Of the many forms of aid to administer a society fresh from the ruins of war, peacekeeping forces generally top the UN’s list, and for good reason. The post-conflict window for peacekeepers to act is often fleeting and always critical, determining whether peace talks will go forward or prevailing uncertainty will precipitate a slide back. But keeping the peace is only one, initial step in the protracted process of reviving and rehabilitating a war torn society--a reality the UN formally recognized only recently.
In December of 2005, the UN’s blue-helmeted peacekeeping corps welcomed long overdue assurance of coordinated civilian reinforcements to supervise the subsequent and equally critical phase of the steep, slippery peace process: peacebuilding.
Acting concurrently, the Security Council and the General Assembly formed the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), an inter-governmental advisory body charged with bridging the precarious gap between immediate post-conflict volatility and medium- to long-term stability from which a self-sufficient, peaceful recovery can emerge.
Some UN critics have been tempted to frame the peacekeeper/peacebuilder distinction as little more than a semantic ploy to introduce yet another voice into already cacophonous peace missions. But such a characterization is flawed: the two bodies actually play distinct roles that complement one another and bolster the societies for which they are working, thus harmonizing, not muddling, the peace process.
The PBC’s role is to mobilize all relevant actors in a post-conflict setting, advise them on integrated strategies, and marshall necessary resources, all for the broader purposes of building a sustainable infrastructure, economy, and government to support peaceful recovery. Along the way, the PBC is to formulate best practices on collaborative issues involving political, security, humanitarian and development actors. Its objectives are designed to pick up where the blue helmets’ services end, namely, when a post-conflict peace accord has been reached or security concerns improve substantially. In short, peacebuilders free up peacekeeper resources by enabling the latter to secure an area and move on to other volatile post-conflict zones sooner than would have been the case without a concerted civilian recovery force.
So how has the PBC measured up in practice? For a relatively young inter-governmental body, its track record is fairly strong, though not without room for improvement. Its first independent progress report came in July of 2007 from the NGO consortium ActionAid, CARE, and Catholic Agencies for Overseas Development. Evaluating the PBC’s pilot missions in Sierra Leone and Burundi, the report praised its impact as “largely positive and well-received,” before recommending that peacebuilding strategies be more fully developed prior to Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) allocation, and that these funds be conditional on political commitments.
Later that year, another NGO, Security Council Report (SCR), lauded the PBC’s considerable contributions to Sierra Leone, Burundi, and the broader peacebuilding community. It emphasized, however, that the Commission is yet young and peacebuilding missions ahead would undoubtedly reveal and test its weaknesses.
In early 2008, NYU’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC) and International Peace Institute (IPI) also came away with a generally favorable view of the PBC’s development, but reiterated the SCR’s reluctance to forecast continued success too confidently based on such a short track record, however strong. One of NYU’s more forceful recommendations was that the PBC continue to strengthen its newfound catalytic role as the global crossroads for political, security, financial, humanitarian and development actors.
More recently, in July of 2009, the President of the Security Council requested a progress report from the UN Secretary-General, published one year later. The report applauded recent PBC efforts in working toward building a stronger, more accountable leadership, completing an international review of civilian capacity, and establishing system-wide strategy and planning standards at the field level. However, it also underlined certain PBC shortcomings, such as an underdeveloped collaborative relationship with the World Bank and unreliable working methods to implement rule of law and security sector reforms. In particular, the report emphasized the need to bolster national capacity and, echoing NYU’s advice, solidify the PBC’s role as a meeting ground for international peacebuilding actors to collaborate.
Of late, the PBC’s agenda has expanded ambitiously to include Guinea-Bissau, Central African Republic and Liberia, bringing the advisory body’s number of peacebuilding missions to five on its fifth birthday. Expansion of responsibility at this rate will require corresponding growth in qualified personnel, logistical capacity, and a leadership that knows how to juggle. Otherwise, the PBC may go the way of so many other multilateral bodies that lost their grip on the mission and dropped the ball.
