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Contributions from
the Column
Focus
Interview with Tilman Evers: “Small beginnings, great potential” of civilian engagement
Rolf Paasch: Illusions of intervention in Afghanistan
Dominic Johnson: Congo’s recent electoral split
Peter Croll and Volker Franke: UN Peacebuilding Commission needs positive notion of peace
Francis Rolt: Media’s role is often misunderstood
12/2006
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Positive peace
In the 1990s, conversion was an important buzzword for policy-makers. Military processes, resources and structures were supposed to be converted for civilian use. In recent years, however, military and security concerns are increasingly overshadowing development programmes, which are so important in view of globalisation, in a similar fashion as they did in the Cold War era. Whether the United Nation’s recently formed Peacebuilding Commission will halt this trend depends on whether it applies an adequately broad notion of peace.
[ By Peter Croll and Volker Franke ]
Germany’s Federal Government estimates expenditure for development cooperation will amount to ¤4.5 billion in its 2007 budget. Defence expenditure for the same time period will amount to ¤28.4 billion, according to the Finance Ministry. Globally, the gap between military spending and development assistance is even wider, with a ratio of one to ten – and still widening. It is particularly alarming that military funds spent on conflict prevention and post-conflict initiatives are primarily geared towards stabilising security in the short- and medium-term, rather than towards creating lasting peace.
There have been times when military intervention by the international community brought civil strife to an end. However, the risk of renewed conflict in post-war societies is ten times higher on average than before a war (Collier, 2003). According to UN data, half of the conflicts supposedly settled in the past twenty years flared up again within five years.
Creating lasting peace requires more than external force. This fact has never been disputed internationally. After all, central reasons for conflict – for example poverty – remain untackled by military intervention. The classic approaches of peace-making, peace-keeping and peace-enforcement deal with peace in a negative sense – understood merely as an absence of war.
Tackling sources of conflict
Complementary to these approaches, it is necessary to create conditions for lasting, “positive” peace. Structural and cultural violence needs to be overcome, just as much as physical violence does. We need a holistic understanding of violence, summarising everything that prevents individuals from fully developing their potentials, including all forms of discrimination, unfair distribution of wealth, unequal educational opportunities and disadvantages due to environmental damages. None of these factors generally affect the physical integrity of people, but they do contribute to the ideology and cognitive justification of violence. Positive peace in this expanded view opposes direct and indirect violence in general and thus transcends security understood in merely military terms.
Against this background, the “post-conflict peace-building” approach Boutros Boutros-Ghali introduced in 1992, during his term as UN Secretary General, gains significance. It was about identifying and supporting structures which tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid relapses into conflict. This approach was the basis for the expanded concept of peace and security, which was meant to guide UN peace-keeping missions. In practice, however, political and military goals still dominate far too often. The proof is in mandates with relatively short timeframes and smallish budgets.
Ulrich Schneckener divides the measures taken by peace-building actors into four strategic categories:
– political and economic liberalisation in the sense of early elections, the introduction of market economies and privatisation;
– the restoration of national security and state monopolies on the use of force (including the separation of conflict parties, security-sector reform and the demobilisation and reintegration of ex-combatants);
– the promotion of civil society locally, as democracy and positive peace must be supported by the population concerned; and
– the institutionalisation and consolidation of state structures in order to reduce the probability of conflict.
Obviously, these objectives are not exclusive, but rather mutually reinforcing. With regard to the outcome of peace-building efforts over the past few years, however, the question arises whether it really suffices to strengthen civil society and jump start democratic institutions, which, after all, need to be rooted in local communities. The budgets approved show that all too often the main focus is still on security according to predominantly military terms.
However, positive peace begins in people’s minds. They must be able to be feel and live it. A precondition is to dismantle prejudices, stereotypes and misguided perceptions – especially after long conflicts. In this context, civil society provides a central element for participative democracy. It is indispensable for institutionalising sustainable non-violent forms of managing and resolving disputes. However, one needs to check which civil-society actors are capable, willing and respected enough to promote peace in the long run.
