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IPI held a policy forum on November 7th on the evolution of the strategic partnership between the United Nations and the African Union, with a specific focus on how they undertake conflict prevention and crisis management efforts. Organized with the support of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the African Union Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations, and the Training for Peace Programme, the forum also served to launch a research report on the subject produced jointly by IPI and the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

Co-authored by IPI Policy Analyst Daniel Forti and ISS Researcher Priyal Singh, the report looks at the partnership at the member state level in the UN Security Council and AU Peace and Security Council, as well as at the operational level between various UN and AU entities. It also assesses the partnership across several thematic issues, including the AU’s Silencing the Guns initiative;  mediation; women, peace, and security; electoral support; peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction and development, and youth, peace, and security. The report offers six recommendations for the UN, the AU and their member states to strengthen the partnership.

Bintou Keita, Assistant Secretary-General for Africa, UN Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations, identified the reasons why conflict keeps reemerging across Africa as “exclusion, marginalization, and discrimination” and said the most effective response was through partnerships. She noted approvingly that at the political and policy making level, the word that most recurred was “joint” as in “joint visit, joint communiques that is becoming more common.”

Jerry Matthews Matjila, the Permanent Representative of South Africa to the UN, and Odd-Inge Kvalheim, the Deputy Permanent Representative of Norway, made opening remarks, with Ambassador Kvalheim praising the report as “a valuable tool for understanding the relationship between the UN and AU to guide their efforts and also to point out where support from others is needed” and Ambassador Matjila talking about the October 2019 South African presidency of the Security Council during which the three African members of the Council (A3)—South Africa, Equatorial Guinea, and the Côte d’ Ivoire—acted in concert and coordination. “The A3 in 10 months had 13 common statements, you never had that before,” he said. “The A3 became like something you have to cross on African issues. Why? Because they were united.” Reflecting this assertiveness, South Africa hosted the 13th Joint Annual Consultative visit between the UN Security Council and the AU Peace and Security Council during its Council presidency.

Underscoring the need for effective partnership between the UN and the AU, Mr. Forti noted that the report’s focus comes at a time “when conflict prevention is a priority for both organizations, but neither has the political, financial, and operational tools to prevent conflicts or manage crises on their own.” He said while the two councils are increasingly interdependent, they are defined by “an overriding tension” because their relationship is “fundamentally unequal in terms of powers, authority, resources, and political status.”

Describing the complementary strengths of the UN and AU in conflict prevention and crisis management, he said, “The AU often has more legitimacy to engage national actors, including governments, and can therefore access more political entry points to engage on a crisis before or when it emerges. With its global mandate for international peace and security and its diverse field presences, the UN has more operational and logistical capabilities and a larger, more predictable budget. These comparative advantages can color how day-to-day interactions unfold.”

Mr. Forti said these dynamics can also force the two institutions into what he called “a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, the UN may defer to the AU because of its push for political ownership and leadership while on the other hand, the AU may defer to the UN due to its greater resources, capacities, and in-country presences.”

Like the relationship between the two councils, the partnership between the UN Secretariat and AU Commission remains a “work in progress, but has grown considerably in recent years” Mr. Forti said. There are important formal mechanisms for engagements, but “in reality, the UN and AU depends just as much on day-to-day collaboration, both in headquarters and in the field.”

Mr. Singh highlighted three of the thematic areas that are priorities for the partnership. The AU’s Silencing the Guns initiative aims to end all wars by 2020, and has become a beacon for the two organizations in guiding their conflict prevention efforts. The two organizations work closely on the varied mediation efforts in Africa through a range of political and policy instruments. However, “the UN-AU partnership must account for the heterogeneous nature of the various political institutions involved in mediation, as well as these various mandates, capacities, and comparative advantages,” he said.

The women, peace and security (WPS) agenda is potentially another fruitful entry point for joint UN-AU action, but Mr. Singh counseled care in applying it properly.  “While opportunities for more impactful UN-AU engagements on the WPS agenda are plentiful, the challenge again, however, is how well these engagements are coordinated and managed to ensure collective, coherent, strategies and responses to advance this critical agenda,” he said.

Fatima Kyari Mohammed, the AU’s Permanent Observer to the UN, commended the increasing UN-AU collaboration and the growing institutionalization of the partnership, but said there was still more to be done to put it into action effectively. “Implementation is what really matters,” she said. “Post-adoption is where the work starts.”

Elaborating on key points in the report, Ms. Mohammed said it was critical to ensure that cooperation proceeds in a “systematic, protocoled, predictable” manner, that council-to-council cooperation go beyond the annual meeting of the two bodies, and that joint analysis is followed up by joint action.

Citing the UN Charter’s Chapter VIII governing regional arrangements, she asked, “How can we strike a balance between the role of the Security Council in the maintenance of peace and security and the ability of the AU to develop its own capacity and take its own action? We have yet to find a clear answer.”

In closing remarks, Gustavo de Carvalho, Senior Researcher at the ISS, highlighted the importance to the African continent of multilateral institutions like the AU and the UN. “We are in a moment in which it is almost a cliché to say that multilateralism is at stake,” he said. “Many countries mention the idea of being small countries because together they can have more impact. This is why it is important to strengthen these two multilateral institutions.”

IPI Senior Fellow Sarah Taylor moderated the discussion.

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Just weeks after the committee named Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as the 2019 laureate IPI hosted Asle Toje, a member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, for a conversation about the prize.

Introducing Dr. Toje at the November 6th event, IPI Vice President Adam Lupel recalled that when he spoke at IPI for the first time last year, he said that “it is no exaggeration to say that the Nobel Peace Prize is the most prestigious prize in the world.” Mr. Lupel remarked, “It must also be added that to be on the committee is itself quite a prestigious honor.” Dr. Toje is the youngest member of the five person Norwegian Nobel Committee, which is chosen by the Norwegian parliament.

Dr. Toje began his remarks with a brief background of Alfred Nobel’s life and how he earned the considerable fortune that led him to write what Dr. Toje called “one of the world’s most famous wills and testaments,” therein instituting prizes in physics, physiology, chemistry, literature, and peace.

According to Dr. Nobel’s will, which both Dr. Lupel and Dr. Toje cited in their discussion, the prize for peace is to be awarded to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”

Dr. Toje explained that since the first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, there has been an ongoing debate about how to interpret the relatively brief and broadly general language in the criteria for the peace prize. While Alfred Nobel could not have conceived of the relevance of climate change or human rights in his lifetime, Dr. Toje explained that the Nobel Committee has adopted a “dynamic interpretation” to account for the importance of modern day issues.

The committee’s interpretation and application of Dr. Nobel’s will and testament is evident in the way that the selection of laureates has reflected contemporary priorities over the past century. Dr. Toje pointed out that after the first World War, the selection of winners centered around the League of Nations. Then, after World War II, “no issue was given more focus than nuclear disarmament.” More recently, the committee has focused on such issues as women’s rights, human rights, and climate change.

