Peacebuilding Commission

The Peacebuilding Commission was established in December 2005 by the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council acting concurrently.UN document |docid=A-RES-60-180 |type=Resolution |body=General Assembly |session=60 |resolution_number=180 |accessdate=2007-09-28|date=30 December 2007] UN document |docid=S-RES-1645(2005) |type=Resolution |body=Security Council |year=2005 |resolution_number=1645 |accessdate=2007-09-28|date=20 December 2005] It is an inter-governmental advisory body that will help countries in post-conflict peace building, recovery, reconstruction and development.

Current members of the PBC

The current composition of the Peacebuilding Commission's Organizational Committee is as follows :

* members of the Security Council, including all permanent members:
*#China
*#France
*#the Russian Federation
*#South Africa
*#United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Northern Ireland
*#United States of America

* members elected by the General Assembly [General Assembly Press Release GA/10460] :
*#Chile
*#El Salvador
*#Egypt
*#Jamaica
*#Burundi
*#Fiji
*#Croatia

*members chosen as top providers of military personnel and civilian police to United Nations missions:
*#Bangladesh
*#Ghana
*#India
*#Nigeria
*#Pakistan

*members elected by the Economic and Social Council [ECOSOC Press Release ECOSOC/6200] :
*#Angola
*#Brazil
*#Czech Republic
*#Guinea-Bissau
*#Indonesia
*#Luxembourg
*#Sri Lanka
*#Belgium
*#Poland
*#Czech Republic

*members chosen as top providers of contributions to United Nations budgets, funds programmes and agencies:
*#Germany
*#Italy
*#Japan
*#the Netherlands
*#Norway

Origins

The Peace Building Commission (PBC) is one of the new entities created by the reform process initiated during the 60th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.The debate over the reform of the United Nations systems is not a recent one. Since the creation of the organization (June 1945), most of delegates and commentators believed that the structure they had given birth to was a merely temporary one as a first step towards the establishment of the new multilateral system. Indeed, the third paragraph of article 109 is a clear clue of this initial orientation, as it states that a General Conference aimed at reviewing the UN Charter should be called from the tenth annual session of the General Assembly onward. But, the first attempt to reform the UN structure failed at the very 10th session, when the General Assembly, even though aware of the need of a reform, decided to postpone any decision.Various attempts to reform the UN took place during the decades but the core issues (Security Council reform, veto power, UN enforcement) failed to be properly addressed.

The High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change

The new environment and challenges brought by the post-September 11th system of international relations spurred the Secretary-General Kofi Annan to seek for new proposals and solutions in order to reform certain sensitive area of the UN system. This approximately was the mandate of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. Mr Annan announced the membership of the 16-member Panel in a letter (dated November 3rd 2003) addressed to the President of the General Assembly, Julian Robert Hunte (Saint Lucia). Mr Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand, was appointed to chair the high-level panel on global security threats and reform of the international system. The other 15 members were as well political leading figures and diplomats, like Gro Harlem Brundtland (former prime minister of Norway and chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development that in 1987 issued the report “Our Common Future” in which the concept of sustainable development was stated for the first time) and Gareth Evans (former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia and President of the International Crisis Group).

