Department Of Peacekeeping Operations Research Articles

Peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and the ‘balance of bureaucratic power’ in Kofi Annan’s Secretariat: a micro-history of two United Nations departments

ABSTRACT This article reviews the interplay of bureaucratic, power-political, and conceptual challenges that affected the UN Secretariat during the tenure of Kofi Annan (1996–2006). Through fresh sources – including the diaries and private papers of the late Sir Marrack Goulding – it considers the case of the two largest and most influential administrative units in New York in charge of peace missions, the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). It argues that the reason for their notoriously conflictual relationship goes beyond bureaucratic rivalries and involves a host of systemic factors – including technocratic rationality, great powers influence over the Secretariat, UN financing, and the porous borders between peacekeeping and peacebuilding. These factors affected the ‘balance of bureaucratic power’ in New York, a balance which under Annan shifted from DPA and peacebuilding towards DPKO and peacekeeping, and which the reforms of Ban and Guterres have not fundamentally altered.

‘The Hand that Holds the Pen’: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Peacekeeping, and American Influence Over the United Nations Secretariat in the Early 1990s

ABSTRACT This article reviews the creative ways in which the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, used the UN Secretariat to achieve his goals, as well as the obstacles he faced in doing so. Using new sources – including confidential UN memos, elite interviews, and private archives – the paper suggests that, in the context of peacekeeping, the former Secretary-General engaged in parallel processes of ‘politicization’ and ‘depoliticization’: on the one hand he minimised, avoided and concealed the substantive dimensions of certain decisions, units and issues with the aim of marginalising those departments and officials that he saw as too close to the United States, while on the other he empowered those bureaucratic units which he felt he could more easily control. Specifically, by bestowing upon the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) a sweeping mandate while painting the role of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) as merely ‘operational’, Boutros-Ghali used ‘technicization’ as a means to strengthen the Secretary-General's office.

The Recruitment, Enlistment, and Deployment of HIV-Positive Military Service Members: An Evaluation of South African and U.S. National, Alongside International, Policies.

Since its detection in the early 1980s, HIV and AIDS have claimed 32.7 million lives. The HIV epidemic continues to plague the world with its most devastating effects felt in Eastern and Southern Africa. The exposure, vulnerability, and impact of HIV have been prominent among military personnel due to environmental, demographic, and socioeconomic characteristics. Policies have been developed to mitigate its exposure, vulnerability, and impact on the military. However, there are disparities across these policies, especially on recruitment, enlistment, and deployment. These contentions inspired this evaluation, which was designed to provide vital information and insights for militaries developing new HIV policies, for example, the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF). Content analyses of key documents and secondary resources from South Africa (SA), the USA, and the United Nations and International Labour Organizations were undertaken. The key documents evaluated included HIV and AIDS policies of the SA National Defence Force (SANDF), the U.S. DoD, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and International Labour Organization (ILO); national HIV and AIDS policies; and legislations of SA and the USA. The SANDF policy permits the recruitment of HIV-positive applicants while the U.S. DoD policy does not. Mandatory pre-employment health assessments including HIV testing is conducted for prospective applicants. Again, discrimination against persons living with HIV (PLHIV) is discouraged by national policies and legislations of both countries and the ILO policy. At the same time, the SA national policy permits discrimination based on requirement of the job.On deployment, the SANDF policy explicitly permits deployment of HIV-positive service members, while the U.S. DoD policy cautiously does so. Both policies support mandatory pre-deployment health assessments in line with the UN peacekeeping policy and medical standards even though voluntary confidential HIV counseling and testing is recommended by the UN. All HIV-positive service members are retained and offered treatment and care services; however, the U.S. DoD policy retires unfit service members after 12 months of consecutive non-deployment. Further, the UN policy repatriates service members with pre-existing medical conditions and pays no compensation for death, injury, or illness, which is due to pre-existing medical conditions or not mission-related. First, the contents of the military policies are not very diverse since most militaries do not enlist or deploy PLHIV except few countries including SA. Implementation and interpretation is however inconsistent. Some militaries continue to exclude PLHIV despite the existence of policies that permit their inclusion. Second, discrepancies exist among the military policies, national legislations, and international policies. The UN policy is not coherent and empowers the military to exclude PLHIV. Also, potential costs to be incurred, in the form of compensation and repatriation, seem to be a major factor in the decision to deploy HIV-positive service members. Harmonization of military HIV policies to ensure uniform standards, interpretation, and implementation and the coherence of the UN policy are essential to guide countries developing new policies, for example, GAF.

