Peace Operations and the Government of Humanitarian Spaces

The article identifies how the nexus between democracy, security, humanitarianism and development was built up from the 1990s. It analyses how the discourse of post-conflict peacebuilding has emerged as a notable component of a liberal democratic international order. The article argues that the transformations in peacekeeping operations depend upon a specific spatiotemporal combination ? a cleavage between a global and a humanitarian space and the temporality of development. For South American countries, participation in peacekeeping operations became a way to assert themselves as participants of a liberal democratic international order and a reflexive mode to strengthen the process of transformation of their own societies in order to be integrated into a new global cartography.

Divided Nations: The Paradox of National Protection

Internal displacement, which in many cases leads to ref uge across international borders, has emerged as one of the major crises confronting the world today. The assumption, clearly erroneous, is that unlike refugees, who have lost the protection of their own governments by crossing international borders, the internally dis placed remain under the protection of their national governments. In most cases, these same governments are actually the cause of their displacement, and worse?they neglect and even persecute them. This arti cle aims to develop a new international response to the global crisis of internal displacement in acutely divided nations. It suggests the problem is more than a humani tarian and human rights issue; the underlying causes have much to do with gross inequities in the shaping and sharing of values and the gross discrimination and marginalization of certain groups. Citizenship becomes largely of paper value. Citizenship becomes largely of paper value. The crisis is ultimately a challenge of nation building.

World Development Report 2011 : Conflict, Security, and Development

The 2011 World development report looks across disciplines and experiences drawn from around the world to offer some ideas and practical recommendations on how to move beyond conflict and fragility and secure development. The key messages are important for all countries-low, middle, and high income-as well as for regional and global institutions: first, institutional legitimacy is the key to stability. When state institutions do not adequately protect citizens, guard against corruption, or provide access to justice; when markets do not provide job opportunities; or when communities have lost social cohesion-the likelihood of violent conflict increases. Second, investing in citizen security, justice, and jobs is essential to reducing violence. But there are major structural gaps in our collective capabilities to support these areas. Third, confronting this challenge effectively means that institutions need to change. International agencies and partners from other countries must adapt procedures so they can respond with agility and speed, a longer-term perspective, and greater staying power. Fourth, need to adopt a layered approach. Some problems can be addressed at the country level, but others need to be addressed at a regional level, such as developing markets that integrate insecure areas and pooling resources for building capacity Fifth, in adopting these approaches, need to be aware that the global landscape is changing. Regional institutions and middle income countries are playing a larger role. This means should pay more attention to south-south and south-north exchanges, and to the recent transition experiences of middle income countries.

Social Resilience and State Fragility in Haiti

This Country Social Analysis examines Haiti’s conflict-poverty trap from the perspective of the triangle of factors that have been identified as its main components: (a) demographic and socioeconomic factors at the individual and household levels; (b) the state’s institutional capacity to provide public goods and manage social risks; and (c) the agendas and strategies of political actors. This report’s three main chapters explore the nature of these components. The closing chapter considers the linkages among them.

The Unlikely Securitizer: Humanitarian Organizations and the Securitization of Indistinctiveness

The securitization framework has greatly improved empirical analysis of security threats. Yet, it could benefit from heightened analysis of two often neglected aspects. First, this article argues that securitizers may invoke multiple referent objects to strengthen their argument that the referent object possesses the `right to survive’. Second, by drawing attention to the presentation of securitizing moves, as well as their content, it highlights how securitizers attempt to persuade multiple audiences that their securitizing moves should be accepted and countermeasures enacted. These claims are illustrated through the analysis of an atypical case of securitization performed by an unlikely set of securitizers, humanitarian aid organizations, as they argue that indistinctiveness poses an existential threat both to their material security and to their identity.

Iraq: Reconstruction Assistance

Following years of authoritarian rule and economic sanctions, the United States and the international community agreed in the spring of 2003 that efforts should be made to rehabilitate economic infrastructure and introduce representative government to post-war Iraq, among other objectives. To meet these ends, a large-scale assistance program has been undertaken by the United States in Iraq. This program, funded through a mix of appropriations accounts, is undergoing increased scrutiny in the 110th Congress. This report describes recent developments in this assistance effort and key issues of potential interest to Congress.

