Preventive Action

Introduction

Since coming to office in 1997, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has pledged to transform the organisation from 'a culture of reaction to a culture of prevention'. In a keynote statement termed Renewing the United Nations, he emphasised the central role of the UN in preventive action and the need for a comprehensive approach to adapting the organisation to meet this role:

The prevalence of intra-state warfare and multi-faceted crises in the present period has added new urgency to the need for a better understanding of their root causes. It is recognised that greater emphasis should be placed on timely and adequate preventive action. The United Nations of the twenty-first century must become increasingly a focus of preventive measures.

Further, his June 2001 report entitled Prevention of Armed Conflict made recommendations on initiatives to be taken to enhance the efforts of the UN system in this field. This briefing examines the origins and features of the Secretary-General's vision, as well as the obstacles and progress towards its fulfilment.

Preventive Action: A Two-Track Approach

Former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali described conflict prevention in An Agenda for Peace (1992) as 'preventive diplomacy', an 'action to prevent disputes from arising between parties, to prevent existing disputes from escalating into conflicts and to limit the spread of the latter when they occur'. He further commented that:

The most desirable and efficient employment of diplomacy is to ease tensions before they result in conflict - or, if conflict breaks out, to act swiftly to contain it and resolve its underlying causes ... Preventive diplomacy requires measures to create confidence; it needs early warning based on information gathered; it may also involve preventive deployment.

While Boutros-Ghali's description of conflict prevention refers to crisis management, in contrast Kofi Annan's more recent perspective advances a more detailed interpretation building on that adopted by the Final Report of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict (1997). This Report suggests that activities falling under the 'preventive action' banner can be separated into two categories: Operational Prevention (action in the face of a crisis) and Structural Prevention (action to address the root causes of conflict). While it is important to recognise this distinction, ultimately Operational and Structural activities have mutually reinforcing roles and any effective preventive action must encompass both short- and long-term measures.

Operational Prevention (OP)

OP refers to strategies and tactics initiated when violence appears imminent. In addition to preventive diplomacy, well-established techniques include fact-finding and early warning, economic measures such as sanctions and incentives, and the deployment of peacekeepers.

Fact-finding and Early warning

Violence rarely occurs unexpectedly and crises can usually be predicted through indicators such as demographic pressure (high infant mortality, and changes in population, refugee movements, and ethnic groups), the deterioration of public services, a lack of democratic practices, government administrations of short duration, and human rights abuses. Effective preventive steps are formulated around gathering and analysing information on these signs through fact-finding missions. Based on this information, policymakers can, at an early stage, pass on their analyses and recommend strategic options to those most able to take constructive action.

Economic Measures

'Carrots and Sticks' diplomacy involves the use of economic measures in support of preventive diplomacy. The Security Council has resorted to mandatory sanctions to signal international concern to the offending State, punish State behaviour, and raise the possibility of stronger action. In the past decade, sanctions have been applied against Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Haiti, Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Ethiopia. By contrast, the UN can grant economic benefit in return for policy changes, and include such measures as favourable trade terms, tariff reductions, and economic aid.

Deployment of Peacekeepers

To prevent the threat or use of armed force, preventive deployment involves the positioning of peacekeeping forces in areas susceptible to conflict. In an unprecedented move in 1992, Security Council Resolution 795 authorised the first ever preventive deployment in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (UNPREDEP) in an effort to ease ethnic tensions in the region, and prevent the escalation and spread of conflict from hostile neighbouring States. The force operated mainly as an early warning system, with responsibility to monitor and report on developments threatening regional stability. Owing to the timing of the deployment, the clear mandate, and broad participation of the international community, UNPREDEP succeeded in deterring any violence along Macedonia's borders.

Structural Prevention (SP)

SP relates to strategies to address root causes of violent conflict and involves addressing long-term economic, social, cultural, legal, humanitarian, and security concerns. The similarity between SP and UN peace-building activities undertaken in the post-conflict phase gives rise to the term 'preventive peace-building'.

Disarmament

While weapons alone do not cause war, they provide the means to wage it. According to the Secretary-General's Prevention Report:

The proliferation of small arms sustains and exacerbates armed conflicts, endangers peacekeepers and humanitarian workers, undermines respect for international law, threatens legitimate but weak governments, and benefits terrorists and the perpetrators of organised crime.

Preventive disarmament thus seeks to reduce the number of small-arms and light weapons in conflict-prone zones. UN peacekeeping forces have been involved in 'buy-back' schemes in Eastern Slovenia, and in El Salvador the UN undertook to demobilise combatants and destroy their weapons as part of the peace process. In Albania in 1999, the UN Department of Disarmament Affairs, together with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) initiated a 'Weapons for Development' campaign, which resulted in almost 6,000 weapons and 100 tons of ammunition being collected. In return, 100 villages were connected by telephone, providing access to the police and the health-care system.

Development Assistance

Countries confronted by social, economic and political degradation - such as Somalia in the early 1990s - where the population cannot take for granted food, water, shelter and other basic necessities are prone to violent conflict. Development assistance cannot in itself prevent conflict, but it helps facilitate political, economic and social solutions necessary to build stable societies. The UNDP's Human Development Report 1997 identified several priorities for action in this regard, including: empowering men and women to participate in decision-making that affect their lives; advancing gender equality; maximising the opportunities of globalisation; and encouraging international support to reduce debt, increase aid and open agricultural markets.

