Abstract
The involvement of the United Nations in East Timor can be divided into four periods, including the anti-colonial period (1955-1974), the reaction period (1975-1982), the attenuation period (1983-1998) and the commitment period (from 1999). It is about this last period that this paper will focus by analysing the decisive steps of the UN, as a multilateral organization with a security mandate, in resolving the Timorese conflict and peacebuilding in that territory. This analysis will be guided by the proposals of the document An Agenda for Peace presented in 1992 by Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then Secretary-General of the United Nations, and the expectations he created in the field of peace operations. We are particularly interested in looking at the design of post-conflict peacebuilding missions and assessing the extent to which the (expected) capital gains from these operations compared to conventional peacekeeping missions would come to fruition or not. Thus, it is important to examine how the main missions were carried out, with special focus on the different actors, as well as to make a critical balance with some historical distance. In this context, it seems to us that the case of East Timor will be a good example to understand the need for a new approach to peacebuilding, as advocated in this Report, but which at a distance of more than 25 years becomes even more evident. The perception of peace as a continuous process that involves a whole sustainability network, and that depends above all on fostering and developing competences for peace (involving multiple and distinct actors facing constant coordination and negotiation challenges), therefore allows demanding greater commitment on the part of the Security Council, but also on that of the General Assembly in carrying out this difficult task in the context of the new world (dis) order.
Highlights
The last decade of the twentieth century witnessed remarkable changes in the field of geopolitics that have shifted the artificial peace between the eastern bloc and the western bloc to a globe fragmented in a growing number of sovereign states and non-state actors with a high transnational role
Faced with an accelerated and complex international dynamic in the webs of interdependencies that are generated among the multiple actors of the new world order, the UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali understood the need to provide an answer adjusted to the new context, requiring the commitment of all states to the goal of peace
The Agenda for Peace acted as an alarm that sounded at the highest levels of the UN itself, namely the Security Council and the General Assembly, to demonstrate that conventional UN Peace Missions - more positive in interstate rather than intrastate conflicts (Branco, 2004: 108-109) - will not be able to respond to new threats to peace and will have to adjust to contemporary conflicts
Summary
The last decade of the twentieth century witnessed remarkable changes in the field of geopolitics that have shifted the artificial peace between the eastern bloc and the western bloc to a globe fragmented in a growing number of sovereign states and non-state actors with a high transnational role (especially for example, economic and financial groups, non-governmental organizations with the most diverse claims, organized crime networks or terrorist groups). Following the above factors, regarding the ability to choose nonviolent ways to confront and work conflicts, Senghaas points to a whole culture of peaceful conflict regulation that is already a result of previous conditions or learning It presupposes habits and good examples, and probably certain characteristics considered as “virtues” (tolerance, moderation, empathy, commitment, respect for social and political rules, willingness to trust, etc.) that facilitate a peaceful coexistence in plural and multicultural societies. The New Horizon process, which began in 2009 and aimed at developing a forwardlooking agenda for partnership-based, broad dialogue-based UN peacekeeping operations, benefited from the launch of an internal document entitled A New Partnership Agenda: Charting a New Horizon for UN Peacekeeping, which has been shared with Member States and other partners In this set of initiatives leading to as effective as possible peace missions, it is relevant to mention the UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, created in October 2014 during Ban Ki-moon's mandate, composed of 16 individuals (including José Ramos Horta of Timor-Leste, who chaired the meeting). In order to demonstrate the contribution of the UN Missions and the steps to effect a peacebuilding process, which was already implicit in the ( expanded) peacekeeping operations, we would like to present the case study of East Timor
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