European Peace Institute / News

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As the UN has grown in terms of size, role, and mandate, restructuring its human resources (HR) system has become a pressing necessity. Staffing missions operating in conflict zones and managing and retaining people in hardship duty stations have proven difficult, leading to multiple attempts at organizational reform. However, past reforms have had limited, counterproductive, or controversial effects, and HR processes remain opaque, lengthy, and largely inefficient.

The report focuses on issues related to recruitment, staffing, and management of personnel in UN peace operations, drawing on the conclusions and recommendations of the HIPPO report, lessons from past efforts at HR reform, and extensive interviews. The study recommends four directions to move in to make human resources fit for the purposes of field operations:

• Get the right people for field missions by putting in place more efficient principles and systems for recruitment of quality staff, making working conditions more flexible and acceptable to better retain staff, and improving performance management systems to make it easier to terminate underperforming staff.
• Reduce bureaucracy by decentralizing decisions on and control over recruitment to field missions and streamlining rules and procedures for the field, including by lifting restrictions, relaxing the principle of competitiveness, and facilitating internal movement and promotion.
• Empower HR teams in the field by ending the culture of hostility between HR staff and hiring managers, reducing the clerical duties of HR teams in the field, moving from a culture of rule-compliance to a culture of service-delivery, and encouraging HR staff to become strategic partners in finding solutions to recruitment and management problems.
• Depoliticize human resources by building confidence between member states and the Secretariat and reducing the Fifth Committee’s micromanagement of human resources.

Beyond these technical recommendations, it urges placing people before processes in order to humanize the UN’s HR system.

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On October 5th, IPI hosted a policy forum event to launch the publication of the IPI policy paper, “People before Process: Humanizing the HR System for UN Peace Operations.”

As it evolved from an organization dedicated to conference services to a complex machine deploying multidimensional peace operations, the UN has had to tackle essential human resources challenges. Staffing missions operating in conflict zones—within timeframes and conditions adapted to changing needs on the ground—as well as managing and retaining people in hardship duty stations, have proven particularly difficult.

Despite multiple attempts at organizational reform, HR processes remain opaque, lengthy, and largely inefficient. Reforms related to the management of personnel have failed to create the HR system needed to support field missions, especially because they created cumbersome procedures for recruitment, performance management, and mobility. Policies in place have contributed to disheartening both hiring managers and candidates trying to navigate burdensome processes and restrictions. The new staffing system, which started to be implemented in 2016, has appeared to be a missed opportunity to simplify procedures and has further centralized recruitment decisions.

The new report, “People before Process: Humanizing the HR System for UN Peace Operations” analyzes the HR system of the UN and the various human resources challenges for peace operations. It explores the directions to move in and recommends political, organizational and cultural changes to make the HR system better fit for field purposes. This event provided the opportunity to discuss these challenges and recommendations, and to inform the management reform efforts of the UN Secretariat.

Speakers:
Dr. Namie Di Razza, Post-doctoral Fellow, International Peace Institute
Mr. Fabrizio Hochschild, Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic coordination, Executive Office of the Secretary-General
Mrs. Chhaya Kapilashrami, Director, Field Personnel Division, Department of Field Support
Mrs. Cherith Norman, Minister Counselor for UN Management and Reform, Permanent Mission of the US to the United Nations

Moderator:
Mr. Arthur Boutellis, Director, Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations, International Peace Institute

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“This is a ‘sigh of relief’ party which we do on an annual basis to celebrate the liberation of Turtle Bay because every year there is an invasion here,” IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen told guests who thronged the Trgyve Lie Center on Tuesday night, September 26, 2017.

“They arrive by plane, all the peacocks, all 193 come in motorcades, with blue lights, and they make life miserable for permanent representatives and ambassadors who are normally the kings of the hill here but are now demoted to servants,” he continued.

“But, of course, when they leave, there is a sigh of relief, and so we’ve invited you here tonight to celebrate the liberation of Turtle Bay.”

Among those who joined in the light-hearted festivities was the guest of honor, Miroslav Lajčák, the Foreign Minister of Slovakia, who is the new President of the General Assembly.

“Relax,” he told the party goers, “but not for too long. We have already started the next stage, with the first high level today and the second tomorrow so I hate to disappoint you.”

He reported that this year there had been 196 General Debate statements delivered from the General Assembly podium, the most ever in a High Level Week.

He also participated in IPI’s Sustaining Peace Stories collaborative project, answering the three questions:

“What does peace mean to you?”
“What are the obstacles to achieving peace?” and

“What would overcome these obstacles?”

His answers, in order, were:

“Peace to me means that you feel safe and secure, that you know that your dignity is protected and your rights are respected. Peace also means that you can blend your personal future and your professional future, and you don’t have to make any compromises.”

