1. GLOBAL CONTEXT
Executive Summary
CONFLICT TRENDS
The surge in violent conflict around the world since 2010 has drastically increased human casualties, displacement, and humanitarian needs, often reversing hard-fought political, human rights and development gains and putting achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals at risk. Conflicts have become more regional in nature, spilling into one another in ways that drive instability and trigger consequences far beyond the region. Violent conflict is also increasingly intractable: more than 60 per cent of the conflicts from the early 2000s have recurred in the past decade. The growing role of transnational criminal networks and other non-state actors, some pursuing extremist agendas, has made today’s conflicts more difficult to resolve with traditional negotiation and settlements.
Global trends indicate a geographical expansion of political violence amidst an increased proliferation of conflict actors and rising close-proximity violence against civilians. Civilians continue to bear the brunt of conflict with devastating impact particularly on women, children and youth. Attacks on women human rights defenders, humanitarians and peacebuilders have risen dramatically, further undermining the still insufficient progress on leadership and meaningful participation of women in peacebuilding.
Despite these trends, there is evidence that well-targeted peacebuilding approaches can enhance the resilience of conflict-affected communities and transform how local and national institutions prevent and manage conflict more effectively. Independent evaluations of PBF-funded initiatives and other studies have repeatedly demonstrated that local-level community dialogues and early warning systems can contribute to improved inter-group social cohesion, enhanced trust between communities and state institutions, and reduce levels of violence.
UN RESPONSE AND REFORM
The 2016 Sustaining Peace resolutions underscored that lasting peace cannot be achieved without national ownership while recognizing that conflict risks do not emerge in isolation; they result from interactions of deeply rooted dynamics, shocks to fragile systems, and the political decisions of leaders. The inter-related nature of these risks means that the UN must take a holistic approach, drawing on resources and capacities across the system focused on preventing the outbreak, escalation, continuation and recurrence of conflict while working effectively with a wide range of national, regional and international partners; addressing root causes; assisting parties to end hostilities and facilitating national reconciliation; and moving towards recovery and sustainable development while respecting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms. The resolutions also stressed the importance of women’s leadership and participation in conflict prevention and peacebuilding, and encouraged the promotion of the gender dimensions of peacebuilding.
To strengthen the United Nations for this task, the Secretary-General has led an ambitious reform process with the core goal of enabling the UN to fulfil its mandate to prevent large-scale human suffering. The reforms focus on improving UN engagement on the ground by driving more integrated across the peace and security, development, and human rights pillars. In conflict-affected countries, the development system reform and reconfigured role of the Resident Coordinators ensure more concerted efforts to avert conflict impeding SDG attainment, facilitating analysis and planning to inform increased prevention and peacebuilding efforts by development, human rights, and humanitarian agencies, funds and
The Women, Peace and Security Agenda remains severely underfunded. While the overall share of bilateral aid for the promotion of gender equality in conflict-affected contexts has increased since 2010, the proportion of aid going to programmes with gender equality as the primary objectives has stagnated at the same level under 5%, relying on a very small group of major donors. Women’s leadership continues to be impeded by lack of access to sustainable funding sources, with only 0.2% of bilateral aid to conflict-affected contexts going directly to women’s organizations in 2016-17
Many peacebuilding interventions need medium-sized investments for which it has become harder to secure funding. The OECD report States of Fragility 2018 showed how this “missing middle” was hampering investments in public goods in fragile and conflict-affected countries. Many projects were either in a group of very small sizes, ranging from $1,000 to $30,000, or in group staring at $2 million for bilaterals and $10 million for multilaterals. The former tend to be too small for broader impact and have comparatively high transaction costs, while middle-sized programmes aimed, for instance, at peacebuilding outcomes such as social cohesion struggled to attract financing. Moreover, mobilizing financing for sub-national institutions-who often have low absorption capacities- was also found to be complicated.
Around the world, and particularly in regions already suffering from insecurity, climate change poses an increasing danger to peace. The effects of climate change and environmental degradation can compound other conflict drivers or even become security risks in their own right. Their cross-cutting and multi-temporal nature also undermines prevention efforts. New pressures from digital technologies, the virality of hate speech, and disinformation are further confounding the conflict landscape.
