The peace operations landscape has evolved dramatically since the first edition of Considerations for Mission Leadership in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations was published in 2010.^[1] Much of the doctrine articulated within the 2000 Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations [the Brahimi report] has been stretched, and several new peace operations have been deployed, employing modern technologically advanced assets and troop contributors into areas where it is difficult to find a peace to keep.^[2] At the same time, a number of long-standing missions have transitioned and closed.

Keeping and sustaining a peace has, over the past decade, arguably become a more dangerous task, occurring in environments where United Nations personnel are increasingly seen as legitimate targets. This has led to a new emphasis on personnel safety and security, as well as a strengthening of the emphasis on protecting civilians and its associated UN guidance. Equally, a culture of accountability and intolerance for sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers and a concomitant focus on the associated leadership responsibilities has had to be instilled. Peacekeeping has sought to keep pace with these and other changes in conflicts. UN peace operations have been authorized with increasingly robust mandates, improved policies and guidance and responses to developments in technology and information management.

The past decade has also seen significant policy shifts which seek to address this changing environment. Examples include the Sustaining Peace Agenda, which emphasizes the whole spectrum of conflict prevention, peace operations and peacebuilding; the reaffirmation of key policies such as the protection of civilians and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda; and the emergence of new normative frameworks such as the Youth, Peace and Security Agenda. Important policy initiatives such as the 2015 report of the Independent High-level Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) and the 2017 Improving Security of United Nations Peacekeepers report delved into the challenges and offered concrete recommendations on how to enhance the effectiveness of peacekeeping.^[3] The UN Secretary-General’s Action for Peacekeeping initiative, launched in late 2018, built on these reports and is an ongoing response to international concerns about the conditions and effectiveness of UN peacekeeping as a result of protracted conflicts, elusive political solutions, increasingly dangerous environments and rising UN peacekeeping fatalities.

The Secretary-General has also launched far-reaching structural reforms within the UN Secretariat, including the Peace and Security Pillar in which two new UN departments – the Department of Peace Operations, and the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs – are now more interconnected.

One recurring theme in these policy shifts has been the reiteration of the importance of effective, courageous and accountable leadership in UN peace operations. This subject, and its associated challenges, has been fundamental to the reviews of UN peace operations and an instrumental aspect in the ongoing UN system reforms.

New edition of Considerations

Against this background, the Challenges Forum Partnership agreed that a revised edition of Considerations was both timely and necessary. The aim of this edition is to contribute to conceptual thinking and a wider understanding of the core functions of multidimensional peace operations. It attempts to bridge strategic and tactical approaches by focusing on the operational level, where all the complex lines of activity leading to success need to be knitted together and integrated into one mission plan. While this task officially rests with the Head of Mission (HoM) and the Mission Leadership Team (MLT), they are also heavily dependent on the skills and capabilities of middle-management leadership. These two important functions are the core target groups of this study.

This revised edition of Considerations uses the definition of peace operations outlined in the HIPPO report, namely: “UN peace operations, including peacekeeping and special political missions as well as good offices and mediation initiatives”. While the study also emphasizes how peacekeeping relates and contributes to conflict prevention and sustaining peace, the primary focus remains on the challenges of peacekeeping.

To that end, this study seeks to “operationalize” the three core functions of contemporary peace operations articulated in a 2008 document entitled “United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines” [the Capstone Doctrine]:

a) Create a secure and stable environment while strengthening the State’s ability to provide security, with full respect for the rule of law and human rights;

b) Facilitate the political process by promoting dialogue and reconciliation and supporting the establishment of legitimate and effective institutions of governance;

c)  Provide a framework for ensuring that all United Nations and other international actors pursue their activities at the country-level in a coherent and coordinated manner.^[4]

The present study seeks to contribute to a wider understanding of the issues senior mission leadership and management face in relation to these three core functions. In essence, a multitude of tasks, or lines of activity, are needed to support a mandate designed to move an immediate post-conflict environment towards one in which there is a prospect of a sustainable peace. Contemporary, multidimensional peace operations have the political leadership of the process, but often lack the necessary authority, budget, expertise or resources to undertake all the tasks covered by their mandates.

While the Capstone Doctrine’s principles and guidelines have resonance at all levels, it primarily gives guidance at the strategic level. The bridge linking the strategic and the tactical levels is the operational level, where all the complex lines of activity leading to success need to be knitted together and integrated into a mission plan by the MLT.