“There are many but basically the main obstacle is bad politics and a bad economy, which is also the result of bad politics, but it could also be climate change that results in a shortage of food and water.”

“We need more political will. We need more political commitment to peace. We need for peace to become really the number one priority. When we speak about peace, we have to mean peace being the most important thing and then we can achieve peace.”

Three experts including IPI Visiting Fellow Alexandra Novosseloff discussed UN Security Council reform in this TRT World segment, touching on the divisive issues the world body faces such as nationalism and a lack of political will.

Ms. Novosseloff noted that, “the Security Council is a reflection of the divisions of the world,” but still believes that we should remain optimistic of the Security Council’s ability to adapt. Though the possibility of reform was discussed by all three experts—Ms. Novosseloff was joined by Mona Khalil of Independent Diplomat and Salman Shaikh of the Shaikh Group— she argued that expanding the Security Council would mean more voices which could complicate the process further.

Despite these shortcomings of the Security Council to act in situations such as Syria and Myanmar, the three experts remained optimistic that the change was possible, with Ms. Novosseloff arguing that the “UN has been reforming itself for decades.”

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IPI and the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) of Switzerland co-sponsored a policy forum on September 22, 2017 to share and discuss the conclusions and recommendations of the second regional conversation on “Investing in Peace and Prevention in the Sahel-Sahara” held in N’Djamena, Chad four months ago.

That meeting, which addressed the nature of violent extremism in the region as perceived by those directly affected by it (main conclusions here), had followed the first one, in Dakar in June, 2016, and a precursor seminar in Tunis in November, 2015.

This latest discussion featured a panel of participants from the N’Djamena talks, one of whom, Jean-Daniel Biéler, Special Adviser for Central Africa, Human Security Division of the FDFA, acknowledged that violent extremism in the Sahel had not diminished since the Dakar meeting 15 months ago but asserted that he now saw “a lot of advances that are important for our understanding of what could be a preventative approach.”

“We have seen that there is no specific profile for a violent person,” he said, “but there is a profile of the groups who use violence to get to their goals, and they will use all cracks and gaps in our social structure to get through.”

To forestall that, he said, “we need to re-anchor our own political values where we are practicing them–from representative elections, to access to political expression, to environmental preservation. Communities, NGOs, and states have to take our responsibilities and open the door for dialogue wherever it is.”

Olivier Zehnder, Switzerland’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said the N’Djamena talks had shown that “there are more and more voices that want to gain in preventing violence. The main thing that comes out of these conversations is that we have to speak, and to speak, we have to meet.”

Steven Siqueira, Deputy Director of the UN Office of Counterterrorism, said that while it had become clear that “harsh crackdowns and heavy handed approaches can be counterproductive,” more emphasis needed to be put on developing alternative approaches. “We’ll only succeed in addressing the increasingly transnational threat of terrorism if we develop a new and comprehensive agenda for multilateral cooperation with a focus on prevention,” he said.

Specifically, he said, “the international community must do more to address the roots of radicalization including real and perceived injustices, high levels of unemployment, and grievances among young people.”

Involving women directly in negotiating for peace and preventing violence was the fervently uttered demand of Madeleine Memb, journalist and representative of MediaWomen4Peace in Cameroon. The fact that women in the region are burdened by living with debilitating personal loss and in real distress does not inhibit their ability to make a meaningful contribution, but quite the opposite, she argued.

By way of example, she said, “We questioned a woman who saw her child beheaded in front of her, and she said, ‘What I am looking for is that women need to be supported.’”

“Can women play a role in investment policy?” she asked. “I say, ‘Yes.’ At the high level, understand feminist existence, women participating actively in decision-making levels, to orient policy to take into account what they are seeing, what they are living.”

Asserting that when women go into politics, policies become more effective, she contended, “It’s time now that we give women the means, which, contrary to what you might think, is not a question of material means, but it’s psychological solutions, answers, words to reflect on their suffering, to try to understand what’s happening to them, to try to understand why their child is being radicalized.”

Aliyu Gebi, Senior Special Adviser of the Nigerian Ministry of Interior, said that though his region suffered from “weaponized poverty, layered with weaponized religion and weaponized politics,” he believed peace was still possible if organized society adjusted itself to the “reality on the ground.”

He defined peace as “the ability to allow my children to go outside and play, to go to the mosque, park, market, movies, to come back home without my worrying about where they are. Peace means mothers allowed to be mothers, fathers to be fathers, and children to be children,” he said. But he warned, “At any point in time that this balance is disturbed, there will be problems in society.”

An optimistic note was sounded by Gali Ngothé Gatta, parliament member from Chad. “The Lake Chad region is being rebuilt even though a few Boko Haram fighters are sowing death and destruction,” he said. “The first sign of progress I observed in Chad was the actors associating themselves together to help communities reorient themselves.”

