Sheba Crocker :
(From previous issue)
3.Continue badly needed peacekeeping reforms.
There are over 100,000 UN peacekeepers deployed in uniform and thousands of civilian personnel serving in 16 missions around the world. These brave men and women are on the frontlines of protecting civilians and contributing to sustainable peace, often in austere environments and with insufficient equipment and training. The United Nations and its member states have not done enough to improve the design and capabilities of these operations.
The peacekeeping summit that President Obama co-hosted in 2015 generated pledges of over 50,000 new military, police, and enablers for these missions.
The United Nations needs to deploy these troops more urgently to missions based on need and quality control, swapping out units that have underperformed or are not fit for where they are deployed. The United Nations also should move more quickly to wind down operations that have outlived their usefulness, improve mission assessment and planning, shorten the time it takes to deploy personnel and assets to the field, and ensure the safety and security of UN mission personnel, including through adequate medical services.
Lastly, and perhaps most important, senior UN leadership in New York, mission leaders in the field, and individual units need to be held accountable more uniformly for failure to carry out their mandated tasks and for conduct and discipline issues, particularly sexual exploitation and abuse of the very people UN peacekeepers are supposed to protect.
4.Strengthen the United Nations’ conflict prevention, mediation, and peacebuilding capabilities.
While UN peacekeeping missions are critical tools in the maintenance of international peace and security, they are expensive and should not be treated as substitutes for long-term solutions (as, unfortunately, some of them have become).
The United Nations’ efforts to prevent conflict through analysis and early warning, mediation, and peacebuilding are equally important to global peace and security efforts.
Unfortunately, while the organization has attempted to bring greater coherence and resources to these capabilities through its “sustaining peace” approach, the United Nations’ efforts in these areas still are fragmented, understaffed, and underfunded. Efforts to address these deficiencies over the years too often have been met with resistance by some member states who see funding in support of these lines of effort as taking away from funding in support of development and other needs, leading to stalemates in UN budget discussions that hamper the organization’s ability to be effective.
Secretary-General Guterres’ announcement earlier this month that he will co-locate regional staff from the United Nations’ Departments of Political Affairs and Peacekeeping and augmenting the policy planning staff in his Executive Office are welcome changes that could produce immediate results.
But think tanks and outside experts have floated more expansive proposals for how greater coherence and increased resources can be realized, such as by formally merging different UN departments and providing more predictable funding for some of these efforts.
All of these proposals, and others, should be on the table as part of the high-level peace and security review that Secretary-General Guterres announced.
5.Create a high-level UN coordinator for counterterrorism and countering violent extremism.
The United Nations has made strides over the past decade in ramping up its counterterrorism and countering violent extremism work. But this has resulted in 37 entities across the UN system focused on these issues, with no single focal point to coordinate activities, shift resources, or plan strategically.
The United Nations needs to create an Under-Secretary-General position to provide dedicated leadership on coordinating and implementing the organization’s work to counter terrorism and violent extremism. Making the UN system more efficient and effective on these issues is critical to building member states’ capacities to counter today’s threats and prevent future ones from emerging.
Like any great organization, the United Nations must continually analyze its performance and make structural and operational changes to improve its results. As President Obama said during his 2014 UN General Assembly address, the United States “welcome[s] the scrutiny of the world-because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems and make our union more perfect…and we are willing to criticize ourselves when we fall short.”
This sort of tough love approach also applies to the United Nations-an organization that is more indispensable than ever, but one that also needs to address the significant challenges that are preventing it from being even more effective.
I am proud of what this Administration has accomplished through the United Nations and broader multilateral system over the past eight years, and passionate about the changes that this system should make to become more fit for purpose in addressing tomorrow’s challenges. Even though my time as Assistant Secretary is coming to an end, I look forward to remaining engaged in conversations around these issues and to contributing to solutions.
(Sheba Crocker serves as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Affairs at the U.S. Department of State).