Turkey’s contribution to international policing

ABSTRACT The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations has undergone significant changes in its organisation since 1948. A new global environment established by the end of Cold War, elevated the Police Division to a more pronounced role in international peace as an essential pillar of UN peacekeeping missions. Nonetheless, despite the increased role of police in international missions, research on police contributions to peacekeeping remains limited. This article addresses this gap in literature by highlighting the case of Turkey’s contribution to UN international police peacekeeping missions. The article confirms empirically that the Turkish police contribution has increased since the 2000s by relying on quantitative data offered by the TUBAKOV dataset designed to collect data on international peacekeeping missions of Turkey. The paper contends that, besides global trends, the increased participation of Turkey in UN-led missions reflects its internal political dynamics. First, under the JDP rule, Turkey’s Cold War era subtle foreign policy was transformed to a proactive policy in global politics. Second, since the 2000s, the transformation of civil–military relations has ended the system of military tutelage, and this has had a considerable impact on foreign policy. Civilian authority, by abolishing military dominance, has become the primary actor in foreign policy decision-making.

ПІДГОТОВКА МИРОТВОРЦІВ ЗА СТАНДАРТАМИ ОРГАНІЗАЦІЇ ОБ’ЄДНАНИХ НАЦІЙ

Introduction. Changes in the United Nations (UN) reform process since early 2000 have led to a reorganization of the peacekeeping training system for peacekeeping operations. The multinational nature of the UN peacekeeping operations environment and their complexity require a clear understanding of UN standardized approaches to training peacekeepers, especially in the pre-deployment phase. Purpose. Analysis of evolution of UN training strategy and its current characteristics. Methods: System analysis, comparison, classification, generalization and systematization. Results. The article contains an analysis of training of the UN peacekeeping personnel for peacekeeping operations and distribution of responsibilities by training stages in the UN system. The evolution of UN peacekeeping activities caused by the emergence of complex peacekeeping operations has led to the formation of new requirements for the training of peacekeeping personnel, based on a comprehensive analysis and lessons learned of conducted peacekeeping operations. Pre-deployment training for peacekeeping personnel is a basic training, the standardized minimum of which is set by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, but the responsibility for its quality rests with the contributing countries.Originality. The scientific novelty of the study is the analysis of the UN approaches to the formation of training strategy for peacekeeping operations, which determines the thematic focus and distribution of tasks by stages of training in the UN system. Currently, this topic is paid less attention, than other issues relating to peacekeeping activities in Ukraine. The practical significance of this research refers to the informative material for assessing the strategy of training peacekeepers according to UN standards, identifying the main directions and focusing efforts on training peacekeepers for peacekeeping operations.Conclusion. Analysis of UN reports and other materials on the training of UN peacekeeping personnel conducted in the article shows, that this training has undergone an appropriate evolutionary period, which is characterized by emergence of complex peacekeeping operations. Thus the tasks for mentioned operations got wider spectrum with formation of new training strategy, which covers military, civilian and police components. Development of UN training strategy based on comprehensive analysis and lessons learned from conducted UN peacekeeping operations has tendency for further changes consider complexity of operational environment in UN peacekeeping operations.The pre-deployment training of peacekeeping personnel remains the main training where member states responsible for its quality, however, a standardized approach to training rests for UN, maintained through the development of standard training materials and requirements for peacekeeping personnel.

Rwanda: the Political Failure of the UN Security Council

This article discusses the role of the UN Security Council during the crisis in Rwanda in 1993/94. It focuses on the peacekeeping dimensions of the Council’s involvement. It is a perspective from a practitioner, rather than an academic. It also makes some observations about whether the Rwanda crisis has had an enduring influence on Security Council practice. It does not address the impact on practical aspects of peacekeeping or on the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

No action without talk? UN peacekeeping, discourse, and institutional self-legitimation