The Case for Prevention: Rhetoric to Reality

The rationale behind Kofi Annan's vision to develop the UN's conflict prevention capacity relates in part to a desire to correct the organisation's poor record in undertaking these activities. This is illustrated by its failure to act in Rwanda in 1994 in the face of genocide that resulted in the slaughter of approximately 800,000 Tutsis. Based on a range of early warning signals, the force commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), Major General Romeo Dallaire, maintained that the deployment of a 5,000-strong peacekeeping force with a Chapter VII mandate would have been sufficient to prevent the violence, assist the return of refugees, protect the delivery of humanitarian aid, and provide a secure environment for the conduct of peace talks. However, calls for Member States to assemble such a force from Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali failed to prompt any immediate response.

Two further factors reveal the clear potential for preventive action and raise questions regarding the UN's shortcomings in this field. First, Article 1 (1) of the UN Charter establishes the prevention of threats to international peace and security as a priority for the UN. Read in conjunction with Article 55 of the Charter - which recognises that solutions to international economic and social problems and universal respect for human rights are essential for 'the creation of conditions of stability and well-being necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations' - the UN has a robust mandate for a long-term and comprehensive approach to preventive action. Second, as the Millennium Report demonstrates, Member States and international organisations widely support the view that in both human and financial terms, preventing conflict is far better than confronting the horrors of war.

Overcoming the Obstacles

Given this potential, why is preventive rhetoric so seldom translated into reality?

(1) Consent and Political Will

One reason is that the UN's preventive action relies on the consent of the parties to outside assistance. If a government refuses to accept early on that it has a problem that could lead to violent conflict, outside actors can do very little. Also, if a State feels its sovereignty is under threat, particularly from influential neighbours, or if regional allies lack the political will to lend support, preventive action is more likely to fail. Thirdly, the UN's political bodies are not always prepared to give prompt consideration to prevention cases brought to their attention. Unfolding crises and emergencies usually preoccupy the Security Council, and thus prevention can be relegated to the background.

(2) Finance

A further problem is financial. Preventive action is far less expensive than peacekeeping or peace enforcement. Nevertheless, funding can still be difficult to obtain, owing to the fact that where governments can react readily to a crisis when the implications are clear, they are less forthcoming when the costs and benefits are less tangible. In the UK, a review of the government's commitment to conflict prevention in 2000 led to the establishment of 'pooled budgets', combining the resources spent on conflict prevention by the Foreign Office, the Department for International Development, and the Ministry of Defence. These budgets aim to enhance the UK government's financial contribution to conflict prevention and to facilitate collective decision-making on where and how to focus the government's conflict prevention efforts. They also demonstrate the government's recognition that preventing conflict requires a broad interpretation of security.

The UN's Preventive Capacity

Despite these obstacles, in many ways the UN is well-equipped to engage in preventive action as its global representation confers considerable influence and legitimacy on its actions. This is true of the work of the Security Council and Secretary-General.

The Council can impose sanctions, can authorise the deployment of peacekeepers, and can undertake fact-finding and observation missions. In 2000, there were five such Council missions to Eritrea and Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, East Timor and Indonesia. The prestige of the Secretary-General, supported by the Department of Political Affairs, translates into his ability to engage in certain kinds of preventive action not always available to States for political reasons, such as high-level 'quiet diplomacy'. In the past, the Secretary-General has brought to the attention of the Council early evidence and warning of genocide, refugee flows, human rights violations, attempted coups, and damage to the environment.

Further, the open forum provided by the Council raises the profile of prevention through its debates and resolutions. A public debate held in the Council in July 2001 to discuss the Secretary-General's Prevention Report led to the adoption of Resolution 1366 (August 2001) expressing the Council's determination to pursue the objective of prevention as an integral part of its mandate, its willingness to give prompt consideration to cases brought to it by the Secretary-General, and its commitment to take early and effective action to prevent armed conflict.

The General Assembly has likewise been actively promoting conflict prevention in its discussions. A recent resolution (337 of 18 July 2003) adopted unanimously committed the Assembly to considering ways of enhancing its interaction with other UN organs and made recommendations and conclusions on the duty of Member States in complying with arms-control agreements and the rule of law. Finally, it emphasises the importance of a comprehensive strategy involving the application of a variety of preventive measures.

Promoting Coherence

The Brahimi Report of 2000 commended the ongoing internal Task force on Peace and Security at the UN for its work on long-term prevention, especially the notion that development bodies in the UN system should view humanitarian and development work through a conflict prevention lens. The Report also commented on the positive contribution of the Inter-Agency/Interdepartmental Framework for Co-ordination, created by the Executive Committee on Peace and Security (ECPS) in 1994 but re-orientated towards conflict prevention in 1998. Bringing together various departments, funds, programmes and agencies, every month the Framework Team meets at director level to decide upon areas of risk, to schedule country review meetings, and to identify preventive measures. This initiative has improved contacts and information-sharing across a range of UN bodies, and is now an important mechanism for early formulation of UN preventive strategies.

Final Remarks

Despite this progress, the Secretary-General's Prevention Report nonetheless draws attention to the continuing need to enhance the capacity of the UN in the field of prevention:

There is a clear need for introducing a more systematic conflict prevention perspective into the multifaceted programmes and activities of the UN system.

In particular, he suggests this requires an even greater level of coherence and co-ordination in the UN with a specific focus on conflict prevention. It remains to be seen whether Member States display the commitment necessary to achieve this goal.

Author: Tim Pippard, Research Assistant, editor: Alex Ramsbotham, Head of Research.

This set of briefing papers has been financed by a donation in memory of Joy K B Wynn-Jones and Mary Owen. For a full publication list and more detailed information on the work of the Programme, please contact Alexander Ramsbotham, Head of Research, UN and Conflict Programme, UNA-UK, 3 Whitehall Court, London SW1A 2EL.

Tel: (switchboard) +44 (0)20 7766 3444 (direct line) +44 (0)20 7766 3446 Fax: +44 (0)20 7930 5893 E-mail: aramsbotham@una-uk.org.