European Peace Institute / News

As the practice of the protection of civilians (POC) has evolved in peacekeeping missions, the UN has increasingly focused on “people-centered” approaches. As a result, community engagement has emerged as a core component of POC efforts. By engaging with communities, missions can build trust, gather information, and build a protective environment, ultimately improving their ability to protect civilians.

This paper examines the positive implications and impact of this increased focus on community engagement, as well as the challenges and risks it can pose for communities and missions. It analyzes the community engagement activities of the military, police, and civilian components of the UN missions in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, and South Sudan. The paper concludes with recommendations for these four missions, the UN Secretariat, and UN member states on the Security Council:

• UN member states should continue to refine the language on community engagement in peacekeeping mandates.
• The UN Secretariat should develop more in-depth modules on community engagement in relevant training materials.
• Relevant UN stakeholders should explore how missions’ military personnel can improve their community engagement.
• The UN Secretariat and missions should optimize their use of community liaison assistants.
• The UN Department of Peace Operations should continue to explore where the unarmed civilian protection methodology could complement community engagement by UN missions.

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On November 23rd, IPI MENA hosted Hae-Kwan Chung, Ambassador of Korea to Bahrain, in an online event entitled “Korean Economic Development: Speedy & Sustainable.”

During the presentation, which was moderated by IPI MENA Director Nejib Friji, Ambassador Chung first presented the historical context of Korea’s economic ruin and reliance on foreign aid following its liberation from Japanese occupation, the advent of the Korean War, the People’s Revolution, and the multiple military coups.

“The government’s analyses into the causes of economic crises highlighted the areas for change,” Mr. Chung reflected, noting that the change in policy paradigms from a government-led economy to one that embraced “liberalization, market-orientation, stabilization” was key to Korea’s economic growth and resilience to this day.

He pointed to four key factors—state-led development plans; export and large companies-oriented policies; investment in human resources; and a strong work ethic— as well as four sustainable and inclusive growth policies—rural development, social welfare, education, science and technology investment— as the foundations of Korea’s economic growth, and ability to overcome the economic crises.

The presentation was followed by a question and answer session with government officials, diplomats, representatives of civil society, the private sector, and media.

Mr. Abdulnabi Alshoala, Chairman of Al Fanar Investment Holding, praised Korea’s short and exemplary journey to becoming a global economic powerhouse, in comparison to many developed countries in the West that have taken much longer. He also noted the role that the educational system has played, and highlighted it as an area for countries in the region to look into through further bilateral exchanges.

Mr. Ahmed Jawahery, Chairman of Middle East Trading & Engineering, suggested ways to enhance bilateral cooperation between Bahrain and Korea.

Mrs. Margaret Nardi, US Charge D’Affaires to Bahrain, drew parallels between Korea’s journey towards economic development and Bahrain’s current plan, noting that there are possible silver linings to the economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. She pointed to state-led diversification programs in Bahrain as a positive first step in concerted efforts to be taken by both the government and the people.

Mr. Ebrahim K. Ebrahim, founder of Fintech Robos, underlined the need for increased exchange of business delegations and beyond, to Korea and vice versa, in order to learn and gain experiences.

Bangladesh Ambassador H.E. Dr. Muhammed Nazrul Islam suggested further collaborations with other ambassadors to encourage the sharing of knowledge, practices, and experiences, noting that “economic prosperity and peace go hand in hand.” He commended IPI MENA for organizing such a platform.

Mr. Friji closed the session by posing the age-old question of “how does South Korea view an end to the conflict with North Korea and hopefully a reunify the Korean Peninsula?”, to which Mr. Chung responded that reunification is long overdue, and confirmed Korea’s position of willingness and commitment to develop peace through dialogue.

The event was part of IPI MENA’s Ambassadorial Conferences Series.

In attendance were:

Egyptian Ambassador H.E. Yasser Shaban
German Ambassador H.E. Kai Boeckmann
Indonesian Ambassador H.E. Nur Rahardjo
Moroccan Ambassador H.E. Mostafa Benkhayi
Nepal Ambassador H.E. Padam Sundas
Tunisian Ambassador H.E. Mr. Salim Ghariani
Turkish Ambassador H.E. Kemal Demirciler;
Yemen Ambassador H.E. Ali Hassan Al Ahmadi
Dutch Honorary Consul H.E. Mrs. Zeenat Dawani
UAE Second Secretary Mrs. Noof Al Mubarak
Indonesian Embassy’s Economic Affairs Officer Ms. Alia Filtrate
Sudan Embassy; Shura Council (Senate) First Vice-Chairman
H.E. Jamal Fakhro; Shura Council Member
Dr. Mohamed Al Khuzaii;
Supreme Council for Women (SCW) Head of Department of Domestic & International Cooperation, Ms. Noura Abdulaziz Al-Rifai
SCW International Cooperation Specialist, Sheikha Zain Bint Hamad Al Khalifa
GPIC Chairman Dr. Abdulrahman Al Jawahery
Bin Juma Chairman, Mr. Abdulla Juma;
Tricom Group Chairman & CEO Mr. Tareq Wafa
Al Ansari Group Chairman Mr. Jaleel Al Ansari
Gulf Daily News Business Editor, Avinash Saxena

During the 4th MENA Pensions Conference organized by Fintech Robos held on November 16th, IPI MENA Director Nejib Friji joined a chorus of pension funds officials, actuaries, and finance experts calling for a global multilateral response to address the global pension funds crisis.

Mr. Friji, who opened and moderated the first session, “Can Defined Benefit Pension Systems be Saved,” urged the government, private sector, and trade unions to work together in creating a pension strategy framework based on prudent foresight, population structures, and sound economic policies before the pension crisis threatens social and global peace.

Mr. Friji noted that parallel to the MENA region’s drastic population growth and “youth bulge” is the increase of global life expectancy and the expected surge in the region’s senior population from 10 million to 70 million by 2050.

“We must also keep in mind that unemployment rates in the MENA region are at 25%,” he underscored. “The current coronavirus pandemic has undoubtedly added to that percentage of unemployment on a global scale. Meanwhile, 90% of the world’s working-age population is already not covered by pension schemes.”

Greater life expectancy, significant unemployment, and strains over limited public resources are bound to boil over, he stressed.

In addressing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on pension systems, Philip Wheeler, Senior Manager of Ernst & Young, discussed the pandemic’s impact and pressures on funds such as increased life expectancy, lifestyle changes, retirement age, and a growing labor market.

Simon Herborn, Associate Partner at AON, referred to Bahrain’s recent implementation of parametric reforms as a prime example of what is required to improve the region’s public pension system.

“Pushing back the retirement age, making adjustments to the benefit amount, making the indexation of pensions a requirement and conditional of the financial position of the system, and partially raising the contribution rate are key parametric reforms,” he stated.

Hazem Abdulrahman, Actuarial Consultant at Mercer in the United Arab Emirates, referred to the Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index 2020, a report that compares 39 retirement income systems, representing more than 64% of the world’s population. Mr. Abdulrahman noted that “Grade A” pension systems include the Netherlands and Denmark, while Saudi Arabia is at a Grade C due to long-term sustainability issues.

Iyad Hourani, Managing Partner & Actuary of 4Sight Advisory Solutions, reiterated that most countries scoring well on indexes tend to be those that have adopted a multi-pillar approach—a system the Gulf region has yet to incorporate. He focused on the agility of the systems and the need for legislation that is dynamic and capable of adapting to a rapidly changing demographic and economic environment. Mr. Hourani stressed the need for an awareness campaign on reform issues, including why reforms need to be changed gradually for the system to remain sustainable.

In his closing remarks, Mr. Friji reiterated the importance of pensions in connecting peace, society, security, and sustainable development. He pledged IPI’s readiness to team up with experts, governments, and financial institutions to bring this issue to the forefront of the international community’s agenda.

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On November 19th, IPI together with the French Ministry of the Armed Forces cohosted the launch of IPI’s policy paper entitled “UN Reform and Mission Planning: Too Great Expectations?” authored by Marc Jacquand.

Since 2017, the UN system has undergone a historic process of reform at several levels and across many entities. Several of these reforms have either directly aimed at improving the planning of UN peace operations or included elements that have a significant bearing on mission planning.

The reorganization of the peace and security pillar has created shared regional divisions between the Department of Peace Operations (DPO) and the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA), streamlining communication and providing field operations a single point of entry. The reform has also brought greater attention to peacebuilding during planning processes. The management reform has made missions more flexible and efficient by delegating greater authority to mission leaders, and has centralized operational planning capacity. Likewise, the development system reform has enhanced country teams’ analysis and planning processes, supporting longer-term peacebuilding. Other initiatives—from the secretary-general’s use of independent strategic reviews of peace operations to increased attention to data-based performance monitoring of peacekeeping—have also impacted how missions are designed.

