The Future of the UN Peacebuilding Commission
The project objective is to foster creative, original thinking on the medium and long-term future roles of the UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), with a specific focus on how this body might better contribute to “sustainable” peacebuilding efforts and outcomes.The research project was initiated by the Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS) at the University of Ottawa, with the support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. NUPI has subsequently been invited to join the project as an institutional partner. Participants
Cedric H. de Coning
Eli Stamnes
This research project will step back from the day-to-day operations of the PBC and pose a longer-term strategic question: What role or roles should the PBC perform five or ten years from now? Put differently, what are the right “stretch targets” for the PBC over the medium and long term?
In answering these questions, the project will focus on the PBC’s contribution to “sustainable peacebuilding”. The problem of sustainability refers not only to the need for ongoing international attention to specific countries at risk, but also (and more fundamentally) to the need for peacebuilding policies and strategies that yield durable and self-sustaining results in the host countries themselves. The practice of peacebuilding has long suffered from shortcomings in both of these dimensions of sustainability: International attention has tended to be fleeting, and the results of peacebuilding missions have often turned out to be superficial. As we look ahead to the possible future of the PBC in five or ten years, one of the key considerations is how the Commission might better address these problems of sustainability.
The core of the project will be original essays by internationally recognised analysts of peacebuilding. Each contributor will be asked to think creatively about their answers to the questions posed above.
Project website: http://statebuilding.org/pbc.html
Funding
The project was co-organized by the Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS) at the University of Ottawa and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), with the support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre (Noref), and the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Publications
- Tschirgi, Necla (2010). Escaping Path Dependency: A Proposed Multi-Tiered Approach for the UN’s Peacebuilding Commission. NUPI Working Paper: . 24 pages. This paper argues that unless the Peacebuilding Commission adopts a ‘multi-tiered approach’ which is designed to better identify and respond to multiple peacebuilding challenges, it will remain a marginal actor in an already overcrowded peacebuilding field.
- Rettberg, Angelika (2010). The Private Sector, Peacebuilding, and Economic Recovery: A Challenge for the UNPBA. NUPI Working Paper: . 34 pages. The paper focus on two aspects of the private sector-peacebuilding relationship. First, it will examine difficulties related to promoting economic recovery by stimulating domestic and international private sector actors in conflict or post-conflict countries to produce and invest in order to reinvigorate economies. Second, the paper will discuss aspects directly related to engaging the private sector in peacebuilding tasks.
- McCandless, Erin (2010). In Pursuit of Peacebuilding for Perpetual Peace: Where the UN’s Peacebuilding Architecture Needs to Go. NUPI Working Paper: . 37 pages. This paper suggests that the new focus on the immediate aftermath of conflict supported by the UN’s Peacebuilding Architecture (PBA) crowds out important debates surrounding potential core drivers or building blocks of sustainable peace.
- McAskie, Carolyn (2010). 2020 Vision: Visioning the Future of the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture. NUPI Working Paper: . 29 pages. Despite the overwhelming impact of major global crises, the actual number of conflicts has been reduced significantly since the end of the cold war. At the same time too many post-conflict countries either fall back into violence or fail to get on the path to sustainable peace. More is now understood about the link between global security and the lack of economic and social investment. This combination of analyses has provided the impetus behind the development of peacebuilding as a field in its own right and the creation of new international architecture.
- de Coning, Cedric H. (2010). Clarity, Coherence and Context: Three Priorities for Sustainable Peacebuilding. NUPI Working Paper: . 31 pages. This paper will focus on three challenges that should inform the 2010 Review of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, namely: (1) developing the UN peacebuilding concept and operational model; (2) significantly stepping-up efforts to improve system-wide coherence; and (3) seriously implementing the principle of local ownership.
- Jenkins, Rob (2010). Re-engineering the UN Peacebuilding Architecture. NUPI Working Paper: . 37 pages. This paper argues that if the Peacebuilding Commission and the Peacebuilding Support Office are to avoid longterm institutional decline, they will, over the next five to ten years, need to position themselves to play new roles – in terms of mandate, resources, procedures, and partnerships.
- Stamnes, Eli (2010). Values, Context and Hybridity: How can the insights from the liberal peace critique literature be brought to bear on the practices of the UN Peacebuilding Architecture?. NUPI Working Paper: . 33 pages. The authors of the liberal peace critique literature argue that local ownership should mean taking the recipient societies’(rather than simply governments’ and elites’) understanding of the problems and solutions as the starting point of peacebuilding.
- Aning, Kwesi , Ernest Lartey (2010). Establishing the Future State of the Peacebuilding Commission: Perspectives on Africa. NUPI Working Paper: . 26 pages. The paper discusses the strategic role of the Peacebuilding Commission as a vital component in the attainment of the new peacebuilding vision and architecture and examines its potential implications for sustainable peace in Africa.
- Biersteker, Thomas, Oliver Jütersonke (2010). The Challenges of Institution Building: Prospects for the UN Peacebuilding Architecture. NUPI Working Paper: . 17 pages. The United Nations peacebuilding architecture is a new and relatively recent institutional creation. To address the issue of what role the UN peacebuilding architecture could realistically be expected to perform ten years from now, this paper briefly examine what different theories have to tell us about the origins of new institutions, their operational dynamics, their challenges, their constraints, their pathologies, and their realistic possibilities.