AbstractIn this article, I argue that much of the discourse observable within the UN constitutes neither unnecessary and unproductive ‘talk’ nor efforts to convince outside audiences of its legitimacy, but actually a form of institutional self-legitimation that is key to its ability to function. Using the case of the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), I show that because the organisation has a multifaceted organisational identity, it faces situations where it is forced to choose between multiple but equally appropriate courses of action, and it uses self-legitimation alongside other mechanisms to overcome these tensions. I specify three sets of circumstances in which this occurs, showing how DPKO uses discourse that simplifies and exceptionalises in a bid to reconcile or downplay these contradictions and reassert a cohesive and legitimate organisational identity internally. This simplification and exceptionalisation in turn serve an enabling function, allowing DPKO to continue operating in conditions of complexity by decreasing risk aversion and instilling a deep sense of professional loyalty in staff. At the same time, such discursive processes are costly and may entrench inefficient practices, rendering the effects of self-legitimising discourse paradoxical: they may enable action, but they reduce the efficiency and effectiveness of that action.

Providing for Global Security

Abstract A fundamental question facing global governance today is whether the UN peacekeeping regime can function with enough skilled troops to execute increasingly demanding and complicated mandates. The People’s Republic of China is informally thought of as a potential lead troop-contributing country. China typically deploys non-combat enabler troops, and recently began deploying combat troops, which may have to engage in live fire to defend the mandate. The risks and costs associated with dispatching combat troops challenge the benefits that China derives from supporting peacekeeping. I first establish China’s feedback mechanisms to facilitate simple and complex learning against China’s peacekeeping trajectory and motivations for participation. I then address the implications of China’s combat troop deployment, focusing on the UN Multidimensional Stabilization Mission in Mali and the UN Mission in South Sudan. The article draws insights from interviews with Chinese foreign policy elites and UN officials, and participant observation at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

Aide-memoire: Operational guidance on maintaining the civilian and humanitarian character of sites and settlements

In light of the growing complexity of humanitarian crises today and the continued need for effective cooperation among humanitarian actors, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched a consultative process in September 2016 to collect operational practices with regard to maintaining the civilian and humanitarian character of sites and settlements for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees. Exchanges with field staff from both organizations targeted five ongoing operations – in the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Iraq, Nigeria and South Sudan – and included a one-day workshop in Geneva on 20 April 2017 in which the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) also participated. A wider set of stakeholders was consulted as well, during a roundtable organized under the auspices of the Global Protection Cluster (GPC) on 21 April.

Militarised Peacekeeping in Darfur

In February 2014, the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations produced a Strategic Review of the troubled United Nations-African Union Hybrid Operation in the Darfur region of Sudan (unamid). The Strategic Review faults many aspects of the operation; however, it finds that its mandate is the correct one, concludes that its staffing levels are sufficient and warmly welcomes what it sees as an improved relationship with the Sudanese government. This report may be contrasted with a Foreign Policy investigation published in April 2014, where journalist Colum Lynch provides an unvarnished analysis of the operation. Relying on documents leaked by Aicha Elbasri, former Spokesperson for unamid, the Foreign Policy investigation describes a troubled operation, failing in many of its tasks and mistrusted by parts of the populace. The Foreign Policy investigation portrays a force that routinely downplays or covers up its shortcomings and under-reports violence by the host state government against Darfuri civilians and unamid itself. It is argued that the functioning of unamid provides a vivid illustration of the difficulties associated with a militarised peacekeeping operation, especially when it is emplaced in a country that never wanted it there in the first place.

Exceeding Limitations of the United Nations Peacekeeping Bureaucracy: Strategies of Officials to Influence Peacekeeping Activities within the United Nations Mission in Liberia and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations

United Nations peacekeeping is implemented by a complex bureaucratic organization, which itself can be a source of dysfunction and failure. This article empirically explores the strategies officials within the United Nations Mission in Liberia and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations apply in order to continue to do their job as effectively as possible despite the limitations of the UN peacekeeping bureaucracy. The findings demonstrate that internal acknowledgement and relevance of work are core strategic goals of UN officials. However, as the actual practices of achieving these objectives vary at different levels and locations of the UN peacekeeping bureaucracy, these strategies contribute to a significant diversity of local and decentralized decision-making frameworks rather than a rationalized effective bureaucracy.

