Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Spring 2006
Training the Peacemakers
Once the UN officially agrees on a given policy, generally it’s
someone’s assignment to follow through—and part of the UN
program is to train personnel to carry out these diverse and challenging
duties. In the early 1990s, the international community came to the realization
that heightened demands on the UN for preventive mediation and peacebuilding
were pushing the diplomatic staff beyond capacity. To address this concern,
the United Nations Institute for Training and Research worked with two
nonprofits, the International Peace Academy and Parliamentarians for Global
Action, to develop a Fellowship Programme in Peacemaking and Preventive
Diplomacy, toward which the Corporation provided $650,000 in funding.
The specialized curriculum provided middle- and senior-level UN staff, diplomats and parliamentarians with fundamental training in conflict resolution that was lacking within the UN system, covering theory as well as practical steps in problem solving, negotiation and mediation. Directed by a psychologist with a long diplomatic career and taught by high-level diplomats and academics, coursework included systematic coverage of the nature and causes of international conflict, hands-on sessions in applying conflict resolution methodology and an option for graduates to continue fieldwork in ongoing or developing conflicts and to evaluate the peacemaking efforts then underway.
Participants were expected to come to understand the root causes of dissension, viewing each situation in its own cultural, historical and political context. Case studies used to develop a body of knowledge for the program were disseminated within the UN and in the wider international community. Annual meetings allowed graduates, eventually numbering in the hundreds, to hear timely lectures by conflict prevention practitioners and scholars. The program, which solicited nominations for candidates from relevant UN departments and offices, UN missions and foreign ministries, became increasingly competitive with each passing year, with well over 100 applicants typically vying for fifteen places. Program leaders aimed for gender and racial balance and reached out to students from troubled parts of the world such as Bosnia Herzegovina, Sudan, the Middle East and West Asia. The curriculum was continually revised to remain relevant under changing world conditions and to meet the evolving needs of participants.
Graduates’ testimony found in the Corporation’s files confirmed that the program had changed their approach to conflict prevention and resolution, and that the competencies acquired proved useful in real-world situations. Counselor Zhang Qiuye, Permanent Mission of China to the United Nations, commented positively, saying, “Your program, in giving greater emphasis on negotiation and mediation as the most important means of peacemaking and conflict prevention, has put peacemaking efforts in the right perspective.” Like Qiuye, Counselor Yemisi K. Marcus, Permanent Mission of Nigeria, attributed key benefits to the training: “Personally, the program has enhanced my negotiating tactics from rigid country positions to those of amicable compromise, to the satisfaction of all concerned.”
Yale University has, since 1993, had a United Nations Studies Program dedicated to training the next generation of UN scholars and practitioners. Drawing on the university’s full range of disciplines, including law, environmental studies, ethics, politics, economics and management, the program collaborates with international and intergovernmental organizations, the UN Secretariat among them, to address a range of issues under the heading of “human security.” Students regularly explore such topics as ethnic conflict, civil war, human rights violations, poverty and environmental crises. Corporation funding of $315,000 over a period of several years has helped strengthen the program, supporting research, seminars and working sessions with links to a worldwide community of scholars.
Yale received another grant of $100,000 in 1997 to organize and preserve a record of the events of United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s tenure from 1992 to 1996. The role of the UN in maintaining world peace changed dramatically during this time, and crises in Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Haiti and Rwanda influenced Boutros-Ghali to strengthen the organization’s preventive diplomacy and peacekeeping role—an evolution in strategy that reflected the conclusions of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. These events and Boutros-Ghali’s salient agendas for peace, development and democratization would be the theme of the Yale project’s ultimate publication.
Restoring War-Torn Societies
One of the main issues to face the UN in the late twentieth century is
that of war-torn societies. “It’s become painfully clear that
state collapse anywhere can become a direct security concern everywhere,”
says Stephen J. Del Rosso, chair of the Corporation’s International
Peace and Security program. Violent internal conflict occurred in one-in-five
countries in the early 1990s and about one-in-seven at the end of the
decade. Yet, even with international assistance, rebuilding shattered
societies is a far from simple task, frequently prone to failure because
of poor understanding of the extent of damage, lack of capacity and the
severity of need.
The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) and the Program for Strategic and International Security Studies at Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International Studies (an academic and research institution dedicated to international relations) designed the $3 million War-Torn Societies Project (WSP) in 1994 to help the international donor community respond more effectively to the needs of post-conflict societies. By 1998, the Corporation had provided grants totaling $450,000 to the project.
Launching field studies in Eritrea, Mozambique, Somalia and Guatemala, WSP research teams analyzed ongoing policies, identified obstacles and formulated recommendations, publishing a newsletter and holding international conferences to disseminate their findings. From conception through implementation, the project had embodied the ideal multilateral peacebuilding approach, stressing the need to incorporate different forms of international assistance toward rebuilding within an integrated policy framework. In order for a base to be laid for future development, projects involved conflict survivors in the decision making and implementation phases of peacebuilding, consistent with the recommendations of the final report of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict.
Within four years, the War-Torn Societies Project, which was meant to be a model research initiative, had evolved into an action-oriented NGO. Instead of simply studying theories of post-conflict policy, it was now positioned to acquire staff and put to use the effective strategies identified during the research phase. Because of this change to participatory status, the WSP, while still working in partnership with the UN, no longer qualified to be part of its research arm. The project’s donors (including the United Nations Development Program, UNICEF, the United States Agency for International Development, the Canadian International Development Research Centre, the World Health Organization, several European countries and various foundations) opted to have the War-Torn Societies Project officially move from pilot investigation program to active work on the ground, meeting the challenges of social, economic and political rehabilitation.