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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The United Nations was founded, in the words of its
Charter, in order "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of
war." Meeting this challenge is the most important function of the
Organization, and to a very significant degree it is the yardstick with which
the Organization is judged by the peoples it exists to serve. Over the last
decade, the United Nations has repeatedly failed to meet the challenge, and it
can do no better today. Without renewed commitment on the part of Member
States, significant institutional change and increased financial support, the
United Nations will not be capable of executing the critical peacekeeping and
peace-building tasks that the Member States assign to it in coming months and
years. There are many tasks which United Nations peacekeeping forces should not
be asked to undertake and many places they should not go. But when the United
Nations does send its forces to uphold the peace, they must be prepared to
confront the lingering forces of war and violence, with the ability and
determination to defeat them.
The Secretary-General has
asked the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, composed of individuals
experienced in various aspects of conflict prevention, peacekeeping and
peace-building, to assess the shortcomings of the existing system and to make
frank, specific and realistic recommendations for change. Our recommendations
focus not only on politics and strategy but also and perhaps even more so on
operational and organizational areas of need.
For preventive initiatives to
succeed in reducing tension and averting conflict, the Secretary-General needs
clear, strong and sustained political support from Member States. Furthermore,
as the United Nations has bitterly and repeatedly discovered over the last
decade, no amount of good intentions can substitute for the fundamental ability
to project credible force if complex peacekeeping, in particular, is to
succeed. But force alone cannot create peace; it can only create the space in
which peace may be built. Moreover, the changes that the Panel recommends will
have no lasting impact unless Member States summon the political will to
support the United Nations politically, financially and operationally to enable
the United Nations to be truly credible as a force for peace.
Each of the recommendations
contained in the present report is designed to remedy a serious problem in
strategic direction, decision-making, rapid deployment, operational planning
and support, and the use of modern information technology. Key assessments and
recommendations are highlighted below, largely in the order in which they
appear in the body of the text (the numbers of the relevant paragraphs in the
main text are provided in parentheses). In addition, a summary of
recommendations is contained in the annex.
It should have come as no
surprise to anyone that some of the missions of the past decade would be
particularly hard to accomplish: they tended to deploy where conflict had not
resulted in victory for any side, where a military stalemate or international
pressure or both had brought fighting to a halt but at least some of the
parties to the conflict were not seriously committed to ending the
confrontation. United Nations operations thus did not deploy into post-conflict situations but
tried to create them. In such complex operations, peacekeepers work to maintain a secure
local environment while peacebuilders work to make that environment
self-sustaining. Only such an environment offers a ready exit to peacekeeping
forces, making peacekeepers and peacebuilders inseparable partners.
Implications
for preventive action and peace-building: the need for strategy and support
The United Nations and its
members face a pressing need to establish more effective strategies for
conflict prevention, in both the long and short terms. In this context, the
Panel endorses the recommendations of the Secretary-General with respect to
conflict prevention contained in the Millennium Report (A/54/2000) and in his
remarks before the Security CouncilŐs second open meeting on conflict
prevention in July 2000. It also encourages the Secretary-GeneralŐs more
frequent use of fact-finding missions to areas of tension in support of
short-term crisis-preventive action.
Furthermore, the Security
Council and the General AssemblyŐs Special Committee on Peacekeeping
Operations, conscious that the United Nations will continue to face the
prospect of having to assist communities and nations in making the transition
from war to peace, have each recognized and acknowledged the key role of
peace-building in complex peace operations. This will require that the United Nations
system address what has hitherto been a fundamental deficiency in the way it
has conceived of, funded and implemented peace-building strategies and
activities. Thus, the Panel recommends that the Executive Committee on Peace
and Security (ECPS) present to the Secretary-General a plan to strengthen the
permanent capacity of the United Nations to develop peace-building strategies
and to implement programmes in support of those strategies.
Among the changes that the
Panel supports are: a doctrinal shift in the use of civilian police and related
rule of law elements in peace operations that emphasizes a team approach to
upholding the rule of law and respect for human rights and helping communities
coming out of a conflict to achieve national reconciliation; consolidation of
disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programmes into the assessed
budgets of complex peace operations in their first phase; flexibility for heads
of United Nations peace operations to fund "quick impact projects" that
make a real difference in the lives of people in the mission area; and better
integration of electoral assistance into a broader strategy for the support of
governance institutions.
