Building peace: the United Nations' role in the post-conflict state.

GEORGE E. MOOSE is adjunct professor in International Practice at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He has served as US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and US Permanent Representative to the European Office of the United Nations.

The new Peacebuilding Commission created within the United Nations states as its main objective: "to reinforce the UN's conflict resolution function, with a strong post-conflict feature to help prevent countries or regions from relapsing into war." Do you believe that there was a legitimate need for the creation of a new administrative body for building peace, and if so, why?

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I have come to the conclusion that a new management structure was needed within the UN system, with a mandate to draw upon and coordinate the activities of various elements and agencies. It begs the question of what kinds of inputs are needed for a credible and viable peacebuilding operation. The fact is that, depending on the situation, countries emerging from conflict need a range of services, from providing basic humanitarian assistance to aiding people who are coming out of conflict, to helping refugees and displaced persons get back to their homes and resettle, to providing some minimum security. "Security" refers not only to military security, but also to the kinds of basic civil security that one expects in a city--for example, a police force that controls both post-conflict violence and simple crime.

In addition to a police component, a justice component is necessary. There is no point in arresting suspects if there is no judicial system in place to adjudicate whether they are innocent or guilty--which is a major problem. For example, after the conflict in Rwanda, the government felt obliged to arrest people who were accused of participating in the genocide. At one point, more than 125,000 people had been incarcerated in prisons that were not intended to hold that many people. But there was not yet a functioning judicial system to determine guilt or innocence, or even whether those people should be held. There are other necessary requirements such as supplying assistance for reconstruction and development and establishing a system to monitor this process. All of these things are done by different agencies of the United Nations, and trying to figure out how to coordinate them and who will coordinate them has been a real challenge.

What are the necessary preconditions for the Peacebuilding Commission to achieve its goals, and are these conditions being met?

The Peacebuilding Commission is really designed to assume a role once peace has been re-established. However, it is important to understand that there has to be continuity. One does not have peacekeeping one day and peacebuilding the next. The purpose of the Peacebuilding Commission is to make the transition from peacekeeping to peacebuilding one in which there is continuity, because that has been the missing piece in most of our efforts. What we still lack today is sufficient capacity in numbers of peacekeepers, structures to support them, and the ability to deploy them rapidly to respond to urgent situations like Rwanda. Since Rwanda, there have been several efforts to build greater capacity. One of the commitments that came out of the Gleneagles G8 Summit was to train 25,000 African peacekeepers, which is a laudable commitment.

However, we have been extremely slow in actually accomplishing what we set out to do. In the 1990s Rwanda demonstrated the need for more capacity, more country involvement, better forces able and willing to participate in peacekeeping, and an environment in which forces could exercise together. This would ensure that forces would have the experience necessary to effectively handle the peacekeeping situation they are presented with. My disappointment is that we have not been able to do more of that sooner. The fundamental requirement is political leadership--someone, or some set of countries, who will take the lead. And we can only acquire these necessities if, in fact, we have a serious program and a plan to expand our collective capacity globally. This involves two things: more trained forces that are able and willing to participate, and stronger infrastructure at the United Nations that can support those kinds of operations. Right now, we have more than 18 different peacekeeping operations and nearly 100,000 UN peacekeepers in the field. Yet we have no more than 600 staff members in the UN's peacekeeping office supporting all of those operations. That is a formula for ultimate disaster, and it must be fixed.

To what extent is it the responsibility of the post-conflict nation-state itself to participate in peacebuilding activities? What contributions, if any, should its government and citizens be obligated to make?

The literature that resulted in the Peacebuilding Commission's approval by the General Assembly clearly includes the assumption that the government concerned, whether it is a transitional government or a newly-elected government, will commit to this process. This is not an imposed process. It is a process that is premised on the full agreement and cooperation of the government concerned. If that agreement is not there, there will be no peacebuilding mission in that country. It is very different from the notion of a peace-enforcement operation, where, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, an outside force might be sent in to actually impose a peace and then, following that, try to create circumstances of stability. The function of the Peacebuilding Commission is to support those countries that have asked for the assistance of the international community in creating post-conflict peace and who are willing to participate in the process of working together with the Commission to rebuild and restore a stable state.

Could you discuss a situation in which such a development program was successfully implemented, the role that the United Nations played, and what challenges emerged during the process?

Because the Peacebuilding Commission was only recently created, some people may have the misperception that the United Nations has not really been doing peacebuilding at all, which is not true. If you look at what happened in the 1990s, you will see that there has been a gradual evolution of peacekeeping into what is now becoming peacebuilding. Peacekeeping entailed deploying peacekeepers after a conflict to make sure that everyone abided by the terms of the agreement. Often it was a transition period of several months.

For example, in Namibia in 1988 and 1989, it became evident that in addition to keeping the peace, the UN was going to have to oversee the preparations for and the monitoring of an election, because otherwise there would not have been a legitimate government to take over. Moreover, there were many displaced and refugee Namibians that had to be brought back and resettled, which was a significant humanitarian component that had to be managed. And in addition, an interim governmental structure had to be provided to allow the society to function while this transition was taking place. So already in 1988 and 1989, there were examples of missions that had expanded beyond the traditional definition of peacekeeping toward what we now consider peacebuilding.

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Another successful example would be Mozambique. An agreement was reached in 1991 and 1992, settling the civil war between the government and the rebel movement, the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO). Again, part of the process was to send in a peacekeeping force to ensure that both sides were abiding by their promises under the agreement, as well as to disarm and demobilize forces--particularly, but not exclusively, those of RENAMO. The disarmament component became very complicated. Other duties included oversight of elections as well as a reconstruction component geared toward reintegrating and employing all the demobilized soldiers. The level of complexity in these operations increased as people understood the limitations of traditional peacekeeping and the necessity of complementing peacekeeping with other activities to ensure sustainable peace.

We now face even more complex challenges. Sierra Leone, for example, was virtually destroyed by more than a decade of civil war. It lost its infrastructure and governmental structure--essentially all of the things that one needs in order to have some semblance of a state. Therefore, the task of rebuilding after the war is far more complex and far more demanding than it was in Mozambique, for example. That, too, has challenged the international community as it attempts to resolve the issue of what elements need to be put in place in order to ensure that the investment we made in finally getting peace does not result in a return to conflict. What is it that we need to do in order to sustain that over some period of time? Sierra Leone was one of the first countries chosen for attention by the Peacebuilding Commission. The Commission's challenge, therefore, is to design a program with the elements necessary to ensure that the country can be put in a sustainable path toward peace and development--because we can't have one without the other.

In your address at the 57th Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, you said that "development is one of the keys to a stable, secure, and prosperous world." How should efforts to promote development be integrated into peacebuilding operations?