European Peace Institute / News

The International Peace Institute (IPI) is pleased to announce the Honorable Kevin Rudd has been elected unanimously by IPI’s board of directors as the board’s next chair, effective June 01, 2018. Mr. Rudd was Vice Chair of IPI’s board since June 2014.

Mr. Rudd succeeds Professor Michael Doyle, Director of the Columbia Global Policy Initiative at Columbia University, who has served as interim Chair since May 2016. Dr. Doyle was Vice President of IPI (then IPA) from 1993-1996 and has been on IPI’s board since 1997.

IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen issued the following statement:

“On behalf of the staff of the Institute, I would like to thank Professor Michael Doyle for his outstanding work in various capacities at IPI, where he has served for over 20 years. Michael has consistently shown extraordinary loyalty and dedication through his valuable contributions to IPI. He has skillfully mentored numerous young researchers over the years, who now serve important positions in international organizations, governments, academics, and non-governmental organizations across the globe. I would like use this opportunity to thank my friend Michael for the exceptional work he has done for IPI and the good of the global community we are serving.

The Honorable Kevin Rudd has served with extraordinary skills and dedication as the Vice Chair of the board of directors of IPI since 2014, and has lent invaluable support to the Chair of the board and the President and CEO. Through his chairmanship of IPI’s Independent Commission on Multilateralism (ICM), he was a skillful helmsman who, together with his fellow members and IPI staff, produced a series of reports which gave new perspectives to the challenges of the future of the multilateral system, and guidelines and advice on how to address the dangers and opportunities alike. I would like to warmly welcome Kevin as our new Chairman. And I am looking very much forward to working closely with him in pursuing IPI’s objectives of peace and reconciliation through policy research, advice, and our convening and outreach capacity.”

Mr. Rudd served as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, then as Foreign Minister from 2010 to 2012, before returning to the Prime Ministership in 2013. As Prime Minister, Mr. Rudd led Australia’s response during the Global Financial Crisis. Australia’s fiscal response to the crisis was reviewed by the IMF as the most effective stimulus strategy of all member states. Australia was the only major advanced economy not to go into recession. Mr. Rudd is also internationally recognized as one of the founders of the G20 which drove the global response to the crisis, and which in 2009 helped prevent the crisis from spiraling into a second global depression.

As Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Mr. Rudd was active in global and regional foreign policy leadership. He was a driving force in expanding the East Asia Summit to include both the US and Russia in 2010. He also initiated the concept of transforming the EAS into a wider Asia Pacific Community to help manage deep-routed tensions in Asia by building over time the institutions and culture of common security in Asia. On climate change, Mr. Rudd ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2007 and legislated in 2008 for a 20% mandatory renewable energy target for Australia. Mr. Rudd drove Australia’s successful bid for its non-permanent seat on the United Nation’s Security Council and the near doubling of Australia’s foreign aid budget.

Mr. Rudd joined the Asia Society Policy Institute as its inaugural President in January 2015.

Mr. Rudd remains engaged in a range of international challenges including global economic management, the rise of China, climate change and sustainable development. In 2015-16, Mr. Rudd led a review of the UN system as chair of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism. In February 2014, Mr. Rudd was named a Senior Fellow with Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he completed a major policy paper, U.S.-China 21: The Future of U.S.-China Relations Under Xi Jinping. He is Chair of Sanitation and Water for All, a Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House in London, a Distinguished Statesman with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Paulson Institute in Chicago. Mr. Rudd is a member of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization’s Group of Eminent Persons. He serves on the International Advisory Board of the Schwarzman Scholars program at Tsinghua University, and is an Honorary Professor at Peking University. Mr. Rudd is proficient in Mandarin Chinese. He also remains actively engaged in indigenous reconciliation.

The International Peace Institute is an independent, international not-for-profit think tank dedicated to managing risk and building resilience to promote peace, security, and sustainable development. To achieve its purpose, IPI employs a mix of policy research, strategic analysis, publishing, and convening. With staff from more than twenty countries and a broad range of academic fields, IPI has offices across from United Nations headquarters in New York and offices in Vienna and Manama. IPI’s research covers aspects of peace, cooperation, and multilateralism including UN reform, peace operations, sustaining peace and prevention, peace and health, humanitarian affairs, WPS (women, peace and security), and the intersection of the Sustainable Development Goals and peace. IPI also produces the analysis website The Global Observatory.

On May 24th, IPI together with the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United Nations cohosted a policy forum entitled “The Primacy of Politics and the Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping Operations.” This policy forum explored the perceived and actual tensions between the pursuit of political solutions and the protection of civilians in peacekeeping contexts. The event follows the 2018 Security Council Open Debate on the Protection of Civilians organized by Poland (#United4Civilians).

This event is the first as part of IPI’s recently launched Protection of Civilians Project. While the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) stressed the “primacy of politics,” UN peacekeeping missions are often mandated to protect civilians in challenging environments where the peace process has stalled and political solutions seem out of reach. In these contexts, protecting local populations from physical violence may appear to be an operational imperative for the mission and a priority over engagement in protracted and uncertain political processes.

