The origins of the United Nations lie in the upheavals of the Second World War, and are thus deeply embedded in the quest for peace. Beginning with its foundational commitment to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’, the United Nations Charter established three founding pillars: peace and security, human rights and development. The coupling of peace and security with human rights and development gave a broader meaning to the concept of ‘peace’ within the UN system.
The conceptual progression of peace in the UN system from its three foundational pillars has recently been linked to the 5 Ps of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – people, planet, prosperity, partnership and peace. The resulting perspectives on peace pay particular attention to contemporary concerns including: women and
peace, peace as an ecosystem, peace education and multicultural literacy, all of which have transformed the scope of the UN peace agenda in myriad ways.
Notwithstanding the immediate challenge of creating an international security structure and instruments to avoid the carnage caused by the Second World War, the founders of the United Nations were conscious of the multiple ways in which peace must be nurtured over the long term. The preamble of the Constitution of UNESCO, which highlights the need to construct the defences of peace in the minds of men, is a quintessential example of such a holistic understanding.
In its formative decades, however, the UN peace agenda was constrained by the standoff between the Cold War adversaries, and hopes that the wartime allies would continue their cooperation into the post-war era proved short-lived. Extensive use of veto powers restrained the UN Security Council (UNSC) from carrying out its primary responsibility of maintaining peace and security. For its part, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) sought a greater role in matters of peace and security, as its reach broadened and its membership grew. Ironically, in spite of initiating a historic ‘Uniting for Peace’ resolution, the Assembly was unable to substitute for the peacemaking role of the Security Council. The unceasing constraints imposed by the Cold War left little scope for UN agencies and entities to affirm their peace-inducing role in alleviating the scale and severity of indirect violence and related humanitarian crisis.
During this era, peace was generally conceptualized as the absence of large-scale interstate war. This narrow or minimalistic view posits war as an essential and constant feature of the interstate system, wherein peace is an exception – a contingent situation that typically occurs after the signing of a peace accord. Thus, despite the UN Charter’s holistic vision that ties peace and security to human rights and development, it was a narrow definition of peace that dominated the centre stage. Humanitarian, cultural and developmental aspects of peacebuilding largely subjugated to state-centric security (or peace as security) discourses.
Still, the formative years saw some remarkable developments including the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the creation of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1950. These and many other similar initiatives were to provide a larger context for building peace over the long term.
The unblocking of the Security Council in the early 1990s paved the way for a renewal of the UN’s prime commitment to preserving and maintaining peace. Starting with the ambitious launch of ‘An Agenda for Peace’ (AFP) (Boutros-Ghali, 1992) and continuing with the 2005 founding of the Peacebuilding Architecture (PBA), the UN ethos of peace
has progressed, engendering the concept of ‘sustaining peace’ and developing synergies with Agenda 2030 and the SDGs.
Evolving trajectories: preventive diplomacy and peacemaking
Perhaps the most significant indicator of the dynamic UN peace agenda has been the constant evolution of its methodologies to achieve peace. In the course of over seven decades, the UN has conceptualized, developed and fine-tuned a range of trajectories to
‘make’ peace in various conflict situations. Beginning with the challenges of post-war insecurities, the UN has constantly tried to modify its approach through the Cold War threats of large-scale interstate wars to the unprecedented spurt of civilian violence in a post-bipolar world. While preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention have elicited a stronger focus in recent times, methodologies such as peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding have taken on new dimensions in past decades to meet emerging forms of conflict and threats.
The term ‘preventive diplomacy’ was first coined in 1960 by the former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld to describe efforts to pre-empt the escalation of superpower proxy wars in Third World countries into global confrontations.
However, the UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali at that time, faced with an unprecedented spate of intra-state conflicts in the post-Cold War era, extended the scope of Hammarskjöld’s term to preventing regional conflicts from starting in the first place. Boutros-Ghali also extended conflict prevention to actions designed to keep violent conflicts from spreading geographically (Lund, 2009: 288).
The methodology of preventive diplomacy has been constantly enriched to meet new challenges. A significant step towards redefining the UN preventive approach was taken in 1992 with the launch of the report An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy,
Peacemaking and Peacekeeping by then UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
Boutros-Ghali wanted the UN to adopt an integrated agenda with conflict prevention at its core, the aim of which would be: ‘to seek to identify at the earliest possible stage situations that could produce conflict, and to try through diplomacy to remove the sources of danger before violence resulted’ (Boutros-Ghali, 1992).
While An Agenda for Peace highlighted the importance of early warning, mediation, confidence-building measures, fact-finding, preventive deployment and peace zones, subsequent UN policy papers such as the Agenda for Development (1994) significantly expanded preventive measures to include such diverse vectors as humanitarian aid, arms control, social welfare, military deployment and the media. The preventive diplomacy track is now the centrepiece of the emerging concept of sustaining peace.
The concept of UN peacemaking has also evolved to embrace new meanings in different settings. It is generally viewed as an extension of parties’ own efforts to settle their conflict. However, when unable to reach an accommodation, the parties in question or the UN Security Council or the UN General Assembly may call upon the UN
Secretary-General to use his/her ‘good offices’ to resolve the conflict in a peaceful manner. The Secretary-General may also undertake a peacemaking initiative on his/her own under the provisions of Article 99. Article 33 of the UN Charter mentions various methods of peacemaking by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies, or arrangements or other peaceful means preferred by the disputing parties. Articles 41 and 42 of the UN Charter also allow for sanctions, blockading and violent intervention in order to restore peace between warring states.
The inventory of peacemaking methods listed in the UN Charter have been substantiated by many subsequent documents including the Manila Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes (1982), and the Declaration on the Prevention and Removal of Disputes and Situations Which May Threaten International Peace and Security and on the Role of the United Nations in this Field (1988). An Agenda for Peace conceptualized peacemaking as part of a spectrum of activities comprising preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping and post-conflict peacebuilding. It defined peacemaking as ‘action to bring hostile parties to agreement, essentially through such peaceful means as those foreseen in chapter VI of the charter of the United Nations:
Pacific Settlement of Disputes’. While the usage of force has not been traditionally a part of peacemaking efforts, the 1992 Agenda opened up the possibility of intervention in civil wars under certain circumstances, overriding Articles 2.4 and 2.7 of the UN Charter, which impose constraints on violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.
Similarly, the role of the UN Secretary-General in peacemaking has evolved over recent decades, largely through precedents. A greater focus on preventive diplomacy during the post-Cold War era by successive Secretary-Generals has led to a remarkable rise in the deployment of personal envoys or special rapporteur to facilitate peace agreements in protracted conflicts. To this end, intensive training programmes have been introduced for mid and senior-level officials within the UN, regional organizations, Member States and the representatives of indigenous peoples. The UNITAR-led Peacemaking and Conflict Prevention Programme, initiated in 1993, is one instructive example of UN efforts in conflict prevention and resolution. However, notwithstanding the recent ‘surge in diplomacy for peace’, peacemaking is unlikely to succeed in
addressing contemporary conflicts alone, due to the changing nature of conflicts, which are mostly fought within state borders rather than between states. Accordingly, peacemaking is increasingly being contextualized as an organic part of a larger continuum alongside preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping and peacebuilding.
FROM PEACEKEEPING