European Peace Institute / News

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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The 2030 Agenda calls for inclusiveness, which can contribute to stability and peace as well as development in Lebanon. However, while Lebanon’s power-sharing model was instrumental in ending fifteen years of civil war, it is outdated as the country embarks on a process to achieve the 2030 Agenda and advance the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Although sectarianism is impeding political processes and development in Lebanon, the SDGs can provide an opportunity for the country to address some of the political model’s limitations. Based on two weeks of field research, this paper explores how Lebanon is confronting challenges related to the environment, education, economic growth, poverty, and gender, all while hosting more than a million Syrian refugees.

This paper 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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On March 29th, IPI together with the Permanent Missions of Israel, Colombia, and the Republic of Kenya to the United Nations cohosted a policy forum on combating sexual harassment in the United Nations.

The global scourge of sexual harassment and assault has been increasingly recognized by the international community, particularly over the last several years. Government and civil society actors continue to grapple with how to prevent sexual harassment and assault, seek justice when these reach the threshold of criminal acts, and, most importantly, support the survivors. It has recently become clear that the United Nations shares this burden.

Secretary-General António Guterres has expressed his commitment to a zero tolerance policy and has acknowledged that there remain obstacles to implementing policies that combat sexual harassment at the UN. The complex situations in which UN staff work make a difficult issue even more challenging to address.

To shed light on the ongoing issue, Israel introduced resolution E/CN.6/2017/L.4, entitled Preventing and eliminating sexual harassment in the workplace, during the Commission on the Status of Women in March 2017. The document, which was adopted by consensus, was the first, and so far the only, UN resolution to address this topic.

Sexual harassment and sexual violence cannot go unchallenged. It is the responsibility of the United Nations and its member states, in consultation with and supported by civil society, to provide a serious and comprehensive response to this pressing issue.

This event served as a starting point for discussion amongst member states, UN staff and leadership, and civil society. It brought together different stakeholders in order to discuss the best way forward in combating sexual harassment, grounded by best practices and contributions from experts.

Opening Remarks:
H.E. Mr. Danny Danon, Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations

Speakers:
Ms. Jan Beagle, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Management
H.E. Ms. Koki Grignon, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kenya to the United Nations
Ms. Orit Sulitzeanu, Executive Director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel (ARCCI)
Ms. Joanne Sandler, Senior Associate, Gender at Work

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

On March 28th, IPI together with the Stanley Foundation cohosted a policy forum on “Sustaining Peace in Practice: Evidence, Measurement, and Indicators.”

The dual General Assembly and Security Council resolutions on sustaining peace (70/262 and 2282 respectively) define sustaining peace as a goal and a process to build a common vision of a society and a shared responsibility of governments and all stakeholders, with conflict prevention playing a central role. Although the concept is clearly defined in the resolutions, there are still some obscurities regarding how to measure and operationalize sustaining peace.

To fully realize the shift toward prevention for sustaining peace, it is important to understand its practical and local-level implications from the perspective of all actors, including UN missions and local peacebuilders. As such, there is a need to develop a set of indicators to guide us in recognizing and comprehending what sustaining peace looks like in practice. Such indicators could help the international community identify and analyze what is working to strengthen resilience in societies and provide the tools for understanding what is needed to sustain long-term peace in country-specific contexts.

This policy forum aimed to better understand what these indicators are and what elements truly contribute to long-term peace. Drawing on case studies, this event sought to identify practical examples of sustaining peace in the field. The case studies considered the practical elements of social and institutional structures, processes, and precursors that enable societies to develop in sustainably peaceful ways.

Opening Remarks:
Mamadou Tangara, Permanent Representative of the Gambia to the United Nations

Introductory Remarks:
Lesley Connolly, Senior Policy Analyst, International Peace Institute
Jennifer Smyser, Vice President and Director of Policy Programming Strategy, Stanley Foundation

Speakers:
Peter Coleman, Co-Director, Advanced Consortium for Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4), Earth Institute, Columbia University
Michelle Breslauer, Director of the America Program, Institute for Economics and Peace
Ismaila Ceesay, Professor of Political Science, University of the Gambia

Moderator:
Youssef Mahmoud, Senior Adviser, International Peace Institute

On March 28th, IPI hosted a conversation with H.E. Mr. Jüri Luik, Minister of Defense of Estonia, on cyber security and the current European security environment.

The security environment in Europe has been tarnished by efforts to undermine democracy and weaken trust in democratic institutions. From sophisticated social media campaigns and targeted information warfare to ostensible meddling in electoral processes, cyber security has become a major concern for governments around the world. More than ten years after the world’s first major, state-targeted cyber attack, Estonia has become a global heavyweight in cyber security.

H.E. Mr. Jüri Luik has served as the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Estonia since June 12, 2017. Minister Luik has played a significant role in Estonia’s foreign and security policy since the early 1990s. In 1992, he was elected to the Estonian Parliament and held numerous top-level cabinet positions for over a decade, notably as Minister of Defense (1993, 1999-2002) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1994-1995). Minister Luik has also had a long career in diplomatic service. He has served as the Ambassador to NATO (1996-1999), Ambassador to the United States (2003-2007), Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council (2007-2012), and Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2015).

