Global Policy Forum

By Peter D. Bell and Guy Tousignant

"Peacekeeping" is known in American political jargon as a third-rail issue, to be touched only with great caution. In fact, though little has been said about the issue recently, we see some light in the sky. The long-standing deadlock on America's unpaid assessments to the United Nations—and specifically for peacekeeping—has ended in compromise, a new secretary of state is well disposed toward the world organization, a top-flight French diplomat, Jean-Marie Guehenno, has taken control of U.N. peacekeeping operations, and the General Assembly has before it the first truly comprehensive review of all U.N. peace operations. For the moment, there is the prospect of fundamental reform; it is a moment worth seizing.

Our purpose is to discuss specific and practical steps, based on CARE's experience, that can increase the effectiveness of both peacekeeping operations and the longer-term enterprise of peace building. We do not intend to broach the perennial problem of developing standby forces—the "heavy strategic reserve" mentioned in the August 2000 report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, chaired by Algerian ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi. Nor will we deal with suggestions for a global peacekeeping strategy, much less the heated debate over humanitarian intervention. Our purpose is more modest: to discuss ways to reform peacekeeping in the field.

The peacekeeping system malfunctioned terribly in the 1990s for a host of reasons. In Bosnia, the United Nations was asked to do too much with too little; in Rwanda, world powers failed to act in time; and in Somalia, the United Nations was blamed for an ill-planned operation under direct United States control. A chronic condition underpinning all of these disasters was the failure of member states to back their rhetoric with resources—with the United States itself setting a shameful example in its decade-long dues-paying delinquency. Another systemic problem that receives far less attention is the way the U.N. system fails from start to finish to engage local civil society in the peace process in conflict areas. The reform package pending before U.N. General Assembly makes many worthy recommendations—for example, to overhaul the management of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations and to authorize peacekeeping missions only when resources are available to carry out their mandates—but ignores the endemic weakness of the United Nations in eliciting civil society involvement.

Peacekeepers now often enter environments where the conditions for peace are fragile or barely exist. In places like East Timor, the Balkans, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations must extend a measure of security to civilian populations and catalyze efforts to lay the foundations for peace—rebuilding civil institutions, providing economic opportunities for ex-combatants, and creating mechanisms to promote dialogue and reconciliation. The United Nations cannot do this alone. Local leaders, regional and subregional groups, civic groups, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are crucial to the promotion of a durable peace in societies emerging from conflict. Nascent U.N. efforts to incorporate conflict prevention and peace-building activities more effectively into peacekeeping mandates and operations will fall short unless local civil actors become part of the equation.

Our field-based experience in relief and development leads us to make four recommendations.

First, U.N. members should take positive steps, and commit resources, to avert conflicts before they start, recognizing that an ounce of conflict prevention is worth a pound of peacekeeping cure. They should give peace building a legitimate place in both the budgets and mandates of peacekeeping operations. Reduction of poverty must be integral to both enterprises.

Second, U.N. staff on the ground should encourage the greatest possible involvement of local leaders and organizations in the spectrum of conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and peace-building operations; this is all the more important when peacekeeping forces are drawn into a conflict and U.N. personnel are no longer perceived as disinterested outsiders.

Third, policymakers should reexamine the role currently played by the military in humanitarian and civil affairs during peacekeeping operations. The military can be crucial in facilitating humanitarian assistance, as they were, despite the eventual debacle, in protecting the relief convoys in Somalia. At the same time, the military must assign high priority to civilian protection and make certain that military activities do not undermine civilian leadership, humanitarian aid, or the emergence (or reemergence) of local civil institutions.

Fourth, a review of the roles and responsibilities of agencies that respond to humanitarian emergencies is long overdue. The United Nations must work with other emergency-response actors to differentiate military and civilian functions and to devise a strategy to guide all of these organizations. The United Nations can contribute more by coordinating the on-the-ground activities of international agencies than it can by itself trying to build new foundations for societies emerging from conflict.

Peter D. Bell is president and chief executive officer of CARE USA, an international relief and development organization that operates in more than 60 countries. Guy Tousignant is secretary general of CARE International. He formerly served as the commander of U.N. peacekeeping forces and as assistant secretary general to the United Nations in Rwanda during UNAMIR II.

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