Building on the Brahimi report, the UN published the Capstone Doctrine in , a document that detailed the duties and responsibilities of peacekeeping. The parties of the conflict had to consent to both the presence of peacekeepers on their territory and the implementation of a political process Johnstone In addition, consent had to be maintained by peacekeepers, through deterrence if necessary.
This type of consent was not an ideal situation as it hindered the rapid and smooth development of the local political process that would lead to sustainable peace. The UN was accused of forgetting two of its guiding principles, namely consent and impartiality and thus the robust mandate questioned the credibility, efficiency and legitimacy of the UN.
The intention of the report was not to declare the UN the imperialistic judge of good and evil but rather to distinguish between neutrality, the equal treatment of both parties, and impartiality, reactivity unburdened by prejudice. To favour of neutrality over impartiality has in the past caused some missions to fail.
The peacekeepers were criticised for having mistaken impartiality for neutrality. Yamashita argues that impartiality is loyalty to the mandate of the mission and that in the face of genocide, there can be no neutrality.
Post-Brahimi report missions require peacekeepers to identify potential spoilers of the mandate and take action against them, using force if necessary. This can be a danger to the mandate as governments, if they support militias, will feel threatened by peacekeepers and withdraw their consent Johnstone The UN has to both maintain a friendly relationship with governments by making concessions to its mandates and remain impartial enough that it does not appear as a supporter of a non-democratic government that violates human rights.
MONUC was victim of a decrease in its credibility when it cooperated with the DRC armed forces FARDC , a necessary step for the conduct of the mission but an apparent dismissal of the human rights violations they had committed.
Abandonment of neutrality was prominent in subsequent UN operations. This was a ground-breaking measure as it set precedent to the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect R2P embraced in during the General Assembly World Summit. The Brahimi report established the humanitarian nature of PKOs by suggesting that peacebuilding, transitional administrations, reconstruction and development were equally as important as peacekeeping UN Peacekeeping is no longer immediate relief but the establishment of long-term peace.
The complex long-term commitment has put a strain on the UN by being more financially demanding and time consuming. This is nonetheless necessary since a High-level panel report identified violence within states as one of the six main threats to peace and security in the world UN The clarity of mandates wanted by the Brahimi report was brought by the creation of an international pool of civilian police officers CivPol coming from 80 participating states Williams and Bellamy Deployed on the ground along with national police, they increased the coordination of the different parties to facilitate peacebuilding, reconstruction and development and assist with the delivery of humanitarian aid.
The first CivPol was present in Cambodia for the UNTAC mission but since then, the use of police force has become common and their mandate has expanded to give them the rights to arrest, detain and prosecute criminals Williams and Bellamy However, the presence of police does not diminish the need for peacekeepers since their number is usually limited and their power is only efficient if there is a foundation of peace and public order.
With the use of civilian police, the UN has been increasingly preoccupied with the development of a rule of law as part of the reconstruction process. Revived by the success of the Australian-led transitional administration in East Timor in , a model rule of law that could be applied in case of state collapse was created. Moreover, the Brahimi report inspired the creation of the Peacebuilding Commission PbC during the World Summit as a result of its recommendation to establish a body capable of dealing with transitional administrations and failing states Stahn The PbC includes a set of preventive measure designed to keep states from relapsing into conflict.
It requires dialogue between the UN, donors, TCCs, NGOs, regional organisations, financial institutions and any other body capable of facilitating the post conflict recovery of states McAskie Far from being a neo-colonialist scheme, the PbC has an advisory role and works in close cooperation with national elites and remaining political apparatus with their consent Stahn This seems unlikely considering the reluctance of states to assist peacekeeping operations.
Since peacebuilding is a step ahead of peacekeeping, it would be surprising if TCCs were able to fund reconstruction but not missions.
The main challenge of peacebuilding is the same as peacekeeping: the coordination between a number of agencies with different strategies, budgets, ideologies, resources, geographic locations and ambitions. Post-Brahimi peacekeeping mission include the doctrine of R2P, which encompasses the responsibility to prevent, react and rebuild. However, the doctrine of R2P, like the Brahimi report, considers intervention to be a last resort and therefore the international community must focus on prevention Breau The Brahimi report participated in early warning by suggesting reports in partnership with regional organisations.