This policy forum provides an opportunity to discuss situations where there is a risk of competition between the primacy of politics and the centrality of protection, as well as where they are complementary and mutually reinforcing. While the two objectives are hardly mutually exclusive, in practice pursuing both can raise challenging questions. In South Sudan, Darfur, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the UN mission’s political role may seem elusive, and its protection goals may appear to detract from its political effectiveness. The political stance of UN missions intervening in support of host states may also be an important limitation for peacekeepers mandated to protect civilians from all threats of physical violence—including from host-state forces.

In these situations, where civilians are clearly at risk, how should peace operations reconcile political strategies and the protection of civilians? In the absence of viable political processes at the strategic level, what political measures and strategies can be used in parallel with military operations to protect civilians on the ground?

Opening Remarks:
H.E. Mr. Karel J. G. van Oosterom, Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United Nations

Speakers:
Mr. Ralph Mamiya, Consultant; formerly Protection of Civilians Team Leader, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations
Mr. Sébastien Lapierre, Chief, Policy and Best Practices Service, UN Department of Peacekeeping operations
Ms. Daniela Kroslak, Leader, Darfur Integrated Operational Team, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations
Ms. Chloé Marnay-Baszanger, Chief, Peace Mission Support Section, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Ms. Alison Giffen, Director, Center for Civilians in Conflict

Moderator:
Dr. Namie Di Razza, Research Fellow, International Peace Institute

The 2015 UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) stressed two major themes that Secretary-General António Guterres continues to focus on: first, the primacy of politics in peacekeeping, which he raised in his September 2017 remarks at the Security Council open debate on peacekeeping; and second, the core obligation of peacekeepers and the entire UN to protect civilians, a continuous theme of his tenure.

Yet protecting civilians and pursuing political strategies, the defining tasks of modern peacekeeping, have frequently been in tension. Critics argue that peace operations in the last two decades have too often been tools of last resort, deployed to conflicts with no viable political process and serving as stop-gap measures rather than strategic steps toward a political solution. This is particularly evident in missions whose mandate to protect has been prioritized in the absence of a clear political vision to address the conflict.

This issue brief reviews the complementarity and tension between protection of civilians and political strategies. It explores the important role of the Security Council in laying the strategic groundwork for the success of missions, and examines how missions, at their level, can implement protection of civilians mandates through a political strategy.

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Counterterrorism measures are developed to ensure individual and collective security in response to terrorist attacks, but there is growing evidence that counterterrorism measures can infringe upon the protection of civilians by inhibiting the provision of assistance. This tension was the subject of an IPI policy forum on May 23rd, entitled, “The Protection of Civilians in Counterterrorism Contexts: Safeguarding the Space for Principled Humanitarian Action,” and co-sponsored by the Permanent Missions of Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Peru to the United Nations.

Marine Buissonnière, a consultant and the former Secretary-General of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders (MSF), said that humanitarian assistance, which follows principles of International Humanitarian Law, faces new challenges to protecting civilians in a post-9/11 international environment. Although former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon promoted a resolution that entitled health workers to provide care in all circumstances without incurring any form of harassment or sanctions, health workers, over two years later, continue to face issues for providing “impartial” care, serving all people regardless of their identity, she said.

The ethical dilemma that humanitarian actors and international lawmakers now face, she said, is that healthcare professionals find themselves “cornered, caught between counterterrorism laws that can criminalize their duties to impartially treat all, and International Humanitarian Law ethics and International Human Rights Law.”

In this context, what is new is not the criminalization of healthcare, she said, “but how counterterrorism frameworks, in a sense, appear to have strengthened the basis–moral and legal–to justify harassment, arrests, and prosecutions” against medical professionals. The “vague and broad” definitions of terrorism and support to terrorists have enabled some people to interpret medical treatment as a form of “illegitimate support,” thereby criminalizing those who offer assistance, even though under International Humanitarian Law such assistance is considered to be principled humanitarian action.

“When ethics and International Humanitarian Law are not prioritized by both those seeking and those providing medical care,” she said, the act of providing impartial medical services “inevitably becomes criminalized, perpetuating a chilling effect on the provision of impartial care that is detrimental not only to those banned or to those listed as terrorists but detrimental, at the end of the day, to us all.”

Jürg Lauber, Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the UN, and chair of the Group of Friends of the Protection of Civilians, described the role of the state in addressing the negative impact that UN sanctions can have on humanitarian activities. His recommendation, from a policymaking perspective, was that “we as states should really try to do everything to address this and to avoid the dilemma between these two sets of measures.” He discussed two steps for this. “We need to raise awareness for the issue,” he said, “and secondly, come down with a set of practical measures.”

Yves Daccord, Director-General of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said that criminalization of humanitarian assistance in the past two decades had changed the landscape in which humanitarian organizations operate. The effect of counterterrorism policy on the space for humanitarian action posed two issues aside from criminalization, he said. Lack of impartiality in offering medical assistance or withholding aid to those in need based on their affiliation can “create notions of good victims, who have rights to be helped, and victims who do not deserve to be helped because they are under the control of, or on the territory controlled by, a non-state armed group labeled as terrorist.”

