Written by: Lawrence Woocher, Research Fellow, Center for International Conflict Resolution School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
The Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) was originally conceived as a mechanism to help the UN identify, monitor and coordinate policy towards states at risk of collapse or violent conflict. This broad vision for the PBC-generated by the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change as part of its blueprint to address "the challenge of prevention"-was noticeably eroded in negotiations among UN member states. The world's governments charged the new Commission with a mandate more narrowly focused on states emerging from conflict. It will surely be a boon to these states. But in rejecting a broader vision for the PBC, governments have missed an opportunity to strengthen global mechanisms for preventing fragile states from lapsing into conflict in the first place.
The High Level Panel's original vision of the PBC was quite broad and strongly oriented to prevention. They found "a major institutional gap in addressing countries under stress and countries emerging from conflict." According to the High Level Panel, this gap was relevant to "both the period before the outbreak of civil war and in the transition out of war." The Panel concluded: "What is needed is a single intergovernmental organ dedicated to peacebuilding, empowered to monitor and pay close attention to countries at risk, ensure concerted action by donors, agencies, programmes and financial institutions, and mobilize financial resources for sustainable peace."
Secretary-General Kofi Annan endorsed the Panel's recommendation for a PBC in his report to member states, In Larger Freedom, but in modified form "based on reactions from Member States." In recommending the creation of a PBC, Annan declared that there was "a gaping hole in the United Nations institutional machinery: no part of the United Nations system effectively addresses the challenge of helping countries with the transition from war to lasting peace." Notably, the Secretary-General excluded "countries under stress" from the High Level Panel's original formulation, limiting his recommended scope to post-conflict countries.
Yet Annan did not entirely drop the notion that the PBC should contribute to prevention in states without a recent history of violent conflict. While eschewing the Panel's suggestion to charge the PBC with a mandate for early warning or "operational prevention," the Secretary-General did list prevention as one of seven proposed Commission functions. Specifically, he recommended that member states be able to seek advice from the PBC "at any stage" (i.e., including before the outbreak of violence). In this way, according to Annan, the PBC would "add an important dimension to United Nations preventive efforts by providing better tools for helping States and societies reduce the risk of conflict."
Even this modest preventive function was apparently unacceptable to member states. The Outcome Document of the 2005 World Summit, produced through months of intensive multilateral negotiations, referred exclusively to "post-conflict" and "recovery" in relation to the PBC's functions.
Limiting the PBC's domain to states emerging from conflict makes little sense from an institutional design perspective. After all, the fundamentally relevant category is not pre-conflict or post-conflict, but states at high risk of collapse or violent conflict, where effective mechanisms for international aid, advice and support are lacking. Post-conflict countries are most commonly equated with these needs because the single greatest risk factor for future armed conflict is having a recent history of armed conflict. But any state that can be reliably identified as being at high risk-even if they have not had a major violent episode in the recent past-would benefit from access to special mechanisms like those provided by the PBC. Existing mechanisms for identifying and supporting these fragile "pre-conflict" states is weak and highly dispersed, leaving an institutional gap nearly identical to that for post-conflict countries: i.e., lack of coordination, poor mechanisms for marshalling funds strategically, limited attention of policymakers.
The door may be ajar yet to a more inclusive, prevention-oriented PBC. The concurrent Security Council and General Assembly resolutions officially creating the PBC follow the exclusive focus on post-conflict reconstruction and recovery from the Summit Outcome Document. But in spelling out how its Organizational Committee should construct the PBC's agenda, the resolutions stipulate that the agenda should be based on recommendations from four sources: the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretary-General, and "Member States in exceptional circumstances on the verge of lapsing or relapsing into conflict and which are not on the agenda of the Security Council." This category of member states, importantly, includes those on the verge of "lapsing" as well as "relapsing" into conflict. Thus, despite the PBC's clear post-conflict thrust, a state without a recent history of violent conflict could request the advice of the PBC, along the lines of Kofi Annan's recommendation.
Like all new intergovernmental bodies, the PBC's function in practice will depend on how states choose to use it. Even though member states negotiated vigorously over every word of the Summit Outcome Document and the resolutions creating the PBC, these documents do not lead inexorably to a precise agenda or focus. Thus, over time states could choose to use the PBC to coordinate advice and support for "pre-conflict" countries under stress as well as those on the path from war to sustainable peace. Doing so would be a wise investment in the prevention of violent conflict and state failure.
Mr. Lawrence Woocher is a Research Fellow at Columbia University's Center for International Conflict Resolution, where he directs the Center's genocide prevention activities. From 2004-2006 he served as Program Manager of Global Policy Programs at UNA-USA.