As the focus shifts from designing to implementing these reforms, this public virtual panel discussion will take stock of the various strands of UN reform and explore their impact on the planning of UN missions, drawing on the recent establishment of UN political missions in Colombia, Haiti, Hodeidah, Yemen, and Sudan—whether alongside or to succeed preexisting political missions, or in parallel with the drawdown of long-standing peacekeeping operations.

Opening remarks:
Brig. Gen. Roland Margueritte, Head of the Defense Mission, Permanent Mission of France to the UN

Panelists:
Mr. Marc Jacquand, Independent Consultant and Author of the IPI paper, “UN Reform and Mission Planning: Too Great Expectations?”
Ms. Laura Flores, Director, Americas Division, UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs/Department of Peace Operations
Mr. Steven Siqueira, Chief of Staff, a.i., UN Integrated Transition Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS)
Mr. David Haeri, Director, Division of Policy, Evaluation and Training, UN Department of Peace Operations
Mr. Ian Martin, former Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Libya and member of the HIPPO panel

Moderator:
Mr. Jake Sherman, IPI Senior Director of Programs

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On November 16, 17, and 18, IPI and the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) jointly hosted a series of consultations to
explore if and how a focus on masculinities can allow for a more comprehensive approach to integrating gender considerations in counter-terrorism (CT) and countering violent extremism (CVE). The series aimed to identify specific policy implications of such an approach, as well as potential challenges and pitfalls.

At the Open Briefing of the Counter-Terrorism Committee on “integrating
gender into CT and CVE,” held on November 1, 2019, several Member States acknowledged the need to consider masculinities and requested CTED to give due regard to this issue.

The CTED-IPI consultations were held as four thematic sessions structured around a set of specific questions for each theme. Participants included academics, civil society experts and practitioners from different regions of the world, along with relevant United Nations partner entities.

Discussions centered on the following questions:

• What does the concept of “masculinity” mean in the context of CT/CVE?
• Why does it matter to consider masculinities in CT/CVE? What is the objective in doing so?
• What are the practical implications for policy?
• What are some of the challenges and potential adverse effects?

There is growing awareness that integrating gender in CT and CVE must include a focus on masculinities. This is reflected in a growing body of research into the relevance of masculinity for various aspects of terrorism and counter-terrorism, as well as the importance of avoiding a one-dimensional conception of gender. However, the bridge from that research to policy, as well as the bridge from policy to practical implementation, remains weak.

An issue brief on this topic is forthcoming.

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The UN Security Council is expected to renew the mandate of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) in November 2020. In 2019, the mission’s mandate and strategic engagement in the Central African Republic (CAR) shifted to supporting the implementation of the Political Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation signed earlier that year. Nearly one year later, the presidential, legislative, and local elections are seen as another pivotal moment in the country’s political process and offer the mission another opportunity to refine its support to the country.

In this context, the International Peace Institute (IPI), the Stimson Center, and Security Council Report organized a workshop on October 8, 2020, to discuss the mandate and political strategy of MINUSCA. 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 largely agreed that MINUSCA’s current mandate remains relevant and encompasses the areas necessary to facilitate the mission’s effective engagement on political, security, and peacebuilding issues, including the upcoming elections. Recognizing the fluidity of the country’s political situation, they cautioned against major changes to the mandate. Instead, they encouraged the mission to continue balancing between supporting the electoral process and encouraging full implementation of the peace agreement, on the one hand, and responding to humanitarian needs and protecting civilians, on the other.

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In a webinar hosted by IPI MENA on November 5th entitled “Building Youth Resilience,” young authors, filmmakers, and artists called for greater awareness of the benefits of using the arts to build peace and resilience among the Arab youth.

IPI MENA’s Director Nejib Friji and Policy Analyst, Dalya Al Alawi underlined the importance of this at a time when sentiments of hate, violence, and despair are heightened. Ms. Al Alawi highlighted the possibility of youth as being agents of peace and that schools could act as focal points to promote the culture of peace.

Reem Saleh, the Associate Director of External Relations for the Arts Center, NYU Abu Dhabi spoke about the barriers youth are facing in contributing to culture in Arab social spaces and emphasized that culture should be more tailored and aimed at the Arab youth population to foster more participation.

Tanya Shamil, an 18-year old Omani artist and filmmaker, shared the tools she used to create and disseminate her work, which helped her engage more and learn from her community and beyond.

Sara Ghannoum, the author of the “Tom Alien” series, spoke about the healing properties of reading and playing, which helps children express themselves and in turn contributes to their mental and physical wellbeing.

The two youngest panelists, Adam Kadia, author of Hakeem the Adventurer and The 17SDGs, and Yara Khazindar, a young poet, praised the platform for being a great example of how the arts can be a useful tool in building long-lasting resilience among youth.

The event concluded in a collective acknowledgment that youth are agents of peace and builders of resilience, no matter what tool they chose to accomplish this.

Since 2017, the UN system has undergone a historic process of reform at several levels and across many entities. Several of these reforms have either directly aimed at improving the planning of UN missions or included elements that have a significant bearing on mission planning. As the focus shifts from designing to implementing these reforms, it is possible to begin reflecting on whether these aims have been met.

This paper takes stock of the various strands of UN reform and explores their impact on the planning of UN missions, drawing on the experiences of four missions that have recently started or transitioned. In addition to the peace and security, management, and development system reforms, it looks at the impact of several other recent initiatives. These include the launch of a series of independent strategic reviews of peace operations, the reinvigorated use of the secretary-general’s transition planning directives, the rollout of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment System, and the establishment of the Executive Committee.

The paper concludes by recommending that the UN consider:

• Tying together the strands of reform related to planning to prevent fragmentation;
• Making increased and better use of peace and security management mechanisms at the initial stages of planning to ensure that UN leaders have a unified tone and vision;
• More formally and transparently involving the Security Council in strategic reviews;
• Clarifying and strengthening the role of all relevant departments and the shared regional divisions in the mission budget process;
• Repositioning DPO’s planning cell in the Office of Shared Services to move toward a shared planning capacity; and
• Incentivizing lateral movement of personnel across departments and entities to broaden their perspectives.

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IPI MENA hosted a webinar on November 3rd entitled “Cultural Heritage & COVID in the Arab Region: Assessment & Perspectives,” where experts called for greater efforts to ensure protection and conservation of cultural heritage, during pandemic situations.

During his opening remarks, IPI MENA Director Nejib Friji emphasized the severity of the pandemic’s impact on the cultural sector and world heritage sites, which has borne high costs both economically and socially. He poignantly underlined UNESCO Director-General, Audrey Azoulay’s call to face our current “cultural heritage crisis.”

Participants debated how the pandemic has added to the cultural crisis they had already been facing for decades. In particular, the short-term impacts due to restrictions on in-person gatherings, that limited access to cultural sites and hence caused an unprecedented economic and social crisis.

The long-term disastrous economic effect on the cultural sector as a whole, which represents just above 6% of the global economy, was also emphasized. Not to mention, the loss of revenues from the decline in tourism as well as funding cuts by governments which in turn, exasperated this crisis by halting numerous urgent preservation projects.

However, there were hopes that the cultural sector would come back stronger than before by accelerating adaptability and modernization—with the advancement and availability of technology adapted specifically to the cultural world. Museums have begun to digitalize their content, which acts as a safeguard of knowledge, moving towards online museums in a “new normal” era. Advanced communication strategies including video-conferencing have also enabled the continuation of ongoing projects that would otherwise not be accessible.

Panelists reiterated the devastating effects of the pandemic on cultural heritage, and why collective action and multilateral cooperation is urgently needed in order to prevent any further losses brought about by the crises.

Participants included Mr. Mounir Bouchenaki, Advisor to the Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities (BACA) and UNESCO, Paris; Dr. Hayet Guettat, Director of Culture at the Arab League Educational, Cultural & Scientific Organization (ALECSO) Headquarters, Tunis; Dr. Zaki Aslan, Regional Representative of ICCROM for the Arab States and Director of the ICCROM in the Sharjah office, UAE; Dr. Karim Hendili, Chief of Culture at the UNESCO Regional Office for Maghreb in Rabat, and Culture Focal Point of the “Li Beirut” Initiative Taskforce at the Office of the Director-General of UNESCO in Paris.

The Board of Directors of the International Peace Institute has named Dr. Adam Lupel Acting President and Chief Executive Officer.

“The Board has complete confidence in Dr. Adam Lupel to steer the IPI forward at this challenging time,” said Kevin Rudd, Chair of the Board. “Adam is held in high esteem by staff, including for his professional integrity and dedication, exemplified by his fourteen years of service to the IPI.”