Regarding those who claim to have been nominated for the prize, Dr. Toje said that while the committee “will not speak against” such claims, the list of nominees remains confidential for 50 years, and the committee is bound to secrecy until lists are released. Still, he explained that every year, the committee receives questions from people claiming to have been nominated, asking if there is a diploma or a consolation prize. “Sadly,” Dr. Toje explained, “ we don’t we don’t give any runner-up medals.”

When asked about the relevance and diversity of the prize winners, Dr. Toje explained that the committee tries not to judge “different actors by different standards.” He elaborated, saying, “There is a tendency, at least in Europe, to be a bit cavalier about developments in Africa.” To Dr. Toje, this indicates that “we need to check development in Africa and in the Middle East,” where many of the world’s conflicts exist, and “if that means that we just have to really read up on the politics and the religious affairs of countries that we know little about before we start the process, so be it.”

Dr. Toje also addressed the relevance of international institutions in the future of promoting peace, admitting, “We’re facing a global challenge unlike anything we have seen in the past.” He believes that there is still a great deal of work to be done, and stated “I do believe that the United Nations will have a core role to play in this.” Though power balances and dynamics are shifting around the world, Dr. Toje pointed out that the UN has successfully overcome such challenges in the past and will continue to do so in the future. “I do believe that international institutions and multilateral cooperation is the path forward.”

Though much of the discussion focused on the history of the prize, Dr. Lupel asked Dr. Toje to place himself in the future, posing the question “When you look back on the Nobel Peace Prizes of this period, what do you hope to see?” Dr. Toje said he would hope that the Nobel Committee continues to “take its job seriously.” He continued, “We have this opportunity, once a year, to shine the light of global attention at one single issue, so we must choose carefully.”

In answering questions about the impact of the prize, Dr. Toje said the Nobel Peace Prize is always controversial. “There are always some people who feel that this laureate was the wrong one,” he admitted, highlighting that when Kailash Satyarthi was named a laureate in 2014, his award was not well-received within his own Brahmin community. Sharing further examples of controversial laureates, Dr. Toje remarked that Barack Obama’s award remains “deeply controversial,” and that while the selections of Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa received criticism at the time, they are looked back on as “among sort of the stellar moments of the Nobel Peace Prize.”

However, Dr. Toje added, “Once the announcement has been made, we realize it lives its own life,” alluding to the intensity of public reactions. “If the Nobel Peace Prize didn’t spark outrage and strong emotions, well, we wouldn’t be living up to our reputation.”

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Diverse police forces that reflect the populations they serve are better prepared to carry out mandates for the prevention, detection and investigation of crime, the protection of persons and property, and the maintenance of public order and safety. As an illustration of that, in United Nations peace operations, women police have been challenging traditional gender roles and embodying a new model for independence, equality, and economic success.

On November 5th, IPI, in partnership with the Government of Canada, Peace Is Loud, and the Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions in the UN Department of Peace Operations, hosted a discussion on experiences of women UN police (UNPOL) officers and how they contribute to implementing the women, peace, and security agenda.

The event began with a clip from the 2015 film A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers, which follows three women UNPOL officers in an all-female police unit deployed from Bangladesh to Haiti as UN peacekeepers for one year.

Geeta Gandbhir, the film’s director, showcased the experience of being on patrol with women, and the civilian response to seeing female police in place of male officers. Where people would often “hide” in their camps from the male troops, women and children came outside and followed the women through the camp, sometimes reaching to hold their hands. The women had “immediate rapport” with the community, she said. “This showed us how critical it was to have women on the ground.”

And the experience also had a positive effect on the women officers, she said, adding that it was a “powerful moment” seeing the women “transform.” The women in this unit came from patriarchal and fairly traditional families and had never enjoyed the independence and freedom of movement they suddenly encountered. Ms. Gandbhir said that one of the Bangladeshi police women told her, “We women go from our father’s house to our husband’s house.” In addition, women had mostly been assigned to desk jobs, and there was no opportunity for them to get field experience. “Some had never been on a plane,” emphasized Ms. Gandbhir, so “for them to travel to Haiti on this mission, alone, was an incredible act of bravery.”

These women also earned new financial security, Ms. Gandbhir explained, making on mission three times what women made in Bangladesh. And because they were able to pay for their children’s education, many women were willing to do additional tours, to be able to support their extended families as well.

Once the women returned home, they became a symbol of hope and emulation. One woman’s five-year-old son “told us that he wanted to be a big shot police officer, like his mother,” said Ms. Gandbhir. “To hear that statement alone told me that what the women were doing was smashing patriarchy and bringing equity and equality in both places where they existed—at home and abroad.”

Currently, of the 9,353 police personnel serving in 23 UN peace operations, 1,420 are women police officers. Luis Carrilho, a UN Police Adviser in Haiti who was featured in the documentary, told the IPI audience that gender parity was a “top priority” for UNPOL, and spoke about the UN’s efforts to make the police recruitment process more accessible. “Our strategy has goals in a very measured way,” said Mr. Carrilho. Regardless of whether the police troops were men or women, he reported, “The priority is always for us to fulfill the mission on the ground.”

Mr. Carrilho enumerated four initiatives that aimed to increase women’s participation in UN policing. The first, he said, was putting in place female role models, and gave the example of the female police peacekeeper of the year award. The next was creating a female senior police leadership roster which countries could draw on to place women in key positions. Third, he said, was developing a senior female police commanders course to better prepare female police to hold positions at the highest level. Finally, he added, was increasing the number of women involved in the selection process for peacekeeping.

Paula Dionne, Assistant Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, emphasized how “it is not enough to simply increase the number of females deployed. Rather, it is crucial to place them in key positions where the true value of what they do in conflict-torn states and countries can be realized.”

Policing and gender considerations have significantly changed in the past few decades, Ms. Dionne continued, citing her 33 years of experience. When she started, Ms. Dionne said, she had to wear a different uniform from the men and was “expected to take on pink jobs, as opposed to the tougher jobs.” Women, she said, had to “break down the barrier to our right to be part of specialized teams which were usually filled by males.”

Ms. Dionne concluded that “we have certainly come a long way in recognizing the value female police officers bring to peace and security, but there is more that can be done.” Necessary, for example, were “including a feminine voice in recruitment posters, a ‘she’ alongside the ‘he,’” attitude, which would entail adding photos of female officers to the material, and including female presenters at training sessions, which, “while seemingly small, goes a long way in encouraging female participation.”

Nirupam Dev Nath, Counsellor at the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the UN, said that the film “speaks volumes of the rewarding experiences” that, he said, “have long-term impact, not only in the host countries our women police officers serve in, but also globally, and back to their own country.”

Mr. Dev Nath pointed to the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000, and how that was the first year that individual police officers from Bangladesh were sent to East Timor. Ten years later in 2010, the all-female police unit was sent to Haiti. Right now, he added, out of 700 police officers who are serving under the UN umbrella, almost 24 percent of them are women, which he hailed as a significant accomplishment.

The biggest challenges to deploying women peacekeepers, Mr. Dev Nath said, ranged from pre-deployment training down to including the family members in the decision making. In fact, he added, women’s participation in peacekeeping was felt deeply by the community; he called it an “inclusive journey” that bore “real fruit.”