Among them, he identified agricultural workers, religious leaders, women’s organizations, local politicians, members of civil society, and the international community including NGOs, the European Union and the UN.

He concluded: “The state had a monopoly on the debate, but now it’s an open debate, discussing what is going on, why they are mobilizing young children in violence.”

Youssef Mahmoud, IPI Senior Adviser, moderated the discussion.

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“It’s a place with hope in very short supply, Yemen,” said Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, opening his presentation at an IPI Humanitarian Affairs Series event on “Addressing the Humanitarian Situation in Yemen” September 22nd.

“There is no citizen in that country spared by what’s going on,” he said. “What you’ve got is a man-made crisis with people touched by it who have no power to stop it.”

A two-and-a-half-year-old conflict in Yemen has turned the country into what the UN says is now the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and largest food insecurity crisis.

The current hostilities erupted in March of 2015, just months after the arrival of Mr. McGoldrick, a seasoned UN humanitarian official with past service in places like Nepal, Pakistan, Georgia, and Lebanon. The conflict pitted a Saudi-led coalition loyal to the internationally recognized government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and those allied with the Houthi rebel movement and widely thought to be supported by Iran.

As a result of fighting since then–much of it involving devastating attacks from the air–the economy is now near collapse, public and private services have all but disappeared, and average citizens, having lost their livelihoods and whatever savings they had, face tremendous hardship while the most vulnerable are struggling simply to survive.

Supplying the stark details, Mr. McGoldrick said that 7 million Yemenis faced the threat of famine, and that there are already 650,000 cases of cholera, a statistic he said was expected to rise. Food insecurity, already critical, has jumped 20 percent this year; 50 percent of all health structures have been destroyed; 1.2 million civil service workers, 30,000 of them health workers, have not been paid, and up to 10,000 people, by the count of the Norwegian Refugee Council, have died prematurely without treatment or because travel out of the country is blocked.

“People go in villages and die because there’s no health service for them,” he said. “They die because the cancer services don’t work, the blood bank doesn’t work, dialysis doesn’t work, insulin’s not available.”

Air strikes in the first six months of 2017 equal the number in all of last year, and military activity is “heavily stalemated,” he said. “There are many instances of armed clashes, shellings and IEDs, and their indiscriminate nature is unparalleled.”

There is an overall disdain for international humanitarian and human rights law by all parties in the conflict, with killing and wounding of civilians, recruitment of child soldiers, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and unlawful restrictions on the passage of humanitarian assistance.

“The belligerents understand their obligations under the Geneva Conventions, but there’s a blatant disregard for them,” Mr. McGoldrick declared. “No matter what we do to talk to the parties, we get silence, we get indifference, and until that changes, we will have this recurring humanitarian nightmare.”

Everyone realizes that the war is a “massive failure,” he said, “but we still have to get the parties to be much more willing to accept a political solution.”

In a final commentary on the inhumanity of the situation, he said, “You never hear any of these parties ever say caring statements about the population. That’s not what they care about. What they care about is political gain, and that has to change.”

He said the only way a humanitarian response can get through is “to end the war.”

The moderator was Warren Hoge, IPI’s Senior Adviser for External Relations.

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On Thursday, September 21, 2017 IPI held its fifth Ministerial Dinner on Peace Operations in its Trygve Lie Center for Peace, Security, and Development. The dinner was attended by foreign and defense ministers, a United Nations senior official, and former members of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO), who discussed the recent debates on the reform of peacekeeping operations and adoption of Security Council Resolution 2378, as well as the broader reforms proposed by Secretary-General António Guterres.

The event was chaired by Terje Rød-Larsen, President of IPI, and co-hosted by Finland, Uruguay, Indonesia and Rwanda, represented respectively by Timo Soini, Finland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs; Enrique Loedel, Uruguay’s Vice-Minister of Political Affairs; Dian Triansyah Djani, Indonesian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and Valentine Rugwabiza, Rwanda’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Member of the Cabinet.

In a roundtable debate, conducted under the Chatham House rule of non-attribution, attendees had an open discussion on the most pressing issues confronting contemporary UN peace operations, while taking into account the recommendations contained in the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) and the reforms proposed by Secretary-General António Guterres.

The discussion began with Arthur Boutellis, Director of the Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations at IPI, briefly presenting the (forthcoming) IPI Peace Operations Reform Scorecard 2017, which analyzes the implementation of the recommendations from the HIPPO.

Jean-Pierre Lacroix, Under-Secretary-General of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, presented some of the progress made and challenges remaining on peace operations reform, and how the reforms proposed by Secretary-General António Guterres will help address some of the latter.

