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Short-term responses and long-term consequences

Global crisis management in a post-Covid19 world

The UN Security Council is expected to renew the mandate of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) in June 2020. While Malian stakeholders have recently taken steps to implement provisions of the 2015 Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in Mali, the country’s fragile social contract and deteriorating security conditions place pressure on national and international actors alike. Following significant changes to MINUSMA’s 2019 mandate, including the addition of a second strategic priority, the upcoming mandate renewal negotiations offer council members the opportunity to take stock of progress on the UN’s stabilization efforts in Mali and refine its strategic engagement with the country.

In this context, the International Peace Institute (IPI), the Stimson Center, and Security Council Report organized a workshop on May 20, 2020, to discuss the mandate and political strategy of MINUSMA. This workshop provided a forum for member states, UN stakeholders, and outside experts to share their assessment of the situation in the country. The discussion was intended to help the Security Council make more informed decisions with respect to the strategic orientation, prioritization, and sequencing of the mission’s mandate and actions on the ground. Participants reflected on opportunities and challenges for consolidating political reforms and implementing key provisions of the peace agreement. The discussions underscored the centrality of MINUSMA’s support to the protection of civilians, promotion of human rights and accountability, and strengthening of state institutions.

Workshop participants largely agreed that MINUSMA’s current mandate remains relevant but pointed to two pressing issues that should be resolved. First, the mandate could better define and operationalize MINUSMA’s role in supporting the G5 Joint Sahel Force. Second, MINUSMA requires the budget and resources necessary to become more agile.

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While most United Nations peace operations are expected to protect civilians from any source of physical violence, they also need to maintain the consent of the host-state to function. How the missions work with, despite, or even against the host state to implement their protection mandates while supporting the host state is the subject of a new IPI policy paper With or Against the State? Reconciling the Protection of Civilians and Host-State Support for UN Peacekeeping. The paper was launched at a June 10th virtual event, cosponsored by IPI and the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the UN.

“The UN is an organization of states, and support to host states represents a cornerstone of UN peacekeeping approaches,” explained Dr. Namie Di Razza, IPI Senior Fellow and Head of Protection of Civilians, who moderated the conversation. “Supporting host states is critical to ensure national ownership of protection strategies, and the sustainability of protection activities undertaken by UN peacekeepers,” but “at the same time,” she said, “where state actors, such as national security forces, are themselves responsible for violence against civilians, peacekeepers are expected to confront government actors.”

The author of the report, Dr. Patryk I. Labuda, Non-resident Fellow at IPI and Hauser Post-Doctoral Global Fellow at New York University School of Law, outlined the potential conflict between people-oriented peacekeeping and state-centric support. “On the one hand,” he said, “the rise of POC is a priority, and on the other, there is the rise of host-state support, and by that, I mean more and more mandates that require peacekeeping to support host-states. This report is an attempt to see to what extent these two parallel phenomena are compatible, or in some cases incompatible.”

Dr. Labuda reported that in his research, when he would ask peacekeepers why they were operating in a country, “they reflexively, effortlessly invoke POC, it rolls off the tongue naturally, ‘We’re here to protect civilians.’ But when you ask whether POC is something that should be done together with the host-state, in support of the host-state, reactions vary significantly. Some think that the host-state is the end game—everything the mission does, including POC, is a means to an end, empowering the host-state because it will have to take over the mission. At the other end of the spectrum, they view the state with suspicion, caution, and even mistrust.”

Among the examples of events causing friction that he highlighted were the implementation of the human rights due diligence policy, instances when support of government actors is seen as a risk to civilians, and self-censorship in missions, as in “when do peacekeeping personnel tone down or suppress criticism of the host government’s human rights record to be able to maintain cooperation?” He singled out what he called the “most controversial question: When can peacekeepers use force against state actors? The problem is that peacekeepers are dependent on host-state support, and by using force against the state, they are imperiling, weakening that host-state consent.”

Ugo Solinas, member of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Integrated Operational Team, UN Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations (DPPA/DPO), said it was essential that missions be “pragmatic” about maintaining host-state consent, which is “dynamic and ebbing and flowing in response to political interests and actors on the ground.” He expressed concern over what he viewed as an overreliance on the use of force. “These dilemmas and these problems cannot be resolved through the use of force alone… but increasingly the success, effectiveness or failure of peacekeeping operations is seen through the lens of willingness to use force. Recent years show that while force may be part of the equation, it is certainly not the solution, and certainly not when force is applied in the absence of the broader political understanding of the objective that the mission is trying to achieve in partnership with a broader set of actors who have a stake in the success of the mission.”