And since building trust among communities in conflict is necessary for the provision of humanitarian assistance, he said, these distinctions are undermining the trust owed to humanitarian actors, making it impossible for them to fulfill their aim of providing assistance. “I think we’ve seen over time people challenging us more,” said Mr. Daccord. “There is a lot of tension, polarization, for an organization like the ICRC…it’s absolutely critical that they are able to demonstrate on a daily basis that they are impartial and neutral.”

Naz Modirzadeh, Director of the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, brought to light the different ways policy makers talk about the conflict between counterterrorism and humanitarian law, and the state of this debate. She highlighted the norms of International Humanitarian Law in contrast to counterterrorism measures, which, she said, “We tend to talk about…as though they are in a relationship with one another…sharing a common purpose.” But, she said, “I’d like to suggest that we avoid this misrecognition. It is not a value judgement to suggest counterterrorism and International Humanitarian Law are distinct and aim at different purposes.”

Counterterrorism, she explained, connotes a sense of urgency and immediacy whereas International Humanitarian Law tends to be decided over time and negotiated through the diplomacy of many different actors. International Humanitarian Law “presumes that there is a distinction that we must maintain between war and peace and is only applicable in situations of armed conflict,” she said. “On the other hand, counterterrorism frameworks often blur the lines between war and peace by combining elements relating to armed conflict with elements connected with the resort to force and law enforcement.”

As such, International Humanitarian Law sees humanitarian assistance and protection for people, including purported enemy civilian populations as “legitimate and indeed mandatory,” Ms. Modirzadeh explained. Under a counterterrorism framework, she said, the same support may be primarily perceived as “dangerous, because it can help free up the resources of terrorist groups.”

However, Ms. Modirzadeh saw hope for a solution in providing legal exemptions for humanitarian workers. “The idea of exemptions merits much closer attention,” she said. “I think there was a time when this was thought politically impractical or so sensitive that it was not worth having a conversation about. What I’m hearing here today is that it is indeed perhaps one of the better solutions to this dilemma and that we have good examples that we can build upon…Every counterterrorism measure from this point further should incorporate an acknowledgment, reaffirmation, and indeed, where appropriate, a very particular exemption related to principled humanitarian access where relevant.”

Ms. Modirzadeh also called for greater discussion that should involve the private sector. In response, Lise Gregoire-van Haaren, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the UN, spoke on how to reconcile the humanitarian action with the due diligence requirements by banks and governments.

“We feel that raising awareness is a very important first step,” she said. “Secondly, governments and national banking associations could provide more guidance to NGOs on how to comply with counterterrorism measures and sanction regimes.”

Closing remarks were made by Reinhard Krapp, Minister, Permanent Mission of Germany to the UN; Juan José Gómez Camacho, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the UN; and Gustavo Meza-Cuadra, Permanent Representative of Peru to the UN. IPI Vice President Adam Lupel moderated.

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An evening discussion among peacebuilders was held at IPI, May 16, 2018, on women’s meaningful participation in negotiating peace and the implementation of peace agreements.

The meeting, convened by UN Women and IPI, brought together internationally recognized peacebuilders, officials from the United Nations, diplomats, and representatives of civil society. The event was held as part of an Expert Group Meeting (EGM) convened by UN Women in preparation for the Secretary-General’s annual report on women, peace and security, expected in October.

Teresa Whitfield, Director of the Policy and Mediation Division at the United Nations Department of Political Affairs; said that the meeting built upon the work these stakeholders have undertaken thus far to explore what makes women’s participation “meaningful” in the context of negotiating peace. She reminded participants that the Secretary-General’s report last year unequivocally stated, “inclusive processes should be the rule, not the exception.”

The EGM participants have worked to support joint strategizing to overcome the persistent barriers to inclusion, representation, and meaningful participation. The international community must continue to articulate ways of moving beyond words to action in implementation of women, peace and security commitments, she said.

The conversation was seen as one of the preliminary steps on the “collective road” to 2020, the year in which the landmark Security Council resolution 1325 will observe its 20th anniversary.

Ms. Whitfield moderated a panel discussion between Jean-Marie Guéhenno, President & CEO of the International Crisis Group, and member of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation; and Rosa Emilia Salamanca, Director, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Action. Ms. Salamanca addressed inclusivity in the Colombian peace process and gender-sensitive peace agreements.

Overarching themes that emerged from the discussion included the need for meaningful participation of women in decision-making positions in all efforts to end conflict, including formal peace negotiations, as well as power sharing, disarmament and ceasefire arrangements, humanitarian access agreements and implementation mechanisms; women in leadership roles in negotiation teams; delivering on the commitment to civil society inclusion in mediation processes; the essential role of international community in the transition phase to support the implementation of gender-relevant provisions; and the importance of gender sensitive provisions in agreements for gender responsive implementation.

IPI Vice President Adam Lupel, and Paivi Kannisto, Chief, Peace and Security Section, UN Women delivered the opening remarks.

Partnerships are critical to effective UN peacekeeping, particularly in New York, where the Security Council, the Secretariat, and member states examine proposed reforms and seek consensus on the direction of peacekeeping. Yet throughout the nearly seventy-year history of UN peacekeeping, relations among key stakeholders have frequently fractured due to their often diverging interests. These differences have been compounded by member states’ limited access to information on the roles and responsibilities of different UN bodies in taking forward peacekeeping reforms.