The ensuing discussion stressed the importance of political strategies guiding peace operations, the need to increase women’s participation in peacekeeping and in peace processes, the need to further institutionalize consultations with troop-contributing countries during the mandating process, and the importance of regional partnerships (especially the African Union). Many also emphasized the importance of training, performance and accountability, and for a change in mindset to accompany the reforms proposed by the Secretary-General. Member states represented included Korea, Italy, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, Croatia, Namibia, Norway, Sweden, Ghana, Japan, Estonia, France, Mexico, Netherlands, Turkey, Nigeria, Argentina, Azerbaijan and the Slovak Republic.

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Joan M. Larrea, The Chief Executive Officer of Convergence, said that when she was first asked to participate in conversations about how business interacts with peace processes, she thought everyone knew that peace is good for business, “and I also thought it was obvious that business is good for peace.”

“But,” she said, “apparently it’s not that obvious to all parties, hence this report.”

Her reference was to the report “A New Way of Doing Business: Partnering for Peace and Sustainable Development,” a collaboration between IPI, the Sustainable Development Goals Fund and Concordia, and the focus of a September 21st IPI policy forum on “Changing the ‘Business as Usual’ Model: A New Way to Partner for Peace and the 2030 Agenda,” sponsored by the same three organizations.

“We’re long past everybody thinking of business as a rapacious race to the bottom,” Ms. Larrea told the forum. “Economic growth is a prerequisite for peace, and economic growth comes from business, it comes from companies, it comes from investment. So for me the link is obvious.” With emphasis, she concluded, “Peace is really good for business, but business is really, really good for peace.”

Terje Rød-Larsen, President of IPI, said the institute had decided to explore the linkages as part of its research into applying the Sustainable Development Goals “because without business, implementation of the SDGs is not possible. In the end the UN needs the business community, and vice-versa.”

Matthew Swift, co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Concordia, said his organization felt there was a need for translating the public and private sectors to each other.

“Those sectors speak very different languages, but as an institute that focuses on what public-private sector cooperation can achieve, it’s important to get both on the same page,” he said. “And the SDGs do a very nice job communicating to CEOs around the world ways in which they can follow this framework of the seventeen goals towards both changing the way they do business but also thinking about the role the private sector has in various communities.”

Paloma Durán, Director of the SGD Fund, said putting into effect these synergies in the context of the UN presented a particular set of challenges.

“How to engage the private sector, keeping in mind that the private sector is not one homogenous actor and there are different sizes, different regions with different practices,’ she said. She also emphasized that businesses needed to be responsible partners and to incorporate the 2030 Agenda into their core business strategies and policies.

While it was important for the UN to engage big corporations with large resources, she said, “we need to work with small and medium-sized business; not because we want the private sector only as a donor, but because we want a real actor working with us.”

Peter van der Vliet, Director of Multilateral Organizations and Human Rights of the Netherlands, said he was encouraged by the opportunities for collaboration offered by the SDGs and by the growing interest of business in having an impact beyond simply making money. “Whether it’s big multinational corporations or small enterprises, the private sector is increasingly not only about making a profit,” he said. “And try to find one SDG where the private sector does not have an impact, just one. From goal one to goal seventeen, the role and conduct of business is crucial.”

Hedayetullah Al Mamoon, Senior Secretary in the Ministry of Finance of Bangladesh, said that “we should be careful about the difference between developed countries and developing countries because our private sector is not so strong.” He stressed that less developed countries need support to use and scale up innovative financial mechanisms to attract more private investments. The report highlights how new partnerships can be forged to finance the SDGs.

Mats Granryd, the Director-General of GSMA, the trade body that represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide and is focused on leveraging broad-based technologies for sustainable development, said members of his group reached more than 5 billion people in their effort “to connect everyone and everything to a better future.”

“There’s no better way of describing that better future than the SDGs,” he said.

Tonye Cole, co-founder and Executive Director of the Sahara Group, said the SDGs had shaped a defining rationale for his business operations, particularly in Africa.

“The SDGs in themselves have created a tool,” he said, “a mechanism for business so we can look at ourselves and say we actually have a voice.”
“And now we can itemize them and say, ‘I do SDG five, I believe in SDG eight, I actually have for years been doing SDG one’,” he said. “Now businesses can actualize it and put words to it.”

To meet the scale and ambition of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the private sector will have to play a central role. The agenda provides a window of opportunity for the private sector, governments, the UN, and civil society to collaborate with each other through a new global partnership.

This report explores what is needed to make this new partnership a reality, including the steps that both the UN and the private sector need to take. It also seeks to understand how the private sector can contribute to achieving peace as both an enabler and an outcome of the 2030 Agenda. Finally, the report aims to address how to mitigate the risk companies face in investing in countries facing challenges in attracting private domestic and international investments.