“Adam also has a distinguished academic record in international relations, including his PhD from the New School,” Mr. Rudd said. “Furthermore, the fact his appointment has been so warmly received across IPI’s partners and the wider international community over the last 24 hours shows the regard the UN and diplomatic community has for him, including for his role as the driving force of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism’s secretariat.”

Dr. Lupel joined IPI in 2006 as Editor, and over the years has served as IPI Director of Research and Vice President. Between 2014 and 2016, he also was Director of Research and Publications for the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, a project of IPI.

He has a PhD in political theory and an MA in liberal studies from the New School for Social Research and a BA in international relations with a concentration in Latin America from Boston University. He has taught modern and contemporary political theory at The New School’s Eugene Lang College in New York.

Dr. Lupel is the author of Globalization and Popular Sovereignty: Democracy’s Transnational Dilemma (2009) and the co-editor of Peace Operations and Organized Crime: Enemies or Allies? (2011) and Responding to Genocide: The Politics of International Action (2013).

He tweets at @ALupel.

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Several United Nations peacekeeping missions are deployed in highly complex environments, marked by stalled political agreements, significant protection challenges, direct threats to the security of peacekeepers, vast theaters of operations, and a range of partners. Many of the challenges faced by these missions underscore how contemporary armed conflict is evolving. In response, peacekeeping has had to evolve.

On October 28th, IPI, with cosponsors the Permanent Missions of Sweden and Egypt to the UN, held a virtual panel discussion on how the operational capabilities of contemporary UN peacekeeping are changing; whether these reforms are yielding the desired effects; what impact these changes have on peace operations’ ability to effectively deliver on their mandates; and what more needs to be done to maintain momentum for reform.

Anna Karin Enestrøm, the Permanent Representative of Sweden to the UN, acknowledged that “significant efforts” were already underway to reform peacekeeping in doctrine and in resourcing missions with funding, personal equipment, and technology. But lagging behind, she said, were actions expanding the participation of women. “We must act now to increase the number of civilian and uniformed women in peacekeeping at all levels and in key positions. As of May 2020, only 5.4 % of the United Nations military and 15.1% of the police personnel were women, compared to 3% and 10%, respectively, in 2015. This pace is simply too slow. We must redouble our effort to implement the Women, Peace and Security agenda in peacekeeping.”

Mohamed Fathi Ahmed Edrees, Permanent Representative of Egypt to the UN, spoke of how the COVID-19 pandemic had impacted peacekeeping and made even more urgent the need for reforms. “The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the peacemaking reality and worsened the already complex environments where peacekeepers are deployed. This new reality requires collective efforts from all peacekeeping stakeholders to adapt and further advance A4P (Action for Peacekeeping) implementation.”

General Dennis Gyllensporre, Force Commander, UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) said there were two rationales behind the adaptation in his mission. “The first one is the threat situation that we experience in the country to the civilian population, but also to the personnel of MINUSMA, where we are a target for some of these illegal armed groups, and also more recently, the very fluid situation that we have at the political level with the coup in August, translating, in some respects, to unrest on the ground.

“The second reason why the adaptation was necessary for us was the fact that the Security Council decided in its most recent mandate renewal that we would have another additional strategic priority to focus on the center of the country in addition to supporting the implementation of the peace accord. Basically, we have to do more with the same resources because there was no added resource that came with this priority. The Security Council also outlined the need for doing a mission-wide adaptation, and it’s not just the military part, but all the pillars of the mission. And now we are in the process of implementing the COVID-19 situation—obviously an obstacle, a delaying factor. Nevertheless, we’ve taken steps forward.”

He explained that those steps dealt with the three pillars: protection, posture, and partnering. On the posture, he reported that in addition to performing its traditional peacekeeping role with infantry battalions providing area coverage and trying to understand what’s happening on the ground, the mission had added a mobile component to the force so it could concentrate forces in certain areas for limited periods. “From that point of view, we are also in the process of generating and getting new capabilities, more aviation, more intelligence collection assets to make sure the composition reflects this new posture.” General Gyllensporre said that in addition to the change in composition, this represented “a change in mindset for us to conduct our operations more proactively and engaging with the population, engaging with other stakeholders, and leading the way if needed.”

As for protection, he said the mission had an approach that was more “population-centric.” In military terms, he explained, that meant acting from temporary operating bases to ensure that there are soldiers present continuously in the vicinity of exposed villages and areas where the threat to the population is thought to be imminent. “And we also make sure that we employ intelligence as a driving factor for operations. The ability to protect has to start with a good intelligence assessment from all components of the mission.”

On the subject of partnering, he said, “This is the way to leverage the efforts of the mission, making sure that the Malian authorities, civilians and military, are stepping up and extending their responsibilities in the areas that are threatened.” He added that the mission had a mandate to provide support for “partner forces” like the Malian armed forces and the G5 Sahel. He said that though the reform process was in its early stages, he was encouraged by the positive response from the local population and local leaders. “When we are able to come in quick, insert soldiers and provide some assistance, that is a good indicator that this adaptation is indeed the right way to go.”

Rania Dagash, Chief of the Policy and Best Practices Service, Department of Peace Operations, shared details of adaptations at three UN missions. She said that MINUSMA had developed an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) on early warning and rapid response, “two mechanisms that help us respond better. A rapid verification and dissemination of early warning information is critical based on what the Force Commander just said about the constantly shifting nature of the threat.”

She said that MINUSCA, the UN mission in the Central African Republic, has created joint special security units to demobilize armed group combatants. “What this joint special security unit does is establish mixed units, including CAR’s military and armed group elements to jointly carry out security. The training of these units has been completed, and they have already been dispatched to boost protection.” In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she said, MONUSCO has increased connections between its far-flung field offices. “What this has led to is increased coordination on threat analysis and response between field missions, and a senior management group on provincial protection was held.”

Major General Jai Shanker Menon, Director, Office for Peacekeeping Strategic Partnerships, pointed out that the reforms decentralize the management of resources to senior managers in the field who have mandate implementation responsibilities and direct responsibility for the safety and security of peacekeepers. He pronounced this “a positive development that can have an impact on the ground.

Now, for this to be effective, definitely the mindset of those in UN headquarters needs to shift from one of directing missions to one of truly acting in a support role to the missions.”

General Menon said his own experience of commanding missions had taught him the value of leadership and decisive decision-making. “In my opinion, there should be absolutely no procrastination. Decisions must be given after due thought, but they must be capped with the limit of time and information. A bad decision may be better than no decision at all. In my present job, I often see a lot of systemic issues in the mission like trauma care, base defense, integrated offices not working together, and these often stem from a lack of giving simple and clear-cut decisions.”

The two essential talents that UN mission leaders must have, he said, were “political acumen” and managerial ability. “Leaders must be multi-skilled to run a multi-dimensional peacekeeping operation and must possess managerial skills. Leaders must preferably have previous UN experience to understand the organization, its functioning, and the myriad policies, rules and regulations. Trust me, it can be overwhelming the number of policies, rules and regulations that come flying at you when you’re trying to run a mission.” He lamented that the UN didn’t have enough job mobility and clear career paths to better develop more seasoned leaders and weed out potential failures.

Ihab Awad, Deputy Foreign Minister of Egypt, chose to focus on MINUSMA where Egypt is a major troop-contributing country. “The MINUSMA adaptation plan was an important step forward to reorient the focus and operational capabilities of the mission, but it’s still a work in progress and, given the recent turmoil in Mali following the election, perhaps there is a need to continue to ensure that the adaptation plan is actually adapted to the emerging political and operational challenges facing the mission. So while there is a plan in place, I would like to really call on adapting this adaptation to the version of the realities.”

Ambassador Awad brought up the great variances in the country contexts in which UN missions operate. “This is where the reforms of peacekeeping will actually make a difference, and those are different contexts that require different context-specific adaptation of both the mandate, operation capabilities, and resources.”

In the question and answer period, General Menon had what sounded like the last word. “What the organization, what we need to do is to adapt faster. More flexibility, more adaptability. We need to get the capabilities faster, otherwise the situation and the environment will keep changing. And your force adaptation plan, like someone said, will have to be further adapted.”

Moderating the discussion was Jake Sherman, IPI Senior Director of Programs.

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In a webinar organized by IPI MENA, diplomats, leaders of civil society, and religious representatives across different faiths and sects decried violence committed in the name of religion following the brutal events that transpired in Paris and reiterated their pledge to advocating a message of peace.