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Keeping the Peace: The UN Peacebuilding Commission Five Years On
January 22, 2011
Of the many forms of aid to administer a society fresh from the ruins of war, peacekeeping forces generally top the UN’s list, and for good reason. The post-conflict window for peacekeepers to act is often fleeting and always critical, determining whether peace talks will go forward or prevailing uncertainty will precipitate a slide back. But keeping the peace is only one, initial step in the protracted process of reviving and rehabilitating a war torn society--a reality the UN formally recognized only recently.
In December of 2005, the UN’s blue-helmeted peacekeeping corps welcomed long overdue assurance of coordinated civilian reinforcements to supervise the subsequent and equally critical phase of the steep, slippery peace process: peacebuilding.
Acting concurrently, the Security Council and the General Assembly formed the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), an inter-governmental advisory body charged with bridging the precarious gap between immediate post-conflict volatility and medium- to long-term stability from which a self-sufficient, peaceful recovery can emerge.
Some UN critics have been tempted to frame the peacekeeper/peacebuilder distinction as little more than a semantic ploy to introduce yet another voice into already cacophonous peace missions. But such a characterization is flawed: the two bodies actually play distinct roles that complement one another and bolster the societies for which they are working, thus harmonizing, not muddling, the peace process.
The PBC’s role is to mobilize all relevant actors in a post-conflict setting, advise them on integrated strategies, and marshall necessary resources, all for the broader purposes of building a sustainable infrastructure, economy, and government to support peaceful recovery. Along the way, the PBC is to formulate best practices on collaborative issues involving political, security, humanitarian and development actors. Its objectives are designed to pick up where the blue helmets’ services end, namely, when a post-conflict peace accord has been reached or security concerns improve substantially. In short, peacebuilders free up peacekeeper resources by enabling the latter to secure an area and move on to other volatile post-conflict zones sooner than would have been the case without a concerted civilian recovery force.
So how has the PBC measured up in practice? For a relatively young inter-governmental body, its track record is fairly strong, though not without room for improvement. Its first independent progress report came in July of 2007 from the NGO consortium ActionAid, CARE, and Catholic Agencies for Overseas Development. Evaluating the PBC’s pilot missions in Sierra Leone and Burundi, the report praised its impact as “largely positive and well-received,” before recommending that peacebuilding strategies be more fully developed prior to Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) allocation, and that these funds be conditional on political commitments.
Later that year, another NGO, Security Council Report (SCR), lauded the PBC’s considerable contributions to Sierra Leone, Burundi, and the broader peacebuilding community. It emphasized, however, that the Commission is yet young and peacebuilding missions ahead would undoubtedly reveal and test its weaknesses.
In early 2008, NYU’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC) and International Peace Institute (IPI) also came away with a generally favorable view of the PBC’s development, but reiterated the SCR’s reluctance to forecast continued success too confidently based on such a short track record, however strong. One of NYU’s more forceful recommendations was that the PBC continue to strengthen its newfound catalytic role as the global crossroads for political, security, financial, humanitarian and development actors.
More recently, in July of 2009, the President of the Security Council requested a progress report from the UN Secretary-General, published one year later. The report applauded recent PBC efforts in working toward building a stronger, more accountable leadership, completing an international review of civilian capacity, and establishing system-wide strategy and planning standards at the field level. However, it also underlined certain PBC shortcomings, such as an underdeveloped collaborative relationship with the World Bank and unreliable working methods to implement rule of law and security sector reforms. In particular, the report emphasized the need to bolster national capacity and, echoing NYU’s advice, solidify the PBC’s role as a meeting ground for international peacebuilding actors to collaborate.
Of late, the PBC’s agenda has expanded ambitiously to include Guinea-Bissau, Central African Republic and Liberia, bringing the advisory body’s number of peacebuilding missions to five on its fifth birthday. Expansion of responsibility at this rate will require corresponding growth in qualified personnel, logistical capacity, and a leadership that knows how to juggle. Otherwise, the PBC may go the way of so many other multilateral bodies that lost their grip on the mission and dropped the ball.