In , the situation was still unstable but the robust mandate prevented the massacres of thousands of civilians Breau Moreover, this non-paper reiterates the need to create exit strategies first suggested in a report UN By supporting the recommendations of the Brahimi Report the U. CINCs can shape the international community to prepare for an uncertain future and advance U. Unified Commanders. Get Books. In the 's. UN-Friedensmissionen und der Brahimi-Report. Organisationen u.
The Commission was established by Canada as an independent body to advance debate in this area after a call by S-G Kofi Annan in his Millennium report to the General Assembly to address the issues of sovereignty and international responsibility in humanitarian crises. In June , the Secretary-General reported that, with legislative approval, he would budget for QIPs wherever operationally useful. By December , missions had begun implementing QIPs.
Without follow-on funding, however, the goodwill that such projects build in the first year might dissipate. Fifteen projects in Ethiopia and 28 in Eritrea were approved and have helped to establish a closer relationship between UNMEE field units, local administrations, and communities. By December , 32 projects had been completed, 28 were nearing completion and 10 were still being implemented, while 70 new proposals awaited funding.
He argued, however, that new projects needed additional funding, especially as humanitarian and drought conditions in the area of UNMEE needed great support. Relying on voluntary funding to complete demobilization and begin reintegra- tion runs the risk that such programs will start late and not finish. The Secretary-General pledged to seek funds in assessed mission budgets for DDR on a case-by-case basis, as appropriate.
Coordination with DDR implementation partners is particularly important since assessed funds can only be applied to tasks specifically listed in the peacekeeping mandate, and were envisaged by the Panel to be replaced after a year or so by voluntary funds in any case.
The position was filled in mid and will take the lead in planning and implementing DDR when needed in future peace operations. Thus, when MONUC received a new mandate for disarmament, demobilization, repatriation, resettlement, and reintegration of foreign-armed groups in the DR Congo in late , its role and funding were still limited to disarmament and initial demobilization. This discrepancy can pose security risks, as the Brahimi Report warned and as the sidebar on DDR in Sierra Leone illustrates sidebar 5.
Armed UN police were sent into Kosovo to enforce the law without much thought as to what law and without international jurists who could render fair judgments in tense inter-ethnic cases. Its report made a number of operational recommendations to 45 improve support for rule of law-related activities in peace operations.
The program rolled out in stages, focusing on a few districts at a time, which enabled UNAMSIL to shift limited support and security resources from place to place.
The phased demobilization required an equally nimble reintegration program but shortages in voluntary funding and administrative problems within the NCDDR caused delays.
Two-thirds of the 16, ex -combatants demobilized by September had received some form of reintegration assistance, but little more than a third about 18, had received any assistance by the official end of demobilization in January The improved security resulting from these programs contributed to the success of national elections held in May By March , continuing reintegration efforts had reached over 40, ex-combatants with some form of assistance and nearly 46, by June as against 55, who had registered for reintegration, including those demobilized prior to the May hostage crisis, which disrupted earlier DDR efforts.
The Unit also provides operational and technical support for criminal law and judicial needs in peacekeeping operations that have civilian policing components see also discussion of rule of law measures in section 4. The Task Force report recommended that the Unit leverage expertise within and outside the UN, creating ad hoc working groups to help support mission planning.
Member states were approached regarding possible contributions to support this work and the unit began to create a rule of law framework for peace operations. The Task Force also suggested that the focal points conduct a review, two to three years after publication of the Handbook, to ensure that rule of law guidelines are well-represented in peace operations mission plans. The Handbook was expected to be released in late and reportedly includes civilian policing and rule of law guidelines.
It was updated in to regulate recruitment for the human rights components of peace operations and human rights training for mission personnel. The Handbook was originally due for release in mid It needed standard personnel profiles and standby arrangements for rapid deployment to field operations, as well as a standardized data management system for information gathered by human rights workers in peace operations that protected the confidentiality of that information.
The S-G returned in with a larger request to strengthen OHCHR, proposing a mix of six regular budget and nine peacekeeping support account posts. ACABQ denied all of the support account posts and approved just four regular posts—not for database construction, deriving best practices, contributing to mission planning, or enhancing rapid deployment, but for training.
OHCHR needs to be able to train others in human rights law but it also needs to do all these other things if it is to effectively shape, support, and implement the human rights components of peace operations.