IPI MENA Director Nejib Friji opened the conference on October 25th by stressing zero tolerance of using violence or extremism, and most pertinently when targeted against youth and teachers, as agents of peace. He highlighted the importance of how a culture of peace and a united interreligious alliance is necessary to combat and counter violent extremism by fostering understanding, tolerance, and reciprocal respect.

The French Ambassador to the Kingdom of Bahrain, H.E Jérôme Cauchard highlighted France’s fight against violent extremism, for a comprehensive approach for a peaceful coexistence, and pointed to Bahrain as an example of interfaith diversity and unity.

Mr. Mounir Bouchenaki, Advisor to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), offered insights from initiatives carried out by the organization from a multilateral standpoint, wherein helping societies recognize peace and coexistence through enforcing a foundation built-in education and culture, enables societies to become more resilient against radicalization and violence.

Reverend Hani Aziz, Pastor of the National Evangelical Church of Bahrain reiterated his attachment to the respect of all cultures, religions, and civilizations. He called on faiths’ representatives to unite against violent extremism and radicalism.

Dr. Abdulla Ahmed Al Maqabi, Law Courts Directorate, Ministry of Justice & Islamic Affairs & Waqf, Mr. Ebrahim Nonoo, Representative of the Jewish Community in Bahrain, Mr. Sushil Muljimal, Chairman of the Krishna Temple in Bahrain, Ms. Tahera Jaberi, Representative of the Baha’i Faith in Bahrain, and Pastor Isaac Inayat, Urdu Language Congregation, National Evangelical Church of Bahrain all denounced the incorrect manipulation of religion to legitimize personal agendas, violence and conflicts, and stressed their commitment to tolerance, mutual respect and durable peace.

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Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, young people have emerged as a powerful force calling for transformative change on climate action. The United Nations’ “Youth 2030 Strategy” calls for expanded and systematic youth engagement in all arenas, and the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the UN recognizes that “youth is the missing piece between development and peace.”

The practical steps and challenges of engaging youth in peace and climate action was the subject of an October 22nd virtual policy forum cosponsored by IPI, the Governments of Singapore and Sweden, the Office of the United Nations Secretary- General’s Envoy on Youth, the UN Office for Partnerships, the Office of the Assistant Secretary-General on Climate Action, the Global Challenges Foundation, the United Network of Young Peacebuilders, and the UN75 Campaign.

In opening remarks, Mary Robinson, Chair of the Elders, First Woman President of Ireland, and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, noted that COVID-19 had aggravated the devastating cost in human lives, and to economic growth, political momentum, and social inequality. “COVID-19 has exposed the interconnections between health, economic, and political risks of inaction and neglect.”

She declared, “Now is our opportunity to make change happen by design, and to realize this new design, we will have to listen to the voices of young people, and in the climate sphere, they are telling us to listen to the science, and listen we must.”

Jimena Leiva Roesch, IPI Senior Fellow and Head of the Peace and Sustainable Development Program, prompted the discussion with a general question to the young participants and diplomats. Did they think that the youth, peace, and security agendas were compatible?

Pedro Cunha, Regional Facilitator at Latin America and the Caribbean Engagement Mechanisms for the Society (LACEMOS) and member of United Network of Young Peacebuilders (UNOY) said the agendas were “more than compatible, they are complementary and co-dependent, as they are built on the same foundation of meaningful and inclusive participation of young people in decision-making and strong democratic governance.”

He said that from his conversations with peace and environmental activists in Latin America, he had concluded that there had to be a new category of international crime against peace, which he identified as “ecocide.”

“Right now there are four crimes against peace: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes of aggression,” he said. “All protect peoples and civilization, but we miss a key foundation of peace, to protect the earth and all its living beings. We are missing this fifth category of crimes against peace, and that is ecocide.”

Jayathma Wickramanayake, the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, said, “we all know from our work and our experience that youth, peace and climate are very much interlinked.” She mentioned two examples to make the point. “One is that seven of the ten peacekeeping missions that we have are actually based in countries that are most susceptible to climate change. And the second statistic is that these seven countries are some of the most youthful populations in the world.” She said that in countries like Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Mali, up to 80 percent of the population was under the age of 30. “And we see these countries on the lists of those countries that are the most susceptible to violence and most vulnerable to climate change, and I don’t think this is a coincidence. I think this shows that young people are disproportionately affected by both conflict and by climate action.”

Nisreen Elsaim, Chair of both the Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group and the Sudan Youth Organization on Climate Change, offered up her own life experience as exemplifying the linkages. “I’m a climate change activist, I’m a young person, and I’m coming from a country that has suffered from civil wars for 40 years and a conflict over natural resources for 20 years.”

Geraldine Byrne Nason, Permanent Representative of Ireland to the UN, commented, “We know that we can’t transform the world in the way we need to, the way we set out to in the 2030 agenda unless we look at the interlinkages between the issues, the movements, and, I would argue, between the generations. So I know that the young people on the screen with us this morning are ready to help shape the world that they want. And we need to give them a voice in order to do that. But for all of that to happen, we have to recognize that the linkages between these agendas are as true for the Youth, Peace, and Security agenda as they are for the climate action movement.”

Ireland is joining the Security Council in January, and Ambassador Byrne Nason said that though climate change was contributing to all of the root causes of the conflicts that the Council deals with, there is “big resistance” on the Council to acting on it. And as for youth, she said, “It’s a very one-dimensional view of young people that we employ here at the UN. We want to see young people sitting at the Security Council during the debates, we want to see youth shape the way, and not just as custodians of the future and peace, we want to see youth shape the way we talk about issues that are currently on the table.” She promised, “You can rely on us to do that. I mean, let’s be clear, there are few issues that really affect young people more than the damaging impacts of climate change.”

Magnus Lennartsson, Deputy Permanent Representative of Sweden to the UN, said, “It is impossible to keep these agendas apart. They are, and should be, closely interlinked. The leadership of young women and men of different backgrounds is absolutely key in our search for a long term climate solution. Youth in decision-making is the way to ensure ambition and progress.”

Ambassador Lennartsson said that Sweden’s recent two-year service on the Security Council had convinced him that “it is simply not possible to have a serious discussion about what the world should or will look like tomorrow without including and listening to young women and men. It is, after all, the young people who will live longer in the world that we build together today. We know that in places where the impact of climate change is most severe, like the Sahel, like East Africa, the population is very young. And it is therefore not surprising that the strongest activism for climate action comes from the younger generation.”

Joan Cedano, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Dominican Republic to the UN, said that her country’s almost two years on the Security Council had shown her that the Council didn’t fully appreciate the linkages between the agendas. “The Council has recognized climate change as one major driver of conflict; however, it has not yet made the connection in terms of how this specifically and fundamentally affects young people living in conflict.” She implored young people to keep pressing for participation in the Council’s deliberations. “Young people will continue to make points to the Council and to us member states, the points that we are not making on our own. And please don’t stop doing it. You need to continue to be that voice that calls on policy-makers and the international community to do their jobs.”

In closing remarks, Ambassador Lennartsson asserted, “Youth are the agents of change, and they have a key stake in the jobs, the environment, and the economy of the future, and they have clearly demonstrated that, through activist movements, they have a sincere interest and willingness to support a rapid shift towards sustainable consumption and production.”

In closing the event, Ms. Leiva Roesch highlighted that the Tweet Chat preceding the event had received millions of impressions, underscoring the relevance of the topic. See our one-pager for outcomes from the Tweet Chat.

Ms. Leiva Roesch moderated the discussion.

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Only 6 percent of all uniformed military, police, justice, and correctional personnel in United Nations field missions are women, and IPI Vice President Adam Lupel asked, “After 20 years and ten Security Council resolutions, why is it still so hard to increase the participation of uniformed women?”

Dr. Lupel was speaking to an October 20th IPI event co-sponsored with the Elsie Initiative for Women in Peace Operations and featuring a virtual discussion exploring answers to that question and launching the IPI policy paper “Woman First, Soldier Second: Taboos and Stigmas Facing Military Women in UN Peace Operations.” The paper is a product of IPI’s Women in Peace Operations Project, which is supported by the Government of Canada.

Jody Thomas, Deputy Minister of the Department of National Defence, Canada, introduced the discussion with an account of her own personal experience as a beginning officer. “I went aboard my first ship completely confident in my ability to be an excellent and equal shipmate. Not everyone agreed. There were some who were adamant that my gender was a weakness that they were being forced to accommodate, and they were angry about it. Their words and actions reinforced that I was not welcome, that there was something wrong with me actually wanting to be on a ship.