Unaisi Vuniwaqa, Police Commissioner for the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), spoke on challenges to recruiting women for peacekeeping police, from her own experience. Access to opportunity, Ms. Vuniwaqa said, is “very key.” Prior experience, she argued, “will greatly help them when they come into the mission to be able to deliver at the highest level, whether it’s police commissioner or deputy police commissioner.” Without such exposure, said Ms. Vuniwaqa, it would limit being able to come into the mission and getting the opportunity to serve at a higher level. Additionally, she said, what was needed was more confidence in leaders who recruit and deploy police women, so that women are able to take on equal responsibility before they embark on the mission.

Ms. Vuniwaqa shared her personal experience of persisting in finding a place. “I had to try about three or four times to be able to get into the professional position in the police division,” she said. “I continued to look at myself in every attempt that I made and how best I could be able to package my CV and my experiences.”

Ms. Vuniwaqa attributed her ultimate success to a course benefiting female officers for UNPOL. This course, she said, helped her to prepare for further interviews that she was able to get through. As a result, she tried to replicate this course for recruitment in the South Sudan mission, “to assist our female officers to prepare the forms that they’re supposed to submit to a police division before they can then be listed for the interview.”

One of the telling stories from women police in her mission, concluded Ms. Vuniwaqa, was how they recently appointed two female officers for the position of POC coordinators. They are in charge of this protection of a civilian site in South Sudan that has about 30,000+ IDPs. “And since we put in these two female officers, they have been doing a great job,” she said. And “of course,” she added, “they can do just as well as their male counterparts.”

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United Nations peace operations often operate in complex theaters where a wide array of actors are also deployed by specific member states or regional organizations to effectively address peace and security challenges, and on November 4th, IPI and the French Ministry of Armed Forces held a policy forum to explore peacekeeping partnerships.

The event featured two panel discussions and launched two IPI publications, Partners and Competitors: Forces Operating in Parallel to UN Peace Operations by IPI Senior Fellow Alexandra Novosseloff and Lisa Sharland, Head of the International Program  of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), and Lessons for “Partnership Peacekeeping” from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) by Paul D. Williams, Professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University.

Jake Sherman, Director of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations, opened the morning-long discussion by noting that six UN operations are now fielded in partnerships with regional, subregional, and other non-UN forces, and he suggested this pattern presaged upcoming deployments. “Regional and subregional bodies are increasingly authorized by the UN Security Council to take on roles for which the UN peacekeeping forces are ill-suited,” he said. “Parallel forces will be an essential aspect of planning and deploying all UN peacekeeping in the future.”

Laure Bansept of France’s Ministry of the Armies said there had been around 40 such coalition deployments since the end of the Cold War and that they were “helpful in situations where the UN lacks the capacity or skills to work in certain sensitive contexts” and allowed the UN to “focus on its mandates.” Referencing France’s support for African-led peace operations, she said these partnerships proved essential “when humanitarian situations rapidly deteriorate and threaten the stability of a region, and no other organization can address it as immediately.”

IPI Research Fellow Namie Di Razza said that regional organizations “offer what UN peace operations don’t have—they have different entry points and different resources and capacities.” Citing her experience researching the case of Mali, she warned, however, that while all actors pursue the same objective in different ways, they also risk “confusion, conflation with peacekeeping operations, and duplication.” She suggested there should be “a clear division between forces.”

Ms. Sharland listed three “rationales” for deploying parallel forces:

• Where there is a humanitarian imperative, and immediate action is necessary, they can respond more rapidly and robustly than a UN force.
• Since parallel forces can be more advanced militarily, they can overcome reservations about the capability of UN peace operations.
• They can serve national interests and intervene to protect their own nationals.

She also listed four “classifications” of parallel forces:  military stabilization, crisis response, insurance or deterrence, and capacity building, and three different types of actors: bilateral, multinational, and regional organizations.  “No two parallel forces are the same,” she said, “so while we can draw some broad lessons, we must be conscious of each unique context.”

Her co-author, Dr. Novosseloff, addressed some of the challenges these parallel force partnerships pose. “UN and parallel forces may have different motivations and goals, and this impacts the way they work on the ground and also their effectiveness,” she said. “The lack of mutual understanding and communication at the strategic level can be more damaging than we think. The divisions of labor that should be at the heart of the deployments are not clear enough.”

She said that central to these concerns was “the impartiality of UN peace operations and how partners can work with non-UN forces that may have different objectives. It impacts the perception of local populations so the impartiality of the UN will be at stake.” Such a lack of distinction, she said, could be exploited by “those seeking to undermine the peace or the process by going after the UN.” And potential mission overlap raised the danger of UN forces being “dragged into situations for which they are not equipped.” Airing these objections, Dr. Novosseloff said, should not be seen as minimizing the positive elements of parallel deployments, “such as additional niche capacities, military robustness, and political support. But the various stakeholders have to make stronger efforts to make them less of competitors and more genuine partners.”

The report makes a series of specific recommendations, but in general, Dr. Nosovoleff concluded, it represented a “plea for a stronger cooperation between all stakeholders involved in crisis management because all the money spent comes from the same pockets, and there needs to be a greater accountability.”

Col. Richard Decombe, Defense Mission of the Permanent Mission of France to the UN, said that while there remained room for improvement in how parallel forces operate, “it’s already an achievement.” Detailing the work of the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), he explained how a coordinating forum involving five different partners (MINUSMA, Barkhane, G5 Sahel Joint Force, Malian Armed Forces, and EU training mission) met every two months. “What is in place is quite good, in terms of coordination and communication so the partners are at least informed on what the others are doing,” he said. What they can do better, he said, was having a stronger focus on building up the capacity of local security forces.

Naomi Miyashita, Senior Political Affairs Officer, UN Department of Peace Operations, said that parallel forces were of great value to the UN, which typically confronts situations with a dense web of competing regional and international interests and no clear path to a comprehensive political solution. “Parallel operations shape the space that others have for alternative approaches,” she said.

Self-criticism was essential, she added. “We must be constantly asking ourselves what the progression of the conflict has been and be constantly critically evaluating whether our interventions are having the desired effect and whether stability in itself is a good enough long term objective. We need to be clear about where we add value and where we have strength and comparative advantage. For the UN, it’s its political role, support for political processes and ability to protect civilians.”

The second panel of the morning provided an opportunity to discuss Paul D. William’s IPI report on Lessons for “Partnership Peacekeeping” from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). The report describes AMISOM as the AU’s “longest, largest, most expensive and deadliest” peace operation and says that for the UN it is “the most profound experiment not only with providing logistical support in a war zone, but also with partnering on the political front.” Dr. Williams described AMISOM as “probably the most complicated model for any modern peace operation we’ve ever seen,” a model, he said, that “evolved in response to a series of crises and in an ad hoc manner.” As a consequence, he said, the AMISOM model is “not one that screams out for replication, but there are a lot positive things we can draw from it.”

Since AMISOM reflected “the primacy of politics”, the fraught state of politics in Somalia, a country with no state authority for decades, has prevented the mission from becoming effective, he said. “AMISOM has been unable to deliver a peace dividend because the Somali government did not come in behind it and support it.”

