ADVANCING GLOBAL PEACE, WAGING WARS AND CONFLICT

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It’s official. Global instability is the new normal. Political and economic uncertainties, combined with climate change and the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, are all contributing to create unparalleled volatility. Diplomats and defence specialists have fretted over these interlocking threats at major conferences in Davos and Munich over the past two months.

The potential for catastrophic outbreaks of violence between the US, Russia, and China is more apparent now than at any time since the Cold War came to an end. Proxy conflicts in Syria and Yemen, Russian aggression over Ukraine and its neighbours, and tensions in the South China Sea are in some ways a “correction” after two decades of relative stability.

And the problems don’t end there. Many of the world’s 40-odd armed conflicts are becoming more vicious and fragmented. Civil wars and factional fighting in Syria, Libya and Yemen are generating record levels of population displacement. More people were killed as a result of “terrorist” acts in the past few years –especially in Africa and the Middle East – than ever before. These latest trends are in stark contrast to a half century decline in organized violence.

A UN system stretched to its limits

The strain of these transnational challenges on the UN system is stretching the organization to its breaking point. There are currently 16 peacekeeping operations deployed around the world – nine of them in Africa, three in the Middle East, two in Europe and one in the Americas. There are currently more blue helmets on the ground than at any time in history. The cost of keeping over 125,000 personnel in the field hovers at roughly $8 billion a year.

The mounting sense of disorder is shaping how the world’s political and military leaders are thinking about international peace and security. Some of them are calling for a return to isolationism: focus on humanitarian relief to global hot spots and little else. Others are clamouring for more muscular forms of intervention, especially to snuff out radical extremism in North Africa and the Middle East. The space for moderation and balance is shrinking.

Faced with this ominous state of affairs, what is the UN to do?

The organization started by doing what it knows best – commissioning reports. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon did not just ask for one report, but several. In 2014, he requested that the UN set up high-level panels to deliberate on the future of peace operations, the peacebuilding architecture, and the relationships between women, peace and security.

All of this soul searching is intended to have a real-world application. Everyone knows that the UN has to repurpose itself in order to better engage with a turbulent global system. After a few years of reflection and consultation, the results are in. Not surprisingly, the three panels concluded that a credible, legitimate and well-resourced UN is part of the solution.

At least six recommendations stand out from the three high-level reviews.

Reforming the UN

First, conflict prevention is the order of the day. The best way the UN can save lives and reduce spiralling costs is by preventing war from breaking out in the first place. This means the UN needs to adopt a culture of prevention across the organization. And the UN cannot go it alone. There needs to be more burden-sharing by member states, including both traditional donors and emerging powers.

Second, the form and function of peacekeeping should be shaped by the situation on the ground, not the (often competing) political interests at the UN headquarters in New York. The UN also has to abandon cookie-cutter approaches to peace support missions. To do this, the UN Security Council has to be more flexible about determining when troops should enter, how long to stay, and when to exit.

Third, strategic and inclusive partnerships are essential. UN agencies have to stop navel gazing and fighting petty turf wars and get better at reaching out to regional bodies, non-governmental organizations and civil society groups that have a stake in peace. Moreover, UN-resourced activities need to be people-oriented, field-focused and much better targeted at actual and potential hot spots.

Fourth, the focus cannot be limited to “building” peace, but rather making peace “sustainable”. This rhetorical shift is important. Rather than confining activities to post-conflict settings, the UN and its partners need to double down on peace before wars break out. This recommendation dovetails with the freshly minted Sustainable Development Goals, particularly goal 16, which calls for promoting just, peaceful and inclusive societies.

Fifth, national ownership of “peace”, while difficult, is fundamental. Ownership cannot be limited to national government institutions alone, but must be extended to political parties, labour unions, chambers of commerce, women’s organizations, veteran’s associations, minority groups and more. When key players are excluded from peace processes, wars are much more likely to restart.

Finally, and perhaps most important, there must be a much more proactive engagement with women’s participation in peace at all stages of the process. This includes involving women at multiple levels of the peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding process, together with support and protection services for women and girls. Investment in women peacebuilders and respecting gender rights can also help undermine extremism.

A new UN for a new global order

All of these recommendations are eminently sensible. UN member states would do well to act on them immediately. It is worth recalling that we’ve seen some of them before. Back in 2000, the Brahimi Report on peace operations made some of the same points, not least the importance of political solutions over military ones, matching peacekeeping needs with resources, increased coherence in UN responses to emergencies, and stronger partnerships to deliver results.

