space

Over the last decade international efforts to secure peace in conflicts such as Kosovo, East Timor, DRC, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Afghanistan, Burundi and Sudan have involved a dizzying array of actors:  foreign diplomats and UN personnel, international military forces, international humanitarian and development agencies and NGOs, and local civil society groups. A wide range of efforts to promote security, relief, development, peacemaking among leaders, support to civil society, gender equity and community level peacebuilding have been undertaken by these varied actors, in the attempt to end violence and build sustainable peace.

Until quite recently, it was presumed that the many independent and parallel efforts by various intervening agencies would automatically add up to positive overall contributions to peace.   In recent years, however, this assumption has given way to efforts to promote explicit communication, coordination and even formal integration among interveners to achieve more impact.

From key donor countries, to UN agencies, to NGOs, a common understanding has emerged that efforts for peace must become more strategic and coordinated if they are to have the ambitious impacts they intend.  Accordingly, in the late 1990s, this push for more unified efforts directly led to such innovations as UN integrated missions, which combined the political, peacekeeping, and humanitarian arms of the UN system under a unified command. Indeed, many donor countries have now synchronized their foreign assistance arms of government in what has been variously called the “joined up approach”, the “all of government approach”, or, in Canada, the “3-Ds” approach, referring to defense, development and diplomacy. While supporting efforts to improve coordination and more strategic programming in the field, international humanitarian, development, and peace NGOs have been divided about the push for greater integration of their efforts with the more politically-driven agendas of donors and of the UN.

Do the current attempts to implement such coordinated approaches work in practice? Do they really improve the impacts of international assistance in conflict-affected countries? To date there have been few attempts to assess the effectiveness of recent efforts to operationalize such coordinated approaches.  However, recent international interventions have shown that closer coordination involves tradeoffs and growing pains; humanitarian NGOs have voiced serious concern regarding threats to ‘humanitarian space’ from the way military, humanitarian and development efforts have been integrated in Afghanistan, and elsewhere. 

In other contexts, the tension between promoting peace to end violence -- through the inclusion of armed groups in the political process or granting amnesty for war crimes -- and securing justice for victims of violence has become clear.  Another key issue is whether greater coordination between agencies of donor countries undermines or supports consultation processes and local ownership of development and reconstruction efforts by government and civil society actors in affected countries.  As well, coordination efforts to date have had a mechanistic focus, as if the optimal mix of efforts to achieve peace is clear and various actors/programs must simply be better aligned.  This approach masks the fact that the “recipe” for peacebuilding remains unclear, and recent international efforts leave many questions open about the optimal mix of contributions and relationships among various actors that will truly promote sustainable peace.

A two-day lessons-learned workshop held at the University of Calgary in late March 2007 examined these issues.  Participants explored what “joined up” approaches look like in practice from the perspective of multiple actors in the field, and to take stock of how well these various approaches and tools are working (or are not working) in two specific conflict settings.  Questions addressed included:  What does experience show about the benefits, drawbacks, and tradeoffs of recent attempts at more coordinated approaches from the perspectives of the military, international NGOs, UN, and local civil society? What creative innovations have emerged from field experience to deal with the tradeoffs and negative aspects of such coordinated approaches?  What more general insights can we draw from the cases about effective relationships between security, development, and peacemaking efforts?  How do the experiences of other countries and agencies that have also employed “joined up” approaches inform Canada’s “3-Ds” concept for aid to conflict areas?  

The workshop brought together experts from the diverse communities of the military, humanitarian and development agencies and NGOs, policy makers from foreign ministries, academics, and government and civil society actors from two case study countries (described below). The product of the workshop will be a brief policy-oriented publication laying out key issues and challenges, creative approaches and innovations in the field, and some preliminary recommendations for a policy/practitioner audience. 

Case Studies: Afghanistan and Liberia

The two case studies grounded analysis in the concrete experience of two different models of coordination.  Though Afghanistan and Liberia represent quite different situations in terms of current intensity of violence, similar issues with respect to multiple efforts to implement security, development and peacebuilding assistance have emerged in both contexts. 

Afghanistan and Liberia are critical cases for several reasons.  In Afghanistan the ‘joined – up” approach is used by most major donor countries, and is institutionalized in the NATO-ISAF Provincial Reconstruction Teams, tasked with integrating military and civilian efforts to provide both security and reconstruction assistance outside of Kabul.  As well, because Afghanistan is not a UN peacekeeping mission, coordination among key donors, multilateral agencies, and NGOs happens in an ad hoc manner, providing insights into the development of effective linkages among outside actors without a clear chain of command.   Liberia represents the most integrated UN peace operation to date, bringing the military, political, and humanitarian arms of the UN under a unified chain of command. The track record of efforts at coordination in Liberia thus illustrates the successes and problems of this model of formal integration among major actors. 

International and local NGOs and civil society organizations are key players in relief, reconstruction, and peacebuilding work in both Afghanistan and Liberia.  They are often engaged in a range of coordination and information sharing forums with the other actors, yet remain outside formal structures of integration. Accordingly, the workshop examined the lessons learned in the interaction between NGOs and the other actors in both settings.

The workshop was co-sponsored by the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies (CMSS), University of Calgary and the Institute of World Affairs (IWA), Washington, D.C. Financial support for the workshop was provided by the University of Calgary, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), The Canadian Department of National Defense (DND), and NATO.