This event was moderated by Mr. Warren Hoge, Senior Adviser for External Relations, International Peace Institute.

On March 26th, IPI together with Inclusive Security and the Permanent Mission of Estonia to the United Nations, cohosted a policy forum on constitution making in the wake of conflict and unrest.

Even as fighting rages in Syria, constitution making has become part of the peace process. In Sri Lanka, constitutional reform could address a conflict’s root causes or deepen war’s old wounds.

Constitution making is a frequent feature of peace and transition processes: new research from Inclusive Security finds 75 countries undertook significant constitutional reform in the wake of conflict or unrest between 1990 and 2015. Yet the potential for constitution making to transform conflict depends, in part, on who gets to participate. Despite increasing emphasis on inclusive approaches, only one in five constitution drafters in these settings is a woman.

How does constitution making relate to peacebuilding? What are the challenges and opportunities for inclusive constitutional reform in practice? Where have women exerted influence on the process, and what impact did they have?

This event explored research and case studies on women’s roles in constitution making; personal experiences of facilitating participatory approaches in Tunisia and Nepal; and implications for peace and security in Syria, Sri Lanka, and beyond.

Welcoming Remarks:
H.E. Mr. Sven Jürgenson, Permanent Representative of Estonia to the UN

Speakers:
Ms. Mariam Jalabi, Founding Member, Syrian Women’s Political Movement; Representative, Syrian Opposition Coalition Office to the United Nations
Ms. Amira Yahyaoui, Founder, Al Bawsala
Mr. Rohan Edrisinha, Senior Political and Constitutional Advisor, UN Department of Political Affairs
Ms. Marie O’Reilly, Director of Research and Analysis, Inclusive Security

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

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Norway’s Foreign Minister, Ine Eriksen Søreide, was honored at an evening reception at IPI on March 14th during the annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) gathering at the United Nations. Foreign Minister since October, 2017, Ms. Eriksen Søreide is the first woman to occupy the post, and in her remarks, she emphasized why she thinks that women’s participation in peace processes is so important.

“It is about building resilience, it is about making peace, and it is about making peace last,” she said. “Those three factors are very important, and for all of those to happen, women have to be part of this, fully integrated, from the beginning to the end.”

By way of example, she mentioned Norway’s involvement in the peace process in Colombia. “Norway is one of the guarantor countries,” she said, “and what we did was try to, from the beginning, integrate women into the whole process, and this guided our diplomatic efforts.

“I wanted to make a very particular point of this,” she said “because it’s easy to think that this is about women as victims, but it is not only about that, it is also about women as community leaders. Bear in mind that the peace process in Colombia was partly driven forward by women’s organizations and civil society organizations.”

Looking out at the large crowd that filled the room, she said she was pleased to find so many men there. “It is of vital importance that we engage men,” she said, “and I think it is even more important to engage young men, and the reason I am saying that is where we see across the world today that women’s rights are under immense pressure, is mostly in areas where young men are getting increasingly marginalized.”

She noted that while most people ascribed Norway’s wealth and economic growth to its oil, there was, in fact, a more compelling argument for this audience. “The most important thing is having women as part of the work force,” she said. “That accounts for a larger part of our GDP than oil does. So that is a bit of a lesson to everyone. To include women in the work force produces more economic growth, which leads to less marginalized groups in most regions and countries, and that is a win/win situation.”

Prior to her current job, she was the minister of defense, the third woman in a row to fill that post, and she recounted with some delight a happy consequence of that fact. “We’ve had female defense ministers – no female foreign minister until now – but so much so that young girls had a tendency to ask – and they’ve asked me several times– ‘Can a man be minister of defense in Norway?’”

On March 15, 2018, the Syrian armed conflict entered into its eighth year. Since 2011, attempts to facilitate a political solution to the Syrian conflict have either failed or stalled. Amidst this deadlock, one track that has not stalled is the civil society track. Against the odds, progress can be observed at this level as Syrian civil society has become better organized and more tightly interconnected, and as its voice in the process has grown stronger.

This issue brief looks at progress on this track through the Civil Society Support Room (CSSR), a novel approach to including civil society in a peace process that could become a model for other processes to follow. The paper outlines three of the CSSR’s central functions, three key contributions it can make to the peace process, and the three main challenges encountered. It also proposes three measures for the CSSR moving forward:

• For both the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Syria (OSE-S) and CSSR participants to engage in an open discussion about the scope of the latter’s role in the process;
• For the OSE-S to continue its efforts to reach out to and engage with civil society actors located in hard-to-reach areas inside Syria and in refugee camps in the region; and
• For the OSE-S to continue to engage with civil society actors not only during intra-Syrian talks in Geneva, but also between rounds of talks and in the region.

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