He said he was encouraged by evidence that an alternative approach—engagement—was “becoming the default setting instead of go/no go.” He cited engagement on human rights, justice, and child protection, where important progress has been made. “Through engagement with leadership at all levels, from the highest levels to provincial levels to communities, engagement has proven more effective, including at the height of tension in the 2016-18 period when MONUSCO (UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) was facing pushback from the authorities. Engagement helped to de-escalate tension and ensure an open line of communication that enabled the mission to create a protective environment.” He declared, “Going forward, we should be looking to strengthen those aspects.”

Aditi Gorur, Senior Fellow and Director of the Protecting Civilians in Conflict Program, Stimson Center, said a mission’s effectiveness often depended upon the kind of host-state consent it had, which she categorized in three ways— “strong,” “weak” and “compromised.” She said that “often consent may be strong at the start of the mission and can deteriorate over time,” due to developments that governments can see as threatening their sovereignty like elections. In light of this, she advised to “Take advantage of a window of strong consent at the beginning” of peacekeeping missions’ deployment.

As a general rule, she said, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure… Once we reach a crisis point of consent, options become much more limited.” She said that problems in navigating consent arose often through “simple misunderstandings.” One way to head off those misunderstandings, she suggested, was for the Security Council before deployment to “sign a compact with the government for a shared political vision, with a detailed role for the government and for the mission so that expectations can be aligned.” She said governments had the “ultimate trump card of expelling missions,” and it was consequently important for missions to be developing relationships with many stakeholders beyond the head of state “so that it’s not just one individual who will be deciding whether a mission stays or leaves.” Describing the “worst-case scenario,” she said, “We want to prevent situations where missions are unintentionally bolstering autocratic states.”

Ammar Mohammed Mahmoud, Counselor, Permanent Mission of the Republic of Sudan to the UN, commented that “analyzing the element of consent on paper, the UN Security Council authorized peacekeeping missions to always give the primary responsibility of POC to national governments. But once the peacekeeping mission starts to operate, it is recommended that it engage in dialogue with the authorities, government and local communities. Whatever is the strength of the peacekeeping mission remains secondary to that of the government. That dialogue should have two objectives: implementation of the strategy of POC and building the capacity of law enforcement bodies to be equipped with international standards and best practices.”

Lizbeth Cullity, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), raised the range of challenges the mission was facing, including farmer-herder tensions, ethnic divides, class disputes, and a situation where many of the armed groups are Muslim and the central government is Christian. She said MINUSCA had focused on “investing in people who can develop watchdog groups, who can understand how local governance is operating, what local budgets look like and how they can contribute to their society.” She described how MINUSCA had developed a “complex monitoring mechanism” to track closely communities, security concerns, and political perspectives at a local level. “My favorite recommendation of the report is capacity building for a people-centered and holistic approach. I could not agree more, and that comes after 20 years of peacekeeping in Haiti and Sierra Leone and Mali, that if we focus only on the states, we will never ever reach our goal.”

In brief remarks, Karel J.G. Van Oosterom, the Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the UN, praised the IPI report. “I think the report is spot-on that stabilization missions are really something completely different with a new environment, new threats, new challenges, but also with a new role for the host governments. And indeed, is it with or against the government? I think for all of us, it would be our preference to work very closely with government—it’s very difficult to work against—but sometimes there is a friction between the two, and on that, I think your report was very enlightening.”

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Demokratiet er på tilbagetog i Afrika og har vanskeliggjort arbejdet for mange civilsamfundsorganisationer

Demokratiet er på tilbagetog i Afrika og har vanskeliggjort arbejdet for mange civilsamfundsorganisationer

The Covid-19 pandemic currently acts as a magnifying glass under which we can view the state of international cooperation. What we see there is cause for deep concern. It is to be feared that the Covid-19 pandemic will further increase the number of victims and as a result not only health and economic systems, but also political systems will reach the limits of their capacity. How can international cooperation be strengthened under these circumstances and what role will club governance formats such as the G7 and G20 play?

The Covid-19 pandemic currently acts as a magnifying glass under which we can view the state of international cooperation. What we see there is cause for deep concern. It is to be feared that the Covid-19 pandemic will further increase the number of victims and as a result not only health and economic systems, but also political systems will reach the limits of their capacity. How can international cooperation be strengthened under these circumstances and what role will club governance formats such as the G7 and G20 play?

The Covid-19 pandemic currently acts as a magnifying glass under which we can view the state of international cooperation. What we see there is cause for deep concern. It is to be feared that the Covid-19 pandemic will further increase the number of victims and as a result not only health and economic systems, but also political systems will reach the limits of their capacity. How can international cooperation be strengthened under these circumstances and what role will club governance formats such as the G7 and G20 play?

War music videos are not just artefacts of popular culture, but have become integral parts of how warfare is practiced today.

