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, September 13, 2007), 22–3.

78 Bob Breen (trans.), ‘Australia's Involvement in Peacekeeping Operations’ (Canberra: Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, September 5, 2007), 53; Australian National Audit Office, Coordination of Australian Government Assistance to Solomon Islands, Audit Report No. 47 (Canberra: Australian National Audit Office, 2006–7); and Australian National Audit Office, Australian Federal Police Overseas, No. 53 (Canberra: Australian National Audit Office, 2006–7).

79 Australian National Audit Office, Australian Federal Police Overseas, 18.

80 Brookings Institution, ‘The U.S. and U.N. Roles in Nation-Building’, 19.

81 Reychler, ‘Challenges of Peace Research’.

82 Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Our Failing Neighbour: Australia and the Future of Solomon Islands (Canberra: ASPI, 2003), 13–14.

83 Tony Coady and Michael O'Keefe, Righteous Violence: The Ethics and Politics of Military Intervention (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005), 95–7.

86 Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka, ‘Crowded Stage – Actors, Actions and Issues in Post-conflict Solomon Islands’, presentation to a forum on re-inventing government in the Pacific Islands, Honiara, cited in Oxfam Australia and New Zealand, Bridging the Gap Between the State and Society: New Directions for the Solomon Islands (Oxfam Australia and New Zealand, July 2006), 17.

84 Elsina Wainwright, ‘How is RAMSI Faring? Progress, Challenges and Lessons Learned’, Australian Strategic Policy Institute Insights 14 (April 2005): 10.

85 Michael Morgan and Abby McLeod, ‘Have We Failed Our Neighbour?’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 60, no. 3 (2006): 425.

87 Tim Anderson, The Limits of RAMSI (Sydney: AID/WATCH, April 2008), 3.

88 Ibid., 11.

89 Ibid., 11–13.

90 Clive Moore, ‘The Solomon Islands beyond RAMSI’, in Security and Development in the Pacific Islands, ed. M. Anne Brown (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007), 178–83.

91 Anderson, The Limits of RAMSI, 12–13.

92 Michael Fullilove, ‘RAMSI and State Building in Solomon Islands’, Defender, Autumn 2006, 31–5.

93 Neil Middleton and Phil O'Keefe, Disaster and Development: The Politics of Humanitarian Aid (London: Pluto Press in Association with ETC (UK), 1998); and Joel C. Beauvais, ‘Benevolent Despotism: a Critique of U.N. State Building in East Timor’, International Law and Politics 33 (2001): 1101–78 cited in Anderson, The Limits of RAMSI, 9.

94 Michael G. Smith, ‘Military Intervention and Humanitarian Assistance’, paper delivered to the conference ‘What Works and What Doesn't? New Directions in Conflict Intervention’, University of Sydney, Australia, February 1, 2008, 14–15.

95 Amin Saikal, Address to ‘Politics in the Pub’, Sydney, April 18, 2008.

96 Oxfam Australia and New Zealand, Bridging the Gap Between the State and Society, 28.

97 Moore, ‘The Solomon Islands beyond RAMSI’, 192.

98 Andrew Goldsmith (trans.), ‘Australia's Involvement in Peacekeeping Operations’ (Melbourne: Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, August 20, 2007).

99 Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998), 163–79; and Eide et al., Report on Integrated Missions.

100 Uvin, Aiding Violence.

101 Lambourne, ‘Towards Sustainable Peace and Development in Sierra Leone’.

102 Vanessa Hawkins Wyeth, ‘Getting the Peacebuilding Commission off the Ground: Including Civil Society’, Dialogue on Globalization Briefing Paper (New York: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2006).

103 Eide et al., Report on Integrated Missions.