UN Peacebuilding Architecture


Book Description

Since its establishment, the UN's Peacebuilding Architecture (PBA) has been involved in peacebuilding processes in more than 20 countries. This edited volume takes stock of the overall impact of the PBA during its first decade in existence, and generates innovative recommendations for how the architecture can be modified and utilized to create more synergy and fusion between the UN's peace and development work. The volume is based on commissioned research and independent evaluations as well as informed opinions of several key decision-makers closely engaged in shaping the UN's peacebuilding agenda. It seeks to find a balance between identifying the reality and constraints of the UN's multilateral framework, while being bold in exploring new and innovative ways in which the UN can enhance the results of its peace and development work through the PBA. The research and writing of each chapter has been guided by four objectives: to assess the overall impact of the PBA; to generate innovative ideas for how the PBA can be made more effective post-2015; to analyze the PBA’s role at the nexus of the UN's peace and development work; and to consider what would be required for the PBA to increase and improve its impact in future. It will be of interest to diplomats, UN officials, the policy community and scholars engaged in the debate following the 2015 review and the implementation of its recommendations, and will be an essential resource for UN and peacebuilding scholars.




Making War and Building Peace


Book Description

Making War and Building Peace examines how well United Nations peacekeeping missions work after civil war. Statistically analyzing all civil wars since 1945, the book compares peace processes that had UN involvement to those that didn't. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis argue that each mission must be designed to fit the conflict, with the right authority and adequate resources. UN missions can be effective by supporting new actors committed to the peace, building governing institutions, and monitoring and policing implementation of peace settlements. But the UN is not good at intervening in ongoing wars. If the conflict is controlled by spoilers or if the parties are not ready to make peace, the UN cannot play an effective enforcement role. It can, however, offer its technical expertise in multidimensional peacekeeping operations that follow enforcement missions undertaken by states or regional organizations such as NATO. Finding that UN missions are most effective in the first few years after the end of war, and that economic development is the best way to decrease the risk of new fighting in the long run, the authors also argue that the UN's role in launching development projects after civil war should be expanded.




Peacebuilding


Book Description

The emergence of The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) in 2005 was the culmination of a long and contentious process. In this work Rob Jenkins provides a concise introduction that traces the origins and evolution of peacebuilding as a concept, the creation and functioning of the PBC as an institution, and the complicated relationship between these two processes. Jenkins discusses how continued contestation over what exactly peacebuilding is, and how its objectives can most effectively be achieved, influenced the institutional design and de facto functioning of the PBC, its structure, mandate and origins. He then moves on to examine the peacebuilding architecture in action and analyses the role that the PBC has carved out for itself, reflecting on the future prospects for the organization. The theory and practice of peacebuilding has assumed increasing importance over the last decade, and this work is essential reading for all students of conflict resolution, peace studies and international relations.




Pathways for Peace


Book Description

Violent conflicts today are complex and increasingly protracted, involving more nonstate groups and regional and international actors. It is estimated that by 2030—the horizon set by the international community for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals—more than half of the world’s poor will be living in countries affected by high levels of violence. Information and communication technology, population movements, and climate change are also creating shared risks that must be managed at both national and international levels. Pathways for Peace is a joint United Nations†“World Bank Group study that originates from the conviction that the international community’s attention must urgently be refocused on prevention. A scaled-up system for preventive action would save between US$5 billion and US$70 billion per year, which could be reinvested in reducing poverty and improving the well-being of populations. The study aims to improve the way in which domestic development processes interact with security, diplomacy, mediation, and other efforts to prevent conflicts from becoming violent. It stresses the importance of grievances related to exclusion—from access to power, natural resources, security and justice, for example—that are at the root of many violent conflicts today. Based on a review of cases in which prevention has been successful, the study makes recommendations for countries facing emerging risks of violent conflict as well as for the international community. Development policies and programs must be a core part of preventive efforts; when risks are high or building up, inclusive solutions through dialogue, adapted macroeconomic policies, institutional reform, and redistributive policies are required. Inclusion is key, and preventive action needs to adopt a more people-centered approach that includes mainstreaming citizen engagement. Enhancing the participation of women and youth in decision making is fundamental to sustaining peace, as well as long-term policies to address the aspirations of women and young people.




Challenging the United Nations Peace and Security Agenda in Africa


Book Description

This book concerns the United Nations’ peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace-building, and post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Africa from 1960 to 2021. Succinctly discussed are historic and contemporary peace, security, and economic engagements within 18 countries spanning eight African regions: the Great Lakes; the Economic Community of Central African States; East Africa; the Horn of Africa; North Africa; the Sahel Region; West Africa; and Southern Africa. The book develops a neo-realist and imperialist critique that discusses how resource-rich, conflict-ridden states have become easy targets for capitalists, terrorists, and transnational crime, aligned to geostrategic parochial interests. Critically argued is that endogenous economic growth factors, if applied effectively, can achieve both peace and security, and meet the Global Sustainable Development Goals. Such efforts require constructive engagement with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US. However, the book contends that the cornerstone of multilateral engagement involves Africa’s 55 states and the African Union’s three major pillars: the Peace and Security Council, the African Governance Architecture, and the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Development Centre, which have the ability to move resource-rich, conflict-ridden states out of transnational crime and poverty. This book offers wide-ranging analyses of contemporary African diplomacy and a compelling critique of UN peacekeeping efforts in Africa, which resonates to scholars of international relations, peace and conflict studies, and African politics.