The report offers a number of recommendations for the private sector, the UN, and governments to engage in new forms of collaboration:

• To make the 2030 Agenda’s call for a new global partnership a reality, businesses should embed the SDGs across their supply chains and in their core business strategies and improve reporting. The UN, governments, and businesses should all deepen their engagement with each other and in particular with small and medium enterprises. Engagement of the private sector should be based on the recognition that investing in the 2030 Agenda is not only good for people and the planet; it can also improve bottom lines.
• Businesses should take a sustaining peace approach to all operations and investments. They should assess not only how to avoid contributing to conflict but also how to support efforts to build and sustain peace, including by working closely with national governments, building trust with communities, engaging with local small and medium enterprises, and striving to be more inclusive in their own policies and practices.
• Lack of resources is not the main challenge to financing the 2030 Agenda. Achieving the agenda requires expanding the scale of projects related to its implementation and reducing the risks for greater private sector engagement. The UN, governments, and businesses should partner to scale up investments in countries that need it most through innovative, long-term, self-sustaining funding models and a wider diversity of investors.

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Speaking at the 10th annual Trygve Lie Symposium on Fundamental Freedoms at IPI, Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende said that religious minorities are the “most vulnerable people in the world” and that it was impossible to “separate freedom of religion from other civil rights like the rights to privacy and assembly and expression.”

The title of this year’s symposium, co-sponsored by IPI and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and held on September 21, 2017, was “Promoting the Freedom of Religion or Belief,” and Mr. Brende noted that “collective religious hatred is not a natural phenomenon, it is man made.” Therefore, he argued, we have the power to end it, and “it is our moral obligation to work for a solution.”

Pointing out how widespread religious persecution is, IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen opened the meeting by noting that three quarters of the world’s population “still live in countries with high restrictions when it comes to freedom of religion or belief.”

Zeid bin Ra’ad Al-Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that religious systems have been “among the roots of human rights law and International Humanitarian Law” and that he was convinced that “religious leaders with their considerable influence over the minds of millions can be consequential human rights actors in the world today.”

He added that religious minorities must be “free to fully participate in all areas of society, though it must be clear that they cannot impose their beliefs on others.”

Retno Marsudi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia, noted that her country, the world’s largest Muslim nation, also was home to Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucianists and many other faiths. “Freedom of religion is in the DNA of Indonesia,” she said. “Tolerance is what holds us together as a nation.”

In a reference to the dangers of both Islamic fundamentalism and Islamophobia, she said, “Religious extremism has falsely used religion to justify their inhuman policies and they abuse the guarantee of freedom of expression promised by democracy.”

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the British Minister of State for the Commonwealth and the UN, said the key to tackling extremism was resisting intolerance. “You must be intolerant of intolerance,” he said. “If we nip it in the bud, that intolerance will not rear its ugly head as discrimination, and that will not turn into persecution, and persecution will not turn into human suffering.”

Mark Lattimer, Executive Director of Minority Rights Group International, warned against treating religious identity as something separate from a human right.

“When we speak about freedom of religion and belief, it is not just about freedom to worship,” he said. “Those are vital rights, but if you look at the face of religious rights, what you see is targeted persecution based on religious identity.”

He said that “the individual right to freedom of religion and belief, the collective persecution on account of identity, the mobilization of communities for political purposes all are different phenomena with different solutions, and we need to be careful about abandoning human rights solutions in favor of others.”

Ulrik Vestergaard Knudsen, Denmark’s Permanent Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, reported that his government raised the issue of religious freedom in international meetings “as much as possible” and at home was about to create the new post of ambassador for religious minorities.

Norwegian parliamentarian Abid Raja said that the three-year-old International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief, of which he is a member, now had representatives in more than 65 countries and was growing.

Several speakers referred to persisting instances of religious persecution, particularly the forced expulsion of the Rohingya Muslim minority from Myanmar. In his comment, Mr. Borge said, “The fact that we are using the words ‘genocide’ and “ethnic cleansing’ to describe events unfolding in 2017, 70 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a disgrace.”

IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen moderated the discussion.

Violent extremism expresses itself in different ways, depending on the context, and can manifest itself at every level and across every dimension of societies. In order to be innovative and context-specific, therefore, efforts to prevent violent extremism and invest in peace need to be grounded in joint and collaborative action between communities and local, national, regional, and international institutions.

To promote regional conversations around such efforts in the Sahel-Sahara, the International Peace Institute (IPI), the United Nations, and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs co-organized a regional seminar in N’Djamena, Chad, on May 31 and June 1, 2017. This meeting brought together more than 100 participants from fourteen countries and dozens of regional and international organizations to discuss the prevention of violent extremism from a regional perspective. This followed similar conversations organized in Dakar in June 2016 and a previous seminar in Tunis in November 2015.

