Research Report Is Christmas Really Over? Improving the Mandating of Peace Operations Council members confer with the Director of the Security Council Introduction: Better Process for Better Mandates Affairs Division ahead of a 24 February 2018 meeting. (UN Photo/ Mark Garten) A core task of the Security Council is to adopt Central as mandate-crafting is to its work, the peace operations mandates and assess their imple- Council has been criticised for “Christmas-tree 2019, No. 1 22 February 2019 mentation. Council members meet throughout mandates” that respond inadequately to realities the year to discuss the challenges and achieve- on the ground, are circumscribed by political and This report is available online at securitycouncilreport.org. ments of missions with a range of mandates, from cost considerations of member states rather than For daily insights by SCR on evolving a verification mission with unarmed observers in driven by what the situation demands, and lack Security Council actions please Colombia to a 16,000-strong peacekeeping opera- strategic focus. subscribe to our “What’s In Blue” series at whatsinblue.org or follow tion authorised to use force to protect civilians in Mandates are not the only factor in the suc- @SCRtweets on Twitter. the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). cess or failure of a peace operation. Domestic and Security Council Report Research Report February 2019 securitycouncilreport.org 1 Introduction: Better Process for Better Mandates regional political dynamics, the performance peacebuilding. Once consultations were 1 Introduction: Better Process for of civilian and uniformed personnel, the concluded, the Secretariat, in consultation Better Mandates availability of resources, and the engagement with member states, proceeded to draw up 2 The Role of the Council in and support of senior leadership at head- a Declaration of Shared Commitments that Mandating and Overseeing quarters and at the mission are important had by the end of 2018 been endorsed by Peace Operations contributing factors. However, mandates are 151 countries and four intergovernmental 4 The Longstanding Gap among the few elements entirely under the organisations. between Mandates and Reality purview of the Council, which could invest The member state consultations on poli- 6 Weaknesses in Mandating in rethinking how mandates are designed tics were led by Côte d’Ivoire and the UK. At 9 Action for Peacekeeping: An and reviewed. a 25 June 2018 meeting, many member states Opportunity to Re-engage At a Council open debate on 28 March underscored the primacy of politics in guid- 2018, Secretary-General António Guterres ing peacekeeping operations and expressed 10 Improving the Mandating Process announced the launch of “Action for Peace- overall agreement about the need to improve keeping” (A4P), an initiative aimed at renew- the mandating process. Issues raised includ- 13 Time to Deliver ing states’ political commitment to peace- ed the need for more realistic mandates, the 14 Selected UN Documents on keeping operations. Guterres urged Council importance of consultations with relevant Peace Operations members to put an end to mandates that stakeholders and the interest in setting clear 14 Useful Additional Resources look like “Christmas trees”, trailing streams strategic objectives for peacekeeping opera- of templated components. “Christmas is tions. Although the Declaration was informed over”, he declared, calling for sharpened and by the statements made in that meeting, streamlined mandates and pointing out as one Council members have not agreed on how example that the UN Mission in South Sudan the Council might adjust its own practices. A (UNMISS) could not possibly implement draft resolution on mandating circulated by its 209 mandated tasks. “By attempting too Côte d’Ivoire and the Netherlands in mid- much, we dilute our efforts and weaken our November 2018 was met with reluctance by impact. I hope that our mission reviews will some permanent members collectively to set help to end this mandate inflation,” he said. parameters for the mandating process and Since that open debate, much has hap- was put on hold at the end of the year. pened within the framework of the A4P What follows is the case for improving initiative. The UN Secretariat partnered the mandating process, and ideas to help with ten member states to lead broad con- those in the Council and beyond chart a sultations on five priority areas: politics, way forward to making mandates more real- partnerships, performance, people and istic and achievable. The Role of the Council in Mandating and Overseeing Peace Operations Mandates are the legal and political basis and the Sinai in response to the internation- for the deployment of peace operations— al crisis over the blockade of the Suez Canal and much more besides. Mandates are the in 1956, and the UN Security Force in West mission’s broad marching orders, identify- New Guinea in 1962 to monitor a cease- ing its overall “deliverables”. They can be fire agreement between Indonesia and the an instrument for coordinating regional and Netherlands