Without the necessary people, it cannot. Voter education campaigns and orderly balloting judged free and fair by international monitors imply a return to normal life and an end to the politics of the gun. Yet it is rarely the case that some continuing international support is not needed once initial peace implementation ends, whether in the form of a UN political mission, UN or other development assistance, or just NGO training for political parties.
More recent peace operations—from East Timor and Kosovo to Afghanistan and Iraq—have become much more milestone-driven and focused on institution-building, laying foundations upon which elections can build, first at the local, then the provincial, and lastly the national level.
Beyond the realm of formal peace operations, UN resources for electoral assistance are oversubscribed. The right to self-determination was for years applied only to such territories and to former European colonies, within their existing borders. Moreover, even if the choice of local legal code was clear, a 51 UN General Assembly, Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples, Resolution XV , 14 December Differences in language, culture, custom and experience mean that the learning process could easily take six months or longer.
The United Nations currently has no answer to the question of what such an operation should do while its rule of law team inches up such a learning curve. Institute of Peace USIP took up the issue, however, drafting an interim legal code and code of procedures that were vetted at a June workshop in Geneva, hosted by OHCHR, with review sessions including 80 experts from 24 countries, including judges, legal affairs officers, police, prosecutors, and corrections officers.
The USIP program plans to work with partner organizations to conduct regional review meetings and expert consultations after further revision and drafting of commentaries. One of the continuing needs in such missions, participants stressed, was the need to get a handle on the applicable law issue. The stress on applicable law matched responses from both missions to queries sent to them by the Executive Office of the Secretary-General in the spring of on behalf of the Brahimi Panel.
There have to be enough well-managed, well-trained people to get the job done when the work surges, and effective use of information and communications technologies. The United Nations functions globally and its many constituent parts generate reporting streams from their slices of the environment on a daily or weekly basis.
Information also floods in from the news media, think tanks, and private voluntary organizations working in areas that the United Nations cares about, including human rights, humanitarian relief, and political, social, and economic development. Many of these organizations operate in areas of recent, ongoing, or potential conflict. This is not for want of earlier attempts to do so, however.
In the late s, Secretary- General Perez de Cuellar created a small fewer than six-person Office for Research and Collection of Information, which had limited resources and rapidly withered.
In , a report on reform of the Secretariat by Under-Secretary-General Marrack Goulding proposed an information unit much like what the Brahimi Panel would later propose, but his concept was not implemented.
The staff as proposed would have had three primary functions: strategic planning and analysis; information management; and peacebuilding support.
The Special Committee still counseled delay. Some may have feared that it would function as a selective conduit for national intelligence. Others may have worried that analyses highlighting risks of internal conflict or instability might raise the risk of military intervention or other threats to their sovereignty, even if EISAS based its work only on open-source materials.
Thus, the United Nations still has no single, co-located team dedicated to managing information, tracking multiple crisis and conflict trends, recommending preventive action based on those trends, or anticipating global UN requirements for either peacekeeping or peacebuilding. Without an effort from member states, status quo political interests will easily block formation of so visible an analytic capability.
Its mission reports were largely written long after the fact and there was no mechanism to capture and share best practices within DPKO, or within missions, let alone between headquarters and field, or between missions directly. The rapid advance of information technology offered an opportunity to change that situation radically, if a the proper tools were developed to record, compile, share and, as needed, shield the source s of contributions to the system, and b management were committed to turning DPKO and its operations into learning organizations.
These tasks are not easy for a private company and even harder for an international bureaucracy, because best practices have their counterpart in worst practices, some of which can be laid at the feet of troop contributing countries and the personnel they have contributed to UN operations.
It is very difficult for the Secretariat to criticize member states by name though not impossible. By early , however, the unit was under newly appointed and field- experienced leadership, and is to have nine professional staff, including advisers on DDR and on gender issues in conflict and peace operations. Objectives included compilation of lessons learned case studies from missions in Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Timor Leste, and Ethiopia-Eritrea; compilation of best practices in key functional areas corrections, police, rule of law, military planning, and mission evacuation ; completion of a Handbook on Multidimensional Peacekeeping Operations; creation of a reference guide for desk officers in the Office of Operations still the most traditionalist element of DPKO ; and training modules for DDR and gender mainstreaming.