These conversations highlighted the need to reflect on existing efforts to understand what works and what does not to avoid repeating past mistakes. Participants emphasized the importance of:

• Creating more spaces for dialogue among all sectors of society;
• Pursuing small-scale measures without waiting for national and international action;
• Recognizing that governments hold the primary responsibility to invest in prevention;
• Governments investing the same commitment in prevention efforts as in military engagement; and
• Highlighting and sharing previous successes in preventing violent extremism.

The meeting note is available in French. An English version is forthcoming.

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UN peacekeeping has survived many crises throughout its history, but none has provoked such distinctive disgrace as peacekeepers committing sexual violence against those they are meant to protect. Two decades of incremental reform have not stopped sexual abuse by peacekeepers, and determined rhetoric has not translated into effective action. Against this backdrop, the UN Security Council broke its relative silence on this issue by adopting Resolution 2272 in March 2016.

This report analyzes Resolution 2272’s approach to preventing sexual exploitation and abuse in UN peacekeeping and examines the key debates and controversies that have accompanied it. It identifies nine implementation requirements flowing from the resolution and makes twenty-one recommendations for delivering them, including:

• Appointing an independent, impartial ombudsperson with a mandate to review and oversee UN actions on sexual exploitation and abuse in peacekeeping;
• Streamlining the UN’s cumbersome reporting processes and resourcing to enable easier reporting and more timely action;
• Improving the trauma-sensitivity of investigations and responses to sexual exploitation and abuse;
• Addressing underreporting and institutional opacity by substantially strengthening whistle-blower protections and establishing partnerships with local and international civil society organizations; and
• Requesting reporting on allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse against non-UN forces operating under a Security Council mandate.

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The political crisis related to President Joseph Kabila’s stay in power has provoked instability, political violence, and human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and fueled conflicts in the country. Economic problems, a deepening humanitarian crisis, and destabilizing regional dynamics have exacerbated these problems. These developments have implications for the political strategy of the UN mission in the DRC (MONUSCO).

In light of the expected renewal of MONUSCO’s mandate in March 2018, the International Peace Institute (IPI), the Stimson Center, and Security Council Report co-organized a workshop on June 14, 2017, to give member states and UN actors the opportunity to develop a shared understanding of the situation faced by the UN in the DRC. This workshop was the sixth in a series analyzing how UN policies and the June 2015 recommendations of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) can be applied to country-specific contexts.

Participants suggested that MONUSCO’s mandate and activities should prioritize the conduct of free, fair, and credible elections in the DRC. MONUSCO should also adopt a more mobile approach to the protection of civilians. Finally, the mission must work with additional partners to identify and fill gaps that it does not have the capacity to address, and eventually work toward an exit strategy.

A translation of the meeting note in French is forthcoming.

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The 2030 Agenda’s global indicators provide a universal framework to measure peace. But what type of additional indicators may be needed to measure peace more holistically? And why is it important to gather data? These were some of the questions considered at a workshop at IPI on July 20, 2017.

The “How to Measure Peace? For What? For Whom?” discussion was convened on the margins of the 2017 High-Level Political Forum—an annual forum to carry out voluntary, state-led reviews of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. The session focused on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16, which seeks to promote peace, justice, and inclusive institutions.

Welcoming remarks were delivered by Masud Bin Momen, Permanent Representative of Bangladesh; Jimena Leiva-Roesch, IPI Research Fellow; and Conor Seyle, Director of One Earth Future Research.

The workshop—the second in the Innovations in Partnerships Series—was co-sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the UN, the SDG 16 Data Initiative, One Earth Future, and the International Peace Institute. The discussion was conducted under the Chatham House rule of non-attribution.

Gary Milante, a director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, served as chair during the discussions.

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“To be successful, peacekeepers must have appropriate analysis, training, and support,” said François Delattre, France’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

Speaking at a day-long meeting at IPI on peace operations reform, Mr. Delattre noted, “As the face of the UN, effective peacekeeping is essential to UN legitimacy.” Highlighting the importance of peacekeeping, he added, “It is what reinforces the legitimacy and relevance of the multilateral system, which we know is under threat.”  

Mr. Delattre made his remarks at a June 27, 2017 seminar held to discuss and analyze the state of UN peace operations reform two years after the release of the report of the High-Level Independent Panel on UN Peace Operations (HIPPO) and in light of review processes launched by Secretary-General António Guterres on the restructuring of the UN’s peace and security architecture and on management of the UN system.   

On the eve of the presentation of the reforms proposed to the UN peace and security architecture, there is widespread consensus that current institutional arrangements are anachronistic in their structure, procedures, and priorities. Participants from across the Secretariat, UN member-states’ missions, and academia thus joined a closed-door discussion (under the Chatham House rule of non-attribution) on the current state of reforms to the UN, the challenges of ensuring better delivery in the field, and the extent to which these efforts respond to the new paradigm of prevention and sustaining peace.

