The United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor Leste (UNMIT) represents an interesting case when discussing the impact of local peacekeeping on the overall success, or failure, of peacekeeping operations. Although not without its share of problems, this mission is a good example of the promise of local or 'bottom-up' peacekeeping

Dorussen, H

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05/09/2016, 11:03More than Taxi-drivers? Pitfalls and Prospects of Local Peacekeeping | Sustainable SecurityPage 1 of 5https://sustainablesecurity.org/2016/09/01/more-than-taxi-drivers-pitfalls-and-prospects-of-local-peacekeeping/Sustainable SecurityAddressing the underlying drivers of global insecurityMore than Taxi-drivers? Pitfalls and Prospectsof Local PeacekeepingSeptember 1, 2016 · by Han Dorussen · in Peacekeeping Challenges and the Responsibility toProtect (R2P). ·The United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor Leste (UNMIT) represents an interestingcase when discussing the impact of local peacekeeping on the overall success, or failure, ofpeacekeeping operations. Although not without its share of problems, this mission is a goodexample of the promise of local or ‘bottom-up’ peacekeeping.Timorese policemen used to refer to peacekeepers as ‘really useful cabbies’ whose 4x4s couldget you anywhere, which provides a stark contrast with the official United Nations (UN)version that peacekeepers had been building the capacity of the local police. The United NationsIntegrated Mission in Timor Leste (UNMIT) is particularly interesting when discussing theimpact of local peacekeeping on the overall success, or failure, of peacekeeping operations.  Thislarge mission in a relatively small and, following the departure of Indonesian troops, relativelypeaceful country followed an integrative approach to peacekeeping(http://www.un.org/en/events/pastevents/brahimi_report.shtml). The UN also stronglysupported community policing (http://asiafoundation.org/video/community-policing-in-timor-leste/) in Timor Leste, which is a good example of the promise of local or ‘bottom-up’peacekeeping. Generally seen as successful, the peacekeeping operation ended in December2012. Although not without its share of problems, Timor Leste has remained relatively stableand secure.Local PeacekeepingLocal peacekeeping refers to the activities of peacekeepers throughout the whole area ofoperations and thus corrects for a biased focus on a country’s capital and the official,internationally recognized government. It emphasizes interactions between local communitiesand peacekeepers and considers the improvement of local conditions as crucial to stabilizingpost-conflict situations. Communities often experience specific conflict dynamics because of05/09/2016, 11:03More than Taxi-drivers? Pitfalls and Prospects of Local Peacekeeping | Sustainable SecurityPage 2 of 5https://sustainablesecurity.org/2016/09/01/more-than-taxi-drivers-pitfalls-and-prospects-of-local-peacekeeping/Image by UN Photo via Flickr.(https://www.flickr.com/photos/un_photo/3837227656/in/album-72157626194186743/)uncertainty about entitlements to land and property, exacerbated by the movements ofinternally displaced people. A common legacy of the civil conflict is the undermining oftraditional authority, leading to generational conflicts, as the experience of Liberia illustrates(http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/liberiaca.pdf).These parochial, often even partially private conflicts and grievances not only lead to increasedinsecurity locally, they can also have a wider impact because they are easily exploited toobstruct national peace processes. Recently, Séverine Autesserre highlighted(https://www.ted.com/talks/severine_autesserre_to_solve_mass_violence_look_to_locals?language=en) the failures of the international community, among them UN peacekeepers, toadequately deal with such local conflict dynamics in the DRC, and it has become common totalk about the need for bottom-up peacebuilding.Bottom-up PeaceEven though they are obviously related, local peacekeeping is not the same as bottom-uppeacebuilding, and the differences matter when evaluating possible contributions of localpeacekeeping to the overall success of missions. First of all, even when peacekeepers aredeployed throughout a larger area, they may still predominantly engage with national tensions,for example, when they monitor possible military activities of the government and rebels. Insuch cases, local communities may simply be caught in the crossfire between the governmentand rebel groups, and the interaction between peacekeepers and locals will remain largely of aneconomic and social nature (http://www.nupi.no/en/News/Defining-the-Peacekeeping-Economy).Secondly, a very large peacebuilding community tends to operate in post-conflict countries,involving representatives of global organizations such as UNICEF and UNHCR, but also frominternational NGOs such as the Red Cross, as well as local activists and local NGOs. Thiscommunity, rather than the peacekeepers, initiates and supports local peace initiatives and hasmore readily accepted the importance of bottom-up peacebuilding. Even when they are notdirectly involved, the presence of peacekeepers can still matter. for example, by guaranteeingthe general security situation. Unfortunately, the record of peacekeepers to effectively protecthumanitarian workers remains mixed as illustrated by recent events in South Sudan05/09/2016, 11:03More than Taxi-drivers? Pitfalls and Prospects of Local Peacekeeping | Sustainable SecurityPage 3 of 5https://sustainablesecurity.org/2016/09/01/more-than-taxi-drivers-pitfalls-and-prospects-of-local-peacekeeping/(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/world/africa/united-nations-south-sudan-peacekeepers.html?