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Fishermen pulling a net on a beach near Freetown.
File photo by GLEB GARANICH

Background

•  Liberian reconstruction

•  Afghan turmoil

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In September 2002, a senior official of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations said to me in New York:

"The Department of Peacekeeping Operations should convey to the humanitarian and development crowd: ‘We are offering you the opportunity to sit around the table and be part of what we plan to do; if you don't, we'll do it anyway. What do you think?’"

In the mid-1990s, the United Nations embarked on a plan to establish greater coherence among its various departments and agencies, especially where both military and humanitarian elements were involved.

The idea was for so-called "integrated missions" to work together with the shared goal of restoring peace, security, good governance and the conditions for sustainable development in conflict-affected countries.

Integrated missions differ from earlier U.N. peacekeeping missions by placing the coordination of its humanitarian agencies and military peacekeepers under the command of a single leader -- a special representative of the secretary-general (SRSG) -- within the Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).

Since the first integrated missions in East Timor and Kosovo, the humanitarian community has been concerned at the potential negative impact on their programmes and identities of such integrated missions, while recognising that making peacekeeping operations more effective is of immense benefit to conflict-affected populations.

In particular, they were concerned that the core humanitarian principles of impartiality and independence might be jeopardised by the aid operation coming under the political leadership of the mission.

Experience of more recent missions in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Afghanistan has not made NGOs any less worried.

My conversation in New York formed part of a detailed study that I carried out on the U.N. Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), one of three missions examined by the Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue with funding from the British Department for International Development.

The other two were the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC).

When I met the other two researchers to compare notes, the first and easiest conclusion that we were able to reach about United Nations integrated missions was that it was almost impossible to come to general conclusions at all.

Circumstances, structures and personalities in Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Afghanistan could not have been more different, and this inevitably shaped our respective views.

Broadly speaking, I emerged from a month in Freetown as something of a believer in U.N. integrated missions.

Admittedly, the conflict in Sierra Leone was over, and the integrated UNAMSIL mission was in the hands of a particularly experienced and respected deputy special representative of the secretary-general (DSRSG).

Not only had the worst fears of the humanitarian agencies not been realised, but humanitarian action had been noticeably more independent from political interference than at any time over the previous seven years.

My colleagues returned from DRC and Afghanistan much less convinced.

Structures as well as outcomes vary from instance to instance.

UNAMSIL is an example of what has been termed "minimalist integration". The responsibility for overseeing the humanitarian programme in Sierra Leone was situated within the mission, with the DSRSG the designated U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator.

But the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the U.N. entity mandated with the coordination of a humanitarian system implemented by mainly non-UN actors, was located on the other side of town from the UNAMSIL office.

UNAMA, on the other hand, was an example of "maximalist integration", where all of the responsibility and structures for humanitarian coordination were located firmly within UNAMA’s management structure, and staffed and financed like any other part of the mission.

There was no separate OCHA identity, office or staff.

The absence of their traditional principal U.N. humanitarian partner was and is sorely felt by NGOs, given the range of complex security, access and indeed identity issues that the past two years in Afghanistan has thrown at the humanitarian community.

The rationale and structure of integrated missions was spelt out in the August 2000 Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations.

It was known as the Brahimi report, since it was led by Lakdhar Brahimi of Algeria, who is currently the U.N. envoy helping to shape plans to hand Iraq over to Iraqis.

Four years after the Brahimi report, it is clear that there can be and will be no common blueprint for U.N. integrated missions. There are an almost limitless number of variables that can impact on the wider mission and the relationship that the humanitarian community would choose to have with it.

The point is this. If every experience and context is different, then it will make it hard or impossible for a set of written guidelines to accurately prescribe a structure and a course of action for all integrated missions.

Planning for each mission needs to ensure the equally valid goals of establishing an effective peacekeeping mission while at the same time protecting the impartiality of humanitarian assistance and the security of those providing it.

So what is needed, whenever a UN mission is possible or planned, is a rapid but genuine process of consultation and dialogue between DPKO and the U.N. Secretariat on the one hand, and the humanitarian community on the other.

In a June 2001 update to the Security Council on the implementation of the Brahimi report, the Secretary-General acknowledged: "Any peacekeeping operation should be mandated, designed and resourced to support and at the very least not to hinder the humanitarian action.

"How this is done will vary from case to case; there thus needs to be close cooperation between DPKO and OCHA at all stages of mission design and planning, in particular on such pivotal issues as those related to the protection of civilians."

This is neither controversial nor new. But there is no evidence that it is really happening.

Instead, there is a strong feeling that it is still only lip service that is being paid to the concerns of the humanitarian community, and that other parts of the U.N. Secretariat are not yet properly listening.

The debate must be extended to beyond the United Nations, out of recognition that the greater part of global humanitarian assistance is delivered by agencies operating outside of the U.N. system.

The dialogue must also include the U.N. Inter-Agency Standing Committee, which brings together not only the major UN agencies, but also the far wider NGO membership of the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response, the International Council for Voluntary Agencies and the U.S. NGO umbrella group InterAction.

The current attitude in DPKO still seems to be: "Integration just is – deal with it."

This may be true for U.N. humanitarian agencies, but it does not apply for NGOs.

The latter can decide to do just the opposite and not deal with an integrated mission, if they judge that this is the only way to preserve their operational neutrality in countries where peacekeepers are deployed.

This would be a sad outcome. The great majority of NGOs want to see the United Nations, and OCHA in particular, take a prominent leadership role as coordinators of humanitarian operations in the field.

But not at the price of seeing their security and principles unnecessarily jeopardised by a lack of an adequate dialogue in the planning and execution of UN integrated missions.

At the end of the day, if they feel compromised, NGOs can walk away from an integrated UN mission, even if OCHA cannot.

This is something planners in New York need to be aware of.

Even the most carefully assembled orchestra will sound hollow if the auditorium is empty.