Ana García Rodicio
Visiting Fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies (University of Notre Dame) and former researcher at the UNHCR Spanish Committee/Globalitaria (Madrid, Spain)

The 2005 World Summit and the United Nations mandate on international peace and security

Article 1.1 of the UN Charter states as a core purpose of the United Nations “to maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace”. Taking into account that the United Nations is the only multilateral system with the mandate to maintain international peace and security, we need the United Nations from three perspectives: socio-political, legal and ethical. From a social and political perspective, we need the UN because we live in a world that is increasingly interdependent economically, technologically, politically and socially. Therefore we need to strengthen multilateralism in order to comprehensively address the challenges for peace in the globalization era. From a legal perspective, we need the UN because international law reflects international consensus and the UN system provides law enforcement mechanisms and guarantees under the principle that all the States are equal before international law. From an ethical perspective, we need the UN because as persons, as societies, as States and as humanity we share values that the UN promotes. The UN Summit 2000 listed six shared values reflecting the spirit of the Charter that are central in the 21st Century: freedom, equity and solidarity, tolerance, non-violence, respect for nature and shared responsibility.

The 2005 World Summit addressed, among other issues, the challenges to adequately implement the purpose to maintain international peace and security within the actual legal international order and the international dynamics taking place in a globalizing world. The UN frameworks for peace-making, peace-keeping and peace-building are at the core of this exercise. In 1992, the UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali presented “An Agenda for Peace” and provided the following definitions of the given frameworks:

• Peace-making: action to bring hostile parties to agreement, essentially through peaceful means as those foreseen in Chapter VI of the UN Charter.
• Peace-keeping: deployment of UN in the field with the consent of the parties concerned, normally involving UN military and civilian components.
• Peace-building: the process that facilitates the establishment of peace and tries to prevent the recurrence to violence in post-conflict situations.

The evolution of international relations and the consequent shift in the approach to the national sovereignty principle after the Cold War facilitated the UN’s increasing involvement in post-conflict situations since the nineties. This has meant that both quantitatively (number of operations) and qualitatively (redefinition of mandates in practical terms) the role of the UN in post-conflict situations is larger and broader than before. UN agencies, programs and funds have been dealing with the new challenges and redefining their roles and mandates. The need to comprehensively address peace-building arose in order to deal with issues such as overlapping mandates, coordination, coherence, legitimacy, integrated strategies, maximization of resources, more inclusive processes, etc. In relation to this need, the 2005 World Summit adopted the decision to establish a Peacebuilding Commission . This Commission is intended to be operational by December 2005 and the aim is to fulfill the existing gap in the UN peace-building and reconciliation framework.

The Peacebuilding Commission

The Peace-building Commission is articulated as an intergovernmental advisory body that will focus on helping to create and promote a coordinated, coherent and integrated approach to post-conflict peace-building and reconciliation. Its mandate includes to bring together all relevant actors in order to comprehensively address peace-building strategies, to marshal resources and to advice on and propose integrated strategies for post-conflict peace-building and recovery.

The structure of the Peacebuilding Commission reflects the nature of the body, which is intergovernmental. It will have a Standing Organizational Committee responsible for developing its procedures and organizational matters. Members of the Organizational Committee comprise members of the Security Council (including permanent members); members of the Economic and Social Committee; top providers of assessed contributions to the UN budgets and voluntary contributions to UN funds, programmes and agencies; and top providers of military personnel and civilian police to the UN missions.

Functions of the Peacebuilding Commision include in the aftermath of war provide information to the Security Council and focus on development and institution building, help to ensure financing for early recovery activities, extend the period of political attention to post-conflict recovery, develop best practices and improve the coordination of all relevant actors within and outside the UN.

Although the establishment of the Peacebuilding Commission fulfils an existing gap in the UN system, the structure of this body raises concerns about its adequacy to comprehensively address peace-building and reconciliation processes, and challenges are still pending. These concerns and challenges refer mainly to the Commission mandate as well as to the actors included in the structure and action dynamics of this body.

