How can the United Nations play a more effective role in preventing violent conflict? This article from Global Governance analyses the UN’s track record and potential role in regard to operational, structural and systemic conflict prevention activities. The UN has had limited effectiveness in implementing conflict prevention programmes, but shows greater potential as a norm setter and strategic centre of political action.
The UN should play a more central role in identifying the goals and principles of conflict prevention and a more limited role in implementing them. The UN should promote greater cooperation and dialogue to set common goals and agree on a division of labour in conflict prevention. UN efforts in structural prevention will require interagency coordination and close collaboration with the World Bank and multilateral and bilateral donors. A focus on systemic prevention would respond to the concerns of both developing nations and the US and provides a context for addressing global development.
Three types of conflict prevention can be identified: operational, structural and systemic. Structural prevention refers to efforts to address root causes of conflict through developmental and economic tools. Systemic prevention seeks to reduce conflict at a global level with mechanisms not focused on any particular state. Operational prevention refers to short-term efforts using political and military tools to forestall violence. Analysis of UN activities in operational prevention shows that:
- The UN’s conflict management and prevention activities are limited to small- and medium-sized states, while its success is largely limited to interstate wars.
- Mediation of internal conflicts is politically problematic, since it treats opposition groups as parties to a conflict, denying the government a monopoly on legitimate representation.
- The UN has been more successful in obtaining cooperation with institution-building activities that do not require political recognition of violent non-state actors, while less successful with mediation.
- In West Africa, the UN has had some success establishing the institutional framework for regional approaches to conflict prevention, although this success is still limited.
- Lack of clear rules on engaging with non-state actors who use violence may induce violent conflict.
While structural prevention requires interagency cooperation, there is little evidence that the UN has implemented such a coordinated approach. In regard to systemic prevention, the UN has lacked a well-defined strategic goal, such as lowering the global prevalence of violent conflict. The UN’s Department of Political Affairs (DPA), as the focal point for conflict prevention and the operational base for most mediation activity, requires special consideration:
- The DPA lacks the capacity for analysis necessary for effective conflict prevention. Substantial reform to solve this problem has been resisted by member states.
- The DPA must adopt a more strategic and research-based approach to conflict prevention, in which different types of research find their appropriate place.
- The DPA requires additional analytical and organisational resources to play its role as the focal point for conflict prevention in the UN.
- The DPA could serve as the centre for identifying conflict risk factors and strategies to mitigate their effects. This would require the capacity for different types of research. The DPA could collaborate with the World Bank in producing a risk list.
- The DPA can mobilise non-UN actors to prevent conflict by convening delegates of member states, organising informal discussions or establishing more formal ‘friends groups’.
