Peacebuilding Challenges in the New Millennium
Summary
The Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee, a network of more than 60 Canadian non-governmental organizations and individuals involved in various aspects of conflict prevention, resolution and post-conflict reconstruction and rehabilitation, is primarily concerned with building and sustaining peace internationally.
Members of the CPCC are practitioners of both official and unofficial Canadian foreign policy through their work in international development, relief, human rights protection, conflict resolution, arms control and disarmament activities, security sector reform, governance and democratization activities, peace education and policy development.
The following background paper is based on a series of discussions that began in June 2002 among CPCC members and others regarding the foreign policy review process and its content. It also attempts to take into account and complement individual submissions of network members to the current foreign policy dialogue process.
This paper was prepared by David Lord of the CPCC Secretariat and does not necessarily reflect the views of network members.
Thanks are due to Mejlina Modanu and David Beal for their initial contributions.
1. Putting People First in a Changing World
Since the mid-1990s, the Canadian government has emphasized the promotion of people’s safety from violence or threat of violence. This aspect of Canadian foreign policy is, in part, a projection of values such as tolerance, democracy and respect for human rights, as well as economic and security considerations. Safeguarding people from violence is an approach widely shared by Canadian non-governmental organizations operating internationally and is evident in the Canadian public’s responses to violent conflict around the globe.
Peacebuilding implies active engagement in the prevention and resolution of violent political and social conflict and the consolidation of peace once violence has been reduced. Peacebuilding is integral to protecting people from harm, increasing global security and Canada’s own national security.
Peacebuilding is a multilateral enterprise because no single nation or international organization has the credibility, or the human, financial or military will or capacity to single-handedly manage complex conflict prevention, transformation or reconstruction processes.
The United States-led invasion of Iraq has sent shockwaves around the globe that may take decades to subside. The late dawn of the “new American century” has most recently been marked by the current US administration’s indifference to massive global public and diplomatic opposition to war against Iraq and previously by opposition to the establishment of the International Criminal Court, abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and rejection of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Some would argue that the US acting in its own self-interest and in self-defence in the wake of the September 2001 terror attacks, amounts to business as usual. Others see a tectonic shift in world affairs from US engagement with multilateralism, the United Nations and processes of diplomatic accommodation, towards a willingness to act unilaterally as the planet’s lone superpower. Washington’s aggressive pursuit of national security objectives in recent months appears to be signalling the wholesale reordering of a range of international political, security and economic relations. US plans to single-handedly oversee initial efforts at reconstruction and nation-building in Iraq may well be another harbinger of a sharply reduced role for the UN in particular conflict areas.
This flexing by the US of its unprecedented and vastly dominant military power obviously has deep and wide-ranging implications for the world, for Canadian foreign policy and for Canadians involved in peacebuilding activities.
A shared continent, long-standing joint security arrangements and profound economic and social interdependence have long posed unique challenges for Canadians in their relationship to the US and the rest of the world.
Now there are new questions about how working multilaterally for peace may be affected by unilateral pressures and actions. In addition, the clear and present danger of an upsurge in terrorism has added another dimension to an already complex environment for non-governmental and governmental efforts at building peace.
Iraq is one human security crisis among many. In early April 2003, ReliefWeb listed 33 countries and regions as “Complex Emergencies”. In most cases these are humanitarian and political disasters fuelled by internal and cross-border war and its consequences.
The number of intra-state conflicts increased in the past 25 years, with 101 out of 108 post-Cold War armed conflicts fought within states rather than between them. Armed conflict became more deadly.
The United Nations estimates that more than 2.5 million people have died because of conflict in the past 10 years and more than 250 million have been forced to flee violent conflict. Civilians suffered from the abuses of aggressive states, from the failure of their own weak political institutions to protect them, and the new practices of war, which include the proliferation of increasingly lethal and destructive weapons and the widespread use of child soldiers.