To effectively enhance civil components in peace consolidation, one needs funds, the attention of policy-makers and coordination of all actors involved. However, in practice we witness glaring disparities between how ambitiously tasks are defined and how little staff and funds are made available in the mid-term, that is as early as two to five years after a ceasefire. In comparison, the international community is quite prepared to provide humanitarian aid immediately after a conflict has been stopped. It is far more difficult to mobilise funds for longer term reconstruction work.
Furthermore, strategic planning is made difficult because money for civil measures – such as the reintegration of combatants – must first be applied for at donor conferences. The financing of security measures (deployment of Blue Helmets, demobilisation of combatants), on the other hand, is covered by compulsory contributions by UN member states. Their high levels of national military spending make such jobs easier.
As a general rule, the UN Security Council alone is responsible for post-conflict countries. The council is guided primarily by classic security motives – largely thanks to its five permanent members. As violence dies down, so does interest in any given conflict region. Similarly, the media are more interested in combat than in tender buds of peace. Accordingly, the donor community makes less money available.
New UN body
The fragmentation of the UN system hampers coordination and integration of military and civil actors, and makes coherent strategic planning difficult. One year ago, the UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) was created to redress this deplorable state of affairs. The PBC has the task of supporting the dialogue of all relevant actors in a specific post-conflict context, drawing up integrated peace-building strategies and holding the international community’s political and financial attention and keeping their engagement in terms of personnel in the medium- and long term.
In summer, the Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies stated that many unanswered questions remain, including the financing of the Commission, its composition and size, the institutional design of the Support Office, the actual issues it will pursue, the downplaying of conflict prevention, and the potential for establishing consensus on best practises. The inclusion of civil society is indeed provided for in the relevant UN resolutions and PBC rules of procedure. However the modalities for their involvement are still unclear, which means there is a risk of inadequate consultation.
Furthermore, the commission still does not have adequate financial resources. A sum of $250 million is being targeted for the voluntary Peacebuilding Fund, which seems to be an incredibly small amount in view of the nature of the task. Moreover, only $140 million had been contributed in early November, according to the UN. In comparison, billions of dollars are needed annually in Afghanistan alone.
The concept of integrated missions, however, should apply in all countries where there is UN intervention. The Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations of August 2000, known as the Brahimi Report (after the Chairman of the Commission), gave the impetus to design this concept. The document pointed out that the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) did not have a unit which brought together representatives from all specialist groups involved in a peace-keeping mission – military, police, electoral assistance, human rights, development, humanitarian assistance, refugees, public relations, logistics, political analysis, finance and recruitment.
The principle idea of integrated missions is to use all elements of the UN system in order to reach a shared understanding of the mandates and functions of the various UN actors in a particular conflict region. It is essential to work with this understanding and to optimise the effectiveness and efficiency of the UN in all aspects.
Integrating civilian and military actors (including civil society) is an important step towards drafting common strategies for all UN bodies, going beyond mere coordination. Doing so could lead to an improvement in medium- and long-term peace consolidation and the accentuation of human security. On the other hand, integrating all actors involved could have precisely the opposite effect, if the dominant notion of security is too narrowly defined. The civilian sector must never be neglected after a conflict country is stabilised initially. For that reason, special care must be taken that the further development of peace-building and integrated missions will be based on an expanded concept of security, which gives priority to civilian and civil society components and therefore helps to create a positive and lasting peace.
References:
Collier, Paul, et. al., 2003: Breaking the Conflict Trap. Civil War and Development Policy. A World Bank Policy Research Report. Washington, DC/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ulrich Schneckener, 2006: “Frieden Machen: Peacebuilding und peacebuilder”
(Making peace: peacebuilding and peacebuilders) in Die Friedenswarte (Journal of International Peace and Organization) 80 (2005) 1-2, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin, pp. 22-27.
United Nations, Secretary General, 1992: An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peacekeeping. Report of the Secretary-General. UN Doc. A/47/277 - S/24111, 17.06.1992.
United Nations, 2000: “Brahimi Report” http://www.un.org/peace/reports/peace_operations/
Peter Croll
is head of the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC).
croll@bicc.de
http://www.bicc.de
Dr. Volker Franke
is head of the BICC Research Division.
franke@bicc.de
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