and support the work of a UN international presences, a de facto contract transitional administration. with the host government, and a powerful In 2015, the number of UN peacekeep- messaging tool. Whereas most mandates of ing and special political missions reached a peacekeeping operations are established by historic high with more than 128,000 civil- the Security Council, in the past the Gen- ian and uniformed personnel serving in 39 eral Assembly has done so as well, setting up missions across four continents, according to the first UN Emergency Force interposed the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace between Egyptian and Israeli forces in Gaza Operations (HIPPO). Several have now 2 whatsinblue.org Security Council Report Research Report February 2019 The Role of the Council in Mandating and Overseeing Peace Operations ended, and more, like the UN-AU Hybrid UN Mission for the Verification of Human Secretariat representative around 15 days Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), may end Rights and of Compliance with the Commit- before mandate expiry. In the past, mandat- soon, but the bulk of Council meetings still ments of the Comprehensive Agreement on ing resolutions would simply endorse the pertain to the mandating and oversight of Human Rights in Guatemala, MINUGUA) proposal laid out in the Secretary-General’s peace operations. The Council regularly or by the Secretary-General, as in the case report, but this practice was discontinued renews the mandates of 11 of the 14 peace- of the offices of the Special Coordinators for sometime in the 1990s. In the case of SPMs, keeping operations and six special political Lebanon and the Middle East Peace Process. the Security Council tends to request reports missions deployed at the close of 2018. Two The Council is briefed regularly by the of the Secretary-General less frequently than peacekeeping operations have open-ended head of mission, who normally introduces for peacekeeping operations, and mandate mandates and do not report regularly to the the most recent periodic report of the Sec- renewal discussions can be based merely on Council. They were the first and second such retary-General, adds newer developments the briefing by a high-level official. operations to deploy: the UN Truce Super- on the ground, and describes progress and Some of the analysis put forward in the vision Organization (UNTSO, 1948) and setbacks in mandate implementation. In a Secretary-General’s reports since 2017 has the UN Military Observer Group in India few settings, the political lead is not with been informed by independent strategic and Pakistan (UNMOGIP, 1949). The man- the Special Representative of the Secretary- reviews conducted at the initiative of the Sec- date of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK, General and head of mission, but with a retariat or the Council. These reviews often 1999) is also open-ended, although Coun- different official altogether. In those cases, have an external lead and a “red team” com- cil members are briefed regularly on its which include UNFICYP and MINURSO, posed of non-UN experts in peace operations implementation. the Council will usually hear from both to challenge the review’s assumptions. The Most mandates are renewed annually, ahead of the mandate renewal. Although the Council’s access to the analysis and recom- with a few exceptions. The UN Peacekeep- head of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon mendations contained in these reviews has ing Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) has tradi- (UNIFIL), who is the Force Commander, varied. Some of the review reports have been tionally been renewed every six months. In rarely briefs the Council, a representative of shared with the Council and made pub- recent years, more exceptions have appeared, the Department of Peace Operations usu- lic, mainly where the Council initiated the with six-month renewals of the UN Mis- ally briefs the Council alongside the Special review. This was the case of the UN Orga- sion for the Referendum in Western Sahara Coordinator for Lebanon. Briefings vary in nization Stabilization Mission in the Demo- (MINURSO) and the UN Interim Security frequency from quarterly meetings on the cratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), Force for Abyei (UNISFA). In its final year, UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabili- UNAMID, UNFICYP and UNAMA. How- 2010, the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) zation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and ever, in most cases only a summary of the was renewed every four months. In the case the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan analysis and a selection of recommendations of MINURSO and UNISFA, the shorter (UNAMA), to semi-annual meetings on have been conveyed to the Council in the mandate periods are intended to pressure MINURSO and UNISFA. The frequency of Secretary-General’s report. the parties to re-engage in the political pro- meetings, as well as whether reports are to Depending on what is at stake in the man- cess.