Briefing provided courtesy of the Peacekeeping Best Practices Unit. Nor did the substantive offices have much sense of what IT could or should do for them. Thus the Report recommended that a headquarters-based responsibility center— a chief information officer CIO —supervise the development and implementation of IT strategy and user standards, and that counterpart positions be established in the head offices of each mission, to oversee implementation of these standards.
ACABQ would like to review this post in , on the grounds that management changes ought to be complete by then, while the Special Committee supports a permanent post. Every operation has had electronics and communications technical staff in its administrative branch but it is unclear whether missions also have the sort of high-level direction that the Report envisioned to guide substantive applications of IT to DDR program tracking, human rights investigations, police records, census-taking, or voter registration, for example, as opposed to budget and finance, personnel management, logistics, and property management.
Six new posts within ITSD were approved to support connection of peacekeeping missions to this network. Development of the system began in the late s, under contract to the U.
Until , peace operations lacked access to IMIS altogether, meaning that DPKO of necessity developed its own personnel and financial applications for use in the field, connected them to headquarters via Lotus Notes, and eventually re-keyed the data into IMIS. An Extranet is a data network to which multiple, widely-dispersed user nodes are connected and that all users can access in common via password or compara.
An Extranet may join together several intranets —self-contained, access-controlled local networks. Web access will make things easier for technicians and users alike because there is no need to construct a special communications link, as is the case with VPN.
UN and departmental guidelines and procedures manuals, posted to the extranet, will facilitate delegation of authority to the field in hiring, personnel management, and procurement the manual of standard operating procedures for personnel, for example, went online in mid-January The budget request, to be considered by the General Assembly at its 58th session in fall , seeks a substantial increase for information technology support to make up the shortfall.
Even with that boost, the UN would be spending, proportionately, only about half as much on IT as a comparable institution such as the World Bank. Specific field applications of GIS include border monitoring, demobilization, civilian policing, voter registration, human rights monitoring, refugee return, and reconstruction. Although the Secretariat and UN inter-governmental bodies embraced better use of GIS, they disagreed on specific staffing and restructuring needs.
The General Assembly approved the move in December The Secretariat spends about five percent of its regular budget on IT. The World Bank spends about 11 percent. The Coordination Center in turn has used GIS to conduct landmine impact surveys, document de-mining, plan transport routes for food and water supply for returning refugees, and to support UNMEE itself.
As conceived in the UNMEE pilot project, the Joint GeoCell is the field-based focal point for all geographic information needs of the peacekeeping mission, providing data to troops, military observers and CivPol and training peacekeepers to use GIS for their daily duties.
The Civilian Police Division now has an information management and roster development officer who will develop the unique IT policies and tools needed by CivPol, and will put together the stand-by arrangements and roster system to enable rapid deployment of CivPol see section 4. Available online at: maic. Within DPKO, the logisticians, communication and transport planners in the Field Administration and Logistics Division FALD complained that desk officers in the Office of Operations—who drafted the mandates for Security Council approval—provided too few details for FALD to build a mission and had only the haziest notion of what was involved in sending people, vehicles, food, water, communications equipment and computers to a mission area and making it all work.
Thus, what DPKO called mission task forces, pre-Brahimi, were generally ad hoc groupings that met infrequently, and were used as sounding boards by desk officers, not as joint decision-making teams.
The IMTF would be a one-stop shop for strategic guidance, operational plans, and field queries on all mission-related subjects. The comprehensive review endorsed it. The Special Committee and Security Council both endorsed it. An IMTF for Liberia that was formed in the summer of attracted a large number of participants too many: upwards of 50 , but again devolved into a briefing and discussion format.
As such, the working group is an augmented version of the old concept of cooperation, helping DPKO rather than managing UN-wide contributions to mission planning. If used consistently, however, with multi- agency participation, it will at least increase the flow of current information to UN elements outside DPKO who contribute to or work closely in parallel with DPKO, but in the end it works to reinforce the primacy of traditional decision- making channels.
Working against the latter sort of role were the very newness of the concept; a team with an average UN civil service rank of P4 or P5 in military terms, a lieutenant colonel or colonel , which tended to exclude it from political decision- making; the lack of IMTF direct contact with a pre-existing country team based in the region; and a New York-based Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan Special Representative Brahimi himself that supported him in the run-up to the December conference in Bonn, Germany, without much input from the IMTF.