In Dr. Williams’ account, AMISOM was less nimble than its principle adversary, the Islamist militant group al-Shabab, and the conflict became “cat and mouse”, with the government regularly “displacing” al-Shabab but “not destroying its capabilities.” The result was starkly counter-productive, he said. “Extending state authority and consolidating it in a place where the central government is not universally accepted as legitimate is not peacebuilding, it’s actually conflict-provoking.”

AMISOM has also failed to stabilize the polarized society, attract local support, shape an exit strategy, or design what kind of government structure it should leave behind, he said. “At a fundamental level, there are real limits to what a peace operation can achieve when the local actors do not want to see the issue reconciled and resolved. Until the parties in Somalia reconcile, AMISOM will be stuck holding the line and not generating the means for its successful exit.”

Rick Martin, Director of the Division for Special Activities in the UN Department of Operational Support, acknowledged that the situation in which AMISOM is working is “very complex.” But he said there were lessons to be learned, principally that “a partnership of the sort we have in Somalia needs to start at the strategic level—it has to be built on planning, as a contingency for further cooperation, and focus on building capacities between the two organizations. ”He agreed with Dr. Williams that the AMISOM model should not be replicated but conceded that “something similar is likely to evolve again in the future.”

Alhaji Sarjoh Bah, Chief Advisor on Peace, Security, and Governance, AU Permanent Mission to the UN, said that the UN mission in Somalia compared favorably to the UN mission in Afghanistan. It illustrated, he said, the particular challenges that Africa presented. “The AU talks about peace operations, not peacekeeping. Peacekeeping is driven by consent, impartiality, but our peace operations range from peacekeeping to open warfare and counter insurgency. When we went into Somalia, there was a clearly identifiable enemy, so in the views of al-Shabab, we were ‘legitimate targets.’ We haven’t been deterred by the absence of peace to keep. We have gone in, created peace, and then maintained the peace, as in Somalia and Liberia.”

Among the lessons he said were learned from the mission in Somalia were that from the outset, there has to be a “political strategy” and “planning” for a subsequent “multi-dimensional phase,” and neighboring states must be “involved and committed.”

Chloé Marnay-Baszanger, Chief of the Peace Mission Section of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), said that “we are witnessing a reconfiguration of how the international community responds to conflict, and Somalia has been a good example of how to think through our processes. If the UN is not the primary vehicle for leading international intervention, then how can we make sure that human rights are still a priority in crisis response?”

She said that Somalia presented a distinct problem because there was no Protection of Civilians (POC) mandate to AMISOM. In its absence, she said, “what we managed to do through the human rights due diligence policy, we managed to strike a conversation about how we reduce the likeliness of violence against civilians in the context of complex violence.” She said that the most important lesson that the Somalia and the G5 Sahel experiences taught was “going forward, we put mechanisms in place so that from the beginning, we don’t have to course-correct.”

Dr. Di Razza moderated the first discussion on parallel forces, and Mr. Sherman the second on lessons from AMISOM.

Figure 1. Past and current parallel forces around the world (Click for full graphic)

Figure 2. Timeline of parallel force and their type (Click for full graphic)

Since the end of the Cold War, the UN Security Council has authorized or recognized the deployment of more than forty parallel forces that operate alongside UN peace operations. As the Security Council has deployed peace operations in increasingly non-permissive environments, the division of labor between UN missions and these parallel forces has blurred, and their goals have sometimes come into conflict. This raises the question of whether they are partners or competitors.

This report examines the missions that have operated in parallel to UN peace operations to identify how to strengthen these partnerships in the future. It analyzes and categorizes the types of parallel forces that have been deployed and examines the rationales for deploying them. It also looks at strategic and operational challenges, including the challenges unique to peace operations operating alongside a counterterrorism force. Finally, drawing on lessons from past and current parallel deployments, it offers recommendations for member states, the Security Council, and the UN Secretariat. These include:

• Strengthening coordination of assessments, planning, and application of UN standards: The UN and actors deploying parallel forces should conduct joint assessments and planning when deploying or reconfiguring missions. The UN Security Council should also engage more regularly with parallel forces and encourage the continued development of human rights compliance frameworks for them.
• Clarifying roles, responsibilities, and areas of operation: Peace operations and parallel forces should clearly delineate their responsibilities and areas of operation, assess the risks of collocating, and improve strategic communications with the local population. The Security Council should also continue to put in place mechanisms to strengthen the accountability of parallel forces, especially when peace operations are providing support that could contribute to counterterrorism operations.

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The United Nations agendas for Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and for Protection of Civilians (POC) both deal with protecting vulnerable populations. The comparison of these two agendas and opportunities to enhance protection were the focus of a November 1st IPI-Canada roundtable discussion, held under the Chatham House rule of non-attribution.

Discussants expressed concern that protection of women from sexual violence has been prioritized over other forms of gendered violence, such as female genital mutilation, child marriage, sexual violence against men and LGBTQ communities, trafficking, and domestic violence. One reason, agreed participants, is that gender-based violence is chronically underfunded. In addition, women are often appointed as gender experts solely because of their sex.

The experts lamented the fact that women tend to be seen only as victims of violence and not as agents of protection from violence. To overcome this barrier, speakers highlighted the need for more female uniformed and civilian personnel on the ground in peacekeeping missions with POC mandates and involved in developing POC strategy. Even so, they noted, women’s participation is often treated with a tokenistic, “tick the box” approach.

In order to insure that peacekeeping missions better and more safely engage communities, especially with women, participants agreed that accountability measures in peacekeeping should be strengthened, and that it was necessary to embrace a wider understanding of “protection.” One way to do this, they said, was to frame accountability around the UN Sustainable Development Goals, since UN member state governments have made public commitments to concrete goals and indicators and to carry out certain gender-sensitive measures of protection.

To truly mainstream these concepts, discussants suggested it would be useful to conduct local analysis in conflict communities and examine intercommunal conflicts. Speakers said that the strategic integration points of the WPS and POC agendas were climate change, gender-based violence, and sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The second session of the workshop focused on research questions. Participants pointed out that gender considerations are often an afterthought in peace operations, and explored ways to implement POC that do not reinforce the stereotype of women as victims. They pointed out programs that have been working well and recommended monitoring and scaling up these efforts.

One question that arose was whether domestic violence should be addressed in POC mandates. Discussants argued that intimate partner violence is not unrelated to conflict, and that it must be included in gender-based violence analysis and action. However, doubts were raised as to whether military and police personnel, who are the primary actors in peacekeeping, were the right people to address this intimate type of violence.

Finally, participants discussed how best to incorporate male victims in protection peacekeeping mandates and pointed out that because of patriarchal systems of power, the threats men and boys face are under-reported and protection of men and boys receives less attention. Discussants highlighted the fact that “gender” is not specific to women and that to say, “we need more women in peace operations to carry out the WPS agenda” takes the onus off of men to implement the WPS agenda and reinforces the stereotype of women as victims and men as perpetrators of violence.