Turning to the South: Civilian Capacity in the Aftermath of Conflict

SINCE THE END OF THE COLD WAR, THE UNITED NATIONS HAS EXPERIENCED a massive quantitative increase in the number of operations as well as a qualitative shift from military intervention toward state- and peacebuilding support. In their September 2010 submission to the Special Committee on Peacekeeping (the Committee of 34, or C-34), the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO) and Department of Field Support (DFS) noted that peacekeeping has evolved from a primarily military model of observing ceasefires and separating forces to incorporate a mix of military, police, and civilian capabilities to support the implementation of comprehensive peace agreements and help lay the foundations for sustainable peace and legitimate government. (1) UN has become multidimensional and integrated, aimed at assisting countries recovering from conflict and at laying the foundations for peace- and statebuilding. (2) Currently, ten out of a total of fourteen UN operations are multidimensional in nature and have been mandated by the Security Council to perform a broad range of peacebuilding activities. (3) In addition, there are thirteen UN special political missions performing a range of functions in prevention, peacemaking, and postconflict peacebuilding. (4) With the change in mandates and focus on peacebuilding, the role of civilians has shifted from a peripheral support role to that of military peacekeepers; civilians are now at the core of and peacebuilding operations. Today, civilians have responsibility for many of the mandated tasks in missions. For instance, the UNDPKO and DFS Operational Concept on Protection of Civilians provides for (1) protection through political process; (2) protection from physical violence; and (3) establishment of a protective environment. Whereas uniformed peacekeepers have a key role to play in protection from physical violence, civilian peacekeepers are primarily responsible for protection through political process and the establishment of a protective environment. With this shift in roles, the demand for specialized civilian capacity and expertise has increased significantly. (5) However, these significant and substantive changes in the mandates and tasks of UN and special political missions have not been adequately reflected in how the UN system approaches the recruitment, deployment, and management of its civilian capacity or in how the UN's and special political missions are funded. (6) The effectiveness of the UN has been constrained by its traditional and conservative approach to human resources management. The Secretariat in New York was originally set up for conference management, and member states have been slow to adapt to the changing needs of the UN system. As a result, today's and special political missions suffer from high vacancy rates and slow rates of deploying civilian staff to the field. In this article, we argue that there is a need for a new focus on Southern capacity. Due to the financial crisis, capacity delivery from the North has basically reached its maximum. In contrast, many countries in the Global South, especially some of the emerging powers, have continued to grow at impressive rates. Steady economic growth in many countries of the South means that a new generation of civilian experts is now available from which the UN and other actors may draw. In addition, as many of these countries themselves have undergone dramatic changes in the past few decades (e.g., through conflict and transformation), the civilian expertise they may offer is particularly relevant. Moreover, as the increasingly specialized tasks of UN and peacebuilding missions often require unique expertise specific to a country, the need for staff with contextual understanding has become more pressing. More efficient use and development of national capacities is also vital for ensuring long-term sustainability and local ownership in countries emerging from conflict. …

In the Eye of the Beholder? The UN and the Use of Drones to Protect Civilians

The debate on the UN’s possible use of drones for peacekeeping took a turn in 2013 when the Security Council granted the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) permission to contract surveillance drones for MONUSCO, its peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).<br />This article examines what drone capability may entail for UN peacekeeping missions. We find that surveillance drones can help missions acquire better information and improve the situational awareness of its troops, as well as inform decision-making by leadership, police, and civilian components of the mission. We see a significant potential in the use of surveillance drones to improve efforts to protect civilians, increase UN troops’ situational awareness, and improve access to vulnerable populations in high-risk theaters. The use of drones can dramatically improve information-gathering capacities in proximity to populations at risk, thereby strengthening the ability of peacekeepers to monitor and respond to human rights abuses as well as violations of international humanitarian law (IHL). Drones may also enable peacekeepers to maintain stealth surveillance of potential spoilers, including arms smugglers and embargo breakers. They could additionally improve UN forces’ own targeting practices, further contributing to the protection of civilians (PoC). Furthermore, we emphasize how drone capability significantly increases peacekeepers’ precautionary obligations under IHL in targeting situations: the availability of drones triggers the obligation to use them to gather information in order to avoid civilian casualties or other violations of IHL or international human rights law.<br />There may soon come a shift among human rights groups, from being skeptical of the use of drones by UN peacekeepers to demanding that peacekeeping operations be equipped with surveillance drones for humanitarian and human rights reasons – shifting the current debate, which has focused largely on the negative impact of the use of drones, to a more balanced debate that considers more objectively what drones are and what they can be used for. Finally, the debate about armed drones looms on the horizon for the UN as well – and we outline some of the key dilemmas that the inclusion of such a capability will entail.