At Bonn, Afghan factions created a roadmap for a peace accord and the rebuilding of government. Envisaged as a key tool for building an operation and consolidating headquarters support for it, the IMTF lacked logistical support of its own: office space for members seconded from other places e.
DPKO has also experienced problems internally with its departmental Integrated Mission Planning Process, which was to promote a common mission planning effort among political desk officers, military and police planners, and logisticians. The same problem that afflicted the Afghanistan and later IMTFs besets this DPKO initiative: how to resolve issues upward ni a system that traditionally does so through a single chain of decision makers rather than collective decision-making at successively higher levels.
Finally, working mission leadership into the planning process at an early stage has proven difficult. When it has happened, it has suffered from the same tendency to channel all decisions through the designated leader rather than to delegate authority for solving pieces of the problem.
He or she must be willing to trust one or more of these areas to others most of the time. The more dynamic the SRSG good for gaining and maintaining an edge on the ground , the more easily frustrated with joint planning and more likely to circumvent the formal process with ad hoc fixes drawing on personal networks and relationships. What looks and feels tactically effective to the leader can, however, make the larger tasks of mission set-up that much harder to accomplish.
To be a more authoritative decision-maker or the universal point of contact at headquarters for the field, as the Panel envisaged, IMTFs need more senior representation and access to an appeals process that engages UN decision- makers collectively, at successively higher levels, for authoritative choices and to resolve disagreements that rise up from the working level. Without such backup, any serious point of disagreement within an IMTF could dissolve into a fight over whose higher-ups get to be the stovepipe of last resort.
Average people can make a well-structured system work. We have to aim to enable average folks to do good jobs under trying circumstances by giving them support structures and procedures that help them do their jobs.
The job of planning and support became more complex along with the operations themselves. There was never quite enough time in between fighting fires to compile the guidelines, set down the lessons, find the best people, or design the best structures and processes in which to work. Rarely did headquarters seek their advice on policy matters or consult them on how missions ought to be structured or run.
A cable to missions during the research phase of the Brahimi process, which asked them to relate the three best and three worst things about their situations and what they would change to 33 Interview, UN, New York, 19 April DPKO initially sought a three-person gender unit for the department, then several gender-related posts for Best Practices Unit, then a single post. Having such a post in DPKO is no mere question of political correctness. Women and children are by far the greatest victims of internal conflicts and far outnumber men in most camps for refugees and displaced persons.
The mostly male troops, police, and international civil servants who deploy nto i such situations to implement a peace accord can make a bad situation worse unless their behavior comports with the highest standards of propriety.
To its credit, while working toward a dedicated post at headquarters, DPKO developed gender awareness training modules for the field and appointed gender advisers or created gender units in five UN peace operations Kosovo, Timor Leste, Sierra Leone, DR Congo, and Bosnia.
In this section, we look at how the Department of Peacekeeping Operations has been restructured and expanded since the Brahimi Report was released. We then look more briefly at the Department of Political Affairs before addressing the issues of management culture and long-term sustainability of the headquarters capacity that has been built, post-Brahimi.
In early , with UN peacekeeping operations at one-fourth the level of their mid- nineties peaks, member states argued that the number of support staff in New York should shrink proportionately. DPKO had only partially convinced the ACABQ to fill the voids left by departing gratis officers when the new missions began to arrive in mid and two of them Kosovo and East Timor had a higher ratio of civilians to troops and many more police than UN peace operations of the past.
Recruiting and deploying civilians is headquarters labor- intensive, as they are hired, transported, trained, paid, and rotated out one at a time by DPKO. While paramilitary police come as national units, the bulk of UN police components are built a few officers at a time. In the spring and summer of , as the Brahimi Report was being written, most of these posts were still being filled.
The Panel recommended a substantial increase in UN headquarters support for peacekeeping operations, urging the S-G to submit proposals to the General Assembly for both emergency funding and longer-term support. Table 4 summarizes five years of changes in headquarters staff support for peace operations. Numbers are broken out by department and, within DPKO, by office. For an organizational diagram, see Appendix E.
Overall, DPKO gained posts. They field political queries and provide guidance in return. When the Brahimi Report was written, Operations had 19 desk officers to cover 15 operations and virtually all worked without backup. One of the puzzles at the time was why DPKO desk officers could not or did not draw more upon the expertise of counterparts in the Department of Political Affairs.