The following chapters endeavour to address a wide array of considerations for the HoM and MLT as they attempt to implement complex UN Security Council mandates under the three core functions. While this study cannot be comprehensive, it focuses on and navigates between issues at the operational level and should hopefully serve as a helpful reference document for senior leaders in the field and for middle management. For a richer understanding of the issues, supplementary reading of more specialized documents may be necessary.

Scope

This revised edition of Considerations has been written at a time when global peace and security is under stress and resources are limited. While there is less appetite for large multidimensional missions, the UN continues to play a vital role in bringing impartial engagement and protection to countries emerging from conflict, through the three core functions outlined above. At the same time, the evolving relationship between peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and the importance of the (re-) establishment of the rule of law as an exit strategy for a field mission, all add to the complexity of the task of a mission’s senior leadership. This study addresses this environment, which is characterized by UN Security Council mandates calling for a multidimensional engagement to tackle the spectrum of a conflict, while applying the provisions in Chapter VII of the UN Charter which allow for the use of force at the operational and tactical level to protect civilians and those covered by the mandate. The study’s scope, therefore, essentially covers contemporary, multidimensional peace operations as they continue to evolve.

Methodology

There are dangers in stereotyping UN peacekeeping missions and their problems. Therefore, any conceptual guidance should not be a prescriptive checklist of things that must be done but more in the nature of helpful discussion, under generic headings, of the things that the MLT might like to consider as best practice. The methodology of this study has therefore been to:

• outline the preconditions for success, even though not all of them are likely to be in place at the time of deployment of a mission;
• identify the various key objectives (based on analysis of various mandates and the Capstone Doctrine) the MLT needs to tackle;
• identify a generic set of operational outputs that support each objective;
• identify a set of operational activities that might need to be undertaken by the mission in order to achieve the desired outputs;
• attribute to the outputs a broad benchmarked framework based on short-, medium- and long-term priorities (many of which go beyond the life cycle) and mandated responsibilities and budgets of a mission;
• associate with the outputs appropriate responsibilities, resources, challenges and risks; and
• recognize the considerations or polarities which inevitably arise and need to be managed to help inform senior mission leadership thinking.

This methodology corresponds with UN best practices, including logic models suggested by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services.

However, not all considerations respond to a treatment which attempts to group them under objectives. For this reason, the first two chapters of this revised edition of Considerations focus on leadership, management, mandate implementation, integration, coordination and mission sustainment, which together provide the normative framework for senior mission leadership.

Chapters 3–6 focus on four key objectives extracted from mandate analysis and the core functions of peacekeeping:

•    Facilitating and Supporting the Political Process (Chapter 3)

•    Creating a Secure and Stable Environment (Chapter 4)

•    Strengthening the Rule of Law (Chapter 5)

•    Supporting Peacebuilding and Development (Chapter 6)

Political primacy

Lasting and sustainable peace is only achieved through political solutions and not through military and technical engagements alone. Accordingly, political solutions must guide all UN peace operations. The present study attempts to reinforce the primacy of the political nature of contemporary peace operations. A field mission led by its HoM signals the political engagement of the international community. The scope of this engagement is much wider than the leadership of the mission – it extends to the complex of actors working within the mission area and the host country, as well as neighbouring states, regional and international organizations and interested UN Member States, including troop- and police-contributing countries. The study therefore stresses the importance of the MLT’s political engagement, and this informs the contents of each chapter. MLT engagement can never be a mechanistic process but is, instead, a skilled articulation of refined political judgement. Nevertheless, the study recognizes that this judgement can be better informed by knowledge of best practices and some generic considerations.

Principles of United Nations peacekeeping

The Capstone Doctrine outlines three core principles of peacekeeping as key factors for the success of a peacekeeping mission:

1. Consent. This involves a commitment to the peace process by the parties and their acceptance of the peacekeeping operation, translating into physical and political freedom of action of the mission to carry out its mandated tasks.
2. Impartiality. A peacekeeping mission must implement its mandate without favour or prejudice to any party. Impartiality, however, should not be confused with neutrality, inactivity or inaction.
3. Non-use of force except in self-defence and defence of the mandate. A nuanced principle from its original articulation for traditional peacekeeping, and which now implies that force may, and often should, be used in support of the mandate and those protected by it.

The Capstone Doctrine identifies credibility, legitimacy, and promotion of national/local ownership as additional key factors for mission success.

Taken together, these principles provide the lens through which all the activities of a mission are viewed and considered. The ways in which they interact, conflict and/or mutually support each other must be fully understood in order to provide a guidance and analysis tool for senior mission leadership. The principles underpin the analysis in the study, which also explores how they have been nuanced to reflect today’s new demanding environment.