This paper examines the intergovernmental processes and partnerships that support and guide the development of UN peacekeeping policy to identify what needs to be considered to build consensus on its future direction. The paper offers several recommendations for the Secretariat, member states, and other stakeholders to strengthen the value and outcomes of intergovernmental processes, as well as the partnerships that guide the formulation of UN peacekeeping policy:

1. Foster understanding of UN peacekeeping challenges and the policymaking process.
2. Strengthen consultation mechanisms.
3. Demonstrate leadership and identify a shared vision.
4. Improve information sharing, reporting, and accountability.
5. Encourage awareness of challenges in the field among stakeholders in New York.

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The number of international migrants has grown by 49% since 2000, according to United Nations statistics, and incoming migrants often move to cities, which house 54% of the world’s population. Multilateral deliberations on migration policy tend to focus on the national level, although it is municipal leadership that often bears the brunt of providing services and facilitating integration for migrants. Developing appropriate and effective policy on migration requires perspective from the ground to be shared with national and international actors.

In October 2016, the UN General Assembly Adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, which created an international commitment to future negotiations, an international conference, and the adoption of a global compact for safe, orderly, and regular migration in 2018 (GCM). On May 9th, IPI held a meeting to discuss how the compact’s policies can be more comprehensive and effectively put into place.

The event, hosted in collaboration with the Global Policy Initiative, Columbia University, the University of Ottawa, and The Open Society Foundations, was conducted under the Chatham House Rule of non-attribution, and brought together key stakeholders in the compact’s implementation. Included were international mayors, UN representatives, and members of civil society.

Among the speakers were Penny Abeywardena, New York City Commissioner for International Affairs; Bitta Mostofi, Acting Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs in New York; Majid Batambuze, Mayor of Jinja, Uganda, and Chairman of the Urban Authority of Uganda; Cosimo Palazzo, Director of the Social Policy Department of Milan, Italy; Veronique Lamontagne, Director of the Bureau of Integration, Montreal, Canada; David Barclay, the Mayor’s Adviser on Inclusion in Bristol, UK; Eloisa Arruda, Human Rights Secretary in São Paulo, Brazil; Juan José Gómez Camacho, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the UN; Griet Seurs, Permanent Representative of Belgium to the UN; Jürg Lauber, Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the UN; Colleen Thouez, Division Director of Welcoming and Integrated Societies at the Open Society Foundations–International Migration Initiative; Gregory Maniatis, OSF Initiative’s Director; Eva Åkerman Börje, Senior Policy Adviser, Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration; and Suzanne Sheldon, Senior Policy Adviser of the Global Compact for Migration at IOM. Speaking for IPI was Vice President Adam Lupel, who moderated the discussion.

Speakers in the session noted that there is a common misunderstanding of the distinction between refugees and migrants, as well as documented and undocumented migrants, and migrants often face prejudice upon entering a country. City leadership does not determine who enters the country, but, speakers noted, it can be responsible for the treatment of migrants when they enter city parameters.

Participants asserted that city leaders could design meaningful migration programs, not because they are more creative or well-resourced, but because they operate at a more human scale. In a much commented upon statement, one speaker said, “People belong to a local community before they belong to a nation.”

The conversation stressed that integration does not stop just across the border, and neither should policy. For this reason, to ensure safe and orderly migration, cities should not only share principles of policy reform with their national governments, but they should also share insights among other cities worldwide.

However, participants noted, member states negotiate on behalf of the nation. Speakers encouraged city leaders to strengthen conversation with their representatives at the state level and ensure their advocacy is representative of the population.

Of concern to many speakers was a lack of information sharing between members of the municipal and federal governments, since records of immigration are often housed at the national level. Participants cited examples where the central government did not share migration data with the cities where migrants lived. A lack of data and regularly updated statistics of migrations as well as a lack of migration management systems make it difficult to monitor the exact impact of migration. In order to do so, comprehensive indicators need to be developed, and all migrants need to be documented.

Speakers in the session noted that a link could be made between improving migration policy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Rather than intergovernmental organizations prescribing a solution to migration, participants declared, the best outcome is a policy that grows organically from the steps that city officials take, separate from institutions like the IOM and UN.

On Friday, May 18th, IPI together with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders are cohosting a policy forum event on “Bridging the Emergency Gap: What Will It Take?”

Remarks will begin at 1:15pm EST*

During their acute phase, contemporary conflicts present a number of challenges for humanitarian actors. Insecurity, growing needs, and the obstruction, denial, or politicization of humanitarian assistance create an environment unfavorable to neutral, independent, and impartial humanitarian action. Even though the humanitarian sector has become increasingly professionalized and well-funded, MSF’s Emergency Gap Project reveals that the first few months of acute crises are often marked by a failure to provide lifesaving assistance and protection to those affected by violence. Beyond the external challenges of the operational environment, MSF also identifies a series of challenges within the humanitarian system itself that they perceive as contributing to this gap in emergency response.