The openness of the global economy has contributed to economic and technological growth, as well as negative developments such as transnational trafficking of people and drugs, terrorism and the proliferation of light weapons. Beyond the direct victims of war are the larger masses of victims of extreme poverty and hunger, those who lack primary education, basic health care, and safe drinking water.
September 11, 2001 brought home the fact that processes and events in the world affect everyone and every state. The realization that global problems can no longer be ignored and the growing activism of civil society have added new dimensions to the peacebuilding and conflict prevention environment and the efforts of governmental and non-governmental organizations to ensure a safer world for all.
Clearly, Canada must take more of a leadership role and join with others to meet interconnected global problems with multi-faceted responses, recognizing that human security goes far beyond the constrained concept of military security to encompass political, economic, environmental and social interactions between people, cultures and states.
In that context Canada can and must continue to increase its role and effectiveness in peacebuilding through leadership, sustained commitment and capacity building.
General Recommendations
There is considerable consensus on several core issues among Canadian non-governmental organizations involved in peacebuilding:
· Promoting human security must remain central to Canadian foreign policy because putting people above other interests reflects shared human values, the reality and complexity of the global environment Canadians are part of, and the need for multilateral foreign policy approaches to meet multifaceted challenges;
· Continued commitment and adherence to a rules-based international system merit Canada’s full support;
· Canada must strive to develop a more proactive approach to security. This necessitates a full range of responses including: more political attention and increased resources for specific preventive action and reconstructive efforts to address both causes and consequences of violent conflict and minimize the potential for future conflict; increased official and unofficial diplomacy for peaceful conflict resolution; increased development assistance and fairer trade to help address some of the structural causes of violent conflict – under-development, poverty, and resource scarcities; armed forces capable of protecting the vulnerable and carrying out a range of other tasks that contribute to international peace and security.
2. Conflict Prevention
Preventing violent conflict has taken on new salience since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. In 1996, a report of the Carnegie Commission for the Prevention of Deadly Conflict argued that to prevent tragedies like the genocide in Rwanda, the international community had to shift rapidly from reacting to violence to preventing the escalation of conflicts into war. Since then, many international agencies, governments and civil society organizations have begun translating this idea into policy and practice.
Canada has promoted conflict prevention through active diplomatic support for the establishment of an International Criminal Court and through efforts by the Canadian International Development Agency to make conflict prevention central to development cooperation.
The Responsibility to Protect, a groundbreaking report initiated by Canada and produced by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), proposes guidelines for the international community to protect people when their own state is unable or unwilling to do so. However, the ICISS report tended to focus more on the use of military force in response to emerging or full-blown conflicts, rather than on one of its central conclusions -- that more effective preventive action should be the priority.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has urged the world organization to move from a culture of reaction to a culture of prevention, and has proposed concrete steps to increase coherence between the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council and a wide range of other specialized UN bodies that play roles in conflict prevention.
Even before this call, many civil society organizations were developing preventive policies and practices -- use of early warning mechanisms, Track Two conflict management efforts, as well as the adaptation of longer-term interventions such as development assistance to address the “structural causes” of armed conflict.
Civil society roles in conflict prevention are being documented and lessons learned and applied. Lobbying, advocacy, public education, sponsorship of research, analysis of concepts and techniques, taking part in early warning of conflicts, direct mediation, and dissemination of information are all elements of preventive actions. Development agencies are also reshaping some of their programming to take into account prevention of conflict. Beyond economic and social development other aspects of structural prevention include democratic development, training and capacity-building aimed at governments and civil society, reform of the police and military, and strengthening of justice systems.
Among the concrete Canadian contributions to preventing conflict are collaborative action on the part of civil society and government to limit small arms and light weapons proliferation and misuse, the development of the Landmines Treaty, and efforts aimed at strengthening protection for children affected by armed conflict and women caught up in violence.
