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Non-Government Organisations in Peacekeeping Operations
INTRODUCTION
This article advocates more active use of Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and civilian agencies in peacekeeping operations. This will provide a more flexible and adaptable instrument for future peacekeeping, as the causes of conflict are becoming more complex, and military peacekeeping alone is insufficient. The article highlights the need for developing civilian components that can deploy swiftly and competently alongside military components, to prevent or end violent conflict. It further suggests challenges and possibilities for Southern African peacekeeping. The region will still need international responses to its many unresolved conflicts, and as South Africa assumes a responsible role, it should be examined how these conflicts can be addressed constructively within a regional context.
THE CHANGING NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT
International conflict has undergone three important changes since the end of World War II. Increasingly, wars tend to be within rather than between states. States used to monopolise the declaration of war and the use of coercive force, and only used this monopoly towards other states. Today, as conflicts move intra-state, combatants are often self-proclaimed movements without the protection of treaties that govern warfare. Thus, they have no interest to heed state-based conventions such as declarations of war and truces, or immunity for non-combatants. States must expect to be engaged by guerrilla movements in other arenas than the battlefield, for instance through acts of terrorism directed towards population centres.
By abandoning traditional standards, violent conflicts have become deregulated. Violence loses its start and end points, and its topical borders. As violence is no longer reserved to the strong, unitary state, parties to a conflict easily lose sight of the goals towards which violence has originally been aimed. Violence becomes a means to settle any conflict, warfare turns into a way of life and society becomes endemically violent.
International violent conflict has become a ‘third world’ phenomenon. Economic interdependence and the relative similarity of common liberal values among states in the northern hemisphere have rendered war obsolete as a political instrument between or within states. War has become irrelevant, its costs are too high in relation to issues causing conflict between these states. So far, states in the developing world lack such compelling restrictions when choosing means for their political ends.
THE CHANGING NATURE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM
As international conflict have changed after World War II, so have the instruments meant to prevent and manage such violence. The United Nations is the most convincing attempt at establishing a regime for collective security. It was mandated to address causes of conflict between states, and was authorised to use force in order to prevent or end violence between states. However, the UN soon proved to have two major deficiencies: it was rendered powerless in matters involving superpower interests, and its respect for state sovereignty complicated its addressing of internal conflicts in member states.
In the wake of the Cold War, hopes were high that the UN would finally be able to carry out its intentions. The resolute international response to Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait seemed a promising start, justified by rhetoric that signalled a new World Order. But Kuwait was irrelevant. It was a success merely because it was the last of the one-state-against-another wars, being the kind the UN could manage. However, it offered no guidelines for the future of collective security.
Directions to be avoided have clearly been demonstrated in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. A lack of political and humanitarian results for a continual expense from limited financial resources, and above all the continued loss of peace keepers’ lives, have led to an increasing peacekeeping fatigue among major donor nations, many of whom used to be willing contributors, even during the dark years of the Cold War.
Two central features of Western societies, with implications for future peacekeeping operations, should be stressed. The limits of personnel losses that donor states will accept in peacekeeping operations seem to become lower, thereby effectively ruling out credible military deterrence against aggressors. Moreover, military peacekeeping is extremely expensive, particularly when conducted by professional armies like the US or British Army, equipped and trained to deploy and operate in the most demanding environments, regardless of cost considerations. This suggests that the high tide of military-based peacekeeping has passed and that other avenues for collective security have to be examined.
ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO ADDRESS INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT
An alternative to military peacekeeping is the employment of civilian assets or preferably a combination between the two, decided by their comparative advantages in managing different aspects of complex conflict situations.
When violent conflict turns domestic, it departs from the international arena traditionally dominated by diplomats and generals, and enter the arena of social scientists and grass-root operatives. By the same token, conflicts are often more complex than the traditional struggle for territorial control, suggesting that a first-hand knowledge of the society in question is advantageous, rather than a general knowledge of statesmanship or warfare. There is thus still a wide margin to be filled in peacekeeping operations.
This is further emphasised by the increasing demilitarisation of conflict, with its arena and consequences stretching far beyond the battlefield, and where the distinctions between combatants and non-combatants are erased. States and the international community lack the will, as well as the ability, to contain such conflict by military means alone, as experienced by the UN in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. These experiences have shown the need to address the complex causes of conflict through a multifaceted approach, where some actions are best left to NGOs or other civilian agencies who have clear advantages over military forces.
THE ADVANTAGES OF NGOs
NGOs’ advantages become more obvious as violent conflict moves intra-state. Many organisations possess intimate knowledge of the society in question by having undertaken humanitarian and development programmes in the area. Through such experience, they have become familiar with that particular society, its formal and informal distribution of power, its traditional divisions and conflict issues, as well as uniting factors, in short, knowledge that is useful in seeking constructive solutions to conflict in any society.