This policy forum will provide an opportunity to bring together different perspectives to explore concrete ways to reinforce the emergency response capacity of the humanitarian sector in complex, acute crises and to ensure that humanitarian actors adequately respond to both emergencies and more protracted crises.

Speakers:
Ms. Teresa Sancristóval, Director of Operations, Médecins Sans Frontières
Mr. John Ging, Director of Operations, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Mr. Bob Kitchen, Vice-President of Emergencies, International Rescue Committee

Moderator:
Dr. Adam Lupel, Vice President, IPI

*If you are not logged into Facebook, times are shown in PST.

On Wednesday, May 16th, IPI together with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, is cohosting a policy forum to launch the publication of an IPI policy paper on the formulation of peacekeeping policy through intergovernmental bodies at the UN.

Remarks will begin at 1:15pm EST*

Partnerships are critical to effective UN peacekeeping, particularly in New York, where the Security Council, the Secretariat, and member states examine proposed reforms and seek consensus on the direction of peacekeeping. Yet throughout the nearly seventy-year history of UN peacekeeping, relations among key stakeholders have frequently fractured due to their often diverging interests. These differences have often been compounded by member states’ limited access to information on the roles and responsibilities of different UN bodies in taking forward peacekeeping reforms.

As the UN reaches another important junction in peacekeeping reform, this paper examines the intergovernmental processes and partnerships that support and guide the development of UN peacekeeping policy to identify what need to be considered to build consensus on its future direction.

Opening Remarks:
H.E. Ms. Gillian Bird, Permanent Representative of Australia to the United Nations
Mr. David Haeri, Director, Department for Policy, Evaluation and Training, United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations

Speakers:
Ms. Lisa Sharland, Head of International Program, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Ms. Inderjit Nijjar, First Secretary Peacekeeping, Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations
Mr. Eugene Chen, Office of the Under-Secretary-General, United Nations Department of Field Support
Colonel Sandeep Kapoor, Military Adviser to the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations
Dr. Craig Mills, First Secretary Peacekeeping and Africa, Permanent Mission of the United Kingdom to the United Nations

Moderator:
Dr. Alexandra Novosseloff, Senior Visiting Fellow, International Peace Institute

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On Tuesday, May 15th, IPI together with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the University of Witwatersrand, Forging Resilient Social Contracts, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations are cohosting a policy forum on the role of the social contract in sustaining peace. T

Remarks will begin at 1:15pm EST*

The identical General Assembly and Security Council Resolutions (70/262 and 2282, respectively), adopted on April 27, 2016, offer sustaining peace as the overarching framework for revitalizing the work of the UN’s peacebuilding architecture. The resolutions and the secretary-general’s report on peacebuilding and sustaining peace, released on January 18, 2018, underscores the importance of nationally owned agendas, rooted in the needs of all segments of society. To better understand—and indeed strengthen—the relationship between the state and the citizen, it is important to examine what drives inclusive and resilient social contracts within different contexts.

Participants at this event will discuss how social contracts manifest themselves in and adapt to different contexts, transcending from what are often unsustainable, ephemeral elite bargains into more inclusive ones with durable arrangements for sustaining peace. The findings of the research project “Forging Resilient National Social Contracts” will be presented and case studies on South Sudan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Tunisia will be featured. These case studies explore social contracting within contexts of conflict and fragility, highlighting the mechanisms through which agreements are forged that support prevention and sustaining peace.

This event will engage with current policy findings and debates, and highlight how the UN can better understand the role of the social contract, and utilize this framing in its work, to support national actors in attaining and sustaining peace. It is hoped that by focusing on concrete examples and cases studies, this conversation will help member states and other key national stakeholders develop a shared and deeper understanding of what sustaining peace means in practice as they attempt to implement the above joint resolutions and deliver on their commitment to make prevention the core function of the United Nations.

Welcoming Remarks:
Patrick Keuleers, Director, Governance and Peacebuilding, UNDP BPPS
Bettina Luise Rürup, Executive Director, FES New York
Takeshi Akahori, Minister, Political Coordinator, Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations

Opening Remarks:
Fabrizio Hochschild, Assistant Secretary General for Strategic Coordination

Speakers:
Erin McCandless, Associate Professor, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa; and Research and Project Director, Forging Resilient Social Contracts
Luka Kuol, Professor of Practice, Africa Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington, DC; and Associate Professor, University of Juba
Jasmin Ramovic, Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Manchester

Moderator:
Youssef Mahmoud, Senior Adviser, International Peace Institute

*If you are not logged into Facebook, times are shown in PST.

On Monday, April 30th, IPI together with the Permanent Mission of Finland to the United Nations are cohosting a policy forum event to launch the publication of the IPI policy paper “A Poisoned Well: Lessons in Mediation from South Sudan’s Troubled Peace Process.” This paper is part of IPI’s Lessons from Mediation project.

Remarks will begin at 1:15pm EST*

In December 2013, South Sudan descended into civil war following a power struggle between its leaders. Following two years of devastating violence, which claimed countless lives, deepened ethnic fault lines, and displaced more than two million civilians, a comprehensive peace deal—the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan—was signed in August 2015. Within a year, the deal unraveled and the fighting resumed.