Despite these efforts, there is a widespread sense that lessons are not being applied quickly enough to keep pace with the spread of conflicts. There is concern about duplication of efforts and missed opportunities for collaboration between UN agencies, governments, civil society organizations and other bodies based on their comparative advantages.
With the failure of attempts to prevent another war in Iraq, there is also a growing sense that the UN and civil society have urgent and unique roles to play in ensuring that the enterprise of conflict prevention is not derailed by a repolarization of the world into hostile camps.
The Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee has recently joined with the European Centre for Conflict Prevention and others around the world in what is expected to be a sustained process of raising awareness and developing more effective mechanisms to prevent violent conflict. The international non-governmental process on conflict prevention is a concept arising from the UN Secretary-General’s Report of June 2001 on the Prevention of Armed Conflict, which specifically mentions the role of civil society in conflict prevention.
Non-governmental and civil society organizations are now beginning to work in concert to:
· Strengthen regional networks among civil society practitioners and academics, and weave these together into a global conflict prevention network.
· Promote analysis and theoretical development that will help the conflict prevention community play a more effective role in international deliberations.
· Produce a UN Action Plan on Conflict Prevention, possibly embodied in a Security Council Resolution, which will guide the international community as it seeks non-violent solutions to armed conflict in the coming decades.
This initiative can be an effective vehicle to increase collaborative conflict prevention analysis, process design and action between government and Canadian non-governmental actors and with their partners internationally.
Recommendations
· The Government of Canada should engage with Canadian civil society organizations and international partners – the UN, other intergovernmental organizations, regional and local partners – in helping to leverage a long-overdue shift from a culture of reaction to conflict to one of prevention;
· That engagement should aim at development of practical, responsive mechanisms and multilateral and multi-sectoral action on emerging conflicts and more effective collaborative conflict prevention efforts on the ground.
3. Waging Peace
Canadian humanitarian agencies have long been engaged in the physical protection of civilians caught up in violent conflict, caring for refugees and the internally displaced and working with former combatants in demobilizing, disarming and reintegrating them in societies emerging from widespread violence. Conflict resolution organizations, faith-based organizations, academics and others have been active in efforts to resolve or transform conflicts by working with the parties to the conflict or civil society groups in various peace processes. Human rights agencies and institutions focused on regional issues have been deeply involved in drawing public and political attention to emerging conflicts marked by human rights abuses, monitoring abuses in conflict situations and developing norms and processes to bring to light and, increasingly to justice, violators of human rights and humanitarian law. Canada’s armed forces and civilian police have a well-earned reputation for peacekeeping and peace support operations from Timor to Kosovo to the Central African Republic. In recent years, civilian deployment capacities to respond to conflict have increased dramatically to the point where Canadian expertise and skills from strategic planning to water system rehabilitation to community reconciliation activities can be mobilized within days.
Canadian involvement in peacemaking and peacebuilding takes place through multilateral and multi-sectoral efforts, where a number of governmental and intergovernmental actors, civil society organizations and others are involved in a broad range of activities -- political, relief, development, or security related. In these complex situations, obstacles to effective collaboration include the diversity of potential collaborators, their methods and objectives, differing mandates, capacities, areas of historical engagement and the shortcoming of coordination processes.
While considerable progress has been made in developing the strategic planning and programming tools necessary for effective and sustained engagement in complex peace processes, much more remains to be done. Some general areas for improvement are:
· Information-gathering and complex analysis; broad, dynamic and multi-institutional strategic planning; and the development of flexible, collaborative procedures in engaging in and sustaining specific peacebuilding initiatives;
· Upgrading conflict response expertise -- intervention management, negotiation and mediation methodologies and processes – through enlargement of the pool of trained non-governmental and official experts
· Strengthening Canadian capacity to contribute to peace operations, including capacity for rapid deployment to peace operations, strengthened civilian police components of peace operations, and better integration of civilian components of peacemaking and peacebuilding operations;
· Increased capacity for civilian deployments of human rights, relief, governance, infrastructure and other types of experts in crises and in post-conflict situations
· Increased in-depth research on peacebuilding concepts and practices, and dissemination of the results of that research in user-friendly formats to peacebuilding practitioners and people affected by conflict.
