Operationalizing Conflict Prevention: Role of UN Police

Since they were first deployed in the 1960s, UN Police have been an established instrument in the peace and security toolbox of the United Nations. Although their role has increasingly been framed as preventive, police contingents have become a regular feature of special political missions as well as peacekeeping operations.
The concept of ‘sustaining peace’ has consolidated the notion of UN Police as a central actor in conflict prevention in a wide range of settings and stages of conflict. In the context of the recent peace and security architecture reform, the UN Secretary-General formally assigned UN Police the role of a system-wide service provider.
While this opens up a range of deployment settings where UN Police can contribute to conflict prevention, writes ANNIKA S. HANSEN, it also entails organizational, financial and political challenges.
Some challenges are specific to police, others are inherent to preventive engagement more broadly but have police-specific connotations, the author writes in ‘Operationalizing Conflict Prevention – The Role of United Nations Police’, a policy briefing published by Berlin-based ZIF-Center for International Peace Operations. She suggests the following key considerations:
Finding a persuasive narrative: The most fundamental challenge is gaining host-country consent for early preventive engagement without appearing to undermine its authority and sovereignty and potentially ‘exposing’ areas of fragility and contested legitimacy. The joint World Bank-United Nations report “Pathways for Peace” (2017) suggests that a narrative which explains how preventive support will in fact bolster a state’s sovereignty and capacity might be persuasive.
Balancing technical and political engagement: Concepts of police reform have long argued that building state capacity without concurrently establishing democratic oversight and good governance, bears the danger of strengthening corrupt or authoritarian institutions. Hence, promises of technical support to enhance sovereignty must be complemented by political engagement, in order not to aggravate tensions and feed conflict drivers.
Addressing regional dimensions of conflict dynamics: Although conflicts tend to be part of a regional system, most deployments remain country-based: UN Police conduct activities with national police services and other stakeholders as part of a peace operation within a particular country. There are few examples of support to conflict prevention through regional offices to address transnational dimensions of conflict. The Peacebuilding Plan for Liberia is one; it foresees future support being channeled through the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel. These examples are likely to increase in the future.
Avoid flying blind: Conflict analysis in the UN has been notoriously disjointed. Efforts are underway to strengthen these capacities throughout the system, but challenges remain in merging component parts of the analysis produced by different stakeholders into a cohesive UN strategy for conflict prevention. This also entails structuring UN Police cooperation with DPPA and other system-wide instruments for coordinating conflict prevention.
Convincing member states of expanding portfolios: Russia and China are the most vocal member states that consider broadening the context of UN Police assistance to non-mission settings beyond the remit of the UN Security Council. Perhaps recognizing that the GFP is the primary entry point for such assistance, Russia rejected that a call for greater member state support for the GFP be included in the December 2018 SC Resolution 2447 on Police, Justice and Corrections.
Securing resources: Mobilizing funds for preventive activities has been challenging. While UN Police efforts in a peace operation are funded through the support account (peacekeeping budget), there are no such ready funds in non-mission settings – nor are there currently modalities for deploying individual officers outside of the SPC setup. Where the Peacebuilding Commission is engaged, such as in Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia, the Peacebuilding Fund can provide vital funding to address post-transition needs. All other extra-budgetary financing has to be generated for a specific program, such as the senior management training for police in Tunisia, which individual member states have funded through UNDP and OHCHR projects. Germany is also providing funding to enable preventive UN Police deployments.
Pursuing prevention in new thematic areas: New areas, such as organized crime and preventing violent extremism, are pushing their way onto the prevention agenda. Organized crime represents a prime case for prevention: unless addressed early, it festers and infiltrates state institutions. Given the nexus between organized crime and national political dynamics, however, addressing organized crime, for which UN Police has deployed specialized teams as in Mali, endangers fragile consent and confounds political engagement.
The same can be argued when it comes to taking on the prevention of violent extremism. Given the mismatch between the deep roots of destabilizing forces and the duration of UN Police deployments, preventive contributions cannot bear fruit in isolation from longer term political and developmental efforts that can affect underlying causes of conflict. And yet, these contributions bring valuable change where it matters most, close to the people, and thereby maintain space for a political process to unfold.