The chapter outlines the conceptual framework of peacebuilding in general and, more particularly, in the context of the UN-EU relationship. It traces the doctrinal shift from traditional peacekeeping to peacebuilding as a process of a mutual influence between the two organisations. It explores the evolution of the consensus between the EU and the UN on the need for and the understanding of peacebuilding while investigating how the two organisations shaped each other’s understandings of peacebuilding. The UN and the EU accustomed peacebuilding as part of their approaches to conflicts almost simultaneously. At the time when the UN expanded its peacekeeping missions into peacebuilding tasks and established a specific body dedicated to peacebuilding, the EU launched its CSDP. The chapter starts with a discussion on multifaceted understanding of peacebuilding and peace operations in the scholarly literature and by the UN. It then moves on to explore the evolution of peacebuilding at the UN as well as the role of the EU in the institutionalisation of peacebuilding at the UN. The chapter then discusses the relevance of the UN’s shift towards peacebuilding for the conceptualisation of the EU’s own approach to peacebuilding.
Peacebuilding and peace operations: Conceptual frameworks
Peacebuilding emerged in a reaction to an unprecedented outbreak of intra-state conflicts after the end of the Cold War.15 A growing number of conflicts demonstrating that violence can re-
emerge and become protracted if efforts are not made to build sustainable peace has led to a consensus among scholars and practitioners on the importance of peacebuilding (Crocker et
al. 2001; 2007; Paris 2004; Stedman et al. 2002).16 These developments led to a shift in the
conception of security from national security to human security that emphasises the individual rather than state as the subject of security.17 These challenges highlighted the need for
comprehensive approaches which peacebuilding became to represent. As Gross noted:
15 Peacebuilding was not a new idea. Internationally assisted post-war reconstruction was characteristic also for the post-WWII recovery of Germany and Japan (Tschirgi 2004, 2).
16 Intrastate conflicts are often the result of failed states characterised by the weakening or breakdown of state structures incapable of solving the conflict on their own. Intrastate conflicts increasingly involve non-state actors. Some conflicts remain local, while others have global effects, e.g. transnational terrorism and flows of refugees (Weiss 2012; UNDP 2008). Ethno-religious and identity conflicts have been on rise since the end of the Cold War (Kaldor 2013; Svensson 2012).
17 The paradigm of human security created a ground for the development of the R2P doctrine which emerged in a reaction to the failures to prevent the genocides of Rwanda and Srebrenica (Bellamy 2009; Baranyi 2008; Gross 2013). R2P consists of three pillars: responsibility to prevent, to react, and to rebuild. Peacebuilding is part of the responsibility to rebuild post-conflict societies (Evans 2009).
“peacebuilding mirrors the simultaneous focus on a comprehensive approach to conflict management that has emerged as a guiding paradigm for the EU, individual countries and other international organisations in their respective attempts to align civil and military instruments. Such an approach combines defence, diplomacy and development” (Gross 2013, 9).
The term peacebuilding was coined by Johan Galtung who distinguished it from peacemaking and peacekeeping. Emphasising that mere absence of direct violence does not necessarily lead to sustainable peace, he referred to peacebuilding as an activity aimed at creating positive peace through the establishment of non-exploitative structures that seek to remove structural and root causes of war. In contrast, peacemaking and peacekeeping seek the cessation of direct violence, which he defined as negative peace (Galtung 1975).18
Nevertheless, it was the former UN Secretary-General Boutrous Boutrous-Ghali who introduced peacebuilding to the international community. Building on Galtung’s ideas, he defined peacebuilding as an “action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict” (Boutrous-Ghali 1992, Art. 21). He adopted Galtung’s categories of peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and added preventive diplomacy. He understood peacebuilding as one of the “instruments for controlling and resolving conflicts between and within States” (Boutrous-Ghali 1995, Art. 23). In intrastate conflicts, the focus of peacebuilding is on “rebuilding the institutions and infrastructures of nations torn by civil war and strife” (Boutrous-Ghali 1992, Art. 15).
