International Peace Academy Studies in Security and Development Peacebuilding as the Link between Security and Development: Is the Window of Opportunity Closing? Necla Tschirgi DECEMBER 2003 ■ NEW YORK Acknowledgements We gratefully acknowledge support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the governments of Australia, Canada (DFAIT and CIDA), Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, and the United Kingdom (DfID) for the Security- Development Nexus Program. This IPA program also greatly benefits from core support from the govern- ments of Sweden and Denmark as well as from the Ford Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. About the Author Dr. Necla Tschirgi is Vice President of IPA and Director of the Security-Development Nexus Program. Previously, she was the Team Leader of the Peacebuilding and Reconstruction Programme Initiative at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, where she was actively involved in the design and management of research projects on peacebuilding in the Middle East, Central America, and Southern Africa. PEACEBUILDING AS THE LINK BETWEEN SECURITY AND DEVELOPMENT: IS THE WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY CLOSING? Contents Executive Summary . i Introduction. 1 I. Security and Development after the Cold War . 1 II. Peacebuilding in Practice: Responses at the International Level . 2 Normative Developments. 3 Policy Developments . 4 Operational Responses. 4 Institutional Reform. 5 New Institutional Arrangements . 6 III. Peacebuilding in Practice: Responses at the Country Level . 6 Review of the Impact of Development Strategies and Aid on Conflict. 7 New Sectoral Programming: Supply vs Demand-driven Approaches. 8 Beyond Sectoral Programming: New Models of Collaboration . 9 Peacebuilding Evaluations . 10 IV. Moving the Agenda Forward . 10 Political Challenges. 11 Institutional Challenges. 12 Operational Challenges . 12 Aligning Priorities and Resources . 13 Conclusion . 13 Endnotes . 14 Selected Bibliography . 16 Contents PEACEBUILDING AS THE LINK BETWEEN SECURITY AND DEVELOPMENT: IS THE WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY CLOSING? Executive Summary Policy Developments: An impressive number of policy initiatives gave impetus to the need to promote human security alongside state security. Conflict prevention, Since the end of the Cold War, it has become common- the uses of development assistance to address violent place to assert that peace and development are conflicts, more effective peace operations for intimately linked and that the United Nations (UN) and peacebuilding, and post-conflict reconstruction other international actors need to address the twin became officially declared goals and objectives at the imperatives for security and development through international level. integrated policies and programs. Shedding its early definition as “post-conflict reconstruction,” the term Operational Responses: In response to a series of ethnic “peacebuilding” has broadened its scope in the 1990s conflicts, complex humanitarian emergencies, civil to encompass the overlapping agendas for peace and wars, state failures and genocide, the UN and other development in support of conflict prevention, conflict international actors launched a growing number of management and post-conflict reconstruction. multi-dimensional humanitarian, peacemaking and peacekeeping operations, and undertook transitional While there has been some progress at both the administrations in Kosovo and East Timor. international and country levels to operationalize peacebuilding, the results are ad hoc, tentative and Institutional Reform: There was considerable institu- uneven. This paper examines peacebuilding practice tional re-organization throughout the international since the 1990s with a view to understanding system. New departments and coordination achievements made to date, as well as identifying mechanisms were created at the United Nations. outstanding political, institutional and operational S i m i l a r l y, many governments and donor agencies challenges. The paper argues that the window of established conflict prevention and peacebuilding opportunity that had opened in the 1990s enabling units. Several multi-governmental and non-govern- the UN and other international actors to begin dealing mental peacebuilding networks were created. Regional with security and development through integrated and sub-regional organizations were restructured or peacebuilding approaches might close in the changed their mandates broadened to address violent conflicts. international climate after September 11, 2001, unless The creation of the International Criminal Court in serious efforts are made to move the peacebuilding 2002 capped the peacebuilding and human security agenda forward. agendas. Peacebuilding at the International Level: There have New Institutional Arrangements: With an ever been five important developments supporting the new increasing number of crises around the world, new peacebuilding agenda: types of institutional arrangements were constructed to deal with different conflicts. Involving a variable Normative Developments: Throughout the 1990s, a geometry of functional collaboration among a more comprehensive normative framework began to changing set of actors (such as the “coalitions of the take shape, which recognized that peacebuilding is an willing” or the “UN plus” models), these flexible important area of international concern. The security institutional alliances sought to respond to increasing agenda was broadened to include human security, with demand for international assistance. global campaigns to ban anti-personnel landmines, to regulate small arms and light weapons, and to create Peacebuilding at the Country Level: While seeking to an international criminal court. Human rights, justice, enhance their own capacities to respond to violent reconciliation, humanitarian protection, good conflicts, international actors also sought to address governance, and rule of law were increasingly accepted the root causes of civil wars and other violent conflicts as important dimensions of peacebuilding. on the ground through various strategies: Executive Summary i PEACEBUILDING AS THE LINK BETWEEN SECURITY AND DEVELOPMENT: IS THE WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY CLOSING? Review of the Impact of Development Strategies and superpower, the U.S. has taken a strongly unilateralist Aid on Conflict: Conventional development strategies approach which has created dangerous rifts within the and models increasingly came under scrutiny. Closer Security Council and portends the derailment of the attention was paid to donor roles and responsibilities multilateralist consensus about the importance of in ignoring the sources of violent conflicts, or in conflict prevention and peacebuilding that was gaining directly or indirectly contributing to the exacerbation ground at the United Nations in the aftermath of the of conflict through their programming. Cold War. New Sectoral Programming: Innovative programs were Institutional Challenges: Despite several dramatic initiated in support of non-traditional sectoral areas failures during the 1990s, the UN had come to be such as post-conflict reconstruction, governance, considered a key instrument in legitimizing interna- security sector, transitional justice and rule of law. tional intervention in the domestic affairs of states in support of conflict prevention and peacebuilding. With New Models of Collaboration: There was growing the war on Iraq, the UN’s relevance and credibility are recognition that, going beyond new sectoral program- in grave jeopardy, yet there are no other international ming, external and internal actors needed a common institutions that can play a global role in pushing forth peacebuilding framework to guide their collective the peacebuilding agenda. efforts. Unified UN missions and multi-donor trust funds were created to facilitate joint planning and Operational Challenges: Meanwhile, there is continuing closer alignment of efforts, especially in post-conflict need to improve the effectiveness and impact of peacebuilding. ongoing peacebuilding programs and activities. These require the deployment of a new generation of interna- Peacebuilding Evaluations: Concurrently, there were tional staff with a better understanding of the serious efforts to track the impact of new interlinkages between development and security, and peacebuilding approaches and strategies through the ability to work in difficult conflict contexts. evaluations and “lessons learned” studies. Aligning Priorities and Resources: The current distribu- Moving the Agenda Forward: The growing interna- tion of global resources for peace and security on the tional consensus and collaboration since the 1990s one hand, and for socio-economic development on the around the new peacebuilding agenda was shaken after other, reflects distorted international priorities in favor September 11 and further undermined by the U.S. war of military expenditures. If conflict prevention and on Iraq. The peacebuilding agenda faces several major peacebuilding are to address the deep-rooted structural challenges in the current international environment: problems that fuel violent conflicts, new and creative ways must be found for generating resources for Political Challenges: The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq peacebuilding. Moreover, the role of the UN’s develop- not only signaled a revival of predominantly military ment agencies, bilateral donors, and the Bretton Woods approaches to security; they also led to deep cleavages institutions in influencing