Private, Armed and Humanitarian? States, NGOs, International Private Security Companies and Shifting Humanitarianism

The article contends that, in the light of contemporary challenges, states are not only changing the meaning of the word `humanitarian’, but are also creating an expanding marketplace that includes international private security companies (PSCs) in the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Three types of factors – supply, demand, and ideational – have led to this development. On the supply side, state-demanded limitations on the private employment of violence and reduced commercial opportunities in Iraq have called for PSC diversification. On the demand side, states increasingly wish for non-state partners that are comfortable with their involvement in integrated solutions, something that PSCs, rather than nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), are more willing to embrace. On the ideational side, NGOs are concerned that humanitarian endeavour is losing its neutral and impartial status in order to facilitate counterinsurgency, `hearts and minds’ activities. PSCs, in contrast, are content with the partial delivery of assistance and likely will continue to be so given, in large part, the experiences of their personnel.

Harmonizing the Humanitarian Aid Network: Adaptive Change in a Complex System

Humanitarian aid operations save many lives, but they also fail to help many people and can have unintended political consequences. A major reason for the deficit is poor coordination among organizations. In contrast to “lessons learned” studies that dominate the literature on this topic, this article uses systemic network theory, drawn from business management literature. It presents the humanitarian aid community as a complex, open, adaptive system, in which interaction of structure and processes explain the quality of the response to environmental demands. Comparison of aid operations in Rwanda in 1994 and Afghanistan in 2001 probes the argument that the humanitarian system is becoming more effective by developing characteristics of a network through goal-directed behavior of participating organizations. The study finds development of network characteristics in the system when clusters of organizations learn to coordinate more closely, but the system is constrained by the workload of a crisis environment, lack of trust among organizations, and the political interests of donor governments.

Peace building and State-building in Afghanistan: Constructing Sovereignty for Whose Security?

In the aftermath of civil wars, international actors often worry about the incoherence, tribalism, and division of war-torn nation-states like Afghanistan. However, the problems encountered in the Afghanistan recovery and reconstruction effort illustrate that the divisions, rivalries and fragmentation of authority of the international community have constituted just as big an obstacle to what the UN now calls ‘peace building’. Sustainable stability and peace, to say nothing of democracy, require international actors to delegate some sovereign functions to a multilateral entity that can reinforce rather than undermine the institutions responsible for the reconstruction of the nation-state. The history and contemporary situation in Afghanistan makes clear that there is an important need for the peace-building mechanisms proposed by the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel. This would involve a unified international decision-making body that would act as a counterpart to the recipient national government and potentially bring order to the anarchy that invariably flows from the multiple agendas, doctrines and aid budgets of the array of external actors involved in peace building in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Liberal Peacebuilding in Timor Leste: The Emperor’s New Clothes?

A critical examination of the effort to build a liberal peace since 1999 in East Timor illustrates that to a large degree the liberal peace model has failed the East Timorese people. There are two aspects to this: the first is the failure to construct a social contract between society and its institutions of governance. This is related to the broader issue of the social legitimacy of, and contract with, international actors derived from society and its complex groupings. The second is the failure, at least in the transitional period, to respond to the experiences of everyday life and welfare requirements of the new state’s citizens.

Principal-Agent Problems in Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazards, Adverse Selection, and the Commitment Dilemma

A number of recent studies have concluded that humanitarian intervention can produce unintended consequences that reduce or completely undermine conflict management efforts. Some analysts have argued that the incentive structure produced by third parties is a form of moral hazard. This paper evaluates the utility of moral hazard theory and a second type of principal-agent problem known as adverse selection. Whereas moral hazards occur when an insured party has an opportunity to take hidden action once a contract is in effect, adverse selection is the result of asymmetric information prior to entering into a contract. Failing to distinguish between these two types of principal-agent problems may lead to policy advice that is irrelevant or potentially harmful. Along with introducing the concept of adverse selection to the debate on humanitarian intervention, this study identifies a commitment dilemma that explains why third parties operating in weakly institutionalized environments may be unable to punish groups that take advantage of intervention.