The relapse into war before the agreement could even be implemented revealed weaknesses in the negotiations and their outcome, including the lack of political will, broad national ownership, and implementing authorities necessary to make it stick, as well as challenges of coherence among multiple mediation actors and regional competition. These and other dynamics offer lessons for future mediation efforts in South Sudan and elsewhere.

Focusing on the role of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which led the mediation effort, as well as other international actors, this paper offers a critical assessment of the peace process from 2013 to 2015. It assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the mediation architecture and the roles played by individuals, institutions, and a wider constituency of peace process supporters. As the IGAD region now attempts to “revitalize” the peace process, this event will provide an opportunity to analyze and reflect on the lessons identified in the paper.

Opening remarks:
H.E. Mr. Jouni Laaksonen, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Permanent Mission of Finland to the United Nations

Speakers:
Mr. Zach Vertin, Visiting Lecturer, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
Dr. Jok Madut Jok, Executive Director, The Sudd Institute
Dr. François Grignon, UNMISS IOT Leader, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations

Moderator:
Dr. Sarah Taylor, Research Fellow, International Peace Institute

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On Tuesday, May 1st, IPI together with the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh to the United Nations are cohosting a policy forum event to launch the IPI policy paper “Keeping Peace from Above: Air Assets in UN Peace Operations.”

Remarks will begin at 1:15pm EST*

Aviation assets (fixed-wing aircraft, utility and attack helicopters, and unmanned aerial vehicles) are key enablers that give any peace operation the mobility and agility it needs to deter and prevail against hostile actors. Beyond enablers, air assets are also force multipliers that enhance the effectiveness of operations. They are essential to ensure that peacekeepers have the support and mobility they need on the ground, to enable casualty evacuation (CasEvac) and medical evacuation (MedEvac), to gather information, and to provide peacekeepers with the necessary robustness to deter armed elements threatening civilians and UN personnel. All of this, in turn, allows missions to implement their mandates, including the protection of civilians, which is not possible without strong aviation capacities.

This study, therefore, looks at how missions’ air assets are organized, generated, managed, tasked, controlled, and commanded. Overall, the UN has steadily improved its operating procedures for military helicopters over the past several years. Numerous steps have been taken by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and Department of Field Support (DFS) to strengthen existing policies and by missions to improve coordination and integration between civilian and military components. These procedures should be implemented and respected by all. But the lack of assets and needed capabilities, combined with the reluctance to use them when available remains, and causes problems.

Read the report >>

Opening Remarks:
H.E. Mr. Masud Bin Momen, Permanent Representative of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh to the United Nations
H.E. Ms. May-Elin Stener, Deputy Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations

Speakers:
Dr. Alexandra Novosseloff, Senior Visiting Fellow, International Peace Institute
Mr. Gregory Pece, Chief, Air Transport Section, Logistics Support Division, UN Department of Field Support
Air Commodore Muhammad Mafidur Rahman, Air Headquarters, Bangladesh Air Force
General (rtd) Patrick Cammaert, General Officer Commanding the Eastern Division, MONUC; former Military Adviser, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations
Mr. Jorge Jackson, Chief of Air Operations, UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS)

Moderator:
Dr. Adam Lupel, Vice President, International Peace Institute

*If you are not logged into Facebook, times are shown in PST.

President Salva Kiir signs the agreement on the resolution of the conflict in South Sudan at a ceremony in Juba, South Sudan, August 26, 2015.(UN Photo/Isaac Billy)

In 2013, the world’s newest nation—the Republic of South Sudan—descended into civil war. External actors moved quickly to convene peace talks under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), leading to a comprehensive peace deal in August 2015. But the agreement unraveled just a year later, before it could be implemented, and the war metastasized.

This paper examines the IGAD-led peace process for South Sudan from 2013 to 2015. Viewed through a prism of mediation best practice, it is a critical assessment of the attempt to negotiate a settlement of the conflict and a distillation of lessons learned.

While singular conclusions are hard to draw, the paper concludes that the process may have helped to slow South Sudan’s civil war and provided a platform to confront the fundamental changes required to transform state and society. But inherent flaws meant the peace deal lacked the political will, broad national ownership, and implementing authorities necessary to make it stick. As IGAD member states and international partners now attempt to “revitalize” the peace process, they would be wise to evaluate, and build upon, its lessons.

Figure 3: UN peace operations with environmental capacities (click to enlarge)

The 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti, triggered by the UN mission there, killed more than 9,000 people and affected nearly 807,000. This disastrous case drew attention to the negative effect UN peace operations can have on the surrounding communities and environment—something peacekeepers had started paying attention to with the deployment of new large-scale operations in the 2000s. As operations have grown in size, so too has the size of their environmental footprint.

This report looks at the environmental impact of peace operations and how the UN has responded, including through policies and guidelines, dedicated staff, and training material. In particular, it assesses the challenges the Department of Field Support faces in implementing its Environment Strategy.

Based on this assessment, which includes a detailed examination of the UN mission in Mali, the report puts forward a series of short-, medium-, and long-term recommendations. It concludes that a UN presence should not be a source of stress but should improve local environmental sustainability and build resilience.