_r=0)  and the DRC (http://www.caritasdev.cd/v3/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3382:nord-kivu-les-trois-agents-de-caritas-goma-ont-ete-relaches&catid=25&Itemid=100053). To find out whether local peacekeeping works, we needto know where peacekeepers go, what they do, with whom they interact, and how locals respond tothem.Regardless of the recent attention paid to local peacekeeping, it is important to be aware thatpeacekeeping remains predominantly ‘top-down’. In our research(http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/50/6/691.short), we have found that UN peacekeepingmissions in Sub-Sahara Africa report mainly on interactions with government representatives.Their collaboration is presented as essential to realizing a key goal of the UN, namely to rebuildcentral administration. There are not only fewer reports of engagement with rebel groups, butthese reports also mention conflict more often. The picture is not uniform: relatively weak rebelgroups are more cooperative towards larger UN missions, possibly because the latter are able tooffer protection. Even more rare are reports of dealing with independent local authorities; infact, there are too few to be able to say anything about the quality of the interaction.A Strategic Approach to Local PeacekeepingCurrently, there is also little evidence to suggest that the UN recognizes the relevance of localpeacekeeping as a strategy. Instead, peacekeeping operations deal with local violence inresponse to specific events and mainly at the tactical level to contain such events. Peacekeepersdefinitely respond to flare ups of violence and they are concerned about protecting civilians.Stories about peacekeepers hanging around hotel pools or spending their time on the beach arelargely urban myths. Even though they are commonly positioned near cities, they are deployedto, and more active in, conflict zones. The lack of strategy, however, leads to considerable andsystematic delays in their response to violence. Once peacekeepers arrive on the scene, theyappear able to largely contain the violence but they may well have missed valuableopportunities to limit damage and save lives.Operations also lack high-quality information about local conditions hindering the developmentof an effective local peacekeeping strategy. At the local level, allegiances and antagonisms areoften complex and subtle, and may shift quickly. It is not only necessary to gather intelligenceabout the local context prior, during and even post deployment, but also to coordinate thisintelligence with ongoing operations. Stefano Costalli similarly argues that the United NationsProtection Force (UNPROFOR) failed to develop a strategy for Bosnia based on features of theterrain, warring factions and ethnic composition of the population that would have allowedthem to intervene in a timely manner. He also recognizes(https://tigizelis.wordpress.com/2016/06/12/peacekeeping-workshop-02-06-2016-at-the-british-academy-carlton-house-londo) that creating strategies is particularly difficult formultinational missions.Pittfalls and Prospects05/09/2016, 11:03More than Taxi-drivers? Pitfalls and Prospects of Local Peacekeeping | Sustainable SecurityPage 4 of 5https://sustainablesecurity.org/2016/09/01/more-than-taxi-drivers-pitfalls-and-prospects-of-local-peacekeeping/Local peacekeeping thus requires a number of difficult choices. First of all, not all peacekeepersare equally suited for local peacekeeping. Regional peacekeeping forces will often have a betterunderstanding of local conditions, but local actors may also perceive them, rightly or wrongly,as biased. Secondly, local peacekeeping benefits from long-term commitments, allowingcontingents to understand local conditions better and to be able to complete the projects theyhave initiated.  Peacekeeping forces, however, regularly rotate, since they often have to operatein difficult circumstances. The support for community policing in Timor Leste provides severaluseful lessons. Peacekeepers from New Zealand took prime responsibility for this taskthroughout the duration of the mission and even following its completion. They were crediblebecause the local population, including local policemen, appreciated their commitment to andunderstanding of community policing. Interestingly, locals recognized the different approachesto policing taken by police officers from, for example, Portugal, Japan and New Zealand.Even though it is too early to say that local peacekeeping has become a strategic approach topeacekeeping, the importance of building good relations between peacekeepers and localcommunities is by now broadly accepted. The United Kingdom is experimenting with trainingfor its peacekeeping mission within local communities in Malakal and Bentiu in South Sudan.This approach, if successful, can be expected to transform into a new policy looking to improvethe interaction and integration of the mission within the communities. There are also initiativeswithin ongoing peacekeeping missions; for example, while deployed as UN police officer,Kristin Konglevoll Fjell set up a women police support network in Liberia, which created achannel for communication between local women police officers and women UN officers.It is important to realize that whether with or without a strategic approach to localpeacekeeping, peacekeepers always have had a local impact. First of all, already a modestdeployment of peacekeepers shortens the duration of conflict episodes in a particular locality.There is also evidence that it makes attacks against civilians by armed factions less likely. The‘Blue Helmets’ provide a basic level of security in situations where insecurity is the norm ratherthan the exception. Peace, however, is more than the absence of conflict. Moreover, the endemicinsecurity in post-conflict situations creates a dependency on peacekeepers—even whilecooperation with, and appreciation of, peacekeepers declines the longer peacekeepers arepresent in a particular country.  The need for a peacebuilding, rather than peacekeeping,strategy seems evident, and the value of local peacekeeping may well be that it recognizes theimportance of harnessing the local capacity to build peace.Han Dorussen (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is Professor of Government at theUniversity of Essex (UK). He is associate editor of the Journal of Peace Research. Currentresearch interests include peacekeeping and the governance of post-conflict societies, therelationship between trade and conflict, and policy convergence in the European Union.Recently his research has focused on the impact of peacekeeping on local communities andon the perception of insecurity among the local population. The latter research based onfieldwork in Timor Leste. He has published in (a.o) International Organization, WorldPolitics, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, InternationalPeacekeeping, and the British Journal of Political Science. Tags: peacekeeping, Timor-Leste, UNMIT05/09/2016, 11:03More than Taxi-drivers? Pitfalls and Prospects of Local Peacekeeping | Sustainable SecurityPage 5 of 5https://sustainablesecurity.org/2016/09/01/more-than-taxi-drivers-pitfalls-and-prospects-of-local-peacekeeping/'Sustainablesecurity.org' is a project of the Sustainable Security Programme of Oxford ResearchGroup (UK Registered Charity No. 299436)| All content and downloads are licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Licence unless stated otherwise|sustainablesecurity@oxfordresearchgroup.org.ukBlog at WordPress.com.

More than Taxi-Drivers? Pitfalls and Prospects of Local Peacekeeping

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