The International Military Intervention Dataset: An Updated Resource for Conflict Scholars

As major wars have become uncommon over recent decades and the efficacy of economic sanctions is questioned, foreign military intervention seems to have become increasingly prevalent on the international scene. Military intervention has also gained a degree of moral legitimacy, as it is now often launched for humanitarian ends rather than simply to further the intervener’s strategic or material interests. Despite the apparent increase in the use of foreign military intervention as a policy tool in recent years, the quantitative international conflict literature continues to operate without either a comprehensive or a current inventory of foreign military interventions. The authors attempt to fill this gap by updating Pearson & Baumann’s International Military Intervention (IMI) dataset from 1989 to 2005. IMI has a number of attributes that should make it attractive to quantitative international conflict scholars. One is that it is one of a small handful of interstate conflict datasets that attempts to discern the motives behind state uses of force. Also, its substantive coverage is broad, allowing researchers to separate out and focus on the forms of intervention (supportive, hostile, humanitarian, territorial, etc.) that are relevant to their research. As a preliminary validity test of the updated data, the authors analyze patterns of Cold War and post-Cold War military intervention in the IMI collection to see if they correspond with conventional wisdom on real world events.

Peacebuilding as Security in “Failing” and Conflict-Prone States

Peacebuilding activities in conflict-prone and post-conflict countries are based upon the assumption that effective, preferably liberal, states form the greatest prospect for a stable international order, and that failing or conflict-prone states represent a threat to international security. Peacebuilding is therefore a part of the security agenda. This has brought obvious benefits, most obviously much-needed resources, aid and capacity-building to conflict-prone countries in the form of international assistance, which has contributed to a decline in intrastate conflicts. However, there are a number of negative implications to the securitization of peacebuilding. This article considers the implications of this, and concludes that it is difficult to mediate between conventional and critical views of peacebuilding since they are premised upon quite different assumptions regarding what peacebuilding is and what it should be.

The Spoils of Peace in Iraqi Kurdistan

This paper examines transition patterns in post-Gulf war Iraqi Kurdistan as a function of external aid, and the impact of these developments on relations between the Kurdistan region and Baghdad. It argues that, despite ethnic traditions and structural legacies, the asymmetrical and changing nature of aid has created new incentives for conflict and co-operation. Since 1991 aid has strengthened the Kurdistan region’s power in relation to the state and increased leverage on the central government to accommodate Kurdish demands for autonomy. Yet it has also created an increasingly complex political,?economic order and new interdependencies between the regions. The shift from relief aid to reconstruction within a neoliberal framework has helped open the Iraqi and Kurdish political economies by encouraging trade between the Kurdistan region, regional states and foreign governments. The creation of a federal Iraqi state has also led to financial and political linkages between the Kurdistan region and Baghdad and to new requirements for negotiation.

The African Union’s Foray into Peacekeeping: Lessons from the Hybrid Mission in Darfur

The African Union (AU) was officially inaugurated on July 2002, and a year later it had already deployed its first peace operation in Burundi. The AU subsequently deployed peacekeeping missions in Darfur, in 2004, and in Somalia, in 2007. This article will examine the AUs foray into peacekeeping which appears to have been hasty, erratic, and not carefully planned. The article will also assess the extent to which what the AU has been doing can be defined as peacekeeping using the Brahimi Criterion for the deployment of operations. The article will briefly assess the AUs operations in Burundi and Somalia before focusing on the joint AU-United Nations (UN) hybrid mission in Darfur. The article examine whether the hybrid mission represents a paradigm shift in peacekeeping, based on the way that it was launched and how it is currently operated. The article examines whether the hybrid mission fulfils the Brahimi Criterion, and whether it can serve as a model for future peacekeeping operations in Africa. The article concludes that the AU has a better chance of success when it undertakes a concise and focused operation with a clear mandate and the modicum of logistics to ensure its effective implementation, as demonstrated by its experiences in Burundi. The AUs efforts in Somalia has left it mired in an open-ended complex emergency with no easy remedy. The organisations joint effort with the UN in Darfur is similarly constrained by the absence of a peace to keep. The hybrid mission therefore falls short of the Brahimi Criterion and suggest that UN intervention following an initial AU peace operation is not necessarily a panacea to the continents peacekeeping challenges.