The spread of violent conflict, instability and unrest into middle-income countries with relatively strong institutions has called into question the longstanding assumption that economic growth would lead inexorably to peace. As highlighted by the joint UN-World Bank study Pathways for Peace, political solutions are crucially important to address issues of inequality and exclusion, including of women, youth, and marginalized groups. Member States must address these challenges if they are to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, an end in their own right but also, as the Secretary-General has noted, the best tool for prevention.
Yet the space for diplomacy and multilateral cooperation has narrowed as deep divisions amongst major powers have led to paralysis on threats to international peace and security. As nationalism and protectionism appear to be rising, faith in multilateralism is on the decline, eroding international norms in the process. This complicates the efforts of the UN and its partners to help find political solutions to conflicts and undermines our collective ability to manage risks.
A renewed and accelerated period of reconfiguration and drawdown of peace operations presents both opportunities and challenges. While such transitions bear opportunities to consolidate peace gains and benefit from shifting aid modalities, there is a statistically higher risk of conflict relapse in countries that have experienced cycles of violence in the past. The Security Council has mandated the closure of several missions in recent years. The next wave of expected transitions is often taking place in large geographic areas with limited state presence and continued protection and other structural deficits.
programmes. Moreover, the Secretary-General has prioritized actions to counter lagging progress of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.
The role of the Peacebuilding Architecture has evolved from a relatively self-contained set of bodies to an integral part of a larger whole in which it plays a crucial role to ensure greater coherence. The Peacebuilding Commission has become an important Member States forum to provide integrated advice that complements the Security Council and mobilizes support from the international community for specific peacebuilding challenges. The renewed role of the Peacebuilding Support Office, which manages the PBF, as part of the new Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) allows it to better support cross-pillar approaches. DPPA’s Strategic Plan 2020-2022 illustrates how the Fund connects with the full range of instruments and capacities at the Department’s disposal, and how the Fund benefits from enhanced analytic and strategic capacities of the new shared regional structures.
FINANCING FOR PEACEBUILDING TRENDS
This PBF Strategy begins in a context of continued aid volatility and financing gaps in fragile and conflict-affected countries. As summarized in Pathways for Peace, based on OECD DAC data, aid has remained unevenly distributed - 34 out of 56 fragile countries received less ODA per capita than the average; volatile - diverted from development and institutional support to humanitarian relief and back again; and infrequently directed to peace and state-building. There is moreover an increasing tendency to earmark funds, risking siloed approaches and leading to less flexibility in the system.
Although prevention is a cost-effective way to secure development gains, adequate, predictable and sustained financing remains a critical challenge. On one hand, the share of total ODA allocated to conflict-affected countries and territories continued to increase in 2018 to 31.2% , from a low in 2014 of 25.3%. Yet, the share of ODA for peacebuilding in these settings has declined, from 19.7% in 2009 to 11.2% in 2018, which amounts to $ 6.7 billion in 2018. By contrast, global military spending rose to $1,822 billion in 2018, marking the highest level since 1988.
This leaves such institutions often “chronically underfunded despite recognition that pockets of fragility often exist at the sub-national level”.
Countries undergoing transitions from peace operations tend to experience higher degrees of aid volatility as the main mechanisms and the scale of international support shift. The 2020 OECD study Mission Drawdowns – Financing Sustainable Peace highlights how the “financial cliff” is less about donor fatigue and more about donors unlikely to shift allocations to peacebuilding programmes given development programming is often locked in for three to five-year periods. Recent transitions, such as the drawdown of peacekeeping missions in Liberia and Haiti, evidenced this: the PBF was one of the few resources available to the United Nations Country Team to scale up efforts in areas previously covered by the missions, or requiring renewed attention. However, the Fund’s resourcing levels were insufficient to meet demand. With the significant scale of downsizing or closing peace operations in the coming years, the challenge of transition financing remains significant.
© UN Photo / Abdul Fatai Adegboye 2019. In Côte d’Ivoire, the PBF filled a critical gap during the transition phase from a peacekeeping configuration allowing it to maintain the focus on peacebuilding, and as the largest contributor to the programme helped catalyze other donors and the Government to fund approximately 90 per cent of the programme.