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On Thursday, April 19th, IPI, together with the Permanent Mission of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the United Nations, is cohosting a policy forum on negotiating peace after armed conflict in which war crimes have taken place.

Remarks will begin at 1:15pm EST*

The discussion will explore the dilemmas that arise when peacemakers seem to face choices between settling an armed conflict and holding to account those responsible for severe human rights violations. Ensuring accountability for past atrocities is today often widely expected, by the international community and by survivors, and is essential in the long term for sustainably building peace. While peace and justice go hand in hand, delivering on justice is often complex and challenging in the short term. Negotiated settlements to armed conflict have the potential to end immediate, often devastating suffering. Processes to establish accountability prior to negotiations or to include accountability mechanisms as part of political processes risk deterring those suspected of war crimes from coming to the negotiating table or from cooperating.

This policy forum will draw on the experiences of senior practitioners with expertise in peace negotiations and transitional justice in countries such as Colombia, Liberia, Libya, and Sierra Leone. It will examine the influence of international criminal courts on armed conflict, including whether prosecutions deter further abuses or whether they can risk doing damage to a peace process. This discussion comes amid ongoing atrocities and calls for accountability in armed conflicts in Syria and elsewhere, and at a time of growing threats of withdrawal from the International Criminal Court.

Speakers:
H.E. Ms. María Emma Mejía Vélez, Permanent Representative of the Mission of Colombia to the United Nations
Priscilla Hayner, Member of the UN’s Standby Team on Mediation and author of the recent book: The Peacemaker’s Paradox: Pursuing Justice in the Shadow of Conflict
Teresa Whitfield, Director, Policy and Mediation Division at the UN Department of Political Affairs
Ruti Teitel, Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law at New York Law School

Moderator:
Jake Sherman, IPI Director of the Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations

*If you are not logged into Facebook, times are shown in PST.

On Wednesday, April 18th, IPI together with the Permanent Missions of Finland, Bangladesh and Italy, are cohosting a policy forum event to launch the publication of the IPI policy paper on the environmental impact of UN peace operations.

Remarks will begin at 1:15pm EST*

Since the 2000s, UN peace operations have increasingly had to address environmental challenges related to their own impact and the conditions in which they operate. Missions, particularly large deployments in arid, land-locked countries, can have significant environmental impacts on countries the UN is seeking to assist. In response, the UN is increasingly focusing on how it can mitigate the environmental consequences of its operations. Demonstrating the growing attention to this issue, a “Group of Friends Leading on Environmental Management in the Field,” co-chaired by Bangladesh and Italy, has recently been created to advocate for further implementation of the Environment Strategy of the UN Department of Field Support (DFS).

IPI’s policy paper on the environmental impact of UN peace operations summarizes the issues at stake and examines the institutional arrangements set up to mitigate and prevent environmental damage in the context of UN peace operations. It assesses the limits of DFS’ environmental strategy, both in its implementation and in its conceptualization of the footprint of missions. It further discusses these issues based on the case of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), with a detailed focus on Camp Castor in Gao. Based on this analysis, it suggests a series of recommendations to strengthen financial and human resources dedicated to environmental issues in missions and at headquarters; to mainstream eco-friendly practices through training and best practices; to advocate for stronger oversight through systematic data collection; to carefully build local capacity through local outsourcing; and to improve current indicators.

Opening Remarks:
H.E. Mr. Kai Sauer, Permanent Representative of Finland to the United Nations
H.E. Mr. Masud Bin Momen, Permanent Representative of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh to the United Nations
H.E. Mr. Sebastiano Cardi, Permanent Representative of Italy to the United Nations

Speakers:
Mr. Atul Khare, Under Secretary-General, Department of Field Support, United Nations
Dr. Lucile Maertens, Lecturer, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Ms. Malkit Shoshan, Director, Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory
Ms. Annica Waleij, Senior Analyst, Swedish Defence Research Agency, Sweden

Moderator:
Mr. Jake Sherman, IPI Director of the Brian Urquhart Center on Peace Operations

*If you are not logged into Facebook, times are shown in PST.

MINUSCA’s Neighbors and Neighborhoods (Click for full graphic)

The last decade has seen more UN peacekeepers than ever before coming from countries neighboring the host state. This report uses the IPI Peacekeeping Database to explore this increase in neighborhood contributions between 1990 and 2017. While less than 3 percent of all UN peacekeepers came from next-door neighbors in the early 1990s, this number had increased to about 20 percent by 2017.

This trend runs counter to a longstanding, if unwritten, principle that UN peacekeeping missions should seek to avoid deployment of troops or police from neighbors in order to mitigate the risks associated with these countries’ national interests in the host countries. It also means there would be significant implications if policymakers wished to reverse this trend, which would put major additional pressure on the UN’s force generation process.

Neighborhood troop contributions to UN peacekeeping operations (Click for full graphic)

Neighborhood police contributions to UN peacekeeping operations (Click for full graphic)

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Water experts from the MENA region called on the regional parties and international community to strengthen “water diplomacy” as a preventive action and a path to achieve sustainable development and durable peace.

