This report provides a basis for discussing pragmatic ways and means of developing flexible and adaptive mechanisms, tools and processes for comprehensive crisis management that ultimately benefit the people suffering from crises and conflict.
The report gives an overview of the international community’s efforts as a whole – both international organisations’ and national governments’ endeavours to improve the coherence of their response to crises and conflicts. It also defines the key concepts relevant to the debate on the Comprehensive Approach (CA) and identifies challenges, opportunities and incentives for pursuing the matter further.
Key findings:
- The Comprehensive Approach is about developing mechanisms and cultures of understanding, sharing and collaboration, both vertically between nations and international organisations, and horizontally between nations and between organisations. Creating a culture of trust and knowledge among potential Comprehensive Approach actors before deployment to the field can bridge many cultural barriers and false presumptions. The organisational values and operating principles that guide different actors involved in solving a conflict may be contradictory. Human rights and humanitarian actors, for instance, may well be in conflict with the values and principles of political and security actors, at least in contexts where some of the international and local actors are hostile to each other. The first step is to be aware of and accept these differences.
- Crisis management operations are required in order to respond to acute situations in fragile and poor states, where political conflict is accompanied by unrest, violence and humanitarian crisis. There is a need to consider the ’Human Security Doctrine’, i.e. making improvement of human security the goal of all functions in the field. Human insecurity, even in conflict, is not just about the impact of military violence; it is also about the consequences of human rights violations and violent crime as well as the material consequences of conflict. This means that both civilian and military initiatives have to put the protection of civilians before the defeat of an enemy. Protection refers to both physical and material protection, that is, economic and social, as well as civil and political rights.
- Multiple international actors engaged in the same crisis or conflicts create challenges for coordination and leadership. The relative size of the engagement of different actors is likely to have an impact on leadership roles. A Comprehensive Approach cannot be based on command and control. It requires facilitative leadership that balances the need to respect the independence of the participating agencies while at the same time manages their interdependencies. It is unrealistic to expect all agents to have an equal role in the coordination process, but the process should ensure that those voices representing a genuine constituency are heard.
- At the Management level, national governments and international organisations can take concrete and practical steps that contribute to attaining the aims at the other levels. CA is a major process and organisational learning and cumulative knowledge take time to develop. Through experimentation, training, evaluation and research and development we can create capabilities and tools that build the Comprehensive Approach from the bottom-up.
