What lessons can be drawn from Liberia’s attempt to implement an integrated peace process? This Institute for Security Studies paper examines the efforts of the Government of Liberia and the UN to craft strategic policy and programming responses with conflict and peacebuilding in mind. It argues that peacebuilding is an undoubtedly messy process and agents have to settle for ‘partially coherent’ solutions.
Since 2003, Liberia has moved from a state of tenuous post-conflict security to a steady but still fragile peace. In January 2006, the new government set out to ensure promised reconstruction-oriented deliverables through a four-pillar policy framework of security; economic recovery; governance and rule of law; and infrastructure and basic services. The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) and the United Nations Country Team (UNCT), comprising one of seven integrated missions presently in operation, have worked to support the new government of Liberia (GoL) in realising these aims.
While considerable progress has been made, much remains to be learned – both within and from Liberia – about advancing peacebuilding in a strategic, coherent and integrated manner. For example:
- the extremely strained capacity at all levels of the GoL has been widely recognised as one of Liberia’s greatest recovery challenges. A lack of technical capacity was a major factor in merely producing the interim Poverty Reduction Strategy (iPRS), and adding yet another demand for highly capacitated individuals to drive a peacebuilding strategy process;
- the GoL’s pillars are led by particular ministries with their unique sectoral concerns, demands and capacity constraints. The interim Poverty Reduction Strategy (iPRS) process was undertaken in a rushed manner, at a time when many competing priorities and demands arose as the new government was establishing itself; and
- while various efforts have been made to date to develop integrated policy and programme frameworks these activity areas have yet to be fully mapped through the type of process that is designed to ensure the strategic enhancement of peacebuilding efforts overall.
From the above analysis the following areas are identified as deserving attention in post-conflict countries, as well as at headquarters, to serve integrated peacebuilding:
- Building consensus around the root causes of conflict or conflict factors in any country, while difficult, is imperative. Ideally both ameliorative and preventive, structures and processes should be developed to directly address the structural sources that caused war in the first place, and the ongoing or new sources of security threat.
- Addressing sources of conflict necessitates the decentralisation of tasks and responsibilities under the leadership of different actors, which could quite possibly cause unintentional harm. Care needs to be taken to ensure that peacebuilding is not compartmentalised into many small programmes with different sectors.
- Benchmarking is a critical tool to ensure a strategic approach to sustaining peace. The consolidation, drawdown and withdrawal (CDW) process in Liberia has developed an analytical framework that facilitates a conceptual means for distinguishing between peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and it can be further developed and shared.
- Demands for nationally driven processes without resources and capacity to back them up will only serve to frustrate and undermine peacebuilding. Tools for capacity analysis need to be developed and shared.