Inaugurating IPI MENA’s Water Preventive Diplomacy Conference on April 11, 2018, H.E Dr. Abdul Hussain bin Ali Mirza, Bahrain’s Minister of Electricity and Water Authorities, said that water scarcity is a threat multiplier that exacerbates “existing tensions and instability in the MENA region, where the potential role of water in conflicts is probably more than other regions, especially since more than two thirds of the region’s water resources are flowing from outside, with no binding agreements between the riparian countries.”

Minister Mirza emphasized, however, that “water can also be a productive pathway to confidence building, cooperation, and conflict prevention, where globally recorded cooperative incidents on water exceed those incidents on water conflict.” Referring to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, he noted that “despite these conditions, they have done well in providing water services to their population and other expanding economic sectors.”

Panelist Lena Salame, Senior Specialist in International Water Law, Mediation and Negotiation, stressed that while “international law offers the generic frameworks in which states can act, the complexities and specificities of the subject at stake mean that more needs to be done at the national, regional and international levels.” She highlighted that key aspects within water preventive diplomacy reside in “building trust and capacities across the various key players, and leveling the playing field among them.”

On his side, panelist Waleed Zubari, on behalf of the Water Science and Technology Association (WSTA), urged the regional community “to implement mechanisms that lead to the development of a common vision on cooperation for the promotion of regional integration.”

Expanding on the need for regional integration, panelist Dr. Noha Nasralla, underlined the collaboration and cooperation between the Nile Basin countries, as a testament to the capacity of water as a tool to build trust.

Addressing the audience, Shaban Osman, CEO of 1958 Project Management & Marketing (1958 PMM), said, “Your presence today is a testimony of the strong engagement of governments, public and private sectors, and the civil society in promoting water preventive diplomacy to minimize the potential for water-related conflicts.”

Moderating the event, Nejib Friji, Director of IPI MENA, called on the MENA leadership to “join IPI’s Water Preventive Diplomacy effort to solve long-standing water differences and divides before they turn into conflicts.”

The conference was attended by an audience of government officials, water experts, diplomatic corps, regional and international organizations, representatives of civil society, private sector, academia, and media.

On Thursday, April 12th, IPI together with the United States Institute for Peace, and Peace Direct are cohosting a policy forum on “The Role of Grassroots Nonviolent Movements in Building a Just Peace.”

Remarks will begin at 1:15pm EST*

The UN sustaining peace resolutions underscore the need for inclusive approaches to strengthen the social contract between people and their governments and to “build a common vision of a society, ensuring that the needs of all segments of the population are taken into account.” The recent UN/World Bank Pathways for Peace report builds upon this idea by highlighting the important role that grassroots movements can play in addressing grievances, preventing and de-escalating violence, and promoting human rights.

Rooted in communities and relying on collective action, nonviolent action or civil resistance is a powerful tool for ordinary people to address injustice and advance a just and inclusive, or positive, peace. In a study of 323 major violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006, researchers found that nonviolent campaigns were twice as successful at achieving their goals as armed insurgencies. The most important variable in determining the success of these campaigns was the size and diversity of participation—or the level of inclusiveness of the campaign. It is thus no surprise that countries that have experienced nonviolent “people power” are much less likely to return to civil war than those in which conflict was violent.

In anticipation of the UN High-Level Meeting on Sustaining Peace, this event seeks to amplify grassroots voices and deepen our understanding of the intersection between local peacebuilding and nonviolent action strategies and how these approaches can be implemented to advance the sustaining peace agenda. Participants will also discuss how the UN can better support grassroots activists and peacebuilders involved in building coalitions and organizing broad-based movements to promote positive peace.

Welcoming Remarks:
Maria Stephan, Director, Program on Nonviolent Action, USIP

Speakers:
Idrissa Barry, Coordinating Committee Member, Balai Citoyen
Ala Oueslati, Fellow, Women Deliver
Quscondy Abdulshafi, Fellow, Peace Direct
Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, Assistant Secretary-General, UN Peacebuilding Support Office (TBC)

Moderator:
Lesley Connolly, Senior Policy Analyst, IPI

Closing Remarks:
Bridget Moix, Senior US Representative and Head of Advocacy, Peace Direct

*If you are not logged into Facebook, times are shown in PST.

Over the last five years Myanmar has gone through fundamental changes as it transitions toward peace and democracy. This transformation provides Myanmar with a unique opportunity to build a peaceful and inclusive society and advance on the path to sustainable development and sustaining peace. Yet at the same time, Myanmar remains submerged in conflict and lacks national consensus on the future of the state.

Achieving the 2030 Agenda in Myanmar will therefore require an inclusive and conflict-sensitive approach that takes into account the views not only of the central government but also of ethnic-minority groups. Based on an eighteen-day field study in Myanmar in 2017, this paper examines the country’s progress toward sustainable development and sustaining peace from these divergent perspectives.

This paper, co-funded by the Fafo Research Foundation, is part of the International Peace Institute’s (IPI) SDGs4Peace project, which seeks to understand how the 2030 Agenda is being rooted at the national and local levels and to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. The project focuses on five case studies: the Gambia, Greece, Guatemala, Lebanon, and Myanmar. Implementation of the 2030 Agenda provides each of these countries an opportunity not only to buttress existing aspirations but also to build new partnerships that transcend traditional approaches.

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