The definition of peacebuilding, however, varies depending on the actors involved and on the nature of activities. Peacebuilding generally refers to post-conflict activities that seek to prevent a relapse into violence.19 Peacebuilding addresses “both immediate consequences
and the root causes of a conflict” (de Coning 2008, 53; see also Newman 2013). It includes negative and positive peace. Negative peace refers to the cessation of direct violence. Positive peace means the elimination of structural violence through the establishment of non- exploitative social, economic, civil and political structures. This includes economic development, the reform of security and justice sectors, and the strengthening of good governance and civil society (Atack 2005).20 Peacebuilding is based on the assumption that 18 Before Galtung, similar ideas were discussed by Immanuel Kant in his Perpetual Peace which outlined conditions for achieving lasting peace (Kant 2008), and Baruch Spinoza who claimed that peace is not a mere absence of war but a virtue - a disposition for benevolence and justice (Spinoza 2004).
19 Post-conflict countries are societies that have emerged from war but remain susceptible to the recurrence of conflict. They are characterised by destroyed, devastated, weak or malfunctioning infrastructure, economy, political structures and state institutions (Licklider 2001, 715).
20 Peacebuilding can also include reconciliation, indigenous dispute resolution, peace education, human rights promotion, capacity-building, justice processes, building of collective security and cooperation arrangements, and resources cooperation (Shepherd 2012; Mac Ginty 2013a). Some distinguish between short-term and
functioning state structures will prevent violence (Doyle 2006, 11). From the perspective of state actors, peacebuilding is a form of international assistance to post-conflict societies.21
Both Galtung (1975) and Boutrous-Ghali (1995) understood peacebuilding as an enterprise of the international community to support countries emerging from conflicts.
Peacebuilding is part of peace operations undertaken by the international community to maintain international peace and security. It supplements other peace supporting measures, namely conflict prevention, peace-enforcement, peacemaking and peacekeeping.22 The idea of
peace missions evolved after WWII alongside the assumption that such missions shall follow common norms and procedures (Battistelli 2015, 25).23 Initially, it was understood that
peacebuilding should follow after peacekeeping. Development would proceed after peacebuilding which terminates when a society has developed a capacity to manage and sustain its peace process without external assistance (UN 2011; de Coning 2008).
Due to increasingly complex conflicts, peacebuilding no longer follows after peacekeeping, however. The different elements of conflict management “overlap, are interlinked, mutually support each other and often take place simultaneously” (de Coning 2008, 53). Many conflict situations require the deployment of peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuilding simultaneously. Peacekeeping operations have become increasingly multidimensional, including a great portion of peacebuilding tasks. Scholars and practitioners agree that peace, security, development and good governance are interlinked and need to be pursued in tandem (Bellamy, Williams, and Griffin 2010; Gowan and Johnstone 2007).
Peacebuilding has developed into a complex process combining both positive and
long-term peacebuilding in relation to positive and negative peace. While negative peace can be ensured quickly, the establishment of positive peace is a long-term process (Jeong 2005). In practice, short-term and long-term activities occur in parallel (Duke and Courtier 2010).
21 In addition to states and intergovernmental actors, external actors in peacebuilding can be non-governmental organisations and foreign businesses. Typical internal actors usually include national authorities, businesses, communities and civil society (Serwer and Thomson 2008). Peacebuilding can also be an internal processes at the national and grass-roots level without the involvement of international actors (Lederach 1997). 22 The distinction between these actions depends on their aims and timing (whether they are deployed before,
during or after a conflict). Conflict prevention includes activities, such as preventive diplomacy and development, aimed at preventing conflicts from breaking out or escalating. Peacemaking facilitates mediation and seeks to bring the conflict to an end through a negotiated settlement. After a peace agreement or a cease-fire, peacekeeping maintains security and monitors the implementation of peace agreements. Peace-enforcement refers to combat operations that seek to establish security in cases when all peaceful means fail to reach a peace agreement (UN ‘Peace and Security’). Crisis management is another term used by scholars and practitioners with reference to “the settlement and containment of violent conflict” (Ramsbotham et al. 2011, 107). Scholars in European studies understand crisis management as short-term actions, such as sanctions, mediation, combat operations, peacekeeping and post-conflict stabilisation, which deal with an open conflict or its consequences (Gross and Juncos 2011c, 6; Whitman and Wolff 2012, 6). UN and scholars in peace studies use conflict management as an overarching term to depict all peace supporting measures at different stages of a conflict cycle.