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IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen was received on October 29th by His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa at Sakhir Palace, who welcomed advanced cooperation between the Kingdom of Bahrain and IPI. Mr. Rød-Larsen was accompanied by IPI Chief of Staff Camilla Reksten-Monsen, IPI MENA Director Nejib Friji, and IPI MENA Policy Analyst Dalya Al Alawi.

On October 30th, Mr. Rød-Larsen was received by the Bahrain Speaker of Parliament Fawzia Zainal. Parliament Members (MP) Mohammed Essa Al-Abbasi, Chairman of the Committee on Legislative and Legal Affairs, MP Ahmed Sabah Al-Salloum President of the Committee on Financial and Economic Affairs, and MP Ali Mohamed Ishaqi Member of the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee were in attendance.

Deputy Prime Minister H.H. Shaikh Ali bin Khalifa Al Khalifa received Mr. Rød-Larsen on October 30th to discuss IPI’s pivotal role in supporting multilateralism and efforts in strengthening the pillars of security and stability.

Interior Minister General Shaikh Rashid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa received Mr. Rød-Larsen on October 30th and spoke on forms of cooperation to reinforce international peace and security. Public Security Chief Major General Tariq Al Hassan was also in attendance.

Mr. Rød-Larsen had a meeting with Foreign Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa on October 30th, where they spoke on IPI’s role in reinforcing coexistence and sustainable peace in the MENA region and beyond.

H.H. Sheikh Faisal bin Rashid Al Khalifa, Vice President of the Supreme Council for Environment (SCE) received Mr. Rød-Larsen on October 27th. The meeting delved into SCE-IPI partnership on sustainable development with a focus on water challenges in the MENA region and beyond.

H.E. Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, Minister of Oil met with Mr. Rød-Larsen on October 27th to discuss mutual cooperation and partnerships on sustainable development in the region with a focus on clean energy.

On the same day, Mr. Rød-Larsen had a meeting with Electricity and Water Affairs Minister Wael bin Nasser Al Mubarak, where efforts to sustain the availability of electricity and maintain economic growth in line with Bahrain’s 2030 Economic vision was discussed.

Related coverage:
Bahrain TV 7pm News on October 29 (coverage between 6:42-7:47)

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The international community’s role in supporting women as vital stakeholders in an inclusive and enduring peace in Afghanistan was the subject of an October 30th IPI policy forum cosponsored by Cordaid, the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and the NYU Center for Global Affairs.

Rina Amiri, Senior Fellow at the NYU center and longtime expert on peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan, said that while the world’s weariness with the ongoing Afghan war was speeding up people’s eagerness to come up with a way to end it, it was also resulting in concessions being made on earlier promises of inclusion. “Women’s rights and inclusion has moved from an absolute priority of the international community to something that is relegated just to inter-Afghan talks,” she said.

In light of this, she asked, “What are the arguments that we need to make that we’re not making, how can we move from lip service to genuine commitment, what are the ways that we should be thinking about inclusion and process design?”

IPI Senior Fellow Sarah Taylor spoke of a disturbing discordance between the pledges of UN member states to the women, peace and security agenda that she heard voiced in the Security Council debate on the subject the day before and the reality that women are still being kept from positions of power and influence 19 years after the passage of the landmark resolution 1325. She alluded to the example of the work done in Sudan by women “putting their bodies on the line, breaking curfews, braving tear gas yet still excluded from the discussions that determine the future of their communities.”

Storai Tapesh, Deputy Executive Director, Afghan Women’s Network, said that recent peace negotiations between the Taliban and the United States in the Qatari capital Doha allowed for more women’s participation than in past talks but still did not attract the necessary support from the international community. “We saw the added value of women during the recent dialogues in Doha,” she said. “It was us, the women of Afghanistan, who were putting important issues on the table. As opposed to the men, we were not negotiating out of a position of self-interest but pushing the real issues such as human rights, the red lines of the constitution and the need for an immediate ceasefire.”

Though those talks have now stalled, Ms. Tapesh said the women of Afghanistan are still “very much committed” to them and want to see them resumed and “facilitated” by the international community. Clarifying the kind of support they needed, she said, “Afghan women do not want you to fight our battles; we need support for our voices and space to advocate for peace.”

Testifying to the importance of women’s inclusion to the sustainability of peace processes, Karen Pierce, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations, said, “You cannot actually build a truly prosperous society that enables any country to realize its full potential if you exclude some 50% of the population from the economic and legal life of the country, never mind the social. More than half of all peace processes collapse within five years if they don’t have sustainable provisions, and those sustainable provisions have been shown in well-documented evidence to include gender and women’s provisions.”

Ambassador Pierce was asked by the discussion moderator, Jake Sherman, director of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations, about how to balance the push for women’s rights with the overall push for a peace accord without one jeopardizing the other. “You must have some very robust clauses about human rights and women’s rights, but I don’t know if in a negotiation with an informal organization such as the Taliban, it is good to go in loudly with your red lines,” she said. Instead, she explained, “the point at which you ask for the things you really need is at the end when peace is in sight.” Signaling the critical nature of this sequencing, she warned, “When we sacrifice the long term goal for short term expediency, we end up regretting that quickly and find ourselves back at the table negotiating peace again.”

Ms. Pierce acknowledged that it was particularly difficult to introduce the subject of women’s rights into conversations with the Taliban, a group notorious for its overt sexism and violence against women. “But the fact that is a difficult argument isn’t an argument for not making it,” she said. She added that those who counsel taking up the subject only “at the pace that the Taliban want” are ignoring evidence of women’s rights having been brought into the process successfully with tact, good timing and persistence. “You do it incrementally, you do it gradually, but above all, you do it steadily, don’t go backward.”

Mahbouba Seraj, a member of the Afghan Women’s Network, urged the international community to adopt a principled position on Afghanistan without regard to pleasing one side or the other. “Do not worry about the Taliban or Trump, but take a stance because if you don’t do that and stay on the basis of being wishy washy with the Taliban, then they are going to take advantage of that.”

Teresa Whitfield, Director, Policy and Mediation Division, UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, said that actions to include women in peace processes had to go beyond the numbers. “We need to normalize the process that women have substantive contributions in peace processes and not just that there are two women at the table,” she said. She asserted that obtaining respect for Afghan women’s rights would require a “creative” approach, given the nature of the Taliban. “The Taliban doesn’t include women in leadership so we cannot recruit and include them through their political or military power,” she said. Among the alternatives from her office’s experience that she suggested were advisory boards, gender subcommittees, women lawyers, broad consultations with civil society, online platforms, and social media information sharing.

In conclusion, Ms. Whitfield stressed, “The absolutely fundamental need for those of us who represent the international community and are on the outside of conflicts is to put in the legwork, the analysis, the research, the knowledge, and always focus on harnessing international forces. The demand for Afghan women’s rights comes from Afghan women, and that’s what needs to be represented in some shape or form at the table in the peace process.”