So why do these new proposals matter?

Well, for one, they reflect a world that has qualitatively transformed. As the global scenario continues changing, so too must the UN. The three reviews – together with a new plan of action to counter extremism – acknowledge the evolving interconnected threats facing the international system, including transnational organized crime, cybercrime and terrorism. They also note how the UN is a target in ways it never was before.

On a more positive note, there are also many new regional organizations with which the UN can partner. These groups are distributed (unevenly) across the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Some of them – including the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) – are assuming a more proactive role in brokering peace deals and supporting recovery. While still too state-centric, regional organizations have a key role to play when it comes to preventive diplomacy, conflict prevention and supporting peace more generally.

Finally, the UN is building a peace architecture that – while needing more robust financing from member states – should help implement the recommendations set out by the three panels. Today, the peace architecture consists of a more proactive and multi-mandate UN Department of Peacekeeping, a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Peacebuilding Commission and a Peacebuilding Fund. A stronger Department of Political Affairs and Office for South-South Cooperation is also advisable.

The UN is finally starting to get its act together to confront the most intractable threats to international peace and security. While silent on the UN’s most systemic problems – not least the unrepresentative nature of its Security Council and the veto powers of its permanent members – the panels offer some hope. Many of their recommendations deserve financial backing, including a meaningful expansion in the UN’s assessed budgets for peacekeeping and peacebuilding institutions. The big question is whether these proposals are sufficient to make the world safer.

Robert Muggah, Research Director, Igarapé Institute

For much of the past year, I’ve lived a double life. I’ve embedded within Iraq’s Special Operations forces throughout the battle of Mosul, witnessing first-hand a truly remarkable struggle against the Islamic State. But I’ve also continued my four-year field research into the Islamic State, interviewing the group’s fighters and supporters to understand the conflict through their eyes.

This double life has led me to a singular perspective: As encouraging as it has been for coalition forces to make so much headway, winning conflicts and taking back land won’t stop the Islamic State for long. Only widespread change in governmental policies can do that. Local policies dealing with Islamic State militants, ex-fighters and potential recruits lag behind the curve not only in Iraq, but also in almost every country from Southeast Asia to Western Europe.

In countries such as Libya, Yemen, the Philippines, Nigeria and Somalia, governments have little physical control over parts of their territories, which makes them easy territorial targets for the Islamic State. But countries with too much control — the Caucasus, Central Asian republics and some African nations — also contribute to the crisis by making life so unbearable for citizens that they leave to find a better life in the group’s caliphate.

It should come as no surprise then that one of the biggest groups of Islamic State foreign fighters (and their families) are Uzbeks. Uzbekistan has a freedom-ranking similar to North Korea and, according to human rights organizations, “wide-scale violation of virtually all basic human rights.”

In the places where governments cannot fulfill their duties to provide for and protect civilians, not only can a relatively well armed group easily take control, the local population, tired of bad government, will not resist a takeover. Often, people even welcome it. In a 2016 survey of post-Islamic State territory in Iraq that I conducted, 30 percent of civilian respondents said security and policing actually improved under the Islamic State, compared with only 5 percent who said that it had become worse. The extremist group was not only strong enough to take the territory, it was also capable of governing it — and in some places, still is.

While recent military successes have given governments a chance to address issues such as rampant corruption, there are few signs of improvement. There was so much corruption among Iraq’s security forces that al-Qaeda used it to its advantage. If it wanted to target a civilian for recruitment, it would report that person to Iraq’s internal security as an al-Qaeda member. The civilian would then be arrested, thrown in prison, beaten and tortured. He would likely only be released after his family paid money through extortion. After such an experience, civilians are often more than ready to volunteer for any anti-government movement.

Overly controlling countries have also not changed — and in some cases have even gotten worse. Many governments have further cracked down on religion and personal freedoms in response to the Islamic State. By doing so, they have not only increased grievances among those most likely to fight but also pushed those people underground.

Although successful military operations have pushed back the Islamic State’s territorial conquest and won time for government reform, that time window is short. The Islamic State is exploring areas with weak security all over the world (even as far away as the Philippines) and is even trying to regain territory in recently-liberated areas of Iraq. Members are either waging insurgency war in remote rural areas or hiding in towns to prepare for future attacks.