“That behavior was and is a reflection of a deeply rooted stigma that it is somehow wrong and inappropriate for women to serve in uniform. This kind of resistance to women in service—words, actions, attitudes—persists, and all that is rooted in the same stigma and taboos: women should not serve in combat roles; they should be out of the way; serving in ways that are not dangerous. Our country and our armed forces have made a lot of progress since those days, and it was a long time ago, in terms of our policy and our approach, but we have more to do to fight stigmas here in Canada and in countries around the world.”

Deputy Minister Thomas reported that Canada and Norway had pioneered a new barrier assessment methodology for police and military organizations and that the Canadian Armed Forces would be undergoing this assessment in the coming months.

Lotte Vermeij, Senior Adviser to the Norwegian Armed Forces and author of the report, said she had interviewed 142 women from 53 countries across 11 UN missions ranging in rank from private to major general. She said she addressed three levels: (1) the individual and community levels (2) within national defense structures and (3) during deployments to UN Peace Operations.

As an example of the mindset they face, Dr. Vermeij said, “Women are often seen as less feminine and less marriageable by their communities.” She quoted a military woman deployed to the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who had told her, “The community sees us as masculine, angry, and more aggressive than normal civilian women as we are trying to fit in with a male-dominated culture. At the same time, single women may be seen as promiscuous, while mothers are often perceived as neglecting their families.”

Another military woman told her, “I witnessed multiple cases of inappropriate behavior that made me feel more unsafe within the walls of the mission than outside.”

Dr. Vermeij said that women’s lack of authority and their minority status within the force made it very difficult for them to report and address these issues. “Women who did speak up were often discouraged from making official complaints and were sometimes even bullied and isolated.”

In pushing back, Dr. Vermeij said, “Women use a range of strategies, including sharing information with their families and friends, working harder to prove themselves and sometimes isolating themselves during deployments to avoid certain situations. They also turn to formal and informal support structures.”

“Unfortunately,” she added, “the burden of change often falls on individual women themselves rather than on institutions. Not surprisingly, these dynamics perpetuate the underrepresentation of women, military peacekeepers in UN missions.”

Among the recommendations she said the interviewed military women made were “the UN Department of Peace Operations should strengthen narratives on the importance of female peacekeepers in mission, ensure that all peacekeepers respect UN values, develop mission-specific general strategies and plans, engage more firmly with troop-contributing countries, make recruitment and selection processes more gender-sensitive, hold personnel accountable for discriminatory and sexualized behavior, and establish in-mission support systems.”

Major Kristy Hudson, Military Training Officer, UN Department of Peace Operations, said that women had to be alert to signs of discrimination, even seemingly small ones, and to signal their robust refusal to tolerate it. “This isn’t just about overt harassment, this is about the tiny moments that leaders let go past every day, and there’s a great saying that I love, ‘The standard that you walk by is the standard that you accept.’ If you are silent when a woman is dismissed as a leader, you are telling the team a woman can be ignored. So let this ‘bystander effect’ drive leadership in missions from the junior leader to the most senior leaders, and we will tackle a lot of these stigmas.”

Major Hudson said that women were wrongfully suspected of resisting deployment. “If someone says they don’t want to deploy, it won’t be because they don’t want to deploy, it would be because there is a barrier. Find out what that barrier is and what your organization is doing about it. In most cases, it’s actually about parenting issues that men and women both need support with. So address that. Consider unconscious bias because a lot of the decisions we make are not intentional, we just haven’t thought about it from the other side whether it’s an intersectional issue or a gender issue.”

Dr. Vermeij said her research bore out the view that women wanted to deploy, and not just in reduced roles. “We sometimes hear this argument that women don’t want to deploy. From the interviews, I can tell you that they do want to be deployed in those roles and they certainly want to be deployed, for example, at military observer sites.”

Major General Kristin Lund, formerly Head of Mission, UN Truce Supervision Organization, and Force Commander, UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, also dismissed the notion that women were not willing to deploy. “When it comes to ‘females don’t want to be deployed,’ I think that’s a myth. When Norwegians deployed to Afghanistan, they came back and said, ‘We need them, we cannot solve the problems out there without the women.’ It has to be shown that these women are able and capable of doing what men are doing.” She pointed out that career advancement often depended on it. “In your career, you need to be deployed if you went to have a future.”

Major Hudson brought up an area where women’s needs were exasperatingly not taken into account. “Only yesterday, I had a so-called military expert argue with me that it was a waste of time to make sure that military equipment was adapted to meet the requirements of women. His view, and I’ve heard it many times before, was that it was unreasonable that a female soldier should expect to have vital protective equipment, in this case, a helmet that actually fit her sufficiently to protect her skull while not slipping down and obscuring her vision and preventing her from performing her duties as a soldier. And that blows my mind.”

Wing Commander Llani Kennealy, Military Liaison Officer – Peacekeeping, UN Women, had a terse rejoinder to this kind of thinking. “Male clothing and equipment are not well suited to women’s bodies, and calling equipment unisex doesn’t cut it.”

Major General Lund outlined the challenges that military women faced in becoming leaders. “For me, now a retired major general in the Norwegian Army, it took me 15 years to find my leader philosophy. Why? Well, your only role models were men, and you saw what kind of values they appreciated to get you promoted. But by hard work, I got stronger and wiser and managed to lead the way I wanted to be led.”

She illustrated how the particular challenges for a woman leader remain even once you’ve assumed responsibility. ‘When I was Force Commander in Cyprus, I had to check, for example, which were the troop- contributing countries where prostitution was illegal. For me, that was an indicator of men’s attitudes towards women. And I had to pay more attention to give guidelines to those contingents and their commanders. I changed that, providing doors to lavatories, curtains in front of the urinals, and separation walls in containers, small simple changes that you can make. The sub-commanders understood my intention and removed inappropriate posters in the gyms.”

Major Hudson called for more attention from the UN and troop-contributing countries to the recruitment and training of military women. ”If a country is to be serious about deploying women and treating them with respect, they must deliberately seek to grow this cadre using the same care and attention they use to grow the male workforce. That is in training, career development, in coaching and mentoring, and that means building from the ground. And if we want female sector commanders and force commanders, we need to start recruitment. Countries must show that women are taken seriously as military personnel, and that they’re not being deployed merely as quotas to be met.”

Wing Commander Kennealy said that military women had developed among themselves successful informal means of being effective and independent in a male-dominated world. “Women, experiencing the stigmas and taboos highlighted in this research identified that in the first instance, rather than raise issues with their chain of command, they often seek assistance from talking to other women through informal networks. This highlights that leadership and networks in no way operate independently of each other. These networks will often develop out of necessity driven by women as a result of a lack of leadership or the inadequacy of systems and policies that support a diverse work force.”

Ms. Kennealy theorized a general reason why there was a need for these networks. “Military organizations are by their very nature striving for uniformity, and they have generally been designed on a male career model that doesn’t allow for the flexibility of career breaks or other policy interventions that help to support and maintain women in their careers alongside their male cohorts.” At the same time, she cautioned against overdependence on these informal networks. “It is critical that through these associations, we do not perpetuate the idea that the need for the structural change to improve the conditions and experiences of our women is just women’s business as this simply is not correct. It is the responsibility of commanders and capability managers to seek policy changes to achieve enabling capability and mission success.”

Lieutenant Colonel Nomthandazo Ditire is a former military intelligence officer for the South African National Defense Force who now serves as a military planning officer at the Military Planning Service of the Office of Military Affairs (OMA) at the UN Department of Peace Operations. She is concerned at the relatively few numbers of women in the higher ranks.

“We still see more women as non-ranking cadre members, we see them as platoon commanders, however, we haven’t seen much more in the sense of company commanders, battalion commanders, sector commanders and also making sure that the force commanders, sector commanders are also recruited. OMA also needs to integrate women so that we know that this will cascade down to the field.

“And mission-specific gender strategies should be more than simply having a woman on a planning team or in a decision-making role, but should look to the benefits of women at all levels in the mission across the different functions and within the military contingents themselves. Women should not just be doing medical or logical or logistical or administrative work, but also can be effectively training combat readiness and also in engagements. Women should be playing a vital role in intelligence gathering and also patrols and physical operations.”

Wing Commander Llani Kennealy underlined the importance of continuing to push for change. “Change will require strong, committed leadership at all levels of decision-making, but just as critical, change will require ongoing advocacy, activism and encouragement by military women and for military women.”

After hearing from the other military women on the panel, she remarked that it could have been depressing listening to the personal accounts of the damaging effect that taboos and stigmas had on women, but that instead she had come away inspired by what she had heard.

“Potentially this commonality of experience could be perceived as deflating – that the issues of stigmas and taboos are too widespread and too ingrained in military culture to change. However, I look at this unity of experience and understanding reported by these women as something very different, and in fact, I see this commonality of awareness as a real opportunity.

