What lessons have been learned from UK experience in stabilisation interventions? This document from the UK Government’s Stabilisation Unit outlines emerging best practice guidance on how to assess, plan, resource and carry out stabilisation operations. Major lessons of experience so far are to: recognise the complexity and uncertainty of the action required; ensure an integrated, comprehensive approach between local authorities and external partners; and build on as much understanding and sensitivity to the local environment as can be generated.
Stabilisation is a summary term for the essential processes (military, humanitarian, political and developmental) that have to be undertaken in countries emerging from, or even still experiencing, violent conflict to achieve peace and security and a political settlement that leads to legitimate government. The objectives of stabilisation are to: prevent – or contain – violent conflict; protect people and key assets or institutions; promote political processes which lead to greater stability; and prepare for long-term development.
Effective state-building is perhaps the central priority in stabilisation, with three dimensions: 1) achieving a political settlement; 2) ensuring the state’s survival functions (security, rule of law and taxation); and 3) meeting citizens’ expectations of the provision of basic services. Other findings include the following:
- Key to success are: ‘good enough’ strategies (policies and plans that focus on limited, sequenced, achievable goals); clear leadership and effective coordination; and close civilian-military cooperation based on mutual understanding.
- Effective preparation involves: a comprehensive approach; a good understanding of the specifics of the situation (not based on assumptions); a clear goal based on local processes and close cooperation with others; willingness to talk to unpalatable political groups and ‘spoilers’; patience and realism about time and money; working with what is there; and learning and adapting.
- Successful implementation of stabilisation involves linking immediate action to long-term plans.
- Practical interventions often involve trade-offs: between support for short-term developments to build confidence in peace among the population (peace dividends) and longer-term development; between substituting for failed governments and building up state capacity; and between choosing local partners we can work with and excluding powerful groups that can wreck political settlements.
- Partners should not be identified by trying to ‘pick winners’.
An Integrated Stabilisation Plan should be drawn up, then rigorously monitored and regularly updated. The priorities of local authorities and significant power groups must form the core of recovery plans, and plans must include at least some of the interests of the ‘spoilers’.
- Quick Impact Projects (QIPs) are one of the most common ways of beginning stabilisation to demonstrate an initial peace dividend, but although they appear simple, certain design and implementation principles should be followed. QIPs should be sustainable, participatory, implemented by local organisations, linked to wider or longer-term processes, and above all should ‘do no harm’.
- The roles and interests of women and the observance of human rights and humanitarian law should not be overlooked in planning and implementation.
- An effective strategic communications programme to both local populations and the UK population is vital to ensure continuing acceptance of and support for the stabilisation intervention.