Perhaps more fundamental to Canada making a greater difference in specific peace initiatives is that our resources are often spread too thin or engagement is not sustained. New crises draw attention away from the old and erode available funding. New crises can also quickly drain the pool of available expertise.
More effective peacebuilding interventions are primarily dependent on political commitment and the dedication of adequate financial and human resources beyond the limits of budget or electoral cycles.
Recommendations
· Canada can play a more active and visible role in the peaceful resolution and transformation of conflicts by focusing more closely on a limited number of specific conflicts and demonstrating the political will and committing the necessary resources to sustain engagement.
· Official diplomacy aimed at conflict prevention, the resolution of existing conflicts or post-conflict efforts to guard against the recurrence of violence can be substantially strengthened through the development of long-term, collaborative strategies with non-governmental actors.
4. Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reintegration
Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Timor, Bosnia, Cambodia, Guatemala and other war-torn societies have demonstrated that while there are many common elements of transitions from war to peace, there are no pat formulas for managing those transitions and no firm guarantees of ultimate success.
Emergency relief operations, demobilization, disarmament and reintegration activities, resettlement of refugees and internally displaced people, rebuilding police and militaries, rehabilitation of public administrations, support for democratic processes and a host of other activities can be part of the post-conflict environment.
It has long been recognized that post-conflict peacebuilding is a long, costly and complex process with no certain outcomes. Societies emerging from widespread violence most often are struggling to reach adequate levels of meeting human needs. But sustained peace is also dependent on political leadership, credible and responsive structures of government, and mechanisms and processes for the peaceful resolution of political, economic and social conflicts within a society and between states – institutional and attitudinal elements that can take generations to develop.
Canada, with its imperfections, can and has served as a model of good governance and democratic practice for post-war societies or those seeking to avert widespread conflict. We should continue to encourage these types of processes to take root and flourish. In general, priority issues for promoting better governance and democratization include:
· Broadening and deepening ongoing public political participation;
· Developing “spaces and fora for reflection and exchange”;
· Developing skills for participation, dialogue, advocacy and negotiation;
· Reforming political parties so they become accountable, transparent and responsive;
· Ensuring oversight of government;
· Ensuring citizen participation in constitutional reform;
· Building democratic practices into civil society organizations, particularly those engaged in governance and democratization processes.
Recommendation
· Because sustainable peace is ultimately dependent on political and social processes of peaceful conflict resolution and peaceful political change, Canada should focus on promoting better governance and democratization in post-conflict reconstruction and rehabilitation processes.
5. Coherence
Canada’s foreign policy lacks coherence, with decisions often being made in a reactive and ad hoc manner and without reference to the wide range of policy interests among Canadians, throughout various government departments, and particularly beyond DFAIT, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the Department of National Defence. Even between the three traditional foreign policy-focused departments, co-operation has sometimes been tortuous.
In relation to the human security agenda, it has been suggested that one reason it has not become integral to overall Canadian foreign policy is the lack of a common, cross-departmental strategic vision and effective procedures to analyze, prioritize and implement policies that reflect a human security approach. Now, there is a danger that short-term preoccupations with responding to the current US administration’s national and international security agenda will skew Canadian priorities and drastically reduce our future options.
It stands to reason that holistic foreign policy decision-making might well benefit from an overarching coordinating mechanism, where not only crises are dealt with -- as was the case with the establishment post-September 11, 2001 of the Ad Hoc Cabinet Committee on Public Security and Anti-Terrorism -- but also long-term issues of Canada’s role in contributing to peace and security in the world.