Implications
for peacekeeping: the need for robust doctrine and realistic mandates
The Panel concurs that consent
of the local parties, impartiality and the use of force only in self-defence
should remain the bedrock principles of peacekeeping. Experience shows,
however, that in the context of intra-State/transnational conflicts, consent
may be manipulated in many ways. Impartiality for United Nations operations
must therefore mean adherence to the principles of the Charter: where one party
to a peace agreement clearly and incontrovertibly is violating its terms,
continued equal treatment of all parties by the United Nations can in the best
case result in ineffectiveness and in the worst may amount to complicity
with evil. No failure did more to damage the standing and credibility of United
Nations peacekeeping in the 1990s than its reluctance to distinguish victim
from aggressor.
In the past, the United
Nations has often found itself unable to respond effectively to such
challenges. It is a fundamental premise of the present report, however, that it
must be able to do so. Once deployed, United Nations peacekeepers must be able
to carry out their mandate professionally and successfully. This means that
United Nations military units must be capable of defending themselves, other
mission components and the missionŐs mandate. Rules of engagement should be
sufficiently robust and not force United Nations contingents to cede the
initiative to their attackers.
This means, in turn, that the
Secretariat must not apply best-case planning assumptions to situations where
the local actors have historically exhibited worst-case behaviour. It means
that mandates should specify an operationŐs authority to use force. It means
bigger forces, better equipped and more costly but able to be a credible
deterrent. In particular, United Nations forces for complex operations should
be afforded the field intelligence and other capabilities needed to mount an
effective defence against violent challengers.
Moreover, United Nations
peacekeepers Ń troops or police Ń who witness violence against civilians should
be presumed to be authorized to stop it, within their means, in support of
basic United Nations principles. However, operations given a broad and explicit
mandate for civilian protection must be given the specific resources needed to
carry out that mandate.
The Secretariat must tell the
Security Council what it needs to know, not what it wants to hear, when
recommending force and other resource levels for a new mission, and it must set
those levels according to realistic scenarios that take into account likely challenges
to implementation. Security Council mandates, in turn, should reflect the
clarity that peacekeeping operations require for unity of effort when they
deploy into potentially dangerous situations.
The current practice is for
the Secretary-General to be given a Security Council resolution specifying
troop levels on paper, not knowing whether he will be given the troops and
other personnel that the mission needs to function effectively, or whether they
will be properly equipped. The Panel is of the view that, once realistic
mission requirements have been set and agreed to, the Council should leave its
authorizing resolution in draft form until the Secretary-General confirms that
he has received troop and other commitments from Member States sufficient to
meet those requirements.
Member States that do commit
formed military units to an operation should be invited to consult with the
members of the Security Council during mandate formulation; such advice might
usefully be institutionalized via the establishment of ad hoc subsidiary organs
of the Council, as provided for in Article 29 of the Charter. Troop
contributors should also be invited to attend Secretariat briefings of the
Security Council pertaining to crises that affect the safety and security of
mission personnel or to a change or reinterpretation of the mandate regarding
the use of force.
New
headquarters capacity for information management and strategic analysis
The Panel recommends that a
new information-gathering and analysis entity be created to support the
informational and analytical needs of the Secretary-General and the members of
the Executive Committee on Peace and Security (ECPS). Without such capacity,
the Secretariat will remain a reactive institution, unable to get ahead of
daily events, and the ECPS will not be able to fulfil the role for which it was
created.
The PanelŐs proposed ECPS
Information and Strategic Analysis Secretariat (EISAS) would create and
maintain integrated databases on peace and security issues, distribute that knowledge
efficiently within the United Nations system, generate policy analyses,
formulate long-term strategies for ECPS and bring budding crises to the
attention of the ECPS leadership. It could also propose and manage the agenda
of ECPS itself, helping to transform it into the decision-making body
anticipated in the Secretary-GeneralŐs initial reforms.
The Panel proposes that EISAS
be created by consolidating the existing Situation Centre of the Department of
Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) with a number of small, scattered policy
planning offices, and adding a small team of military analysts, experts in
international criminal networks and information systems specialists. EISAS
should serve the needs of all members of ECPS.
Improved
mission guidance and leadership
The Panel believes it is
essential to assemble the leadership of a new mission as early as possible at
United Nations Headquarters, to participate in shaping a missionŐs concept of
operations, support plan, budget, staffing and Headquarters mission guidance.
To that end, the Panel recommends that the Secretary-General compile, in a
systematic fashion and with input from Member States, a comprehensive list of
potential special representatives of the Secretary-General (SRSGs), force
commanders, civilian police commissioners, their potential deputies and
potential heads of other components of a mission, representing a broad
geographic and equitable gender distribution.
Rapid
deployment standards and "on-call" expertise
The first 6 to 12 weeks
following a ceasefire or peace accord are often the most critical ones for
establishing both a stable peace and the credibility of a new operation.