Interviews suggested that DPKO personnel viewed their DPA counterparts as slow to respond or insufficiently versed in up to the minute details on the country of interest. DPA officers found their DPKO counterparts unreceptive to advice, protective of turf, and thus unwilling to share the load. With 17 new posts now assigned to its regional divisions, effectively doubling the number of desk officers, Operations has been able to create sub- regional teams whose members can, to some extent, back each other up.
In July , it had UN professional staff and no gratis, for a net loss of 35 percent over 15 months despite hiring. Within OMS, the Administrative Support Division had new elements to manage online recruiting of personnel, civilian training, and career development, while the Logistics Support Division had an upgraded communications and information technology service, enhanced support for geographic information systems, and had embarked upon building the Strategic Deployment Stocks at Brindisi.
The military staff has grown the most in percentage terms, from seven UN professional staff and 25 gratis officers in , to 42 UN professionals in 32 of them serving military officers but on the UN payroll , and 63 professionals in Funded CivPol staff have similarly increased from one professional in , to nine in , to twenty in , now in their own division, together with the two-person Criminal Law and Judicial Advisory Unit.
DPA also manages the Security Council Affairs Division, which has 50 interpreters, translators, meeting managers, and archivists to support the work of the Council and to maintain its records.
In short, DPA operates on several different political and functional levels simultaneously, making it harder to promote the kind of unity of effort that DPKO is trying to achieve in planning and supporting peace operations.
Detailed assessment of DPA is largely absent from the Brahimi Report; lack of time precluded a more thorough analysis and recommendations, and through the entire Brahimi implementation process, —, DPA received only two additional posts.
Subsequent efforts have spelled out more clearly the division of labor between DPA and DPKO, and offered recommendations for revitalizing the department. It would also build and maintain a peacebuilding information system and establish contacts for the department with academic institutions and research centers. The number of special envoys or representatives increased, for example, from 29 in to more than 50 in ; of these, DPA supported about DPA continues to assess its options, with interest from some donors, to create an in-house capacity to focus on peacebuilding.
EAD provides technical advice on electoral matters at the request of member states. Most of its operational funding comes from a heavily earmarked trust fund that is, donors specify how it is to be used. It estimates steady demand for its services from member states: requests per year, with a carry-over of nine or ten per year that cannot be met. To help reduce that unmet demand, EAD sought a 26 percent increase in travel and consulting support for At the same time, DPKO guarded its role as principal political adviser to those operations and as principal UN interlocutor with member states who raised questions about them.
In a recent interdepartmental memorandum of understanding, DPA has agreed to be more political and less operational and DPKO has agreed to dial down its political role and to focus on running operations.
This arrangement is reflected in the decision, announced in October , that UN peacebuilding operations managed by DPA in Angola and Afghanistan would, henceforth, be managed by DPKO—despite the lack of troops or any significant number of police in either mission. However, the UN lacks embassies to generate political reporting from the field, although DPA does have reporting from special political missions.
DPA desk officers have too few opportunities for familiarization visits to their countries of responsibility or to serve in the field although some have prior experience in peace operations. DPA could still benefit from better internal sharing and central archiving of information, as its institutional memory now tends to rest with individual desk officers. It observed that: The United Nations is far from being a meritocracy today, and unless it takes steps to become one it will not be able to reverse the alarming trend of qualified personnel, the young among them in particular, leaving the Organization.
Unless managers at all levels, beginning with the Secretary-General and his senior staff, seriously address this problem on a priority basis, reward excellence and remove incompetent staff, additional resources will be wasted and lasting reform will 47 become impossible. After several runs at the funding bodies, he has in place a high- ranking director of change management to oversee dep artmental reform and 45 Ibid.
He himself submits an annual business plan to the Secretary-General and his senior managers submit plans to him, and these are the basis for their respective annual performance evaluations.
Full implementation of a new management culture may have to await staff turnover in key places, however. Results from peers and subordinates are to be consolidated into two ratings and each manager will sit down with a management consultant to discuss the results. Eight missions had completed this review process by early spring In fall , staff surveys were conducted in the field at all levels and the results were presented to mission leaders to promote awareness of managerial problems within their operations and to encourage more direct engagement with their staffs.
Needed changes were to be implemented in The annex succinctly summarizes the implementation status of each element of the human resources reform effort. The Brahimi Report suggested that headquarters peacekeeping support spending be tied to a five-year moving average of peacekeeping mission budgets and be pegged at five percent of total mission budget.