“Through this unity of experience comes a unity of purpose. Our commonality of experiences will lead directly to a unity for change.”

Gretchen Baldwin, IPI Senior Policy Analyst for Women, Peace, and Security, moderated the discussion.

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Demographics, taboos and stigmas facing military women at the individual and community levels. Click for full graphic.

Deployment, taboos and stigmas facing military women within national defense structures. Click for full graphic.

Despite efforts to increase the participation of women uniformed peacekeepers, military women continue to face taboos and stigmas that are barriers to their inclusion and successful deployment. These range from gender stereotypes that cause military women to face more scrutiny than their male counterparts to difficulties speaking up about discriminatory and sexualized behavior, including racism, sexual harassment, and assault. Being confronted with persistent taboos and stigmas can have far-reaching consequences for military women before, during, and after deployment.

This paper, which is based on interviews with 142 military women from fifty-three countries, assesses the taboos and stigmas facing military women at three levels: (1) at the individual and community levels; (2) within their national defense structures; and (3) during deployment to UN peace operations. It also looks at the strategies women use to mitigate these taboos and stigmas and the formal and informal support structures they turn to.

The paper concludes with recommendations for national defense structures and the UN:

• For national defense structures, it recommends improving standards of behavior and accountability, educating men and women on taboos and stigmas, recruiting and retaining more women, proactively reaching out to and selecting women for deployment to peace operations, providing women the support they need, and designing equipment that better suits women’s needs.
• For the UN Department of Peace Operations, it recommends strengthening narratives on the importance of female peacekeepers, ensuring all peacekeepers respect UN values, developing mission-specific gender strategies and plans, engaging more firmly with troop-contributing countries, making recruitment and selection processes more gender-sensitive, holding personnel accountable for discriminatory and sexualized behavior, and establishing in-mission support systems.

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The 2020 report of the UN Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations (C-34) marked the culmination of nearly a decade of efforts to improve the committee’s working methods and deliver a more relevant report. Because the report was restructured around the eight thematic priorities of the Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative, it also helped translate the initiative’s Declaration of Shared Commitments into practice. This was an especially noteworthy achievement considering that the committee had failed to reach consensus on a report just one year prior.

This paper explores previous efforts to reform the C-34 and the process of agreeing to reform the working methods and report structure in 2019. It also assesses the contribution of the report’s revised structure and substance to ongoing efforts to support and advance peacekeeping reform. It concludes with lessons that could guide other UN reform initiatives: timing and circumstances matter, there must be an appetite for reform, those leading the reform process must listen and be impartial arbiters, and delegations must be patient and have realistic expectations.

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With the world struggling with a global pandemic, increasing attention is being paid to the potential of community-owned and -led initiatives to address poverty, mobilize crisis response, and increase human security and well-being in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

On October 14th, IPI, with co-sponsors Catalyst for Peace, the Institute for State Effectiveness, the Government of Sierra Leone, and the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the UN, held a virtual policy forum to discuss the on-the-ground experiences of two countries that are integrating community-centered initiatives into national government policy, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan.

Introducing the subject, Jimena Leiva Roesch, IPI Senior Fellow and Head of the Peace and Sustainable Development Program, explained, “We ask for these inclusive and leave-no-one behind frameworks that center on community, both as the heart of the 2030 Agenda and in the Sustaining Peace resolutions. So at the global policy level, we know that this is our aspiration, but we rarely find examples in the field of how you transform these aspirations into reality. And of course, the local level is a lot more complicated than these aspirations. When you get to work and roll up your sleeves, it’s not as lofty.”

Francess Piagie Alghali, Minister of State for the Office of the Vice President, Government of Sierra Leone, said that one of the main drivers of conflict in her country had been “the lack of inclusive dialogue platforms at the community level, and the lack of participation. People feel that they don’t belong to these communities when they lose their livelihoods, and there is nowhere where they can address some of these issues, and then the next thing that they do is turn to violence.”

She said that her government reasoned that the best way to avert some of these violent incidents was to strengthen local governments and the decentralization process. “We believe that local councils, local governments know and understand their communities better and are well placed to implement initiatives to build social cohesion and to reap the resulting benefits of stronger, more resilient and productive communities.”

The government has now incorporated a people’s planning model called the Wan Fambul Framework for Inclusive Governance and Local Development, an instrument not only for economic development but also to build peace, social cohesion, and inclusion. “It’s a unique model,” Minister Alghali said. “It sparks the imagination of communities. It makes the communities feel that they are part of the development. It engenders leadership and inclusivity. And one unique component of this framework is that it gives prominence to women and former groups that have not been included in the conversation in the communities, like disabled people, like youths. Those people feel that they have a say in the way their communities are being run.”

She said that the community structures that had been developed using the Wan Fambul framework had helped the country cope with current crises. “For example, we used these frameworks to address the Ebola pandemic that we recently went through. We use these frameworks to address natural disasters. We are using this framework to address the COVID pandemic now, in unique and innovative ways, like sending the message of hand washing and spreading the message of socially distanced gatherings. These are the governance structures that we use, and they have worked quite well.”

The Wan Fambul framework is now being legislated into law, giving it permanence in the structure and governance of Sierra Leone. “Once it is legislated, it makes any government that comes to power obliged to follow this framework, and it also means it must be part of the budget allocation for the government.”

Sierra Leone is applying the lesson of Wan Fambul to its fulfillment of the SDGs, Ms. Alghali said. “As a country, we believe that the first step in achieving the SDGs by 2030 is for us to be able to sustain peace and national cohesion, which is the bedrock of any form of development. Without peace, without cohesion, there is not going to be development, and in order to do that, we have to strengthen governance at the community level by putting communities at the center of the planning process. This is what we have done in Sierra Leone as a model by incorporating the Wan Fambul Framework in our governance and structure. And we hope that other countries will emulate this good example.”

Adela Raz, Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the UN, recounted how the country had pursued its community-driven development using its people- centric Citizens’ Charter National Priority Program. “Through our Citizens’ Charter, we have empowered Afghan communities to identify, plan, manage, and monitor development projects.” She said that projects have been “democratized” through a process in which locally elected Community Development Councils prioritized projects and applied to receive funding for their implementation. “The program success was evident in its very positive impact in over 35, 000 communities which included greater access to public services and then overall acceptance of the democratic process and the people-centered approaches.”

Ambassador Raz said that the Citizens’ Charter program deepened the relationship between the government and its citizens and expanded the responsibility of the Community Development Councils through an inter-ministerial collaboration for better citizen-centric delivery of services, including universal access to clean drinking water, quality education, health services and infrastructure. “This has translated into 12,800 completed projects and more than 13 million people benefited. This model, of course, originated from collaboration between the international and the national. And as a government, we found ourselves in the middle of this partnership, and we adopted it and held it with two hands.”

She pointed out that the government had also taken a community-led approach to the SDGs. “The government has worked to nationalize the SDGs by identifying the most relevant targets and indicators to develop the Afghanistan Sustainable Development Goals. Of course in Afghanistan, when we are talking about community-led efforts, we cannot discuss this without the element of peace. The government has also emphasized that Afghans from all segments of society should have a say in the peace process. It called a Loya Jirga, our format for our grand assembly, with 3,200 delegates from all 34 provinces that prioritized our objective for peace and the formation of an inclusive negotiating team. Following the lead of the Jirga, the government in August took the very difficult decision to release 400 remaining Taliban prisoners as part of the commitment from the government’s side to start the peace talks.

“The government is also empowering women to engage in track two and track three peace processes through community-led initiatives. The second phase of our Women, Peace, and Security National Action Plan emphasizes the localization of the plan and close consultation with stakeholders around the country. This has led to the development of local action plans which has strengthened community leadership and further amplified local ownership of the National Action Plan I think this is the environment we should strive for with these important initiatives and building more people-centric governments and processes and initiatives that leads to greater ownership of the local communities.”

Her fellow Afghan, Rasoul Rasouli, CDD Operations and Development Expert and former Director General, Citizens’ Charter, Afghanistan, said the overall national project aimed at putting in place sustainable systems to reduce poverty and bind people to the government. It was now in its first phase, he said, and on a path to reach 40,000 villages in the country. “Community-driven development programs encourage the notion of participation and voluntary reason. It is quite feasible to expand the program fast and give more coverage. The bottom-up development gives a way for citizens through the different platforms of community participation, to participate in monitoring, social audit, score cards, and a comprehensive grievance redress mechanism linking the beneficiaries at the primary level to the government officials from the local all the way up to the national level to register their complaints.”