Figure 1. The AMISOM model (Click for full graphic)

Figure 2. AMISOM’s force generation challenges (Click for full graphic)

Deployed to Mogadishu in March 2007, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) operates through a complicated and extensive system of partnerships. This has been referred to as the “AMISOM model” of “partnership peacekeeping.” While this specific configuration of forces and mechanisms is unlikely to be repeated, AMISOM remains the longest-standing case of a peace enforcement operation built on such international partnerships.

If the AU and UN are going to continue deploying missions into such difficult environments, AMISOM’s experience offers lessons for how partnership peacekeeping can work better. This report summarizes the main operational-level lessons across seven themes: force generation, logistics, security sector reform, protection of civilians, strategic communications, stabilization, and exit strategy. Many of these lessons have not been truly learned, internalized, and acted upon by the actors and organizations in question.

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The UN Security Council adopted the landmark resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security (WPS) in 2000 and since then, the international community has made notable strides toward implementing the WPS agenda through member state commitments. However, in recent years, the world has witnessed backsliding on these commitments and a backlash against robust attempts at women’s inclusion and gender parity.

On October 29th, experts on WPS gathered at an IPI roundtable to launch and discuss the findings of a new report from Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS), “The 10 Steps: Turning Women, Peace and Security Commitments to Implementation.” The report includes recommendations for action on women, peace, and security as the 20th anniversary of resolution 1325 approaches.

The “10 Steps” report is the product of consultations with over 200 organizations in conflict-affected states. It recommends precise and actionable steps for realizing the WPS agenda, with a particular focus on the role of civil society. GAPS and its partners found that commitments on Women, Peace and Security are “vast and comprehensive,” but that “in practice this has not translated into the inclusion of gender perspectives and women and girls’ rights in policy and programming.”

Participants began the discussion by addressing the current state of the WPS agenda, especially noting the regression on gender parity and women’s inclusion in formal peace processes. Despite considerable progress on women’s inclusion in peacekeeping, discussants lamented that “it has been easier to get women into military, police, and peacekeeping forces on the ground than to get women into negotiating rooms.”

When women are excluded from peace processes, it was noted, the resulting peace agreements include few or no gender provisions. Accordingly, the WPS agenda has aimed to improve gender inclusion in peace negotiations in order to strengthen the outcomes of such processes. Initially, some progress was made. Before resolution 1325, only 11% of peace agreements made any references to women and gender, but in the following 14 years, this number went up to 27%. However, since 2014, the number has dramatically decreased.

Some participants called for women’s increased “meaningful participation” in the face of such discouraging statistics, but others stressed that the term “meaningful participation” is itself far too vague. Suggestions included making calls for “consequential participation,” or even “feminist participation.” Irrespective of the terminology they chose to employ, many agreed that greater women’s participation is greatly needed.

The roundtable then shifted its focus toward ways to engage civil society in implementing the WPS agenda, as the GAPS “10 Steps” report stressed. Participants acknowledged that governments are not the only drivers of the agenda, and civil society continues to play a vital and integrated role in its actualization. Civil society provides insight that guides state action, and it helps governments stay in touch with challenges to implementation on the ground. Moreover, where state action is often slowed by bureaucratic processes and political tensions, civil society helps to push the agenda along and accelerate progress.

When considering what the next steps member states should take on WPS, participants called for action on an array of issues, including the need for gender-conflict analysis, addressing violence against women, and changing social norms around gender.

The work remaining for the international community, participants argued, is ensuring accountability to the commitments outlined in the nine WPS resolutions that have been adopted by the Security Council. Though the agenda is often thought of as a “gender issue” or “security challenge,” it has much broader implications than these characterizations suggest.

“We are all guardians of this incredible WPS agenda,” agreed participants, and its realization will require creativity and widespread action.

From left: Lauri Mälksoo, Professor of International Law, University of Tartu, Estonia; Adam Lupel, IPI Vice President; and Kristi Raik, Director of the Foreign Policy Institute

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In October, Estonia and Finland brought IPI Vice President Adam Lupel to two separate forums to discuss the sometimes challenging but critical role small states play in policymaking and global affairs.

In April 2019, Dr. Lupel and Lauri Mälksoo, Professor of International Law at the University of Tartu in Estonia, published a policy paper entitled, “A Necessary Voice: Small States, International Law, and the UN Security Council.” The paper concluded that small states on the Security Council are well-placed to provide an important, credible voice with moral authority to remind all member states of their obligations under international law.

Dr. Lupel’s first stop was the Estonian Academy of Science in Tallinn on October 29th, where he delivered remarks during a half-day event. “Recent years have witnessed several cases where small states have driven debates on the Security Council defending international law and the rule based order, in particular international humanitarian law,” he said. The event featured Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid, Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, and State Secretary Taimar Peterkop, along with academics from Columbia University, the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute, and others.

As an example, Dr. Lupel provided this: “In early 2016, the small state of New Zealand (population under 5 million) initiated discussion on a possible Security Council resolution to help reinforce that bedrock of IHL by convening a multi-stakeholder round table at its UN mission. Soon, a draft resolution was being negotiated by five penholders from a diverse range of countries: Egypt, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, and Uruguay. After extensive negotiations, the final resolution served to clearly remind member states that ‘intentionally directed attacks’ on health facilities and medical workers during armed conflict are war crimes.

“From a negotiation standpoint, the resolution was a tremendous success. It was adopted unanimously, with eighty-five member states as co-sponsors—spearheaded by the bridge-building diplomacy of two small states in partnership with others.”

Dr. Lupel then went on to Helsinki, where on October 30th, about 50 participants from a broad cross-section of the diplomatic community attended a Finland launch of the small states paper, where he delivered an expanded version of his Tallinn talk followed by an extensive Q&A session. The event was moderated by Anna Salovaara, Director of the Unit for UN and General Global Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland.

Nineteen years after the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, which reaffirmed the important role of women in peace and security, the international community is reflecting on the impact of this commitment and how to fulfill the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda. IPI’s WPS program hosted a staff meeting with the US State Department’s civil society delegation of African women leaders on October 28th during the week of the Security Council Open Debate on WPS to exchange expertise on what needs to be done in different country contexts to promote peace and security through a gender lens.

IPI Senior Fellow Sarah Taylor described IPI’s research on the status of the Resolution 1325. The women, from 18 countries, also shared reflections on their country situations, and raised particular issues that were specific to each context such as terrorism by Boko Haram or the misinformation that has affected the conflict in Mali.

In attendance from the US State Department’s civil society delegation were women from:

• Burkina Faso
• Burundi
• Cameroon
• Central African Republic
• Congo
• Ghana
• Kenya
• Mali
• Mauritania
• Mauritius
• Mozambique
• Niger
• Nigeria
• Rwanda
• South Sudan
• The Gambia
• Uganda
• Zambia

 

As the twentieth anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) on women, peace, and security (WPS) approaches, the ad hoc nature of and limited accountability for implementation of the WPS agenda are undermining its full promise. This is despite increasing recognition that efforts to build and sustain peace are dependent upon the full participation of women and respect for their rights. There is thus a need for concerted, strategic commitment to addressing the remaining gaps in implementation of the WPS agenda.