Problematic Potential: The Human Rights Consequences of Peacekeeping Interventions in Civil Wars

Does peacekeeping intervention improve the human rights situation in states with a history of civil war? While this question has received a myriad of attention and debate within the human rights community, there have been relatively few studies that attempt to answer this question. Examining the characteristics of peacekeeping following civil war from 1980 to 2004, this article finds that peacekeeping can both encourage and undermine respect for human rights. Specifically, the mission and activities of peacekeepers matter. These findings support the human rights community’s stance that peacekeeping can be problematic but holds promise for human rights in post-conflict states.

A significant number of countries worldwide are described as entering a phase of `post’-conflict transition. Drawing on the experience of the health sector, this paper argues that the nature of the rehabilitation task is often misunderstood. In particular, it is often equated with reconstruction of war-damaged infrastructure and assets. Such an approach derives from a misconception of the origins and nature of contemporary warfare. It also serves to reinforce a linear approach to the transition from relief to development. This paper attempts to redefine the rehabilitation task in situations of `post’-conflict transition, drawing on examples from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Uganda. It argues that the direct effects of military action on the social sector are less significant than the indirect effects of political, economic and social changes which both underlie and are precipitated by conflict. Therefore, rehabilitation needs to go beyond reconstruction and tackle the root causes of instability. Such a reinterpretation of the rehabilitation task raises a number of dilemmas, particularly for international actors concerned to contribute to a sustainable peace. These dilemmas are rooted in both the uncertainty about the legitimacy of incoming governments in transitional situations, and in the organisation of the aid system itself. The paper concludes that confronting these dilemmas implies a fundamental change in the orientation and delivery of aid in `post’-conflict situations.

Mozambique: “The war ended 17 years ago, but we are still poor.”

Mozambique, an aid darling, poses some stark questions for development co-operation. Current economic management strategies mean that a growing group of young people are leaving school with a basic education but no economic prospects. Will marginal youth in towns and cities pose a threat of political and criminal violence? Can peace be built on poverty and rising inequality? Are elections and expanded schooling enough when there are no jobs?

Bribes or Bargains? Peace Conditionalities and ‘Post-Conflict’ Reconstruction in Afghanistan

This article focuses on the role of international aid donors in Afghanistan since the signing of the Bonn Agreement in 2001. Specifically, it explores the scope and utility of peace conditionalities as an instrument for peace consolidation in the context of a fragile war-to-peace transition. Geo-strategic and institutional concerns have generally led to an unconditional approach to assistance by international actors. It is argued that large inflows of unconditional aid risk re-creating the structural conditions that led to the outbreak of conflict. Aid conditionalities need to be re-conceptualized as aid-for-peace bargains rather than as bribes for security. Some forms of conditionality are necessary in order to rebuild the social contract in Afghanistan. This finding has wider relevance for aid donors and they should reconsider orthodox development models in ‘fragile state’ settings. Rather than seeing conditionalities and ownership as two ends of a policy spectrum, the former may be a necessary instrument for achieving the latter.

The Imperative to Rebuild: Assessing the Normative Case for Postconflict Reconstruction

The past two decades have witnessed the proliferation of comprehensive international missions of peacebuilding and reconstruction, aimed not simply at bringing conflict to an end but also at preventing its recurrence. Recent missions, ranging from relatively modest involvement to highly complex international administrations, have generated a debate about the rights and duties of international actors to reconstruct postconflict states. In view of the recent growth of such missions, and the serious challenges and crises that have plagued them, we seek in this article to address some of the gaps in the current literature and engage in a critical analysis of the moral purposes and dilemmas of reconstruction. More specifically, we construct a map for understanding and evaluating the different ethical imperatives advanced by those who attempt to rebuild war-torn societies. In our view, such a mapping exercise is a necessary step in any attempt to build a normative defence of postconflict reconstruction. The article proceeds in two stages: first, we present the various rationales for reconstruction offered by international actors, and systematize these into four different “logics”; second, we evaluate the implications and normative dilemmas generated by each logic.

Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World

The international community has struggled without much success to remedy the problem of failed states. Meanwhile, 40 or 50 countries around the world — from Sudan and Somalia to Kosovo and East Timor — remain in a crisis of governance. In this impressive book, Ghani, a former Afghan finance minister, and Lockhart, who has worked at the World Bank and the United Nations, assess the missteps and offer a new framework for coordinated action. They argue that international responses have failed because they have been piecemeal and have proceeded with little understanding of what states need to do in the modern world system to connect citizens to global flows. They advocate a “citizen-based approach.” State-building strategies would be organized around a “double compact”: between country leaders and the international community, on the one hand, and country leaders and citizens, on the other. The book also proposes methods for the generation of comparative data on state capacity — a “sovereignty index” — to be annually reported to the UN and the World Bank. Ultimately, this study offers a surprisingly optimistic vision. The fact that so many disadvantaged countries have made dramatic economic and political transitions over the last decade suggests that developmental pathways do exist — if only the lessons and practical knowledge of local circumstances can be matched to coordinated and sustained international efforts. The authors provide a practical framework for achieving these ends, supporting their case with first-hand examples of struggling territories such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo and Nepal as well as the world’s success stories–Singapore, Ireland, and even the American South.

The Liberal Way of Development and the Developmental-Security Impasse: Exploring the Global Life-Chance Divide

As the rising death toll among humanitarian aid workers suggests, saving strangers has become a dangerous occupation. In addressing the consequences of this increase, this article begins by placing the development-security nexus in its historical context. While it has long been associated with liberalism, two factors distinguish this nexus today: first, the global outlawing of spontaneous or undocumented migration; second, the shift in the focus of security from states to the people living within them. Reflecting these moves, policy discourse now conceives development and underdevelopment biopolitically – that is, in terms of how life is to be supported and maintained, and how people are expected to live, rather than according to economic and state-based models. The household and communal self-reliance that forms the basis of this biopolitics, however, has long been in crisis. Since the end of the Cold War, the destabilizing forms of global circulation associated with this emergency have been reconstituted as threats to the critical infrastructures that support mass consumer society. A new security terrain now links the crisis of adaptive self-reliance with risks to critical infrastructure within a single framework of strategic calculation. Rather than ameliorating the generic life-chance divide between the global north and south, the development-security nexus is entrenching it.

Towards a More Professional Approach to Nation-building

This article describes the slow and uneven movement towards a more professional approach to nation-building. The post-cold war era is replete with instances where the United States found itself burdened by the challenges of nation-building in the wake of a successful military operation. American performance in the conduct of such missions improved slowly through the 1990s, but this trend was not sustained into the decade beginning in 2000. The article outlines what a more professional approach to peacebuilding would require, highlighting a hierarchy of tasks that flow in the following order: security, humanitarian relief, governance, economic stabilization, democratization and development.

America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq

The post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan set standards for postconflict nation-building that have not since been matched. Only in recent years has the United States has felt the need to participate in similar transformations, but it is now facing one of the most challenging prospects since the 1940s: Iraq. The authors review seven case studies – Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan – and seek lessons about what worked well and what did not. Then, they examine the Iraq situation in light of these lessons. Success in Iraq will require an extensive commitment of financial, military, and political resources for a long time. The United States cannot afford to contemplate early exit strategies and cannot afford to leave the job half completed.

Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario

In October 2002, the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, in coordination with the Office of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff/G-3, initiated a study to analyze how American and coalition forces can best address the requirements that will necessarily follow operational victory in a war with Iraq. The objectives of the project were to determine and analyze probable missions for military forces in a post-Saddam Iraq; examine associated challenges; and formulate strategic recommendations for transferring responsibilities to coalition partners or civilian organizations, mitigating local animosity, and facilitating overall mission accomplishment in the war against terrorism. The study has much to offer planners and executors of operations to occupy and reconstruct Iraq, but also has many insights that will apply to achieving strategic objectives in any conflict after hostilities are concluded. The current war against terrorism has highlighted the danger posed by failed and struggling states. If this nation and its coalition partners decide to undertake the mission to remove Saddam Hussein, they will also have to be prepared to dedicate considerable time, manpower, and money to the effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fighting is over. Otherwise, the success of military operations will be ephemeral, and the problems they were designed to eliminate could return or be replaced by new and more virulent difficulties.

The Role of Development Aid in Conflict Transformation: Facilitating Empowerment Processes and Community Building

This chapter will focus on the practical experience of traditional relief and development projects working on complex emergencies in the field of community development. As the authors explore the nexus between conflict transformation on the one hand and participatory and empowerment approaches on the other, they will critically assess the potential of common empowerment approaches within community building not only to avoid doing harm but also to make a substantive contribution to conflict transformation at the local level. The empirical base of the chapter lies within participatory research and in the experiences of bilateral and multilateral development cooperation in the war-torn areas of Sri Lanka. Sections II and III will explore recent aspects of the conflict transformation discourse, paying particular attention to conclusions that might be drawn concerning the role of development aid in complex emergencies. Sections IV and V introduce some common participatory and empowerment approaches within the field of community development, delineating their theoretical objectives as well as their practical implementation. Section VI critically discusses possible spaces of action, as well as constraints, dilemmas and ambivalences for the facilitation of empowerment processes through development aid within complex emergencies. The authors conclude with future prospects on the potentials, constraints and ambivalence of empowerment approaches and recommend a more political role for development aid in complex emergencies as it engages in more inclusive community building through processes of empowerment and recognition.

Building Peace After War

Author addresses the widespread practice of intervention by outside actors aimed at building ‘sustainable peace’ within societies ravaged by war, examining the record of interventions from Cambodia in the early 1990s to contemporary efforts in Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The book analyses the nature of the modern peacebuilding environment, in particular the historical and psychological conditions that shape it, and addresses the key tasks faced by outside forces in the early and ciritical ‘post-conflict’ phase of an intervention.

The West and Contemporary Peace Operations

In recent years, senior UN officials have raised concerns about the decline of Western contributions to UN peace operations. Although this is a worrying trend for supporters of the UN, it does not mean that the West is playing a smaller role in peace operations per se. Instead, the West has increased its contribution to `hybrid’ peace operations and missions that take place outside of the UN system. This article examines the West’s contribution to both UN and non-UN peace operations since the Brahimi Report and assesses whether its contribution has markedly changed and what impact any changes have had on international peace and security. It proceeds in three sections. The first provides a historical overview of the West’s ambivalent relationship with UN peace operations since 1948. The second analyses the West’s contribution to UN, hybrid and non-UN peace operations. The final section explores what Western policies mean for international peace and security by assessing their impact on the UN’s authority, the extent to which they save lives and their contribution to building stable peace. The article concludes that while in the short term the West’s willingness to participate in hybrid operations displays a commitment to finding pragmatic solutions to some difficult problems, over the longer term this approach may weaken the UN’s ability to maintain international peace and security.

The Evolution of Post-conflict Recovery

Recent history has been marked by the rise of post-conflict intervention as a component of military and foreign policy, as a form of humanitarianism and as a challenge to Westphalian notions of state sovereignty. The terms of debate, the history of the discipline and the evolution of scholarship and practice remain relatively under-examined, particularly in the post-9/11 period in which post-conflict recovery came to be construed as an extension of conflict and as a domain concerned principally with the national security of predominantly Western countries. The subsequent politicisation of post-conflict recovery and entry of post-conflict assistance into the political economy of conflict have fundamentally changed policy making and practice. The authors argue that research into post-conflict recovery, which must become increasingly rigorous and theoretically grounded, should detach itself from the myriad political agendas which have sought to impose themselves upon war-torn countries. The de-politicisation of post-conflict recovery, the authors conclude, may benefit from an increasingly structured “architecture of integrated, directed recovery.”