Peacekeeping Reform: Managing Change in an Organized Anarchy

Recent administrative reform initiatives at the UN Secretariat, including reforms of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), have reflected, and been formulated in the language of, models and standards drawn from the fields of management and public administration. Theories of rational design, principal-agent relations, sociological institutionalism, and garbage can processes offer divergent explanations for this phenomenon. Through a case study of the adoption of matrix management practices in the UN Departments of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support, this article investigate the process and mechanisms by which theoretical concepts, standards, and models of management in organisations, largely derived from the corporate world, are imported and applied to the peace operations bureaucracy. I argue that the establishment of Integrated Operational Teams (IOTs) in the UN Secretariat is consistent with a garbage can model of peacekeeping reform.

Negotiating to save lives

In November 2008, former President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, searching for ways to ease a catastrophic crisis in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), came under intense criticism for calling the Congolese general, Laurent Nkunda, “my brother.” Nkunda was accused by the DRC Government of war crimes and was under investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. At the time, I led the Great Lakes Team in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York and was responsible for oversight of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), and the United Nations Integrated Office in Burundi (BINUB). Nkunda occupied much of my thoughts.

The Rise of Policing in Peace Operations

Civilian police have become such a sought-after commodity for use in peace support operations that the phrase ‘international police peacekeeping’ is now in common usage in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The nomenclature is, however, rather misleading, as police personnel may now be tasked with peace enforcement and peacebuilding tasks in addition to more traditional peacekeeping roles. Police personnel bring new capabilities and skill sets to bear in peace operations, and operational difficulties regarding quantity, quality and standardization are beginning to be addressed. However, concerns over the relevance of current policing models to post-conflict settings suggest that future international policing efforts would benefit from a closer consideration of how to balance the demands of international and local policing norms.

First steps towards a police doctrine for UN peace operations (2001–2006)

As a response to the rapid growth of the role and numbers of United Nations (UN) police in peace operations, the Secretariat's Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) has started to develop formal doctrine to guide the work of its police officers in missions around the world. Based on published and unpublished sources as well as a series of interviews with UN officials and external experts, this paper examines the establishment of an organisational infrastructure for doctrine development within DPKO in the 2001–2006 period and the key factors that have contributed to the success or failure of several recent doctrine development processes.

Peacekeeping and Counter-insurgency – Two of a Kind?

This article demonstrates that there are more similarities between peacekeeping and counter-insurgency than often recognized. In today's ‘war among the people’, the counter-insurgent cannot succeed with offensive military capabilities alone and must seek to apply also non-kinetic and defensive methods; whereas the peacekeeper often is forced to apply ‘robust’ and kinetic means to implement a mandate. As a result, the two concepts seem to be converging and share some commonalities. The article compares the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations ‘capstone doctrine’ and the US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual to argue that the two doctrines share similarities in six areas: (1) a focus on civilian solutions; (2) a need for protection of civilians; (3) international coherence; (4) host-nation ownership; (5) use of intelligence in support of operations; (6) limitations on the use of force. The article suggests areas where the two doctrines could mesh with each other.

HIV among Peacekeepers and its Likely Impact on Prevalence on Host Countries' HIV Epidemics

Concerns have been expressed with regard to the public health impact of HIV-positive peacekeepers in the countries in which they serve. This article tests three common contentions: (1) that troop contributing countries have higher prevalence than that of the host country; (2) that HIV prevalence of the peacekeeping mission is higher than that of the host country; and (3) that peacekeepers have a large public health impact on the HIV epidemics of the host countries. Using 2008 prevalence data as well as mission information from the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, this article argues against these notions.

UNPOL: UN police as peacekeepers

There have been momentous shifts underway in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The UN Police Division, long back the ‘poor cousin’ of the military side of the house, has been elevated to a new status. In the new institutional environment, the Division is now embedded within a rule of law and security institutions pillar, with its own Assistant Secretary-General, and which is increasingly recognised as being central to the successful conduct of UN peacekeeping operations. This paper looks at the rise of the Police division within the UN family, and assesses some of the challenges currently facing the UN's unprecedented push to use police to a much greater and deeper extent in very challenging contemporary peace operations.