What Role for Business Actors in UN Peace Operations?

Abstract

Evidence of the exclusion of business actors from United Nations (UN) peace operations is indisputable. Through an exploration of key events in the historical evolution of the UN System, this chapter argues that the approach of UN peace operations to business is pre-conditioned by a deeply entrenched understanding of business actors as economic (rather than political) actors whose prime “peace” role is in the private (rather than public) realms – irrespective of whether they are licit or illicit. This understanding of business tends to preclude them from being engaged as actors who have a meaningful contribution to make to political settlements. A conceptual framework for understanding the roles business plays in war to peace transitions is then explored through the example of Yemen 2011–2016. Business actors, it is argued, play four often overlapping and certainly not mutually exclusive roles: as supporters and/or humanitarian aid providers (or “benefactors”); as beneficiaries of the government and the war economy (“profiteers”); as mediators and peacemakers (“intermediaries”); and as conflict actors or spoilers (“agitators”). To overcome the “blind spot” towards business actors, UN peace operations should apply a “business lens in peace mediation” as a tool for finding practical ways to include both licit and illicit business actors in peace.