The Fambul Tok project in Sierra Leone shared a similar goal of community involvement with the Afghan Citizens’ Charter movement but proceeded on a different mindset, said John Caulker, Executive Director of Fambul Tok International, ”We don’t’ say ‘bottom up,’ we say ‘inside out’ because with all due respect, we believe that people should not be seen as the bottom. People have their answers to the problems, solutions to look out for, and that is the key. We don’t go to communities to solve their problems, we go to communities to facilitate a conversation.”

He explained that the Creole language phrase Fambul Tok means “family talks” and evolved in Sierra Leone in the aftermath of the country’s devastating and divisive civil war. “So the initial concept was to address gaps to work on reconciliation, get the people who suffered during the conflict to sit around to talk about what went wrong. ‘We used to be one big family. Your mother is my mother, and your father is my father, your child is my child. It takes a village to raise a child. What went wrong?’ So that was the initial idea, why we had Fambul Tok, and as the name implies, it’s a national conversation.”

When the Ebola crisis hit five years ago, Sierra Leone profited from this earlier experience with community-centered development. “We realized that it’s important to have a trusted relationship, which we had already forged, and because of that trusted relationship, we were able to lead a conversation at the community level. We were able to get stakeholders to listen to communities.”

Libby Hoffman, President of Catalyst for Peace, spoke of working with Mr. Caulker in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak and a lesson she gleaned from that experience. She recalled that Mr. Caulker was frustrated by the response of the international community which he found replicative of the errors in the outside world’s response to the country’s post-civil war needs years earlier. “He said something that I found so inspiring that I wrote it down, and it’s become a keystone for me. Referring to international donors, he said, ‘They think they can just come in and pour resources at the problem to fix it. They don’t even see the community where the problem is happening.’ And that community is like a bowl, and it’s cracked. And if you pour water into a cracked bowl, it just goes right through, and if you keep pouring, it only makes the cracks bigger.”

Continuing her bowl metaphor, she said the way that Fambul Tok worked was “not about pouring water into the cup of the community, it was about repairing the cup through a community mobilization and engagement process so that it could hold the water itself and then it could generate its own activity and lead in its own reconciliation and development.” Holding up a model of concentric bowls to illustrate her point, she said, “You’ll see that there is no up or down. Depending on where you’re located, it’s a whole system, and the role of each level outside is to create the space that allows the resources in the level inside to be seen, motivated, and magnified. So this is what we mean when we say communities in the center, not separated and hierarchal but all together with distinct roles and responsibilities as part of a larger whole.”

Clare Lockhart, Director, Institute for State Effectiveness, said that the kinds of layered platform designs being discussed varied from place to place and had to be context-specific. “But one of the most important principles that we’ve heard today is that among the decisions, rights or responsibilities, the leadership for planning is vested in the community. And this can sometimes be quite hard for governments or NGOs to let go of when they got used to making the decisions. But it’s really important that shift about understanding that the community will be making the decision and plans for what happens in their community.”

On the crucial issue of financial support, she said that a “single window framework” was key to engaging donors. “From the perspective of donors with these often fragmented programs, having a single set of rules for operation and community development can be so crucial.”

Jimena Leiva-Roesch moderated the discussion.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified existing conflicts, deepened social inequality, and threatened to set back peace processes, but it has also afforded an opportunity “to rethink and develop United Nations peacekeeping further,” said Pekka Haavisto, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland. “The Action for Peacekeeping initiative, which aims to make UN peacekeeping fit for purpose, remains in the midst of pandemic as timely as ever.”

He was speaking at an October 7th ministerial- level virtual meeting on “UN Peacekeeping in the Time of COVID-19: A High-Level Dialogue on Challenges, Responses, and Lessons,” co-sponsored by IPI and the governments of Finland, Indonesia, Uruguay, and Rwanda. The event was the eighth in a series of annual ministerial-level convenings on peace operations, organized on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly debate.

“Peacekeeping has to be an integral part of an inclusive peacebuilding process that creates ground for reconciliation, social cohesion, as well as sustainable peace and development,” the Finnish Foreign Minister said. “This means the peacekeeping political process, development cooperation, and humanitarian aid should be planned and implemented in tandem, requiring close cooperation between the UN peacekeeping operation, the country team, and other partners, civil society and NGOs, and we should not forget the role of the UN policing and other civilian experts.”

He singled out training, capacity building, and increased participation of women peacekeepers for special mention. “Comprehensive peacekeeping demands comprehensive training teams, and, for example, context-specific human rights training can provide the tools for peacekeeping missions to complete their duties in a more sensitive and effective manner.” The number of women peacekeepers must grow, he said, because “it’s clear that more female peacekeepers means more successful operations.”

Febrian A. Ruddyard, Deputy Foreign Minister for Multilateral Cooperation of Indonesia, acknowledged the increased challenges to peacekeeping posed by COVID-19 and outlined three main objectives in response to them:

• “Our collective commitment to support peacekeeping operations should be strengthened.” He said that there were currently more than 2,800 Indonesian peacekeepers, including 126 women, across eight missions, and those numbers would be maintained despite the pandemic. ”In this time of crisis, peacekeeping missions should continue to carry out their mandates while assisting host countries to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic.”
• “Improving peacekeeping performance and ensuring the safety and security of peacekeepers must go hand in hand.” He said that Indonesia had been updating its training materials to meet the new demands and practicing “strict observance” of COVID-19 protocols, both pre-deployment and post-deployment.
• “Our effort to increase participation of women in peacekeeping operations should be redoubled.” He said their stepped- up presence would bring “more impact” to local communities and, in particular, to the protection of women and children.

Nshuti Manasseh, delegated Minister of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Rwanda, said that COVID-19 had forced peacekeeping missions to adapt their activity to minimize risk to troops and police, but that troop-contributing countries faced logistic and financial constraints. “By one example, Rwanda has to test five times each individual before, during and after deployment in peacekeeping missions. However, none of these tests are reimbursed by the UN. To an extent, Rwanda is facing logistic challenges related to decontamination of all aircraft during operations as well as deployment of personal protective equipment which was initially provided for medical staff and which are now required for the majority of our peacekeepers.”

In light of this “division” of resources, he said, the international community had to be wary of armed groups exploiting the situation to strengthen their footholds and reestablish their presence. “In this context, resources are being divided to respond to a health crisis, but we must continue to use strategic partnerships and alliances to ensure that UN peacekeeping operations are adequately funded and resourced to overcome global peace and security challenges while contributing to creating an  environment towards delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goals.”

Atul Khare, Under-Secretary-General, UN Department of Operational Support, reported that 11 UN uniformed personnel had died from COVID, and that overall the UN had recorded 1,450 cases of COVID across all its field missions, of which 1,173 had occurred among uniformed personnel, the police and soldiers.

He outlined steps that have been taken to keep the toll low. “When travel restrictions arose, we established virtual walkthroughs in 21 field mission hospitals to ensure that they met the requirements laid out on hospital preparedness to respond to COVID-19.  Comprehensive virtual walkthroughs of contingent level one clinics and camp settings by public health experts were also carried out and were completed in six missions. Their lessons were then shared across all missions, and this model is now being adopted for use in other areas beyond medical inspection, such as pre-deployment visits.”

He said that early on in the outbreak, rotations were paused to protect UN personnel and host countries from the spreading virus. “But as rotations have resumed, we have put in place stringent conditions for safety and security, including pre-deployment training on COVID-19, a 14-day quarantine period in the home country, adherence to the mission’s quarantine regulations upon deployment in theater, physical distancing, and the use of personal protective equipment.” He said the crisis had also spurred the UN to create testing facilities in mission, to increase capacities for electronic communication, and to modernize the UN’s medevac system, which he said had already been called into service in the current crisis 99 times.

Anticipating two upcoming needs connected to COVID-19, Mr. Khare said that the design of UN field encampments had to be adapted and UN peacekeepers had to assured of being among the first in line to receive any vaccine that was developed. “Our camps were designed to enhance, maximize the efficiency of land and building use, but this means that people are close together, and so we have to look at a different camp design altogether.” And on vaccines, he said, “Our peacekeepers are as much frontline workers as humanitarian workers or health workers so they’ll have to be prioritized for vaccines.”

Expanding on that point, Mr. Haavisto, the Finnish Foreign Minister, said he understood the funding pressures the UN was facing in the crisis but implored people to recognize the priority of holistic peace operations. “I think how we combine peacekeeping with all other development efforts, humanitarian efforts and so forth is becoming more and more important. And then maybe to the countries which are contributing the troops the message ought to be very loud and clear from the UN level that this is not the time to give up, this is not the time to reduce your budgeting on these needs. And I know from the domestic debate that when you see money in the budget for some international purposes, it’s easy to try to cut that out first, whether it’s development aid or funding for peacekeeping. But I think it must be made clear that the only way to live in a safe world is to keep on this and continue this very important contribution that we make for peace through the UN.”