Concerns and challenges regarding the Peace-building Commission

In terms of mandate, the Peacebuilding Commission lacks a comprehensive approach to peace-building. It does not deal with juridical-political and psychosocial issues in an integrated way but it rather focuses on juridical-political measures such as effective institution-building efforts and promotion of the rule of law, building State capacity to deliver public services, etc. This approach reflects a highly placed emphasis on the juridical-political dimension of post-conflict interventions and a lack of support to formal and non-formal initiatives working on psychosocial issues and reconciliation at the local level. An approach that integrates both perspectives in a comprehensive way and takes into account both the top-down as well as the bottom-up dynamics and the inter-relation among both is essential. Internal conflicts and wars constitute the majority of the armed conflicts nowadays. These conflicts are characterized by generalized violence affecting the society as a whole, social turmoil, disruption of social and political relationships and socio-economic livelihoods, fragility and breakdown of State institutions and physical destruction and generalized insecurity. Peace-building should address the reconstruction of the political and juridical structures as well as the rebuilding of the social fabric that has been strongly affected by the war. In the same way, the issue of transitional justice both from a retributive point of view (punishment of perpetrators) and a restorative point of view (restoration of relationships that have been broken) is a key issue in order to deal with the legacy of impunity in its legal, political, economical and moral dimensions.

A second concern regarding the Peacebuilding Commission relates to the advisory nature of its mandate. The Commission is not a decision-making nor an operational but an advisory body. The challenge relies in the operationalization of peace-building and the equity in the international community decisions regarding interventions in post-conflict situations. Given the structure of the Commision and the nature of its mandate, the body risks working reflecting mainly political interests of the States represented in the Organizational Committee. Consequently, the operationalization of peacebuilding risks relying on the international politics playground rather than on the real needs of the countries and societies emerging from armed conflict. A mandate that reflects a balance between the international community interests and the interests and needs of the societies involved in peace-building processes would be more comprehensive and would lead to more positive results in terms of sustainable peace.

In terms of actors, the challenge is to make the deliberation and implementation process for peace-building in a specific country more inclusive, with a diversity of actors represented. The Peacebuilding Commission is articulated as an inter-governmental body. This implies a danger of politicization within the international politics arena. Local ownership of the peace-building process is essential in terms of sustainable peace and legitimacy of the process. Priorities should focus on contextualized peace-building issues rather than on the international politics dynamics. Although there are provisions for the inclusion of country representatives when the Commission meets in specific configurations for country-specific meetings, the reference to local actors is weak and other major actors are excluded from deliberation processes. In terms of legitimacy of peace-building processes the inclusion of non-governmental local and international actors is essential. As it is now structured, the Peacebuilding Commission excludes some key actors. Specifically, civil society actors and groups-- including those populations who are usually the most affected by the conflict such as indigenous peoples, refugees and internally displaced, families of the disappeared, victims groups, etc. --are left out of the peacebuilding processes of the Commission, removing possibilities for bottom-up approaches to resolving the underlying sources of conflict. Also missing from the current framework is a gender perspective. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 reaffirmed the importance of the role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace-building. This resolution is specifically mentioned in another section of the 2005 World Summit General Assembly Resolution, but new ways of thinking have not yet been integrated into the design of the Commission. Since we know from experience that women’s participation is crucial to the success of post-conflict peacebuilding, this omission raises serious concerns about its overall impact.

Conclusion

The peace-building framework is very important in terms of international peace and security, and efforts have been made by the 2005 World Summit to articulate an integrated approach to peace-building. The decision to establish a Peacebuilding Commission is part if these efforts. Nevertheless challenges to broad the approach to peace-building remain and important questions regarding the mandate of the Commission as well as the actors included and excluded raise important concerns both in terms of legitimacy of the contextualized peace-building processes and in terms of sustainable peace in societies and countries emerging from conflict.

1“An Agenda for Peace. Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-keeping”, UN document A/47/277-S/24111, 17 June 1992 (later updated in 1995).
2The Peacebuilding Commission is articulated in paragraphs 97 to 105 of the General Assembly Resolution “2005 World Summit Outcome”. UN document A/60/L.1, 20 September 2005.

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