Texts and Reports - Development Policy and the Armed Forces - Preface

"Peacekeeping has long since evolved beyond its traditional role as a monitor of ceasefires. Today, (UN) missions engage in such tasks as assisting political transitions, building institu-tions, fostering the spread of the rule of law, supporting economic reconstruction, supervising elections, disarming militias and former combatants, facilitating humanitarian aid programmes and re-settling refugees and displaced persons."

Kofi Annan
UN Secretary-General
at the International Day
of United Nations Peacekeepers 2004

Peace and security have gained in significance in the international debate to find an answer to global challenges. International, regional and internal conflicts, failure of states, genocide and terrorism have led to an altered perception of threats, taken into account both in individual states and the European Union, each in their own way, in developing their own security concepts. The Blue Ribbon Panel, appointed by the UN Secretary General, is also concerned with international security architecture and how peacekeeping relates to peace-building. In this context, securing a sustainable peace by reducing structural causes of conflict and supporting conflict resolution is increasingly linked to both civil and military crisis management operations intended, in acute crisis situations, to prevent violent outbreaks of conflict or safeguard a frag-ile peace.

There has been a worldwide increase in peace missions with widely diverging mandates. At present, more than a quarter of a million foreign soldiers in more than twenty countries are on such missions - the majority of them headed or legitimised by UN or regional organisations. As the number of civil and military missions has increased, so the range of their tasks has ex-panded - from exercising purely control functions as electoral observers and weapons inspectors to partially or completely taking on national tasks of formerly sovereign states. At the same time, "state building" has become a familiar characteristic of many peace missions.

The complex tasks entrusted to modern multi-dimensional peace missions, as has also been detailed in the Brahimi Report, require harmonising the approach between, on the one hand, military and security policy instruments and, on the other, civil instruments such as development policy. Even if the need for such an approach is broadly acknowledged, many questions about the principles designed to govern interaction in planning, implementation and funding between the various policy fields remain unanswered.

The International Policy Dialogue entitled "Development Policy and the Armed Forces" was convened by the Development Policy Forum on behalf of the German Federal Government, represented by the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), to discuss current issues with participants from both the civilian and military sectors in a forum free from the constraints of protocol.

The dialogue aimed to provide a contemporary conceptual assessment of the evolution of international peace support mission mandates, with particular emphasis on cooperation between military and development policy actors. Which lessons have been learned, where can improvements be made, where do deficits exist, and how can the cooperative process be shaped? A Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) publication on this topic is soon to be made available, also in English, in the Internet at www.bmz.de/infothek/fachinformationen/diskurs.

Against this background, the differing nature of and mandates for peace support missions were discussed and evaluated in terms of their varying effects on approaches coordinating military and development policy instruments with the aim of establishing accepted standards on interaction between these two policy areas.

When is the appropriate entry point for development strategy, and when is the appropriate exit point for the military actors? How should the interaction between both actors be arranged if they are both involved in operations simultaneously? How can the differing principles of sovereign military action and development cooperation's partnership-orientated approach be combined?

Frequently, depending on the level of peace attained, a different approach is needed from region to region and within a single country. This Policy Dialogue intended to collate the experience gained in using different forms of peace missions in different regions of the world. The relevant regional experience with various forms of peace building and conflict prevention was discussed and debated in four panels:

• Panel 1 dealt with the experience gained in the Balkans with multi-lateral troops working within the framework of a UN mandate (KFOR, SFOR) and the cooperation between the UN, EU and the World Bank within the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe.
• Panel 2 was concerned with the stabilization tasks undertaken by the UN-led troops in Africa and the experience gained there.
• Panel 3 dealt with African peace missions in regional responsibility, as, for example, is ex-pressed in the ECOWAS mission in West Africa, in the context of the increasing importance of African Union and regional organisations for conflict prevention and crisis management in Africa.
• Panel 4 looked at the Nato-led and UN-mandated peace mission in Afghanistan and attempts to establish the special features of the international involvement in and around Afghanistan, characterised by the Operation Enduring Freedom and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mandates.
• Panel 5 related the previous discussions to an integrated peace planning, showing ways for development policy and military cooperation to achieve greater coherence and sustainability.

The International Policy Dialogue aimed to address and discuss controversial problems arising both at the planning stage of peace support missions and during on-the-spot dealings between civilian and military actors with a view to finding solutions. The German Federal Government has clearly stated its commitment to establishing and improving civilian crisis prevention as a priority task in German and European policy. The adoption of the Action Plan on "Civilian Crisis Prevention, Conflict Resolution and Post-Conflict Peace-Building" has created a conceptual framework for the better alignment of security and development policy requirements. The Policy Dialogue aimed to achieve a better understanding of roles in general, along with a more effective concept of the specific roles played by civilian and military actors, and to enhance the integrated planning processes in international peace support missions.

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