Opportunities lost during that period are hard to regain.
The Panel recommends that the
United Nations define "rapid and effective deployment capacity" as
the ability to fully deploy traditional peacekeeping operations within 30 days
of the adoption of a Security Council resolution establishing such an
operation, and within 90 days in the case of complex peacekeeping operations.
The Panel recommends that the
United Nations standby arrangements system (UNSAS) be developed further to
include several coherent, multinational, brigade-size forces and the necessary
enabling forces, created by Member States working in partnership, in order to
better meet the need for the robust peacekeeping forces that the Panel has
advocated. The Panel also recommends that the Secretariat send a team to
confirm the readiness of each potential troop contributor to meet the requisite
United Nations training and equipment requirements for peacekeeping operations,
prior to deployment. Units that do not meet the requirements must not be
deployed.
To support such rapid and
effective deployment, the Panel recommends that a revolving "on-call
list" of about 100 experienced, well qualified military officers,
carefully vetted and accepted by DPKO, be created within UNSAS. Teams drawn
from this list and available for duty on seven daysŐ notice would translate
broad, strategic-level mission concepts developed at Headquarters into concrete
operational and tactical plans in advance of the deployment of troop
contingents, and would augment a core element from DPKO to serve as part of a
mission start-up team.
Parallel on-call lists of
civilian police, international judicial experts, penal experts and human rights
specialists must be available in sufficient numbers to strengthen rule of law
institutions, as needed, and should also be part of UNSAS. Pre-trained teams
could then be drawn from this list to precede the main body of civilian police
and related specialists into a new mission area, facilitating the rapid and
effective deployment of the law and order component into the mission.
The Panel also calls upon
Member States to establish enhanced national "pools" of police
officers and related experts, earmarked for deployment to United Nations peace
operations, to help meet the high demand for civilian police and related
criminal justice/rule of law expertise in peace operations dealing with
intra-State conflict. The Panel also urges Member States to consider forming
joint regional partnerships and programmes for the purpose of training members
of the respective national pools to United Nations civilian police doctrine and
standards.
The Secretariat should also address,
on an urgent basis, the needs: to put in place a transparent and decentralized
recruitment mechanism for civilian field personnel; to improve the retention of
the civilian specialists that are needed in every complex peace operation; and
to create standby arrangements for their rapid deployment.
Finally, the Panel recommends
that the Secretariat radically alter the systems and procedures in place for
peacekeeping procurement in order to facilitate rapid deployment. It recommends
that responsibilities for peacekeeping budgeting and procurement be moved out
of the Department of Management and placed in DPKO. The Panel proposes the
creation of a new and distinct body of streamlined field procurement policies
and procedures; increased delegation of procurement authority to the field; and
greater flexibility for field missions in the management of their budgets. The
Panel also urges that the Secretary-General formulate and submit to the General
Assembly, for its approval, a global logistics support strategy governing the
stockpiling of equipment reserves and standing contracts with the private
sector for common goods and services. In the interim, the Panel recommends that
additional "start-up kits" of essential equipment be maintained at
the United Nations Logistics Base (UNLB) in Brindisi, Italy.
The Panel also recommends that
the Secretary-General be given authority, with the approval of the Advisory
Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) to commit up to $50
million well in advance of the adoption of a Security Council resolution
establishing a new operation once it becomes clear that an operation is likely
to be established.
Enhance
Headquarters capacity to plan and support peace operations
The Panel recommends that
Headquarters support for peacekeeping be treated as a core activity of the
United Nations, and as such the majority of its resource requirements should be
funded through the regular budget of the Organization. DPKO and other offices
that plan and support peacekeeping are currently primarily funded by the
Support Account, which is renewed each year and funds only temporary posts.
That approach to funding and staff seems to confuse the temporary nature of
specific operations with the evident permanence of peacekeeping and other peace
operations activities as core functions of the United Nations, which is
obviously an untenable state of affairs.
The total cost of DPKO and
related Headquarters support offices for peacekeeping does not exceed $50
million per annum, or roughly 2 per cent of total peacekeeping costs.
Additional resources for those offices are urgently needed to ensure that more
than $2 billion spent on peacekeeping in 2001 are well spent. The Panel
therefore recommends that the Secretary-General submit a proposal to the
General Assembly outlining the OrganizationŐs requirements in full.
