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Funding for post-conflict activities key to successful UN peacekeeping: Annan

Funding for post-conflict activities key to successful UN peacekeeping: Annan

A critical hindrance to the successful completion of United Nations peacekeeping missions is a lack of funding for activities such as demobilization and reintegration, or boundary commissions, Secretary-General Kofi Annan writes in a report issued today on the closure of UN peace operations.

Although such programmes are not part of the official peacekeeping operation, the success of UN missions often depends on those activities, the Secretary-General writes in his report, which was commissioned by the Security Council following its critical examination last November of how and why it decides to end UN missions.

"Such voluntary contributions often materialize late or not at all, leaving the peacekeeping operation as an insufficient single prong in what was intended to be a multi-pronged strategy," Mr. Annan writes. "This funding gap will have to be addressed if the Security Council is to enjoy a record of achievement in helping to foster successful peacekeeping exits as well as a self-sustaining peace in their aftermath."

According to the report, discussions on whether to exit or significantly alter a peacekeeping operation may be prompted by three circumstances: successful completion of the mandate, failure or partial success. "Any decision [to close a peacekeeping mission] would appear to be influenced by success or failure as judged in relation to the mandate given to the operation by the Council," the report says. However, it is in the grey area between clear success and failure that a decision becomes complex."

Sometimes, persevering with a UN presence under adverse circumstances might be the "least bad" option, while at other times, "a peacekeeping operation is the wrong instrument if the parties are bent on war and its presence may become a hindrance to conflict resolution," the Secretary-General writes.

Highlighting the important role of conflict prevention, the report cites the example of Rwanda where a UN peacekeeping mission was reduced, leaving hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus to be killed in 1994. "The genocide in Rwanda that followed the Council decision to radically reduce, rather than reinforce, the capacities of UNAMIR [the UN Mission in Rwanda] has occasioned soul-searching and painful assessments of responsibility," the report states. In financial terms, reinforcing the mission to prevent the genocide would have cost $500 million, while the cost of humanitarian assistance to Rwanda and the region after the genocide topped $4.5 billion.

The report also studies the exit strategies that UN peacekeepers have pursued in relative successes, like El Salvador and Mozambique; failures, like Angola and Somalia; and partial successes, like Haiti.