Francisco Bustillo, Minister of Foreign Relations of Uruguay, was unable to attend, but Carlos Amorin, Permanent Representative of Uruguay to the UN, made brief remarks in his place.  “Uruguay believes strongly in the power of collective agreements in order to overcome challenges and produce meaningful and profound change and improvement to UN peace operations,” Ambassador Amorin said.

Summarizing the discussion in closing remarks, IPI Senior Director of Programs Jake Sherman said it had highlighted “how the UN and its member states are adapting in order to manage risks and effectively deliver on their mandates, including procedures for training, deployment and troop rotation, patrolling, and community engagement.  It also underscored how COVID-19 has increased the importance of medical and technological capacities, as well as human rights and the participation of women peacekeepers in order to improve access to communities and respond to heightened risks, including gender-based violence. And finally, of a comprehensive approach that includes development and response to humanitarian needs.”

Looking to the future, Mr. Sherman noted that speakers had voiced the need to “strengthen the collective commitment to peacekeeping at a time of increased importance, from political attention and financial support, to capacity building and equipment, and to use the current crisis to better prepare for future ones.”

IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen made opening remarks.

IPI Senior Fellow and Head of Protection of Civilians Namie Di Razza moderated the discussion.

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Effective and sustainable multilateral peace and security initiatives in Africa depend on a strong partnership between the United Nations and the African Union. While their strategic partnership has grown since 2017, collective peacebuilding efforts still lag behind cooperation in other areas. Different institutional mandates, policy frameworks, and operational practices have led them to carve out distinct roles in the multilateral peacebuilding space, often impeding closer cooperation.

This report—a joint publication of IPI and the Institute for Security Studies (ISS)—analyzes the UN and AU’s approaches to peacebuilding and identifies opportunities for a more robust and effective peacebuilding partnership. These include aligning their political strategies, fostering cooperation between the AU Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) and the UN Peacebuilding Commission (UNPBC), reconciling differences in their peacebuilding approaches, securing sustainable financing, and capitalizing on emergent peacebuilding approaches. The paper concludes with recommendations for UN and AU member states and officials:

• UN and AU member states should build consensus around shared peacebuilding concerns, better institutionalize the working relationship between the AUPSC and the UN Africa Group, and strengthen implementation of the recommendations from the 2018 meeting between the AUPSC and UNPBC.
• UN and AU officials should include peacebuilding and development personnel in annual engagements on peace and security, explore opportunities for joint analysis and planning for peacebuilding activities, and share more analysis and expertise at the working level.

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On September 18th, IPI, in partnership with UN75, The Group of Women Leaders, and the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, convened a virtual event commemorating the 75th anniversary of the United Nations with a diverse group of women leaders in a dynamic conversation on priorities and solutions for “recovering better” from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following welcoming remarks by IPI Vice President Adam Lupel. Waheguru Pal Sidhu, Professor and Head of the UN Initiative at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU, opened the session positing three possible post-pandemic scenarios for the UN’s future, in order of preference.

The first was the UN’s “continued relevance as the center of the multilateral universe,” but this would come about “only if the UN is able to leverage the ongoing disruption, engage a host of sub-state and non-state actors, devise innovative negotiation approaches and address emerging challenges to recover better.”

The second would result if the UN simply opted for “business as usual,” in which case “it might be relegated to the sidelines and become just one of the multiplicity of forums to deal with 21st century challenges.”

The last, and, by Professor Sidhu’s admission, “most somber” was a UN “unable or unwilling to recover better” and consequently passing into “irrelevance or even demise.”

Professor Sidhu said that none of these outcomes was inevitable but that advancing the UN’s future would require “concerted collective action from the individual to the global level, especially if we want to preserve and strengthen the UN over the next 25 years.” He asked, “So how can we ensure the solidarity and sustained collective action for the outcome we want? Can the UN be the arena, agent, and actor that we need in order to build the future we want?”

In response, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, President of the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly and member of The Group of Women Leaders, Voices for Change and Inclusion, singled out the need for “leadership and concerted action.”

She cast a wide net in describing the leadership she had in mind. “It has to come from the whole of society. It is not only government or messianic leaders, but social activists:  women, journalists, opinion makers, scientists, academia, indigenous leaders. I think we all have a role to play in building this new social contract that we have the opportunity now to build, and this new social contract has to be between society, the economy, politics, and nature as well.”

She stressed the importance of a wide-ranging collective effort to shore up the distressed multilateral system. “It is not a self-operating machine, it does not have self-agency. The multilateral system at the UN is what we want it to be. It’s us who have the responsibility to craft the system to serve us and the interests of ‘we, the peoples.’”

Picking up on that point, Elizabeth Cousens, President and CEO of the United Nations Foundation, commented, “I sometimes say that multilateralism is the new realism. It’s not sentimental. It’s not because everybody gets along, it’s precisely because they don’t always get along that you need multilateral institutions and understandings.”

She lamented the “anger and distrust in politics that are deepening rather than overcoming our divisions” and focused her remarks on the uplift coming from “bright spots, pa­rticularly at the local level.”

Ambassador Cousens listed a random few of them, including the voluntary local reviews of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that have been created in more than 100 American cities, the state of Hawaii, and at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh; a new SDG “tracker tool” in Los Angeles allowing community organizations to connect the SDGs to “real lives and impacts;” an effort underway to unite more than 40 American cities behind an equitable response to COVID-19 and recovery; and a campaign by Walmart, the biggest employer in the US, to transform its supply chains to tackle equity, climate change, and gender issues. “That’s just a few snippets from this country, but there is obviously incredible leadership and bright spots around the world in cities and communities.”

What’s essential now, Ambassador Cousens said, is better coordination and broader encouragement. “So I look to a lot of these sources of leadership and innovation where we have real reserves of political power in other places, and the key is to connect them, to empower them, and to find new ways of bringing that leadership into the debate and platforms and actions that we have at a global level.”

Natalie Samarasinghe, UN75 Deputy and Chief of Strategy, said she feared at first that the coming of the pandemic would diminish enthusiasm and distract from the mission of UN75. “But that’s actually when we saw the initiative take off, and I don’t think it was just because people were bored during lockdown. It was because people saw this was a global crisis with far-reaching consequences that couldn’t be solved by their governments acting in isolation and that probably would require intensive efforts over many years and that no country, no matter how big or powerful, was going to be spared.”

She said that she was impressed that even the UN’s biggest backers saw the moment not as just an opportunity to restore the UN but one to make it better and more inclusive and accountable in the future. “They’re thinking long-term, what’s the impact on inequality and unemployment, how can we get more support for the hardest hit? I think it’s a powerful message of solidarity to take back to world leaders.”

In rebuilding the UN post-pandemic, Ms. Samarasinghe cautioned against sticking to just structural renovation and urged attention in addition to improving political leadership and making the world body more inclusive. “We often focus on structures, the composition of certain parts of the UN. That’s right. That’s hard. But even the most perfect system, the most perfect design, won’t make up for politics. We should focus on our leadership, good leadership at all levels, senior but mid-level too. And not paying lip service to include other voices, but actually doing it—meaningful, ongoing inclusion, embedding people, other stakeholders into the system. That will help deliver more evolutionary change, ongoing change and renewal, more than another sort of static re-design of the system would.”

Nisreen Elsaim, Chair of the UN Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change and Chair of the Sudan Youth Organization on Climate Change, cited the common observation that the pandemic had laid bare the desperate inequality in the world but stressed that in her part of the world, such inequality was rampant before COVID-19 and would persist afterward if it continued to be neglected.

“We’re always saying that the SDGs are about leaving no one behind, but that is actually what COVID did. So before thinking about the inequalities that COVID caused, we should first think of the inequalities that we had before, and realize that even if we find a cure, there will still be a lot of inequality happening,” she said.

Regarding her youth organization work, Ms. Elsaim said that young people welcomed all the attention and talk about including them in policy-making but were disappointed at the lack of follow-through on repeated promises. “As young persons, we have gotten used to being the trend, to having people say, ‘Young people are the fuel for the future, they are the change agents.’ But then when it comes to decision-making, when it comes to really implementing things in reality, then the young people, the ones who are actually trending, disappear.”

Ms. Elsaim said that involving young people was not just a moral responsibility, it was a measure that would make the UN more effective, innovative, and more broadly relevant. “What makes us special as young people is that we actually take different suggestions, we take the information we get, we empty our cup, we try to use different materials in order to make our world better. And last but not least, we are fearless.”

Jimena Leiva Roesch, Senior Fellow and Head of IPI’s Peace and Sustainable Development Program, moderated the discussion.

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