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UN Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding: Progress and Paradox in Local Ownership

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2020

Susanna P. Campbell
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Abstract

UN peace operations have increasingly focused on the importance of “local ownership.” The logic is simple. For peace operations to succeed in helping war-torn states to create accountable, democratic institutions grounded in the rule of law, peace operations need to internalize democratic principles by making UN missions accountable to different domestic constituencies—crossing ethnic, religious, racial, social, and gender lines—within the war-torn country. As part of a special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay argues that while there is widespread consensus among UN member states and UN bureaucrats that local ownership is necessary, UN peace operations have faced significant obstacles to creating true local ownership. These obstacles include the UN's focus on host-government ownership; the challenge of creating trust with different domestic constituencies that represent diverse perspectives; the supply-driven nature of UN intervention; and the mismatch between the UN's ideal post-conflict state and the preferences of post-conflict societies. To make UN peace operations more responsive to post-conflict societies, UN staff often have to bend or break rules established only to hold them accountable to their member states.

Keywords

United Nationspeacekeepinglocal ownershippeacebuildingaccountability
Type
The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 34 , Special Issue 3: The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward , Fall 2020 , pp. 319 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

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References

NOTES

1 Walter, Barbara F., Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; and Fortna, Virginia Page, Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents’ Choices after Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Thakur, Ramesh, The United Nations, Peace, and Security (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, Report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations on Uniting Our Strengths for Peace: Politics, Partnership and People, A/70/95-S/2015/446 (New York: United Nations, 2015), p. 20.

4 For further information on the evolution of UN peacekeeping operations, see “Our History,” United Nations Peacekeeping, n.d., peacekeeping.un.org/en/our-history.

5 Ibid.

6 UN, Report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations on Uniting Our Strengths for Peace, p. 20.

7 See, for example, Advisory Group of Experts, The Challenge of Sustaining Peace: Report of the Advisory Group of Experts for the 2015 Review of the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture, A/69/968–S/2015/490 (New York: United Nations, June 29, 2015).

8 Béatrice Pouligny, Peace Operations Seen from Below: UN Missions and Local People (London: Hurst, 2006); Séverine Autesserre, “Hobbes and the Congo: Frames, Local Violence, and International Intervention,” International Organization 63, no. 2 (2009), pp. 249–80; and Susanna Campbell, David Chandler, and Meera Sabaratnam, A Liberal Peace? The Problems and Practices of Peacebuilding (Zed, 2011).

9 See, in particular, Séverine Autesserre, Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018); and Susanna P. Campbell, Global Governance and Local Peace: Accountability and Performance in International Peacebuilding (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

10 United Nations General Assembly, Challenge of Sustaining Peace, p. 47.

11 UN, Report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations on Uniting Our Strengths for Peace, p. 10.

12 Pouligny, Peace Operations Seen from Below; Autesserre, “Hobbes and the Congo”; Campbell et al., A Liberal Peace?; and Meera Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention: International Statebuilding in Mozambique (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).

13 See, for example, Campbell, Global Governance and Local Peace, pp. 147–73.

14 Ibid., pp. 159–164.

15 Ibid.

16 Advisory Group of Experts, The Challenge of Sustaining Peace: Report of the Advisory Group of Experts for the 2015 Review of the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture, A/69/968–S/2015/490 (New York: United Nations, June 29, 2015).

17 UN, Report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations on Uniting Our Strengths for Peace, p. 78.

18 United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Department of Field Support, “United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines,” (New York: United Nations, 2008), p. 32.

19 Campbell, Global Governance and Local Peace.

20 Sarah von Billerbeck and Oisin Tansey, “Enabling Autocracy? Peacebuilding and Post-Conflict Authoritarianism in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” European Journal of International Relations 25, no. 3 (September 2019), pp. 698–722.

21 Giulia Piccolino, “Local Peacebuilding in a Victor's Peace: Why Local Peace Fails without National Reconciliation,” International Peacekeeping 26, no. 3 (March 2019), pp. 354–79.

22 Campbell, Global Governance and Local Peace.

23 Schia, Niels Nagelhus and Karlsrud, John, “‘Where the Rubber Meets the Road’: Friction Sites and Local-Level Peacebuilding in Haiti, Liberia and South Sudan,” International Peacekeeping 20, no. 2 (June 2013), pp. 233–248CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 On this point, see Campbell, “International Organizations in Peacebuilding—Internationally Accountable, Locally Constrained,” chap. 4 in Global Governance and Local Peace, pp. 142–200.

25 Pouligny, Peace Operations Seen from Below; and Niels Schia, Ingvild Magnæs Gjelsvik, and John Karlsrud, “Connections and Disconnections: Understanding and Integrating Local Perceptions in United Nations Peacekeeping,” Conflict Trends (April 2014).

26 UN, Report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations on Uniting Our Strengths for Peace, p. 77.

27 Talentino, Andrea Kathryn, “Perceptions of Peacebuilding: The Dynamic of Imposer and Imposed Upon,” International Studies Perspectives 8, no. 2 (May 2007), pp. 152–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Jennings, Kathleen M., “Life in a ‘Peace-Kept’ City: Encounters with the Peacekeeping Economy,” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 9, no. 3 (July 2015), pp. 296–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Ibid.

30 Mukhopadhyay, Dipali, Warlords, Strongman Governors, and the State in Afghanistan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 World Bank Group and United Nations, Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2018); Campbell et al., A Liberal Peace?; Suhrke, Astri, When More Is Less: The International Project in Afghanistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; and Cheng, Christine, Extralegal Groups in Post-Conflict Liberia: How Trade Makes the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 von Billerbeck, Sarah B. K., Whose Peace? Local Ownership and United Nations Peacekeeping (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Ibid.

34 Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work?

35 Howard, Lise Morjé, Power in Peacekeeping (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Campbell, Global Governance and Local Peace.