Reports by region: Europe

Ten years ago the UN Secretary-General pledged to intensify efforts to move from a culture of reaction to a culture of prevention. In 2005, heads of state and government at the UN World Summit solemnly renewed their commitment “to promote a culture of prevention of armed conflict.”

To what extent have the UN and the international community turned their aspiration for a culture of prevention into a reality? How well do multilateral instruments for conflict prevention perform today? What challenges exist in tapping into their full potential, and how can these challenges be addressed?

This meeting report presents a synthesis of discussions of these questions that took place during the sixteenth New York Seminar on May 4-6, 2011. It also summarizes key recommendations made by participants at the meeting.

The report finds:Multilateral conflict prevention has undergone significant change in recent years.

The report finds:

- Multilateral conflict prevention has undergone significant change in recent years.
- Capabilities, working methods, and the normative framework for multilateral conflict prevention have evolved considerably in response to greater receptiveness by many states facing conflict risks and increasing preparedness by third parties to engage in preventive diplomacy and structural prevention.  This trend has been accompanied by a proliferation of the number of third states, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations undertaking preventive action.
- Achieving coordination and coherence among these numerous third parties in their pursuit of preventive goals constitutes a critical challenge.

Consolidating the legitimate use of force in the hands of the state is a vital first step in post-conflict peacebuilding. Transitional governments must move quickly to neutralize rival armed groups and provide a basic level of security for citizens.
Two processes are vital to securing a monopoly of force: disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration and security sector reform. Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) involve disbanding armed groups that challenge the government’s monopoly of force. Security sector reform (SSR) means reforming and rebuilding the national security forces so that they are professional and accountable.  U.S. experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo yielded three crosscutting lessons: go in heavy, tackle DDR and SSR in tandem, and consolidate U.S. capacity to implement both tasks in a coordinated, scalable way.
This report is based on the panel presentation and the views expressed at a September 12, 2011 meeting of the Security Sector Reform working group. The panel included retired Ambassador James Dobbins, RAND Corp., retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, Center for New American Security, retired Ambassador John Blaney, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Melanne Civic, the Center for Complex Operations. Robert Perito, the Director of USIP’s Security Sector Governance Center, moderated the panel.

Since 1999, an increasing proportion of UN peacekeeping operations (UN PKOs) have been mandated to use force to protect civilians from physical violence. Although recent research and UN efforts have helped clarify that the protection of civilians (POC) is a critical and unavoidable requirement for UN PKOs, its implications for UN planning, and particular planning for the military component, prior to and during deployment remain largely unaddressed in formal guidance.  Recent initiatives by DPKO and individual missions to develop guidance, conceptual tools, and working methods to implement POC mandates have demonstrated remarkable ingenuity.

This document is intended to support those processes by drawing on recent scholarship and operational research on the challenges of ending complex civil conflicts. It seeks to apply that research to better employ the military capabilities of UN PKOs to alter conflict dynamics in order to end attacks on civilians. Drawing on lessons from recent UN PKOs and interviews with mission personnel from a wide variety of contexts, it proposes a shift from a primarily reactive approach based on crisis response, to a proactive one that seizes the initiative and applies pressure on armed actors responsible for violence against the civilian populace.

The purpose of gender mainstreaming in peace operations is to ensure that the needs of men and women in host societies are met adequately, and documents such as Resolution 1325 are important tools for international organizations and peacekeeping troops in this work. The success of mainstreaming, however, depends on how seriously international actors incorporate gender sensitivity into their policies and practices.

This background paper has been produced for a workshop on “The Women, Peace and Security Resolutions: From Rhetoric to Reality”, convened by Peacebuild in Ottawa on June 15, 2011 with the support of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.