Defining the mandate of a comprehensive coordinating structure to analyze, prioritize and act on foreign policy issues is an extremely complex question, but attempts at attaining greater coherence should aim at three results: more clearly defining the roles of various specialized government agencies; providing a forum in which these agencies can adjust their policies in coordination; and providing a locus for greater collaboration between government and civil society in foreign policy analysis and decision making.
Pending change at the macro-level, existing mechanisms such as the Interdepartmental Peacebuilding Working Group or the Program Advisory Committee on Human Security should be expanded to include representation from the non-governmental peacebuilding community.
Recommendations
· Restructuring institutional frameworks and procedures aimed at providing greater coherence in the development and implementation of Canadian foreign policy should include specific input from the non-governmental community involved in human security and peacebuilding issues and be part of a public process;
· Cross-sectoral/departmental participants in activities related to peacebuilding should meet on at least a quarterly basis under the auspices of the Interdepartmental Peacebuilding Working Group or the Program Advisory Committee on Human Security and the Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee to establish more consensual understanding of strategic issues and objectives, as well as constructive linkages between different programming initiatives.
· A key focus of such interdepartmental/NGO meetings should be to collectively share information, update analysis of conflict or pre-conflict situations, and refine peacebuilding planning and implementation.
6. Capacity Building
Complex conflicts necessitate a variety of responses to prevent or resolve them and to consolidate and maintain acceptable levels of individual and collective security, once violence has subsided. Peacebuilding, therefore, denotes a broad range of activities and processes. This range of responses is reflected in the structure of the Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee, which is comprised of six active working groups – Small Arms, Children and Armed Conflict, Gender and Peacebuilding, Conflict Prevention, Peace Operations and South Asia – bringing together a wide variety of organizations and individuals to focus on specific issues or geographical areas.
Canadian strengths in peacebuilding rest on a solid foundation. Canada and Canadian institutions and agencies have considerable political and social credibility in many parts of the world and within multilateral institutions. Canada’s international non-governmental community is largely professional, relatively well-resourced and has good working relationships with overseas partners and international NGO partners.
We have good credentials within the United Nations, Commonwealth, la francophonie, the Organization of American States, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and other multilateral institutions. In particular issue areas such as human security, Canada is a leader among like-minded, ad hoc coalitions of governments and sometimes non-governmental actors.
Canada is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and has an under-utilized national capacity to leverage peacebuilding efforts with substantial amounts of targeted development assistance and increased diplomatic engagement.
Canadian civil society actors, academics, diplomats and other officials who have been engaged in peacebuilding for more than a decade represent a tremendous pool to draw on if we chose to be part of a constructive evaluation of peacebuilding efforts. This should lead to development of a framework for strengthening Canadian participation in collaborative peacebuilding activities in countries and regions.
Recommendations
· Development of an effective framework for greater Canadian capacity to design, support and implement peacebuilding programs with other international partners should be rooted in a wide-ranging and constructive assessment of international and Canadian peacebuilding efforts to date.
· The annual Peacebuilding and Human Security Consultations co-hosted by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee and the Canadian Consortium on Human Security should focus on highlighting emerging potential conflicts (prevention), support for existing peace processes (conflict transformation), and reconstruction and rehabilitation challenges (post-conflict peacebuiliding).
About the Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee
The Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee (CPCC) is a network of Canadian non-governmental organizations and institutions, academics and other individuals from a wide range of sectors, including humanitarian assistance, development, conflict resolution, peace, faith communities, and human rights. CPCC has been working since 1994 to formulate policy and operational directions for Canadian NGOs involved in peacebuilding, in collaboration with other relevant actors. The network is engaged in a process of dialogue with DFAIT, CIDA and a broad range of NGOs to articulate Canadian directions in the area of peacebuilding, and to strengthen NGO and civil society input into peacebuilding policy and program development.
Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee
1 Nicholas Street, #510, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 7B7, Canada
Tel: (613) 241-3446 Fax: (613) 241-4846
Coordinator: David Lord |
