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From Africa Recovery, Vol.14#3 (October 2000), page 8

Brahimi panel proposals for peacekeeping reform

The "Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations" is the first comprehensive review of UN peacekeeping operations in the organization's history. Drafted by a panel of experts headed by former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhtar Brahimi and released on 21 August, it recommends specific improvements in the way the UN Secretariat, Security Council and participating member states conceive and implement peace and security activities. Such reforms are necessary, the panel argues, because peacekeeping missions are increasingly responding to "complex" conflicts within states rather than "traditional" conflicts between states. Key recommendations include:

Conflict prevention and early warning
-- Development and international financial institutions should view their activities through "conflict prevention lenses" to better address the economic and social causes of conflict.

-- The Secretary-General should make earlier and more frequent use of special representatives and fact-finding missions.

-- An information and strategic analysis centre should be established within the UN to provide decision-makers with early warnings and political, military and economic analyses of crisis situations.

Peacekeeping doctrine
-- Consent of local parties, impartiality and use of force only in self-defence should remain core principles. Where one or more local parties is an "obvious aggressor," however, peacekeeping troops must not "cede the initiative to their attacker.... Impartiality must mean adherence to the principles of the UN Charter, not equal treatment of all parties at all times." Where local actors' intentions are suspect, peacekeeping missions must be larger and better equipped to act as credible deterrents with "robust" rules of engagement.

Mandates and resolutions
-- The Security Council must ensure that peace agreements are workable and consistent with minimum human rights, peacebuilding and development criteria before authorizing deployment.

-- Mandates and resolutions must be unambiguous and based on realistic assessments of mission requirements - even at the cost of consensus within the Council. "The Secretariat must tell the Council what it needs to know, not what it wants to hear."

-- Final decisions on a mission's mandate and deployment should await commitments from member states to provide the required number and calibre of troops and equipment. Missions should not go forward unless these conditions are met.

Personnel and deployment
-- The UN should be able to deploy substantial peacekeeping missions within 30 days for "traditional" operations and within 90 days for "complex" operations.

-- Toward this end, countries contributing troops through the UN Standby Arrangement System should designate brigade-sized forces for peacekeeping duties and train with other states contributing troops on an ongoing basis. The Secretariat should refuse to accept forces not meeting minimum requirements.

-- The UN must maintain enough supplies to begin five missions. The Secretary-General should be authorized to draw up to $50 mn from the Peace Reserve Fund in advance of a final Security Council resolution if a mission appears likely to be approved.

Peacebuilding
In complex missions, the panel asserts, "peacekeepers work to maintain a secure local environment while peacebuilders work to make that environment self-sustaining."

-- A small percentage of a mission's first year budget should be used for high-visibility, high-impact development projects.

-- Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes for former combatants should be funded by assessed mission budgets in the first phase of operations.

-- Greater priority should be given to programmes to re-establish law and order and restore civil authority. An interim international criminal code should be developed for use in situations where local courts have collapsed.

-- Information strategy and technology should be enhanced, including communications between missions and headquarters and information programmes for the public.

Expanding headquarters support
-- Staffing of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, with 32 military personnel providing planning and guidance to 27,000 troops, is inadequate and should be expanded, with funding from the UN regular budget instead of from ad hoc peacekeeping assessments.

-- Interagency Integrated Mission Task Forces should be created as the "first point of contact" for mission planning, with staff formally seconded by the agencies and serving as their prime contacts in all matters related to that peace operation.

-- The panel endorses efforts by the Department of Political Affairs to create a peacebuilding support unit and urges that funding for it and the Electoral Assistance Division be expanded and supported through the UN regular budget.

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BOX 1:

Africa a 'special challenge' -- Thabo Mbeki

Africa is a "special challenge" requiring "special interventions" by the international community, South African President Thabo Mbeki told a news conference in New York on the final day of the Millennium Summit. In particular, among the problems identified by participants at the Millennium Summit, he said, were poverty and underdevelopment. "The summit has brought very much to the fore the need to restructure the UN and other international organizations to respond to those sorts of challenges, to find a way by which the poor get heard."

"There is a strong sentiment even among the developed countries to respond to these various challenges," he acknowledged. "I believe that the leadership at the United Nations is going to have to play an even more critical role in building from this broad consensus [and] bring in institutions like the World Bank, the IMF, WTO, etc." The UN Secretary-General's report to the Millennium Assembly, Mr. Mbeki added, "laid a very strong base" for confronting poverty.

In response to a question from Africa Recovery about the proposed peacekeeping reforms, the South African president said, "We are still looking at the Brahimi report. It was important that the initiative was taken and it contains some very important issues. Matters of humanitarian intervention still require some discussion because clearly you can't have people intervene in any country on the excuse that there are humanitarian concerns. There must be a response to those humanitarian concerns, but it's the manner in which you respond and how you arrive at the decision. It has to be handled in a way that respects sovereignty."

Nevertheless, he went on, South Africa welcomes the Brahimi report as a step forward. "As Africans, we've been very unhappy about the response of the UN to challenges of peace and security on the African continent. It has seemed to us that there has been a kind of apartheid approach to this." Too often in the past, he asserted, the attitude of the Council has been that "if problems occur in Africa, we'll let the Africans solve them. It's defined as African solutions [to African problems]. But in many instances it is used to avoid the sort of engagement which is required of the Security Council with regard to international peace and security. Hopefully this matter also will be addressed as people address the Brahimi proposals."

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