Zusammenfassung:

Die Eindämmungsmaßnahmen im Zuge der Corona-Ausbreitung haben das Leben vieler Menschen in Deutschland grundlegend geändert. Welche Konsequenzen dies neben ökonomischen Folgen auch für die psychische Gesundheit der Bevölkerung hat, darüber wurde in den vergangenen Wochen viel spekuliert. Die ökonomische Unsicherheit, die Mehrbelastung durch Homeoffice oder Kinderbetreuung und die fehlenden sozialen Kontakte – all dies könnte zu einem wesentlichen Anstieg der psychischen Belastung in der deutschen Bevölkerung führen. Aktuelle Ergebnisse der SOEP-CoV-Studie zeigen nun, dass die Menschen hierzulande den ersten Monat des Lockdowns besser verkraftet haben als erwartet. Zwar steigt die subjektive Einsamkeit im Vergleich zu den Vorjahren erheblich an, andere Indikatoren für psychische Belastungen (Lebenszufriedenheit, emotionales Wohlbefinden und Depressions- und Angstsymptomatik) sind jedoch bisher unverändert. Dies deutet auf eine starke Resilienz der Bevölkerung hin. Einigen Bevölkerungsgruppen sollte dennoch besondere Aufmerksamkeit zuteil werden.

Future cooperation with African societies will have important  implications  for  the  European  Union  (EU)’s  political  and economic position in the world. We argue that setting democracy as a core principle of the EU’s foreign relations can  contribute  to  sustainable  development  in  Africa  and  beyond. Furthermore, it is in the EU’s own economic, security and political interests, as we will outline in this paper. It concludes with proposals on how EU democracy support could be further reformed and adapt-ed in response to changing context conditions:

Proposal  1:  Bring  democracy  support  and  protection  to  the core of EU external action and implement this strategic priority in EU foreign relations with Africa (and worldwide).

Proposal  2:  Develop  a  new  narrative  and  more  strategic  approach  to  democracy  support  in  a  geopolitical  context  where  democracy  is  increasingly  being  undermined  from  within  in  (former)  democratic  countries  and  challenged  from the outside by powerful authoritarian regimes.

Proposal 3: Address the impacts of demographic change, urbanisation, digitalisation and climate change on political regimes through EU democracy support.

Proposal  4:  Invest  more  in  intermediary  organisations  (media, parties, CSOs, trade unions, business councils) and in the democratic accountability of sectoral policies.

Proposal  5:  Intensify  support  for  civic  education  and  launch new initiatives to strengthen transnational relations between African and European societies.

Proposal 6: Engage more strategically in contexts where authoritarian regimes suddenly open up or where elector-al autocracies gradually close political spaces.

Proposal 7: Continue and deepen cooperation with Afri-can regional organisations and put more emphasis on joint learning and practices for defending democracy.

Proposal 8: Create a different institutional set-up that al-lows the EU to engage more strategically in democratic re-forms.

Proposal 9: Increase the capacities of the European Exter-nal Action Service (EEAS) and the Directorate-General for International  Cooperation  and  Development  (DEVCO)  to  work on democracy support.

Proposal 10: Develop a joint European approach towards democracy support that is sustained by all European countries.

Future cooperation with African societies will have important  implications  for  the  European  Union  (EU)’s  political  and economic position in the world. We argue that setting democracy as a core principle of the EU’s foreign relations can  contribute  to  sustainable  development  in  Africa  and  beyond. Furthermore, it is in the EU’s own economic, security and political interests, as we will outline in this paper. It concludes with proposals on how EU democracy support could be further reformed and adapt-ed in response to changing context conditions:

Proposal  1:  Bring  democracy  support  and  protection  to  the core of EU external action and implement this strategic priority in EU foreign relations with Africa (and worldwide).

Proposal  2:  Develop  a  new  narrative  and  more  strategic  approach  to  democracy  support  in  a  geopolitical  context  where  democracy  is  increasingly  being  undermined  from  within  in  (former)  democratic  countries  and  challenged  from the outside by powerful authoritarian regimes.

Proposal 3: Address the impacts of demographic change, urbanisation, digitalisation and climate change on political regimes through EU democracy support.

Proposal  4:  Invest  more  in  intermediary  organisations  (media, parties, CSOs, trade unions, business councils) and in the democratic accountability of sectoral policies.

Proposal  5:  Intensify  support  for  civic  education  and  launch new initiatives to strengthen transnational relations between African and European societies.

Proposal 6: Engage more strategically in contexts where authoritarian regimes suddenly open up or where elector-al autocracies gradually close political spaces.

Proposal 7: Continue and deepen cooperation with Afri-can regional organisations and put more emphasis on joint learning and practices for defending democracy.

