Peace Operations & Sustaining Peace

• Prioritization and Sequencing of Security Council Mandates

  IPI’s “Prioritization and Sequencing of Security Council Mandates” project aims to make UN peace operations more effective by strengthening the linkages between independent conflict analyses and the UN’s political strategies for countries where a peace operation is present. It also supports engagement by member states in the negotiation of realistic, effective, and achievable peace operations mandates. This initiative aims to help member states, UN actors, and independent experts, including from the field, analyze how country-specific peace operations mandates can be adapted to prioritize tasks based on evolving political and security developments. Read more
• Protection of Civilians

  The POC Program seeks to support the UN Secretariat in analyzing the challenges facing peace operations mandated to protect civilians, and in adapting policy and practice to improve the delivery of POC mandates. It also provides a space to gather member states, UN officials from both HQ and field missions, and researchers, in order to build a common understanding of POC in the context of UN peace operations. Read more
• Peacekeeping Transitions

  UN peacekeeping transitions are long-term processes that span a range of political and technical issues and require sustained engagement by the entire UN system. The UN and its member states have improved their understanding of transitions in recent years and dedicated additional attention and resources to support these processes. This is evidenced by the UN secretary-general’s February 2019 directive on transitions and the July 2019 UN Security Council debate on transitions in the context of peacebuilding and sustaining peace. Nonetheless, the next wave of peacekeeping transitions will confront challenges unlike those of recent transitions. Read more
• UN Reform

  Over the past two years, the UN secretary-general has moved ahead with a broad reform agenda, including a restructuring of the peace and security architecture of the UN Secretariat and a reform of the management structure to make the UN more agile, responsive, and field-focused. The secretary-general also commissioned the “Cruz report” in an effort to reduce peacekeeper casualties in hostile environments and launched the Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative to strengthen collective engagement in UN peace operations. Furthermore, he has overhauled the UN development system to ensure a “whole-of-system” approach across the peace and security, human rights, and development pillars.
  
  Throughout 2020, IPI will continue to monitor and analyze the impact of these reform initiatives at UN headquarters and in the field through a combination of research and convening at both the ambassadorial and expert levels. IPI will produce reports to foster constructive debates on how, and under what conditions, the reforms will increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and credibility of the organization in the complex and uncertain environments in which it is operating.
• Peacekeeping Observatory

  The Peacekeeping Observatory is a multi-year project initiated in 2014, and renewed in 2018 for three years, supported by the French Ministry of Armies’ Department for International Relations and Strategy (DGRIS). It consists of a series of research papers and roundtable meetings examining emerging issues and challenges in peace operations. The observatory has focused on new technologies for peacekeeping (2015), the challenges of peace operations operating in violent and asymmetric threat environments (2016), field support for peace operations (2017), contemporary challenges to peace operations (2018), and non-UN peacekeeping operations (2019). Read more
• Strengthening the UN–African Union Partnership on Peace and Security

  Africa’s continental and subregional organizations are at the forefront of conflict prevention and crisis management across the continent. Given the increasing complexity of conflict drivers and the transnational impact of modern armed conflicts, cooperation and coherence between the UN and the African Union (AU) are important to ensure responses are successful. Direct engagement between the UN and the AU on peace and security has accelerated in recent years, culminating in the Joint UN-AU Framework for Enhanced Partnership in Peace and Security, signed in April 2017 by the UN secretary- general and AU Commission chairperson. Read more
• The Future of Peace Operations

  The focus of reform efforts by UN and member states is on improving contemporary peacekeeping missions. There are few, if any, opportunities for strategic engagement to anticipate the future of peacekeeping: how conflict trends and geopolitical shifts may affect future demand for UN deployments, including what doctrinal changes, capabilities, or partnerships may be required to adapt peacekeeping so that it remains an effective tool for responding to pressing international security challenges.
  