Entangled Peace


Book Description

This book unfolds an exploratory journey intended to scrutinise the suitability of entanglements and relations as a mode of thinking and seeing peacebuilding events. Through a reflection upon the UN’s limited results in the endeavour towards securing lasting peace in war-torn scenarios, Torrent critically engages with three relevant debates in contemporary peacebuilding literature, including the inclusion of ‘the locals’, the achievement of organisational system-wide coherence and the increasingly questioned agential condition of peacebuilding actors. Inattentive to the relational vulnerability of involved stakeholders, it is suggested that the UN seeks to secure a totalising modern distory, defined in the book as a story that undoes other stories. Whilst affirming the entangled ontogenesis of actors and processes in the conflict-affected configuration, Entangled Peace also delves into a cautionary argument about what the author refers to as entanglement fetishism, namely the celebratory, normative, deterministic and exclusionary projection of a relational world. Inspired by Alfred North Whitehead, Entangled Peace is an invitation to speculate over the peacebuilding milieu, and by extension the broader theatre of the real, as radical openness, in which events emanate from the collision of an infinite multiplicity of possible worlds.




UN Peacebuilding Architecture


Book Description

Since its establishment, the UN's Peacebuilding Architecture (PBA) has been involved in peacebuilding processes in more than 20 countries. This edited volume takes stock of the overall impact of the PBA during its first decade in existence, and generates innovative recommendations for how the architecture can be modified and utilized to create more synergy and fusion between the UN's peace and development work. The volume is based on commissioned research and independent evaluations as well as informed opinions of several key decision-makers closely engaged in shaping the UN's peacebuilding agenda. It seeks to find a balance between identifying the reality and constraints of the UN's multilateral framework, while being bold in exploring new and innovative ways in which the UN can enhance the results of its peace and development work through the PBA. The research and writing of each chapter has been guided by four objectives: to assess the overall impact of the PBA; to generate innovative ideas for how the PBA can be made more effective post-2015; to analyze the PBA’s role at the nexus of the UN's peace and development work; and to consider what would be required for the PBA to increase and improve its impact in future. It will be of interest to diplomats, UN officials, the policy community and scholars engaged in the debate following the 2015 review and the implementation of its recommendations, and will be an essential resource for UN and peacebuilding scholars.




The State of Peacebuilding in Africa


Book Description

This open access book on the state of peacebuilding in Africa brings together the work of distinguished scholars, practitioners, and decision makers to reflect on key experiences and lessons learned in peacebuilding in Africa over the past half century. The core themes addressed by the contributors include conflict prevention, mediation, and management; post-conflict reconstruction, justice and Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration; the role of women, religion, humanitarianism, grassroots organizations, and early warning systems; and the impact of global, regional, and continental bodies. The book's thematic chapters are complemented by six country/region case studies: The Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan/South Sudan, Mozambique and the Sahel/Mali. Each chapter concludes with a set of key lessons learned that could be used to inform the building of a more sustainable peace in Africa. The State of Peacebuilding in Africa was born out of the activities of the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding (SVNP), a Carnegie-funded, continent-wide network of African organizations that works with the Wilson Center to bring African knowledge and perspectives to U.S., African, and international policy on peacebuilding in Africa. The research for this book was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.




A More Secure World


Book Description

Today, more than ever before, a threat to one is a threat to all. Threats to international peace and security go far beyond aggression by States and include poverty, deadly infectious disease, environmental degradation, civil war, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and transnational organized crime. This report by 16 of the world's most experienced leaders, commissioned by the United Nations Secretary-General, puts forward a bold new vision of collective security that stresses the need for effective, equitable action in preventing and responding to all major threats to international peace and security.




Luc Reychler: A Pioneer in Sustainable Peacebuilding Architecture


Book Description

This book provides a unique personal perspective on the field of peace research. It not only highlights Luc Reychler’s significant contributions to the theory and praxis of sustainable peacebuilding, but also offers important reflections on the evolution of peace research as an independent discipline. The central concept of this book – and of Reychler’s academic career, for that matter – is sustainable peacebuilding architecture. Reychler introduced this concept in order to draw attention to the architectural principles and considerations that have to be addressed in sustainable peacebuilding processes. Reychler’s work on sustainable peacebuilding architecture has been groundbreaking and has not lost any of its relevance in the twenty-first century. By bringing together Reychler’s seminal texts on sustainable peacebuilding architecture, the current book aims to offer academics, students and policymakers an essential guide to understanding, studying and applying this crucial concept. • Provides a unique personal view of the development of peace research• Lists the necessary building blocks for sustainable peacebuilding• Offers tools for monitoring and evaluating interventions• Discusses the scientific nature and often provocative findings of peace research • Discusses ten lessons learned and the future (Peace Research III)