The Islamic State isn’t currently gaining new ground, but the potential for gaining new fighters waits in the wings. Enter the next generation of extremists: local Sunni civilians who lost everything in the war and are already afraid for their safety, and a new enlistment of young, smart sympathizers who can use their expertise in engineering, science and the military to serve the goals of an armed group.

The next Islamic State, commanded by experienced fighters thirsty for revenge, would be more deadly and more widespread. The anti-Islamic State coalition in Iraq and Syria is dominating the region through air power, but extremists have already begun developing their own drones. Today, these drones are made of recycled plastic and duct tape; next time, they could well be more dangerous.

Looking at ongoing operations, both a former Islamic State foreign fighter and I have reason to be optimistic. I am optimistic that the Iraqi government will regain control of the territory. And he is optimistic that his former brothers-in-arms will finally go to heaven — and that new fighters will come to take their place.

By Vera Mironova

GENEVA (Reuters) – A member of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria said on Sunday she was quitting because a lack of political backing from the U.N. Security Council had made the job impossible, Swiss national news agency SDA reported.

Carla del Ponte, 70, who prosecuted war crimes in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, told a panel discussion on the sidelines of the Locarno Film Festival that she had already prepared her letter of resignation.

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The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to impose new sanctions on North Korea over the country’s long-range missile tests last month.

The measure cuts about $1 billion worth of North Korean exports, or about a third of the country’s export revenue each year.

“This resolution is the single largest economic sanctions package ever leveled against the North Korean regime,” said Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. “This is the most stringent set of sanctions on any country in a generation.

“And this time, the council has matched its words and actions,” she said.

Arriving at new sanctions

The sanctions ban countries from buying North Korean coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood. Other countries will also be barred from increasing the “total number of work authorizations,” and banned from creating “new joint ventures” with North Korean businesses or people.

“The United States was able to get a pretty strong resolution here that will hit North Korea where it hurts economically,” says Ankit Panda, who writes about North Korea for the online magazine, The Diplomat.

North Korea tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July. The second, experts said, showed the potential to reach the U.S. mainland.

All 15 Security Council members approved the resolution, including Russia and China. China is North Korea’s largest trading partner and makes up 85 percent or more of North Korea’s total trade.

China’s representative to the U.N., Liu Jieyi, said North Korea needed to “cease taking actions that might further escalate tensions,” Reuters reported. But Liu also criticized the U.S. role on the Korean peninsula, saying the deployment of a U.S. antimissile system, called THAAD, in South Korea, “will not bring a solution to the issue of [North Korea’s] nuclear testing and missile launches.”

China fears a spread of U.S. influence in the region, though China and the U.S. agree on wanting to stop North Korea’s nuclear development.

A country with experience “absorbing pain

North Korea has already faced a decade’s worth of ever-increasing sanctions backed by the U.S. and its allies. Not only have there been loopholes in the past that traders and businesses have exploited, but implementation and enforcement of sanctions have been spotty. Despite that, the U.S. and two previous South Korean governments “essentially bought into a sanctions approach to try and stop North Korea,” says John Delury, a North Korea watcher who teaches international relations at Seoul’s Yonsei University.

“It hasn’t worked. So we’re doing more of the same,” he says. “One thing North Korea is extremely good at is absorbing pain. And the last thing they’re going to yield on is their deterrence capability. Because they feel under threat and under siege.”

The roles of the U.S. and China

President Trump has used different strategies, from charm to Twitter criticism, to urge China to put more pressure on North Korea over its nuclear program.

“The President appreciates China’s and Russia’s cooperation in securing passage of this resolution,” the White House said in a statement after the measure passed. “He will continue working with allies and partners to increase diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea to end its threatening and destabilizing behavior.”

But, as Amy King of the Australian National University told NPR’s Elise Hu and Anthony Kuhn, the focus on China “abrogates [other countries’] own responsibility, particularly in the case of the U.S.” The U.S. could do more on its own to develop a relationship with North Korea, she said.

Speaking at a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Manila, Philippines, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the vote “a good outcome,” according to The Associated Press. South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha called it “a very, very good outcome.”

Representatives from Southeast Asian countries plan to discuss at the summit what other action to take in response to North Korea’s recent missile tests.

From NPR JAMES DOUBEK, ELISE HU

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