23 UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) is the first ever and the oldest, still ongoing, peacekeeping operation, establishment in 1948 (UN “The Early Years”).
negative peace. The UN’s understanding of peacebuilding has become a generally accepted conceptualisation of peacebuilding. According to the UN, the objectives of peacebuilding are: a) to restore the state’s ability to provide security and public order, b) to strengthen the rule of law and respect for human rights, c) to build legitimate political institutions and participatory processes, and d) to promote social and economic recovery (UN 2008, 25). To achieve these objectives, UN-led peacebuilding can include a wide range of activities, such as:
• Support to basic safety and security, including mine action, protection of civilians, DDR, strengthening the rule of law and SSR
• Support to political processes, including electoral processes, promoting inclusive dialogue and reconciliation, and developing conflict-management capacity at national and sub-national levels
• Support to the provision of basic services, such as water and sanitation, health and primary education, and support to the return and reintegration of internally displaced persons and refugees
• Support to restoring core government functions, in particular basic public administration and public finance, at the national and sub-national levels • Support to economic revitalisation, including employment generation and livelihoods particularly for youth and demobilized former combatants, as well as rehabilitation of basic infrastructure (UN General Assembly and UN Security Council 2009, Art. 17).24
Peacebuilding brings these different aspects under one roof (Reychler and Paffenholz 2001). As de Coning framed it, peacebuilding “provides for parallel, concurrent and interlinked short-, medium- and long-term programmes that work to prevent disputes from escalating, or avoid a relapse, into violent conflict by addressing both immediate consequences and the root causes of a conflict system” (de Coning 2008, 53). Security, peace, humanitarian assistance and development - previously separate paradigms - have become interconnected within peacebuilding (de Coning 2008). Combined civil-military approaches have also emerged as an integral element of peacebuilding (Ankersen 2008; de Coning 2008).25
Various peacebuilding strategies, emphasising different aspects, have been developed.26 Considering the diversity of peacebuilding strategies, Richmond distinguished 24 Already Boutrous-Ghali argued that peacebuilding should involve “demilitarization, the control of small arms, institutional reform, improved police and judicial systems, the monitoring of human rights, electoral reform and social and economic development” (Boutrous-Ghali 1995, para. 47). A report by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) extends peacebuilding into “return of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs); establishing the foundations for a functioning state; [and] reconciliation and societal integration” (UNDP 2008, xviii, 3).
25 In contrast, peace-enforcement and peacekeeping missions deploy a limited number of civilian personnel. Diplomatic and development activities rely on civilian capabilities exclusively.
26 For example, Annan observed that different peacebuilding strategies deal “with secession and partition; with spoilers; with transitional justice, truth commissions, and reconciliation; with elections and power-sharing; [...] with economic liberalisation, reconstruction and development” (Annan 2004, para. 8). Peacebuilding strategies are generally dominated by liberal optimism which takes for granted that societies and state
between four generations of approaches (2011). First-generation approaches refer to top-down practices through which peace is enforced, often by military means rather than negotiated agreement, such as military interventions and peacekeeping. The second-generation approach addresses human needs and promotes peacebuilding at a grass-roots level.27 The third
approach aims at the construction of a liberal state while promoting the Westphalian/ Weberian model of state institutions, democracy, civil society and the market economy. Liberal state-building has become widely accepted by democracies, the EU and the UN (Richmond 2002; 2011; Richmond, Björkdahl, and Kappler 2011; Richmond and Mitchell 2012). A fourth-generation approach supports comprehensive, contextual and case-specific approaches. This ‘hybrid’ peacebuilding involves local, regional and international levels of legitimacy (Richmond 2011; Richmond and Franks 2011; Richmond and Mitchell 2012).