This paper identifies opportunities for the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of Resolution 1325, particularly for the UN Security Council, its member states, and the UN system. It builds on IPI’s scene-setting issue brief “The Global Pushback on Women’s Rights: The State of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda.” The paper concludes with several steps the UN and the international community can take to support substantive progress on WPS:

• Use creative mechanisms to increase women’s participation: The multilateral system can support new initiatives such as the regional women mediator networks.
• Leverage the tools of the UN Security Council: The council should consistently request gender-sensitive analysis and recommendations, mainstream the WPS agenda across all policies, and better integrate the work of the Informal Expert Group on WPS into its daily work.
• Significantly strengthen accountability: Increasing accountability requires changing the political calculus for engaging on the WPS agenda, particularly at the national level.
• Move the focus to the field: Dialogue around WPS needs to shift from UN headquarters in New York to focus more on the countries and regions grappling with conflict.
• Increase financing: Donors should increase their financial commitments to the WPS agenda and ensure funding supports long-term peacebuilding efforts.

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The past year has seen a reduction of organized violence in the Central African Republic (CAR) and progress in advancing the political process and restoring and extending state authority. However, challenges remain under each of these objectives, including persistent low-level insecurity, violations of the Political Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in CAR (APPR), and difficulty redeploying civilian state administrators outside of Bangui. Moreover, almost no progress has been made on addressing the underlying drivers of violence, including challenges related to identity, citizenship, and inclusion.

In this context, the International Peace Institute (IPI), the Stimson Center, and Security Council Report organized a workshop on September 10, 2019, to discuss MINUSCA’s mandate and political strategy. This workshop offered a platform for member states and UN actors to develop a shared understanding and common strategic assessment of the situation in CAR. The discussion was intended to help the Security Council make informed decisions with respect to the strategic orientation, prioritization, and sequencing of the mission’s mandate ahead of its renewal in November 2019.

Participants agreed that MINUSCA’s current mandate and posture have generally given the mission the flexibility it needs to respond to evolving conflict dynamics and political developments. Most therefore did not envision large changes to MINUSCA’s mandate but suggested small adjustments. These included authorizing MINUSCA to support the APPR and reinforce the political process by engaging on broader reconciliation and inclusion efforts; strengthening the mission’s mandate to restore and extend state authority; mandating MINUSCA to support elections; and authorizing MINUSCA to coordinate international partners in CAR.

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(Click to jump to interactive map below)

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Organizational diagram of the UN-AU partnership (Click for full graphic)

The United Nations and the African Union (AU) have worked in tandem since the AU’s establishment in 2002. During this time, their partnership has evolved to focus increasingly on conflict prevention and crisis management, culminating in the 2017 Joint UN-AU Framework for Enhanced Partnership in Peace and Security. But while the organizations’ collaboration on peacekeeping has been extensively studied, other dimensions of the partnership warrant a closer look to understand how to foster political coherence and operational coordination.

This report, done in partnership with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), therefore considers the evolution of the strategic partnership between the UN and the AU, with a focus on their approach to conflict prevention and crisis management. It looks at this partnership at the member-state level in the UN Security Council and AU Peace and Security Council, as well as at the operational level between various UN and AU entities. It also assesses the partnership across several thematic issues, including the AU’s Silencing the Guns initiative; mediation; women, peace, and security; electoral support; peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction and development; and youth, peace, and security.

Based on this analysis, the paper offers several recommendations to guide UN and AU stakeholders in improving cooperation. These include strengthening council-to-council engagement, working toward a collective approach to conflict prevention and crisis management, creating a dedicated team within the AU Peace and Security Department to support the partnership, better aligning work on peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction and development, building momentum on the AU’s Silencing the Guns initiative, and expanding diplomatic capacities to support the partnership.

UN, AU, and REC/RM peace operations, liaison offices, and peace and development advisers (as of July 2019) (Click on each country for operations’ details. Best viewed on desktops.) a img {/**remove hover border**/ display:block; Margin: 0 auto; } a[href$="pdf"]:last-of-type:after { /* don't display "PDF" after the links in the margin */ display: none!important; }

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IPI MENA Director Nejib Friji and H.H Shaikh Faisal bin Rashid bin Isa Al Khalifa, Vice President of the Supreme Council for Environment (SCE) discussed the water challenges in the MENA region, in particular the issues of water scarcity and its threat to regional peace and stability on October 17th.

Both parties pledged cooperation in those fields through sustainable development and consolidation with international institutions and organizations to promote water diplomacy locally, regionally and internationally. Bahrain’s United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) Director Dr. Hashim Hussein also attended the meeting and pledged support to this endeavor.

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On October 3rd, IPI commemorated the end of the event-filled high-level week beginning the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly with its traditional “Sigh of Relief” party. The guest of honor was the newly installed President of the GA, Tijani Muhammad-Bande of Nigeria, who outlined his priorities for the upcoming year and declared, “My sigh of relief will come when we make concrete progress on these goals.”

Among those priorities are poverty and hunger eradication, combating the effects of climate change, and promoting quality education and inclusion. Singling out climate change, Mr. Bande took note both of the summit meeting on that subject at the UN ten days earlier and the mass demonstrations raising the alarm in world capitals, particularly by young people.

“Even before this week, we had a very successful climate summit, and now the efforts of young people around New York and around the world, remind us all that climate action is urgent, which I think is something that is critical for us to remember as humanity,” he said.

Mr. Bande has had a long and distinguished career as a scholar, educator, administrator, and diplomat. He has been a familiar figure at the UN where he served as vice president of the GA in 2016 and since 2018, the Permanent Representative of Nigeria. From 2010 to 2016, he held the position of Director-General of Nigeria’s National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies.

IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen said that IPI had held 12 events during the week involving 23 foreign ministers, two current heads of state and two former heads of state. And he said the party, in addition to being a celebration of the success of the opening UN week, also represented the beginning of IPI’s commemoration of its 50th anniversary next year in 2020.

He recalled that former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon likened the opening week’s gathering of hundreds of world leaders and the meetings among them to “diplomatic speed dating.” He concluded by saying that now that these high-level visitors had returned home, everyone should breathe a collective “sigh of relief.”

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What contributions have the countries of the informal partnership between Mexico, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Turkey, and Australia (MIKTA) made to United Nations peacekeeping operations, and how can MIKTA model international cooperation to address the future challenges of peacekeeping?

These questions were the subject of an October 2nd seminar held at IPI’s MENA office in Manama. At the meeting, government officials, ambassadors, representatives of civil society, the private sector, and the media discussed priorities for strengthening peacekeeping initiatives, and highlighted the successes and challenges that their countries have found in peacekeeping missions.

Lt. Colonel Ratih Pusparini, of Indonesia’s National Defense and Security Agency—one of the first women in peacekeeping in Indonesia—stressed the importance of visibility for women peacekeepers in local communities.

“Women and children can approach women peacekeepers more easily in conflict areas, especially victims of gender-based violence,” she highlighted, while emphasizing the need to improve access and support for women in local peacekeeping contexts.

Lt. Pusparini called for greater commitment to women’s inclusion by senior leaders and commanders, and said that this could be achieved through public policy, corporate plans, cultural reform, and resourcing.