The Panel was asked to analyse and assess future threats to peace and security and to evaluate existing approaches, instruments and mechanisms, including the organs of the UN system.In this view, the Panel was specifically asked to:
* Examine today’s global threats and provide an analysis of future challenges to international peace and security;
* Identify clearly the contribution that collective action can make in addressing these challenges;
* Recommend the changes necessary to ensure effective collective action, including but not limited to a review of the principal organs of the United Nations.The list above makes clear that the panel was not asked to formulate policies on specific issues. Rather it was asked to make an assessment of current challenges and to recommend proper changes in order to meet them effectively.The final report of the High-level Panel, named A more secure world: Our shared Responsibility, set out a number of recommendations to address problems and issues in six main areas of concern on which the multilateral system should concentrate its action now and in the decades ahead:
# war "between" States;
# violence "within" States (civil wars, gross violations of human rights and genocide);
# poverty, infectious diseases and environmental degradation;
# nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons;
# terrorism; and
# transnational organized crime [High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, "A more secure world: Our shared responsibility - Executive summary", http://www.un.org/secureworld/brochure.pdf] . Considering the second point, the analysis of the panel identified “a key institutional g
Report of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (2004), ‘’A more secure world: Our shared responsibility’’, paragraph 264. http://www.un.org/secureworld/report2.pdf] .For what concern more practical and in-depth aspects of this new body, the panel just recommends that the Commission should be reasonably small, meet in different configurations in order to consider both general policy issues and country-by-country situations and strategies, involve the main relevant actors in different fields (UN organs such as ECOSOC and representative from UN agencies, International Financial and Economic Institutions, representatives of regional and subregional organizations) and it should be assisted by Peacebuilding Support Office established in the Secretariat.
----"Full List of the Members of the High-level Panel"
* Anand Panyarachun (Thailand), former Prime Minister of Thailand and chair of the High-level Panel;
* Robert Badinter (France), Member of the French Senate and former Minister of Justice of France;
* João Clemente Baena Soares (Brazil), former Secretary-General of the Organization of American States;
* Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway), former Prime Minister of Norway and former Director-General of the World Health Organization;
* Mary Chinery-Hesse (Ghana), Vice-Chairman, National Development Planning Commission of Ghana and former Deputy Director-General, International Labour Organization;
* Gareth Evans (Australia), President of the International Crisis Group and former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia;
* David Hannay (United Kingdom), former Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations and United Kingdom Special Envoy to Cyprus;
* Enrique V. Iglesias (Uruguay), President of the Inter-American Development Bank;
* Amr Moussa (Egypt), Secretary-General of the League of Arab States;
* Satish Nambiar (India), former Lt. General in the Indian Army and Force Commander of UNPROFOR;
* Sadako Ogata (Japan), former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees;
* Yevgeny Primakov (Russia), former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation;
* Qian Qichen (China), former Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China;
* Nafis Sadik (Pakistan), former Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund;
* Salim Ahmed Salim (United Republic of Tanzania), former Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity; and
* Brent Scowcroft (United States), former Lt. General in the United States Air Force and United States National Security Adviser.----

tructure and mandate of the Peace Building Commission

Institutional Framework

The Peacebuilding Commission is a subsidiary organ of both the General Assembly and the Security Council, thus the legal basis for its institution is to be found in artt. 22 and 29 of the UN Charter, devoted respectively to GA and SC subsidiary bodies.For this reason the Security Council adopted on December 20th, 2005 its 1645 resolution in concurrence with an analogue act approved by the General Assembly, the 60/180 resolution of December 30th, 2005. In both texts the Peacebuilding Commission is described as an intergovernmental advisory body, and among its tasks there is the duty to submit an annual report to the General Assembly which is supposed to hold an annual session to discuss it.

The main task of the new Peacebuilding Commission is that of taking care of post-conflict actions to be adopted and enforced in countries emerging from conflicts, whose Governments choose to ask for relief from the International Community.It is up to the PBC to collect all available resources and funds directed to support recovery projects in those countries, and to draft long-term strategies in order to guarantee reconstruction, institution-building and sustainable development.

As said, this new body represents an innovation to the UN traditional approach to conflicts situations: for the first time there is a single organ charged with a mission that relies on a complex of capacities and expertise which used to be of many UN subjects' concern, without any substantial coordination set out.For this reason the Commission can benefit by all the UN experience on such matters as conflict prevention, mediation, peacekeeping, respect for human rights, the rule of law, humanitarian assistance, reconstruction and long-term development.

Obviously, as it is an advisory body, its natural role is that of proposing action patterns to be followed from the countries involved in the peace-building operations, and it is not entitled to take effective action. Another important task the PBC is supposed to fulfill is the one of ensuring actual funding both for early reconstruction activities and for longer-term strategies. This last mission is aimed at fixing the previous general praxis, according to which Countries were often more disposable to engage themselves to offer resources for short-term interventions (mainly devoted to peace-keeping operations) than to keep their promises of supporting peace-building operations once the conflict had been soothed and the hype on it had ceased to affect international public opinion.

The Peacebuilding Support Office

The Outcome Document of the 2005 World Summit requested the Secretary-General “to establish, within the Secretariat and from within existing resources, a small peacebuilding support office staffed by qualified experts to assist and support the Peacebuilding Commission and drawing from the best expertise available.”