As of winter , it had regular budget and support account funded posts; if one counts the trust fund-supported positions in the Mine Action Service. Surge capacity could then be had not by emergency hiring but by asking current personnel to work overtime—which they had been doing for some years prior to the current round of staffing increases. If DPKO fully implemented the information technology programs now under development and boosted staff productivity to the point that fewer people could handle the workload, then the department might well get by with fewer: the Brahimi Report did argue for more people based on prevailing staff productivity.
The Report, however, also stressed that the time required to hire and train personnel and make them proficient at their jobs makes staff reductions difficult to reverse if peacekeeping demand were to once again increase sharply. The Brahimi Report also recommended that peacekeeping support costs be folded into the regular biennium budget. This swap would allow the funding for headquarters staff supporting peace operations—now contained in the Peacekeeping Support Account—to be provided through the regular budget without raising the budget ceiling, thus enabling peace operations support, a core function of the Organization, to be funded from its core budget.
Tardy deployments plagued every major complex UN peace operation started from to Rapid deployment alone was not the answer, however; such deployment also needed to be effective. As the Panel stressed: The speedy deployment of military, civilian police and civilian expertise will not help to solidify a fragile peace and establish the credibility of an operation if these personnel are not equipped to do their job.
These included advance planning and spending authority; rapid selection of quality mission leadership; improved quality and availability of security forces; capable civilian staff able to deploy quickly; effective logistics; and rapidly deployable capacity for public information.
No benchmarks assisted negotiators in crafting new peace agreements or helped planners preparing for future operations.
It warned that these goals would be difficult to achieve without substantial changes in how the UN and its member states prepared for support of peace operations. The Security Council and the Special Committee endorsed both applications. For a traditional mission, it posited a requirement to provide for 5, troops 50 percent of which were assumed to be self-sustaining ; substantive staff; military observers and police; and administrative staff international civil servants plus local hires.
For a complex mission, it posited a requirement to provide for 10, troops 25 2 Ibid. Both plans assumed limited local support infrastructure, emphasizing the need for member state units and personnel to be well supplied and the need for the UN to have a larger standing stock of supplies and equipment.
The Reserve Fund, originally set up in December , was designed to help make cash available for more rapid deployment of new or expanding missions. The S- G recognized some risk in procuring goods and services in advance of mission authorization, but noted that most such items could be used in other missions if the anticipated operation failed to materialize. In July , the Special Committee endorsed S-G authority to formally canvass member states regarding their willingness to contribute forces to a potential operation and supported pre-mandate commitment authority for the Secretary-General.
In December, the S-G stressed the importance of such authority as a tool for rapid deployment, needed to acquire long-lead items not in stock at UNLB. In March , the Special Committee again emphasized its 10 support. In April, however, the ACABQ turned down the request for new spending authority, arguing that the S-G already had the necessary commitment authority under GA resolutions on unforeseen and extraordinary expenses. Use of the Peacekeeping Reserve Fund, as recommended by the Panel, requires the S-G first to seek and receive written concurrence from the Security Council.
The ACABQ concluded that a letter from the President of the Security Council to the S-G concurring with his intent to plan and prepare 11 for a possible new mission would suffice to trigger the necessary authority. A clear implementing mechanism, however, had yet to be devised. For the biennium , the total contingency fund was set at 0. It also laid out a sequence of steps for seeking allocation of funds, based on the size of the request. Mission leaders needed to participate early in a mission planning process that was far more integrated and inclusive than DPKO had implemented to date.
The Panel therefore recommended measures to improve their recruitment, selection, training, and operational guidance. Defining the specific qualities needed for leadership positions is a challenging task and selection will in most cases remain a highly sensitive and ultimately political question.
As a further issue in mission leadership, there are still relatively few women in top decision-making positions. In the case of the Afghanistan mission UNAMA , senior mission leadership did participate in meetings and planning before their deployment, including, notably, Lakhdar Brahimi. Their decisions to provide them are based on a calculus of interest and capability. Throughout the s, some states calculated that it was in their interest to mooch capability from other states or the UN, sending: Soldiers without rifles, or with rifles but no helmets, or with helmets but no flak jackets, or with no organic transport capability trucks or troops carriers.
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