This report focuses on the challenges that post-conflict countries and the international community face in the immediate aftermath of conflict, defined as the first two years after the main conflict in a country has ended. It underscores the imperative of national ownership and highlights the unique challenges arising from the specific context of early post-conflict situations.
The report also describes efforts undertaken to date by the United Nations to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of its post-conflict response, and identifies systemic challenges related to differing mandates, governance structures and financing arrangements across diverse United Nations entities, which prevent the Organization from making deeper reforms.
It sets out an agenda to strengthen the United Nations response in the immediate aftermath of conflict as well as to facilitate an earlier, more coherent response from the wider international community. Finally it considers the role of the Peacebuilding Commission in supporting post-conflict countries and proposes suggestions for consideration by Member States as to how the Commission could strengthen its advisory role in relation to the early post-conflict period.
Key findings:
- Threats to peace are often greatest in the immediate aftermath of conflict, but so too are the opportunities to set virtuous cycles in motion from the start. The immediate post-conflict period offers a window of opportunity to provide basic security, deliver peace dividends, shore up and build confidence in the political process, and strengthen core national capacity to lead peacebuilding efforts thereby beginning to lay the foundations for sustainable development. If countries develop a vision and strategy that succeeds in addressing these objectives early on, it substantially increases the chances for sustainable peace — and reduces the risk of relapse into conflict.
- A basic level of political will and commitment on the part of national actors is a precondition for peacebuilding. A regional environment conducive to transforming conflict dynamics into peaceful political and economic conditions is essential. International support is also fundamental and requires that Member States align their assistance and engagement in support of a coherent and sustained effort. Unless these basic political conditions are in place, the ability of the Organization to promote a coherent and effective response will be limited.
- There are no quick fixes for holding and sustaining peace. National actors face enormous political, security and development challenges after conflict. But if the international community, led by the United Nations system, is ready to respond rapidly, coherently and effectively, it can help to give national actors a greater chance of sustaining peace and laying the foundations for sustainable development.
- The agenda to strengthen the United Nations contribution to a more rapid and effective response in the immediate aftermath of conflict has the following elements: strengthening and supporting leadership teams in the field, promoting earlier strategic coherence, strengthening national capacity from the outset, improving ability to provide rapid and predictable capacities, and enhancing the speed, flexibility, amount and risk tolerance of post-conflict financing. Each element reinforces the others.
