United Nations Peacebuilding Research Articles

Towards Sustainable Peace and Development in Sierra Leone: Civil Society and the Peacebuilding Commission

The Sierra Leone civil war that ended in January 2002 was particularly brutal and left the country economically devastated. Four-and-a-half years later, Sierra Leone was selected as one of two countries to receive focussed attention from the newly created United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (PBC). The PBC is mandated to support post-conflict recovery and sustainable development with the participation of all relevant stakeholders, including civil society. Drawing on field research and theories of sustainable peacebuilding and the role of civil society, this paper assesses the PBC's performance in Sierra Leone in its first year of operation. The article concludes that the PBC needs to clarify its priorities in relation to civil society participation in order to fulfil its potential to assist governments in promoting sustainable peace and development.

Civil-Military coordination and UN peacebuilding operations

Literature dealing with civil-military coordination (CIMIC) has mostly been concerned with the relationship between humanitarian actors and their military counterparts. In the United Nations (UN) peace operations context, however, the humanitarian-military interface is only one of several civil-military relationships. This paper is concerned with the question whether a different set of principles and guidelines is required for civil-military coordination in UN peace operations. The question is relevant because almost all the UN principles and guidelines for civil-military coordination have been drafted for the humanitarian-military interface, and most have been generated by the humanitarian community from a humanitarian perspective. In contrast, most contemporary UN peace operations are mandated to manage post-conflict peacebuilding transitions that occur in several phases and that involve many different civilian actors, including but not limited to the humanitarian emergency phase and the humanitarian community. The paper argues that UN CIMIC actions can make a positive contribution to the overall peacebuilding process if the military components' resources, energy and goodwill can be positively channelled in support of the overall mission objectives.

New nation: United Nations peacebuilding in East Timor

New nation: United Nations peacebuilding in East Timor

The Rule of Law and the UN Peacebuilding Commission: a social development approach1

There is a danger that the Rule of Law Assistance Unit of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission will employ the same dominant but problematic paradigm that the international development community has pursued across the globe. This top-down, state-centred paradigm, sometimes known as ‘rule of law orthodoxy’, stands in contrast to an alternative set of strategies: legal empowerment. Legal empowerment involves the use of legal services, legal capacity-building and legal reform by and for disadvantaged populations, often in combination with other development activities, to increase their freedom, improve governance and alleviate poverty. It is typically carried out by domestic and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), but also by governments and official aid agencies. This alternative approach focuses directly on the disadvantaged and integration with other development activities, which means it often operates under the de facto rubric of social development. Legal empowerment strategies vary among countries and NGOs. But their impact includes reforming gender-biased, non-state justice systems in Bangladesh; ameliorating the legal system's corruption in post-conflict Sierra Leone; keeping the human rights flame burning in post-conflict Cambodia; advancing natural resources protection and indigenous peoples' rights in Ecuador; and strengthening agrarian reform in the Philippines. Addressing such priorities can help alleviate poverty, ameliorate conflict and prevent chaos or repression from dominating the disadvantaged, particularly in conflict or post-conflict societies.

Civil-Military Coordination and UN Peacebuilding Operations

Literature dealing with civil-military coordination (CIMIC) has mostly been concerned with the relationship between humanitarian actors and their military counterparts. In the United Nations (UN) peace operations context, however, the humanitarian-military interface is only one of several civil-military relationships. This paper is concerned with the question whether a different set of principles and guidelines is required for civil-military coordination in UN peace operations. The question is relevant because almost all the UN principles and guidelines for civil-military coordination have been drafted for the humanitarian-military interface, and most have been generated by the humanitarian community from a humanitarian perspective. In contrast, most contemporary UN peace operations are mandated to manage * Cedric de Coning is a Research Fellow at ACCORD where he is an advisor to the Training for Peace in Africa and the African Civil-Military Coordination programmes. He is a DPhil student with the Department of Political Science at the University of Stellenbosch.