What Richmond frames as the third-generation peacebuilding - peacebuilding with a focus on post-conflict stabilisation, reconstruction and building of state institutions - has become the dominant approach pursued by state actors and intergovernmental organisations (Call and Wyeth 2008; Mac Ginty 2013a; Richmond 2011). Paris has argued that international organisations even prioritise the strengthening of state institutions over liberalisation (Paris 2004). Non-exploitative state institutions are seen as a fundamental condition of sustainable peace (Attack 2005; Barnett et al. 2007; Doyle 2006; Galtung 1964). State institutions, representing “res publica”, are the core elements of “a well-functioning state” (Hill 2003, 33). If state institutions are ineffective, exploitative or even non-existent, the likelihood of war increases. Weak and failing states lose their authority functions in maintaining the rule of law, order and justice and in providing basic services and security to their citizens (Englehart 2009; Rotberg 2004). State-centred peacebuilding seeks to empower such states by rebuilding “the country’s institutional capacity for self-sustaining peace” (Doyle and Sambanis 2006, 46). This form of peacebuilding is regarded as liberal state-building: “the externally-assisted construction and reconstruction of the institutional infrastructure” of a state (Kurowska and Seitz 2011, 17). State-building involves the reform and/or construction of legitimate and effective state institutions that are key to good governance (Ibid., 25 and 29).
Liberal peacebuilding has been a subject of criticism. By creating institutions similar
institutions can be perfected (Mac Ginty 2013a). Some scholars promote liberal peacebuilding (Crocker, Hampsons and Aall 2005), while others criticise it (Richmond 2005; Roberts 2011; Chandler 2010). Peacebuilding strategies reflect particular political values. For instance, the US-led projects promote market- oriented structures and democracy. International NGOs tend to emphasise the strengthening of civil society and indigenous structures (Barnett et al. 2007; Paris 2004). Some stressed that successful peacebuilding requires a balanced approach to competing demands of justice, order and security (Hyde-Price 2013). 27 This approach corresponds with Lederach’s notion of peacebuilding as not only a structural change but also a
transformation of relationships. According to Lederach (1997), peacebuilding shall encompass psychological, spiritual, social, economic, political and military levels.
to their own, international actors promote particular ideologies and models of governance (Kurowska and Seitz 2011, 25; Mac Ginty 2013a; Richmond 2010). According to Paris, peacebuilding activities “have effectively ‘transmitted’ standards of appropriate behaviour from Western-liberal core of the international system to the failed states of the periphery [… or] have supported the transformation of war-shattered states into liberal market democracies” (Paris 2002, 637).28 Yet, as Kurowska and Seitz claimed, condemning liberal peacebuilding
and state-building is questionable if such assistance is welcomed by the receiving country and if it proves effective in preventing failed states (2011, 30).
While academic research has led to the development of idealistic peacebuilding frameworks with complex meanings, it is the practice which defines the character of peacebuilding. In particular, it was the UN that shaped both the conceptual and operational basis of peacebuilding as an instrument of conflict management. In the field, peacebuilding is less defined through its theoretical frameworks; often, the term peacebuilding is even missing in documents, such as UN resolutions. In practice, peacebuilding is refers to particular activities, such as the reform or rebuilding of security, justice and political institutions. Ultimately, the aim of these practices is to build sustainable peace. This thesis adopts this understanding of peacebuilding.