Arthur Boutellis, Director of IPI’s Center for Peace Operations, noted that the secretary-general had outlined nine priority areas for reform at a meeting of the Security Council in April 2017; the report of the Internal Review Team (IRT) on the UN Secretariat’s Peace and Security Architecture will indicate how the first of these nine will be addressed. He also welcomed Ethiopia’s intention, announced at the same meeting, to host a high-level open debate on the implementation of the recommendations of the HIPPO report.

The three panels of this day-long seminar sought to connect the peace and security architecture reform to the past, present, and future of UN peace operations. The Permanent Representatives of Ethiopia, Norway, and the Republic of Korea, as co-chairs of the Group of “Friends of HIPPO” states, served as moderators for these discussions.

The first panel took stock of progress made on implementing changes recommended in the HIPPO report. It concluded that, even as there has been progress on a number of important technical and managerial issues, these changes do not add up to the fundamental shifts called for in the HIPPO report. The UN today has gone through an exhaustive degree of analysis as to how problems arise and may be resolved; that there are still delays in implementing these solutions indicates their politically challenging nature.

The second panel, which included presentations from Fabrizio Hochschild (Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Coordination, EOSG) and Tamrat Samuel (head of the IRT on the peace and security architecture), discussed Mr. Guterres’ vision of a “more anticipatory and agile” UN, which is able to use not only the full spectrum of peace operations but also the entire range of tools and resources within the UN system to be more responsive and flexible in preventing, managing, and resolving conflict.

The third panel reviewed how peace operations could work for sustaining peace. It acknowledged the growing recognition of synergies between the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the sustaining peace framework adopted in 2015, and emphasized that this will require peace operations to be conceived in a “whole of UN” or “Delivering as One” context, with particular attention to financing and budgetary mechanisms to ensure that funding streams for “security” and “development” are not treated as a zero-sum game.

Across the three panels, there was consensus that peace operations must be seen as only one part of holistic UN engagement with countries and regions, and that their ability to contribute to peace, stability, and development in countries where they are deployed will be contingent on the ability to convene and coordinate a range of actors, including UN system actors such as the country team and humanitarian agencies; local, national, and regional governments; regional and sub-regional organizations; local and international non-governmental and civil society organizations; and other international organizations, notably the international financial institutions and donors.

The seminar was organized with support from the French Ministry of Defense’s Department for International Relations and Strategy (DGRIS), and marks the culmination of the three-year “New Issues Observatory” project. In its third year, the project has focused on field support to UN peace operations; previous themes were Technology in Peacekeeping, and UN Peace Operations in Asymmetric Environments.

On June 29th, the International Peace Institute, in partnership with LINKS (Dialogue, Analysis and Research), held a meeting in Vienna titled “Nagorno-Karabakh: Can confidence-building measures help bring about a peaceful resolution of the conflict?” This is the fourth meeting organized by IPI addressing the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

In his opening remarks, Ambassador Günther Bächler, Special Representative of the Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE spoke about the importance of confidence-building measures and the need to engage with a wide range of stakeholders. He thanked IPI and LINKS (DAR) for hosting the event. This was also echoed by the representative of the Office of the EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus, Atanas Baltov, who reiterated the support of the EU for the work of the OSCE Minsk Group, and spoke about the work of the European Union in the context of the Karabakh conflict and conflict settlement process, particularly through its work with civil society in the framework of the EPNK program.

In a short presentation, LINKS (DAR) Executive Director, Dennis Sammut, talked about the role that confidence-building measures (CBMs) can play in the Karabakh context, addressing the questions of when, between who, on what and in what way, the work can be done.

Richard Giragosian, Director of the Regional Studies Centre in Yerevan, Zaur Shiriyev, Associate Academic fellow of Chatham House in Baku, Benyamin Poghosyan, Vice President for Research at the Armenia National Defence University, Yerevan, and Ahmed Allili, Deputy Director, Centre for Economic and Social Development in Baku shared their views on the topic with participants. The representatives of the embassies of Armenia and Azerbaijan also took the floor.

Participants in the meeting emphazised the importance of CBMs for the resolution of the Karabakh conflict, and expressed concern at the lack of progress in the peace negotiations and the deteriorating security situation on the ground. It was highlighted that CBMs are not a substitute for serious peace negotiations, but it was equally argued that CBMs were often an essential ingredient for any peace negotiations. Among the discussants were the ambassadors of Kazakhstan, Iceland, Belgium, and Cyprus; representatives of other diplomatic missions in Austria; international experts from the region and civil society representatives.

On July 13th, IPI is hosting a Global Leaders Series lunchtime presentation featuring H.E. Ms. Kersti Kaljulaid, President of Estonia, who will talk about the challenges and successes of the small European nation.