Paradoxes and Dilemmas of Institutional Change: Human Rights and Livelihoods in Rural War–Torn Angola

This case study 1 critiques the conceptual architecture of a United Nations peacebuilding project called the Human Rights Committee (HRC) and suggests areas of further research and potential action to identify mismatches between local context and institution-building efforts that generate disempowering government structures. The committees were designed for implementation in Angola's war-torn provinces as peace loomed uncertainly in early 2001. The case study assesses the information available in April 2001, 2 and on this basis forecasts how the Committee was set to affect lives and livelihoods, if it was to operate as planned. In the sections below, the study considers three ‘snapshots’ of the small semiurban city of Uige, capital of Angola's northern Uige province: formal political institutions; informal landscapes; and how these were imagined in the documents and processes of the Human Rights Committee. The paper asks, ‘what are the implications associated with how well the three fit?’ Findings are presented in six parts. First there is a brief description of the HRC and how various implementers viewed it. Second is a portrait of the capital city of Uige during Angola's 30-year civil war and the massive displacement of its citizens that followed it. Third is a sketch of the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ political and civic landscapes of Uige. The fourth section describes how the HRC valued and sought to interact with both the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ political dimensions of Uige. The fifth section examines the finding that the Committee resembled a top-down, externally driven, state-building project premised on values that were ostensibly universal rather than on vetted knowledge. Concluding suggestions are discussed in the context of the complex relationship between state and society in Angola and the challenges for development.

Peacebuilding Mission: Lessons from the UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina

As noted in the Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (the Brahimi Report), the human rights component of a peacebuilding mission is critical to effective peacebuilding.1 Most United Nations peacebuilding missions have thus included a human rights component to monitor post-conflict human rights violations and the response of local authorities to those violations, and to strengthen local capacity to address such violations through educational and institution-building activities. Through such activities, human rights components play a crucial role in

United Nations peace-building, amnesties and alternative forms of justice: A change in practice?

United Nations peace-building, amnesties and alternative forms of justice: A change in practice?

Global Social Transformation: The Sweet Spot, the Steady Slog, and the Systemic Shift

Previous article No AccessGlobal Social Transformation: The Sweet Spot, the Steady Slog, and the Systemic Shift*Barry B. HughesBarry B. HughesUniversity of Denver Search for more articles by this author University of DenverPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Economic Development and Cultural Change Volume 49, Number 2January 2001 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/452510 Views: 21Total views on this site Citations: 12Citations are reported from Crossref © 2001 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Barry B. Hughes, Mohammod T. Irfan, José Solórzano, Vivian Yang, Jonathan D. Moyer Estimating current values of sustainable development goal indicators using an integrated assessment modeling platform: “Nowcasting” with International Futures, Statistical Journal of the IAOS 37, no.11 (Mar 2021): 293–307.https://doi.org/10.3233/SJI-200715Barry B. Hughes, Kanishka Narayan, Yangyang Xu Enhancing integrated analysis of national and global goal pursuit by endogenizing economic productivity, PLOS ONE 16, no.22 (Feb 2021): e0246797.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246797Barry B. Hughes Building a Global Model: The Toolkit, (Jan 2019): 7–32.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-804271-7.00002-6Theodora-Ismene Gizelis Systematic Study of Gender, Conflict, and Peace, Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy 24, no.44 (Oct 2018).https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2018-0038Barry B. Hughes International Futures (IFs) and integrated, long-term forecasting of global transformations, Futures 81 (Aug 2016): 98–118.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.07.007Andrew Schrank Toward a New Economic Sociology of Development, Sociology of Development 1, no.22 (Jun 2015): 233–258.https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2015.1.2.233Andrew Schrank Toward a New Economic Sociology of Development, Sociology of Development 1, no.22 (Jun 2015): 25–50.https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2015.1.2.25Shirley Gregor, Ahmed Imran, Tim Turner A ‘sweet spot’ change strategy for a least developed country: leveraging e-Government in Bangladesh, European Journal of Information Systems 23, no.66 (Dec 2017): 655–671.https://doi.org/10.1057/ejis.2013.14Theodora-Ismene Gizelis, Nana Afua Pierre Gender Equality and Postconflict Reconstruction: What Do We Need to Know in Order to Make Gender Mainstreaming Work?, International Interactions 39, no.44 (Sep 2013): 601–611.https://doi.org/10.1080/03050629.2013.805324Theodora-Ismene Gizelis A Country of their Own: Women and Peacebuilding, Conflict Management and Peace Science 28, no.55 (Nov 2011): 522–542.https://doi.org/10.1177/0738894211418412Theodora-Ismene Gizelis Gender Empowerment and United Nations Peacebuilding, Journal of Peace Research 46, no.44 (Jun 2009): 505–523.https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343309334576Paul D. Senese Chinese Acquisition of the Spratly Archipelago and Its Implications for the Future, Conflict Management and Peace Science 22, no.11 (Jun 2016): 79–94.https://doi.org/10.1080/07388940590915336