  To help inform the Security Council’s decision making and the UN Secretariat’s policy development, IPI aims to identify major trends likely to shape the future of UN peacekeeping over the coming decade, ways in which it needs to adapt, and recommendations on how to do so, including decision points for the secretary-general, Security Council, other member states, and other stakeholders. Read more
• Human Rights and Peace Operations

  In line with recent reform efforts aim to improve the performance and accountability of UN peace operations, both the Secretariat and troop- and police-contributing countries (T/PCCs) are expected to strengthen the preparedness of personnel deployed to the field. This entails ensuring that peacekeepers have the requisite knowledge and expertise, training and equipment, and mindset to implement their mandate in accordance with UN principles, values, standards, and policies.
  
  The “operational readiness” of T/PCCs is critical to the effective delivery of mandated tasks, as authorized by Security Council resolutions. To this effect, in 2015, the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Department of Field Support developed an Operational Readiness Assurance and Performance Improvement Policy and related guidelines. As part of the Action for Peacekeeping “Declaration of Shared Commitments,” member states and the Secretariat reaffirmed the contribution peacekeeping operations can make to protect civilians and protect human rights and acknowledged the need to “support predeployment preparations of personnel and capabilities required for effective performance, and the existing human rights screening policy.” IPI’s research will define the concept of “human rights readiness” for peacekeepers to complement “operational readiness” in the pursuit of more effective and fit-for-purpose UN peace operations.
• Climate‚ Peace‚ and Security

  Beyond its environmental and development consequences, climate change also has consequences for peace and security. By exacerbating existing vulnerabilities, including endemic poverty, weak institutions for managing resources and resolving conflicts, and historical fault lines between communities, the effects of climate change may increase the likelihood, intensity, and duration of conflict. The Security Council has made some progress on integrating language on climate-related security risks into its outcome documents, and other bodies within the UN system play essential roles managing the risks of climate change and the vulnerabilities it exposes.
  
  Nonetheless, political sensitivities among member states, and differences over how they frame climate-related risks to peace, remain an obstacle to more effective responses by the UN system. Increasingly, member states recognize that addressing these risks requires a holistic approach, which includes both nearer-term political, humanitarian, and security responses and longer-term solutions grounded in economic development and good governance.
  
  In 2020, IPI is establishing a project on climate-related security risks to undertake research to fill targeted gaps. IPI will research the politics among member states on recent engagement by the Peacebuilding Commission on situations with prominent climate-related security risks (e.g., the Sahel region, Burkina Faso, and the Central African Republic) and its potential to complement Security Council engagement. IPI will also review how UN peacekeeping operations in the Sahel are responding to pastoralist-related insecurity and related intercommunity violence. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, IPI will focus on virtual convening and outreach until public gatherings are safe.
• Understanding Peace in Contexts under Stress 

  Despite the 2016 dual General Assembly and Security Council resolutions on sustaining peace, peacebuilding continues to be treated as relevant solely to contexts where conflict is manifest or proximate, and peace continues to be perceived as the mirror image of conflict (i.e., the absence of violence, or “negative peace”). This binary relationship ascribed to conflict and peace means that societies where there is no violent conflict are excluded from the study of peace when in fact they may be the most likely to unveil the factors associated with it.
  
  In 2020, IPI will conduct research to understand the local, national, and regional factors that enable some countries to remain resilient, and even to prosper, despite internal vulnerabilities and external pressures. While IPI is unable to undertake field research or in-person convening during the COVID-19 pandemic, the project will involve participatory research, for example through a series of virtual discussions with local stakeholders, including university and graduate students, in partnership with universities in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, and possibly other countries.
• Operationalization of the UN’s Recommendations on Prevention and Sustaining Peace: Reflections from the Field

  IPI is continuing its multi-year project to research how the secretary-general’s recommendations on prevention and sustaining peace have been operationalized in countries through a series of case studies. The overall objective of this project is to enhance practical understanding of the UN’s peacebuilding and sustaining peace agenda in the lead-up to the next comprehensive review of the UN peacebuilding architecture in 2020. The project aims to push the discussion on prevention and sustaining peace programming beyond financing to look at what innovations are or should be taking place and how to better encourage and support these practices. In the long term, this project will contribute to the debate on how to advance efforts to build sustainable peace in practice at the country level and to assess whether the UN is having a positive influence on the way peacebuilding is undertaken. Read more