She also recommended the creation of a Global Gender Advisory network to ensure that gender perspectives are understood across divisions of operations. “More special training for women must be provided beyond areas which are perceived as ‘feminine duties,’” Lt. Purparini stressed, “such as medical, logistics or administrative duties.”

Major General Imam Edy Mulyono, Former Force Commander of United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), outlined the importance of the Western Sahara as geographically strategic, as it borders Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania. He also underlined some of the challenges he faced as former MINURSO Force Commander.

These challenges included violations on agreements, reductions of water supplies as a form of uncooperative action, and logistical issues such as flash flooding in 2014, which worsened the threat posed by landmines and explosive remnants of war.

To address these cases, he stressed the importance of forging a relationship between the host country and coordinators to foster effective communication in peacekeeping efforts.

Kemal Dermirciler, Turkey’s Ambassador to Bahrain, noted that his country’s contributions to peacekeeping operations, which began in 1950 during the Korean War, had been both peace support through military participation, as well as international missions where military personnel were assigned as international observers.

He cited Turkey’s current participation in peace operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Somalian territorial waters.

Dongsuk Kim, Assistant Professor of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, noted that the rapid development of Korea’s economy in the 1970s and 1980s enabled the country to achieve the status of a middle power nation. He explained that

“Korean leaders thought that they needed to dispatch troops to peacekeeping missions in a bid to fulfill the duty of a middle power country and return the favor.”

Dr. Kim said that the demand for peacekeeping forces exceeds supply, and added that “Korea needs to find ways to sustain civil-military operations after troop withdrawal.”

Nejib Friji, Director of IPI MENA, highlighted MIKTA’s aim of strengthening multilateralism and global governance structures at a critical time of mistrust in the multilateral system, adding that their objectives are in line with IPI’s strategic goal of managing risk and building resilience for a more peaceful world.

Referencing the UN’s Action for Peacekeeping initiative (A4P), he explained that IPI, through research and convening, “is committed to helping the UN and member states advance the A4P agenda.” This, he said, is the “opportune time to reflect on the contribution that MIKTA can make to peacekeeping both collectively and individually.”

The presentation was followed by an interactive session with the audience. During this session, UN Resident Coordinator Amin Sharkawi pointed out that the percentage of UN women peacekeepers was 3.9% in the military, 10% in policy missions, and 28% of international civil personnel.

He commended Indonesia for leading reform in UN peacekeeping, and highlighted the importance of a Muslim country at the forefront of calls for greater involvement of women in peacekeeping.

The Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Afzaal Mahmood, noted that Pakistan’s Army had the third largest number of soldiers in UN Peacekeeping Missions. He said that the lesson learned from Pakistan’s wars in 1948, 1965, and 1971 was that “war is not the solution.” He added that “we would like to talk more about how to make peace so that post conflict management is not required.”

Italian Ambassador Domenico Bellato also noted that Italy was the seventh contributor for financing peacekeeping operations.

“We do believe in the added value of peacekeeping operations and the role of the UN in addressing those challenges through prevention,” he stated. “Italy’s approach is specifically oriented to creating bridges and to stress the link between military and civilian activity for stability to have a good relationship.”

The Moroccan Ambassador, Mostafa Benkhayi, in a right of reply to Major General Mulyono, played down what Mulyono cited as challenges faced by MINURSO in Morocco.

Tunisian Ambassador Salim Gahriani highlighted the long-standing Tunisian contribution to peacekeeping operations, commended the involvement of women in peacekeeping operations, and paid tribute to the lives lost in the service of peace.

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On September 27th, IPI, together with the United States Institute of Peace and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, cohosted a policy forum entitled “People Power and Preventing Violent Extremism: What is Working?”

In some of the most fragile states and communities around the globe, effective prevention of violent extremism is happening at the grass roots level. Local actors, and groups or organizations fill several important roles that counter the influence of violent groups, including: paving the way for nonviolent conflict transformation; providing space to strengthening practices that enable local communities have a stake in their own future; and delivering powerful positive psychological and social benefits associated with being part of a movement or peacebuilding effort.

Nonviolent action can provide an alternative method for people to address grievances while simultaneously strengthening community roots. The acts of nonviolent action can allow citizens to practice the methods of collective action that ultimately can lead to change, improvements in governance, and stronger social compacts. Building up a culture of dialogue between public actors and such grassroot actors is an additional central line of action.

Welcoming remarks
Mr. Terje Rød-Larsen, President, International Peace Institute
Ms. Nancy Lindborg, President, U.S. Institute of Peace

Opening remarks
Mr. Dominique Favre, Deputy Chief of Mission, Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations

Speakers
Mr. Abdul-Aziz Alhamza, Co-founder, Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently
Dr. Christian Pout, President, Centre Africain d’Etudes Internationales, Diplomatiques, Economiques et Stratégiques (CEIDES), Cameroon
Ms. Azaz Elshami, Sudanese-American Human Rights Advocate
Mr. Jesse Morton, Co-Founder, Parallel Networks (and former violent extremist)
Ms. Leanne Erdberg, Director, Countering Violent Extremism, and Interim Executive Director, RESOLVE Network, US Institute of Peace

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

On September 27th, IPI, together with the Government of Sierra Leone, and Catalyst for Peace, cohosted a high-level policy forum entitled “An Agenda for the People by the People: Consolidating Peace and Advancing Development in Sierra Leone.” Sierra Leone has been at the forefront of localizing peace and development through a people-centered approach. The event highlighted the outcomes of this unique experience and how it can be translated in other contexts.

Over the past twelve years, the Sierra Leonean civil society organization Fambul Tok, its US-based funder and partner Catalyst for Peace, and the people of Sierra Leone have built an infrastructure that puts people and communities at the center of peace and development. This infrastructure is based on the People’s Planning Process (PPP), an inclusive organizing and planning process which after a successful pilot led to drafting a national policy framework, the Wan Fambul National Framework for Inclusive Governance and Local Development (WFNF).

Taken as a whole, the WFNF is an effective and evolving model of a whole- system partnership centered on local communities. The WFNF has been incorporated into Sierra Leone’s National Development Plan 2019–2023 as a priority. This flagship program aims to develop national capacity to engage villages, sections, chiefdoms, and districts through guardians from the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development.

This identified key dimensions of the WFNF that can help put into practice Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 5 (gender equality), 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions), and 17 (partnerships) while supporting many of the other SDGs. 27

Welcoming Remarks:
Mr. Terje Rød-Larsen, IPI President

Opening Remarks:
Ms. Francess Piagie Alghali, Minister of State for the Office of the Vice President, Government of Sierra Leone

Speakers:
Dr. Francis M. Kai-Kai, Minister of Planning and Economic Development, Government of Sierra Leone
Mr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, Special Representative of the Secretary-General
Mr. John Caulker, Executive Director of Fambul Tok International
Ms. Libby Hoffman, Founder and President of Catalyst for Peace

Moderator:
Ms. Jimena Leiva Roesch, IPI Senior Fellow

Closing Remarks:
Mr. Tamba Lamina, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Government of Sierra Leone