The UN’s shift from traditional peacekeeping to peacebuilding
Peacebuilding has become a normative framework in international approaches in post-conflict reconstruction and an integral part of peace operations (Gross 2013, 10). Tardy has noted that the UN and the EU were particularly well positioned to undertake peacebuilding tasks as their policies were designed to cover the entire continuum of crisis management (Tardy 2012, 197). The international community, in particular the UN, was not prepared to deal with complex intrastate wars and new security challenges after the end of the Cold War. Peacekeeping proved inadequate to deal with intrastate conflicts and to prevent failed states. These
28 Critics have argued that liberal models tend to perpetuate socio-economic inequalities, political competition and divisions (Sens 2004, Paris 1997; 2004). Scholars have also emphasised that state-building often promotes Western hegemony by imposing prescribed solutions of powerful states and international institutions (Kurowska and Seitz 2011; Sens 2004). International actors are in the position of power as they control peacebuilding budgets and the design of projects. They may underestimate the ability of local actors and weaken their role. Focusing on institutions can also empower new governments to an extent that they hinder peace (Mac Ginty 2013a; Paris 1997). In addition, peacebuilding can suffer from the proliferation of international actors who often compete among each other. This incoherence derives from the pursuit of divergent goals by international actors in peacebuilding (Jeong 2005, 19; Krasner 2008, 662; 2009, 243; Sens 2004; Reychler 2000, 57). At the same time, local agency should not be romanticised. Local approaches can often perpetuate patriarchy, the dominance of one group, and non-transparent forms of governance (Mac Ginty 2013a, 5).
challenges emphasised the need for a more effective management of violent conflicts and situations of failed states without the rule of law. They highlighted that traditional approaches to peace and security, in particular peacekeeping, do not work in such environments (Cooper 2000; 2003; Gross 2013; Hannay 2008; 2013).
Peacebuilding at the UN emerged from efforts to reform peacekeeping. Based on the principles of impartiality, state sovereignty and territorial integrity, peacekeeping missions were intended to keep order and peace, and observe ceasefires. Peacekeepers were mandated to use force for the protection of UN and humanitarian workers only. The re-establishment of order after violence is indeed cardinal for post-conflict reconstruction (Aggestam and Björkdahl 2013). However, peacekeeping alone is not as sufficient as for sustaining the peace. Peacekeeping operations failed to prevent mass atrocities in Rwanda and Srebrenica. Violence often recurred even if peace settlement was reached (Bellamy 2009; Baranyi 2008). The imposition of order by international actors does not guarantee lasting peace; the country needs to develop its own capacity to sustain peace (Aggestam and Björkdahl 2013).
Failures in peacekeeping led to a re-consideration of traditional approaches to peace and security. With the outbreak of civil wars after the end of the Cold War, the UN also found itself with an overload of peacekeeping operations. Increased capabilities and expertise were needed to make operations successful. Peacekeeping lacked the civilian peacemaking and peacebuilding capacities, such as police and legal advisors, to conduct complex missions (Bellamy, Williams and Griffin 2010; Hannay 2008; 2013). As a long-term and comprehensive approach, peacebuilding was believed to overcome recurring difficulties in peace operations, such as expedient agreements, the lack of coordination between agencies, the lack of sustained attention by the international community, and the failure by the parties to the conflict to fulfil their agreements (Stedman and Rothchild 1996).
Peacebuilding was introduced by former Boutrous-Ghali in his An Agenda for Peace as a new approach in addition to preventive diplomacy, development, peacemaking and peacekeeping. Boutrous-Ghali understood these approaches as constituent elements of conflict management – a range of UN activities to maintain international peace and security (Boutrous-Ghali 1992). The Supplement to An Agenda for Peace elaborated the conceptual elements of peacebuilding and recommendations for its practical realisation. It highlighted the changing nature of conflicts and an increase of intrastate wars characterised by “the collapse of state institutions, especially the police and judiciary, with resulting paralysis of governance, a breakdown of law and order” (Boutrous-Ghali 1995, para. 10-14). The Supplement recommended the creation of a rapid reaction force consisting of national units to prevent