Although the UN has produced important reports and policy on the rule of law, gender equality, and other post-conflict challenges in the decade since Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations (the Brahimi Report), very little has been produced on public administration in fragile environments.
The UN Lessons Learned review rectifies this gap and captures the experience of the UN System in working on public administration in post-conflict environments. Reviewing external and internal literature as well as seven case studies it provides recommendations for more predictable, efficient and timely UN support in this area. The findings and recommendations focus on the immediate aftermath of conflict, defined as the first two years after the conflict has ended. The report is not to be seen as the conclusion of a comprehensive research initiative but rather as the first step in a process of re-directing the UN’s work on post-conflict public administration, in collaboration with recipient countries and other development partners.
The review is focused on ‘core’ or ‘basic’ public administration functions, as opposed to service delivery functions.1 This builds on the Secretary General’s Report on Civilian Capacities in the Aftermath of Conflict, which identified five core functions: policy formulation and public financial management, managing the centre of government, civil service management, local governance, and aid coordination as essential for government ownership of the political and development process.
Five countries were visited by the team (Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Kosovo, Liberia, and Timor-Leste), while two countries (Afghanistan and Sierra Leone) were covered through desk reviews. In addition to the country case studies, the lessons learned review situates UN experience in the wider policy and ‘lessons learned’ context. Undertaken as part of the preparation of this report, there are three main sources of lessons the review has drawn on: (1) the practice of state and peacebuilding over the past decade or so; (2) the much longer tradition of public administration reform (PAR); and (3), recent academic research into governance and institution-building.
These sources highlight a number of important lessons, in particular:
- the centrality of the ‘political settlement’ to peace and statebuilding, notably inclusion and national ownership;
- that governance deficiencies need to be understood as political in origin as much as technical;
- that the translation of forms of administration from one context into another rarely leads to corresponding function, and thus it is important to work for ‘good fit’ and not ‘best practice’;
- and, finally, successful PAR requires strong domestic leadership and objectives that are modest, focused and incremental.
Key Findings:
- The UN, along with the wider international system, is simply not doing enough to support core public administration functions post-conflict given their importance. Core administrative functions do not in themselves deliver services, but the review is clear that these are a necessary requirement for doing so. The case studies also highlight that these functions are the key mechanisms through which countries own the wider process of peace and statebuilding, in particular the political process of raising revenue, setting development outcomes, and the planning and execution of budgets.
- The current approach to support core government functions in the aftermath of conflict has often been unsuitable. There has often been too strong a push for systemic reforms, and, partly as a result, not enough focus on rapid support to restoring basic functionality based on existing systems.
Recommendations:
- The UN needs to approach and understand support to public administration as a political as much as a technical exercise.
- The UN needs to improve its provision of fast, flexible and appropriate support to restoring the basic functionality of core systems as soon as possible after conflict.
- The UN needs to undertake a range of internal measures to improve its capacity to support core government functions in post-conflict countries.