The Panel believes that a
methodical management review of DPKO should be conducted but also believes that
staff shortages in certain areas are plainly obvious. For example, it is clearly
not enough to have 32 officers providing military planning and guidance to
27,000 troops in the field, nine civilian police staff to identify, vet and
provide guidance for up to 8,600 police, and 15 political desk officers for 14
current operations and two new ones, or to allocate just 1.25 per cent of the
total costs of peacekeeping to Headquarters administrative and logistics
support.
Establish
Integrated Mission Task Forces for mission planning and support
The Panel recommends that
Integrated Mission Task Forces (IMTFs) be created, with staff from throughout
the United Nations system seconded to them, to plan new missions and help them
reach full deployment, significantly enhancing the support that Headquarters
provides to the field. There is currently no integrated planning or support
cell in the Secretariat that brings together those responsible for political
analysis, military operations, civilian police, electoral assistance, human
rights, development, humanitarian assistance, refugees and displaced persons,
public information, logistics, finance and recruitment.
Structural adjustments are
also required in other elements of DPKO, in particular to the Military and
Civilian Police Division, which should be reorganized into two separate
divisions, and the Field Administration and Logistics Division (FALD), which
should be split into two divisions. The Lessons Learned Unit should be
strengthened and moved into the DPKO Office of Operations. Public information
planning and support at Headquarters also needs strengthening, as do elements
in the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), particularly the electoral unit.
Outside the Secretariat, the ability of the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights to plan and support the human rights components
of peace operations needs to be reinforced.
Consideration should be given
to allocating a third Assistant Secretary-General to DPKO and designating one
of them as "Principal Assistant Secretary-General", functioning as
the deputy to the Under-Secretary-General.
Adapting
peace operations to the information age
Modern, well utilized
information technology (IT) is a key enabler of many of the above-mentioned
objectives, but gaps in strategy, policy and practice impede its effective use.
In particular, Headquarters lacks a sufficiently strong responsibility centre
for user-level IT strategy and policy in peace operations. A senior official
with such responsibility in the peace and security arena should be appointed
and located within EISAS, with counterparts in the offices of the SRSG in every
United Nations peace operation.
Headquarters and the field
missions alike also need a substantive, global, Peace Operations Extranet
(POE), through which missions would have access to, among other things, EISAS
databases and analyses and lessons learned.
The Panel believes that the
above recommendations fall well within the bounds of what can be reasonably
demanded of the OrganizationŐs Member States. Implementing some of them will
require additional resources for the Organization, but we do not mean to
suggest that the best way to solve the problems of the United Nations is merely
to throw additional resources at them. Indeed, no amount of money or resources
can substitute for the significant changes that are urgently needed in the
culture of the Organization.
The Panel calls on the
Secretariat to heed the Secretary-GeneralŐs initiatives to reach out to the
institutions of civil society; to constantly keep in mind that the United Nations
they serve is the universal organization. People everywhere are fully entitled to consider
that it is their organization, and as such to pass judgement on its activities and the
people who serve in it.
Furthermore, wide disparities
in staff quality exist and those in the system are the first to acknowledge it;
better performers are given unreasonable workloads to compensate for those who
are less capable. Unless the United Nations takes steps to become a true
meritocracy, it will not be able to reverse the alarming trend of qualified
personnel, the young among them in particular, leaving the Organization.
Moreover, qualified people will have no incentive to join it. Unless managers
at all levels, beginning with the Secretary-General and his senior staff,
seriously address this problem on a priority basis, reward excellence and
remove incompetence, additional resources will be wasted and lasting reform
will become impossible.
Member States also acknowledge
that they need to reflect on their working culture and methods. It is incumbent
upon Security Council members, for example, and the membership at large to
breathe life into the words that they produce, as did, for instance, the
Security Council delegation that flew to Jakarta and Dili in the wake of the
East Timor crisis in 1999, an example of effective Council action at its best: res, non verba.
We Ń the members of the Panel
on United Nations Peace Operations Ń call on the leaders of the world assembled
at the Millennium Summit, as they renew their commitment to the ideals of the
United Nations, to commit as well to strengthen the capacity of the United
Nations to fully accomplish the mission which is, indeed, its very raison
dŐtre: to
help communities engulfed in strife and to maintain or restore peace.
While building consensus for the recommendations in the present report, we have also come to a shared vision of a United Nations, extending a strong helping hand to a community, country or region to avert conflict or to end violence. We see an SRSG ending a mission well accomplished, having given the people of a country the opportunity to do for themselves what they could not do before: to build and hold onto peace, to find reconciliation, to strengthen democracy, to secure human rights. We see, above all, a United Nations that has not only the will but also the ability to fulfil its great promise, and to justify the confidence and trust placed in it by the overwhelming majority of humankind.