Proposal 8: Create a different institutional set-up that al-lows the EU to engage more strategically in democratic re-forms.

Proposal 9: Increase the capacities of the European Exter-nal Action Service (EEAS) and the Directorate-General for International  Cooperation  and  Development  (DEVCO)  to  work on democracy support.

Proposal 10: Develop a joint European approach towards democracy support that is sustained by all European countries.

Future cooperation with African societies will have important  implications  for  the  European  Union  (EU)’s  political  and economic position in the world. We argue that setting democracy as a core principle of the EU’s foreign relations can  contribute  to  sustainable  development  in  Africa  and  beyond. Furthermore, it is in the EU’s own economic, security and political interests, as we will outline in this paper. It concludes with proposals on how EU democracy support could be further reformed and adapt-ed in response to changing context conditions:

Proposal  1:  Bring  democracy  support  and  protection  to  the core of EU external action and implement this strategic priority in EU foreign relations with Africa (and worldwide).

Proposal  2:  Develop  a  new  narrative  and  more  strategic  approach  to  democracy  support  in  a  geopolitical  context  where  democracy  is  increasingly  being  undermined  from  within  in  (former)  democratic  countries  and  challenged  from the outside by powerful authoritarian regimes.

Proposal 3: Address the impacts of demographic change, urbanisation, digitalisation and climate change on political regimes through EU democracy support.

Proposal  4:  Invest  more  in  intermediary  organisations  (media, parties, CSOs, trade unions, business councils) and in the democratic accountability of sectoral policies.

Proposal  5:  Intensify  support  for  civic  education  and  launch new initiatives to strengthen transnational relations between African and European societies.

Proposal 6: Engage more strategically in contexts where authoritarian regimes suddenly open up or where elector-al autocracies gradually close political spaces.

Proposal 7: Continue and deepen cooperation with Afri-can regional organisations and put more emphasis on joint learning and practices for defending democracy.

Proposal 8: Create a different institutional set-up that al-lows the EU to engage more strategically in democratic re-forms.

Proposal 9: Increase the capacities of the European Exter-nal Action Service (EEAS) and the Directorate-General for International  Cooperation  and  Development  (DEVCO)  to  work on democracy support.

Proposal 10: Develop a joint European approach towards democracy support that is sustained by all European countries.

Seit dem 1. Juli 2009 forscht Herr Prof. Dr. WANG Zhiping, vom Shanghai Administration Institute (SAI), in der Abteilung Konjunktur. Er ist zur Zeit Gast der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

 

 

 

The twin resolutions on peacebuilding and sustaining peace adopted by the General Assembly and Security Council in 2016 made a breakthrough in the UN’s conception of peacebuilding. Significant work has since been undertaken to reconfigure the UN system to work toward the implementation of these resolutions, and the UN Peacebuilding Commission has launched a comprehensive review of the peacebuilding architecture to be completed in 2020.

To inform this review, this issue brief synthesizes findings related to the operationalization of the peacebuilding and sustaining peace resolutions at the country level. These findings emerged from three case studies published by IPI on Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Burkina Faso. The operationalization of sustaining peace is assessed across four areas: (1) operational and policy coherence; (2) leadership, accountability, and capacity; (3) financing; and (4) partnerships.

The paper concludes that much of the focus to date has been on improving the effectiveness of how the UN delivers its mandates on peacebuilding and sustaining peace. To fully realize the vision of the sustaining peace agenda, its operationalization must increasingly focus on the impact of these efforts. This requires questioning and testing the theory of change underpinning these operational reforms to ensure the UN is effectively helping societies build the foundation for sustaining peace.

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This study investigates the transmission channels of intergenerational social immobilityin low- and middle-income countries. Using a rich longitudinal survey dataset on Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam, we analyze through which factors socioeconomic status is passed on between generations. We reduce the information elicited throughout children’s youth to certain latent factors of their development process, such as cognitive and non-cognitive skills as well as the characteristics of their social environment and the social opportunities they face. We then analyze to what extent each of these factors is explained by parental socioeconomic status, and how much each factor in turn determines the outcome of the children. Next, we combine these results in order to decompose the immobility into the different pathway factors. The findings indicate that children’s aspirations and their cognitive skills can each account for around 20 percent of the correlation between parental and children’s education. Starting a family while still a minor, and the need for child labor also play important, but smaller roles, explaining 10 percent and 6 percent of the immobility, respectively. While children’s health, parent’s attentiveness and the local school infrastructure only have small but still significant roles, parents’ spending on education, children’s social environment, and particularly children’s non-cognitive skills have no significant part in the transmission of socioeconomic status in the sample of developing countries, once all other factors are taken into account.