Remarks will begin at 1:15pm EST.

Estonia, as a small country, has a unique experience to offer when it comes to fostering innovation with limited resources and punching above its weight. The President will talk about the challenges and successes of the small European nation.

From 1999 to 2002, Kersti Kaljulaid was Prime Minister Mart Laar’s Economic Advisor. She was CFO and CEO of the Iru Power Plant for the state-owned energy company Eesti Energia from 2002 to 2004. From 2004 to 2016, Ms. Kaljulaid was a Member of the European Court of Auditors. In this role, she worked on audits of the EU’s research and development funds, structural policies, and Galileo project. She also coordinated and prepared several of the European Court of Auditors’ annual reports, chaired its Administrative Affairs Committee, and chaired the Europol Audit Committee.

The event will be moderated by IPI Vice President Adam Lupel.

Innovative entrepreneurship is a cornerstone to the development of a vibrant local private sector. This, in turn, can make a powerful contribution to the ecosystem of peace. Peace is therefore not the sole preserve of the state: entrepreneurs can also be convincing peace brokers.

This issue brief focuses on how entrepreneurship can contribute to preventing conflict and sustaining peace. It identifies points of convergence between entrepreneurship and peace, recognizing that these are likely to be highly context-specific. It concludes that the economic incentives and peace dividends that can be sparked by entrepreneurship warrant greater attention and offers recommendations for harnessing the positive aspects of entrepreneurship while reining in or mitigating potential harm.

This issue brief is part of the International Peace Institute’s (IPI) attempt to reframe prevention for the purpose of sustaining peace through a series of conversations from October 2016 to June 2017. Other conversations have focused on how to approach the UN’s regional political offices, peace operations, and the SDG on gender equality from the perspective of sustaining peace, as well as on what sustaining peace means in practice.

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An expert group of diplomats, UN officials, and representatives from civil society organizations were convened for the 2017 edition of the annual IPI New York Seminar, held on June 20, 2017. They met to discuss the role of youth leadership for peace and development, in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as well as the Security Council resolution on “Youth, Peace and Security” adopted in December 2015.

The event was organized in association with the Permanent Mission of Ireland to the United Nations. Ambassador David Donoghue, Ireland’s Permanent Representative to the UN, delivered opening remarks.

Mr. Donoghue described the theme for the seminar as very timely and a subject that Ireland considers to be critically important. He noted that young people under the age of 25 make up almost half of the world’s population today. That demographic fact alone means that youth have to be the focus of policy—it will be impossible, for instance, to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) without the involvement of young leaders. The process of drafting and adopting the SDGs itself incorporated significant opportunities for consultation with youth, and the enthusiastic response to these consultations reflected the awareness among youth themselves that the 2030 Agenda was a youth agenda.

Dr. Graeme Simpson, Director of Interpeace USA and lead author of the progress study (commissioned under Security Council Resolution 2250) on youth, peace, and security, delivered the keynote speech. He described the methodology adopted by the progress study, which was designed while keeping in mind the imperative of not replicating the very problems it was looking into—what the resolution describes as a “deep and enduring pattern of exclusion of young people.” The progress study has attempted to model a different approach that incorporates youth and their priorities at every stage of design and implementation and has gone to great lengths to hold consultations with various groups of young people globally.

The subsequent sessions of the seminar were conducted under the Chatham House rule of non-attribution. Participants reviewed the strategies for youth engagement adopted by various entities within the UN system, identifying the lessons learned from current practices, including where they still fell short or faced challenges achieving the desired level of inclusion. They also heard from young leaders of peacebuilding organizations working in a range of countries, who discussed their experiences with catalyzing change and interacting with national and international policymaking bodies.

In these sessions, participants highlighted the prevailing degree of mistrust and disillusionment among young people, who often see existing systems as flawed and in need of reform. It will be difficult to move past these impressions if local or national authorities and intergovernmental organizations are seen as continuing to patronize youth and minimize their concerns; rather, it will be necessary for political and policy-level actors to recognize the agency of youth not only to participate in or benefit from but also to design and lead the processes of development and peacebuilding.

In order to explore the practical and programmatic implications of these ideas, seminar participants then split into working groups. Each group was assigned a hypothetical scenario in one of three countries and asked to design interventions to respond to those situations while keeping in mind the principles enumerated in the previous discussion. This exercise helped make those insights more concrete, while also leading participants to appreciate the importance of deep local knowledge and analysis. Rapporteurs for each of the working groups then presented their proposals back to the plenary and received feedback on their proposals from a panel including leaders with extensive experience of UN grant-making to civil society organizations.

Finally, the participants expressed their appreciation for the emphasis UN Secretary-General António Guterres has placed on youth in his tenure thus far and their hope that he would take up and sincerely pursue the lessons and recommendations that emerge from the progress study.