The PBSO is headed by Carolyn McAskie Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support. Ms. McAskie provides overall management of the PBSO and the PBF, and advises the Secretary-General on peace-building issues.

PBSO comprises three sections: Strategic Planning Section, Policy Analyses Section and External Relations Section.

The PBC takes its first steps

In its first year of operations, the Commission has focused its attention on Burundi and Sierra Leone.UN document |docid=S-2007-458 |type=Document |body=Security Council |year=2007 |document_number=458 |accessdate=2007-10-19| date=25 July 2007|title=Report of the Peacebuilding Commission on its first session]

In Burundi, the PBC and the Government of Burundi agreed on four critical peacebuilding areas to form the basis of a strategic framework: promoting good governance, strengthening the rule of law, reform of the security sector, and ensuring community recovery with a special focus on youth.

In Sierra Leone, the PBC and national partners identified reform of the justice and security sectors, youth employment and empowerment, and capacity-building in governance institutions as key priorities. Effective partnership between national and international actors helped ensure that recent elections in Sierra Leone were conducted in a peaceful, orderly and genuinely contested manner.

As the PBC begins its second year of work, the critical challenge ahead will be to ensure continued support to Burundi and Sierra Leone, while continuing to implement its mandate and meet the high expectations of its performance, most importantly with respect to the populations of countries emerging from conflict. It is expected that other countries will be referred for the Commission’s consideration in the near future.

For more information, please visit http://www.un.org/peace/peacebuilding

The United Nations Peacebuilding Fund (PBF)

The Peacebuilding Fund is a multi-year standing trust fund for post-conflict peacebuilding, established in 2006 by the Secretary General at the request of the General Assembly with an initial funding target of $250 million.

The fund was established out of the recognition that among the impediments to successful peacebuilding is the scarcity of resources, most notably financial resources. The fund aims therefore to extend critical support during the early stages of a peace process. Its design embodies several key principals:

*Recognition of national ownership of peace processes
*The need to serve as a ‘catalyst’ to kick-start critical peacebuilding inventions
*To utilize United Nations Agencies, funds and programmes as recipients to support project implementation by national entities
*To operate as a disbursement process at the country level

Since its establishment in October 2006, the Peacebuilding Fund facility has been activated for the two countries currently under consideration by the Peacebuilding Commission, Burundi and Sierra Leone. The Secretary-General allocated US$ 35 million each for these two countries earlier this year.

Burundi:To date, the Peacebuilding Fund approved 12 projects with a total budget of US$ 26,883,000 in the four priority areas set out in the United Nations-Burundi Government Peacebuilding Fund priority plan, namely governance, the security sector, justice and human rights, and land issues.

Sierra Leone:At present, the Peacebuilding Fund approved 7 projects with a total budget of US$ 15,982,577 in the priority areas of good governance, security and justice sector reform, youth employment and empowerment, and capacity-building.

Côte d’Ivoire:The Fund approved emergency funding in the amount of US$ 700,000 to support the on-going “Direct Dialogue” between President Laurent Ghagbo and the armed opposition, the Forces nouvelles, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The funds will help build confidence between ex-belligerents of the Ivorian conflict and contribute to the implementation of the Ouagadougou Political Agreement, leading to the organization of free and fair elections.

Central African Republic:The Fund approved emergency funding in the amount of US$ 801,975 to support political dialogue, including a period of mediation by international facilitators, between the Government, civil society members, opposition political parties and armed opposition groups. Governance Arrangements:The General Assembly guides the operations of the Fund and may offer overall policy guidance. The Peacebuilding Commission supports the development of integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery and provides strategic advice in relation to countries under its review. The Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) provides overall direction and guidance on programme management and monitoring. The Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) Office of the United Nations Development Programme serves as the Administrative Agent and is responsible for fund management, including the receipt of donor contributions, the disbursement of funds, and the submission of consolidated narrative and financial reports.

The Advisory Group:An independent advisory group has been appointed by the Secretary-General to provide advice and oversight of the speed and appropriateness of fund allocations and to examine performance and financial reports. In March 2007, the Secretary-General announced the composition of the Advisory Group: 10 eminent persons, from all regions, with significant peacebuilding experience. The Advisory Group met for the first time on 6 September 2007.

For more information on the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), please go to: http://www.unpbf.org

References