Another advantage of NGOs is experience of local co-operation, with both local authorities and local NGOs. This is fundamental to all NGO projects, as the development of skills inherent to such co-operation are often the only certain results of a development project. Thus NGOs are able to prove themselves as credible partners with integrity to local actors, and can play a constructive role in societies ravaged by violent conflict. NGOs pose a lesser challenge to local authorities, who are often highly suspicious of any outside involvement in what is deemed to be ‘sovereign’ affairs. This integrity can also serve to make NGOs more acceptable to parties to a conflict on other levels. Local authorities will accept that some trusted NGOs have developed rapport with informal groups, as this is an accepted modus operandi for NGOs, without lending undue legitimacy to the group in question. Similarly, groups opposed to the authorities will accept an NGO, with whom they have developed good relations, as a mediator. In this way, NGOs can fill crucial vacuums not easily covered by other institutions. Simultaneously, familiar NGOs are less liable to be accused of acting on behalf of some mischievous external power, a trick often played by challenged leaders to rally forces.
Scarce or unevenly distributed resources are often a main component of any causal complex resulting in violence. Such root causes are among the issues that have to be addressed in an extended and co-ordinated approach to peacekeeping operations. Development projects specifically aimed at alleviating or defusing potentially violent conflict should be recognised as valuable means within the concept of peacekeeping operations.
THE LIMITATIONS OF NGOs
There are several limitations to NGOs’ ability to play roles in peacekeeping operations. Integrity is of great importance to the NGO’s ability to operate in conflict scenarios. This integrity stems from NGOs’ emphasis on true independence from any political actors, including funding authorities in their country of origin. Integrity is their chief resource in playing a role in peacekeeping operations, as they possess no coercive or financial power of their own, and hold no international diplomatic recognition, like sovereign states, UN missions or the ICRC. Obviously, this advantage has to be safeguarded meticulously.
IMPARTIALITY
NGOs should accept the first tenet of all peacekeeping activities, that they can only fulfil a role if their presence in a theatre is accepted by both or all parties to the conflict. Many NGOs are deeply committed to specific values. Their raison d’être may, for instance, be based on supporting certain minority groups against oppressive authorities.
Such NGOs will find it impossible to co-operate with those same authorities. Active support for one party to a conflict against another can be a constructive approach, but it clearly falls outside the concept of peacekeeping. In the interest of all parties, such NGOs should steer clear of other NGOs or institutions willing to seek solutions through co-operation with all parties to a conflict.
NGOs should take care in co-operating with military components in peacekeeping operations. Countries can contribute troops to peacekeeping operations and humanitarian interventions to serve their own interests, even within the framework of UN operations. Moreover, UN troops in the future may have their mandate changed during the course of deployment, from peacekeeping to ‘peacemaking’. This entails identifying some parties as aggressors, and subsequently taking belligerent action to check or defeat these parties. Maintaining close links with such a military force spells trouble for any NGO wanting to keep channels open to all parties to a conflict. However, co-operation with military peacekeeping components is both sensible and inevitable in most theatres. Such co-operation will be addressed in greater detail later in this article.
VULNERABILITY
NGOs should not lose sight of their primary purpose. The advantages of NGOs in peacekeeping stem from the fact that they have often been present in the theatre before violence erupted, doing development or humanitarian projects. Active intervention in politicised issues, such as violent conflict,. can jeopardise the NGO’s ability to carry out its primary purpose, however benign the intentions behind such involvement. For instance, a mediating initiative with some chance of success is unwise if it results in a certain stop to the NGO’s food distribution. Local authorities will often seek to discredit NGOs in this way.
COMPARATIVE DISADVANTAGES
NGOs should always consider where they have comparative advantages, and where not. Virtues of NGOs are an understanding of development problems, and experience in co-operating with local partners for humanitarian or long term development purposes. Nothing in the nature of these activities suggests that NGO workers are brilliant negotiators, or are otherwise destined to assume high-profile positions in conflict situations. Publicised peace processes have lent prestige to the role of peace broker, at the expense of the grass-roots approach to alleviating conflict. NGOs contribute most to peace processes when they stick to what they are good at: working in the long term within troubled societies, addressing root causes of conflict by means of their knowledge and their integrity.
DEFINING POLITICAL AMBITIONS
There are roughly three different categories of political ambitions for NGOs’ peacekeeping-related projects in societies ravaged by violent conflict.
CATEGORY 1: CREATING HUMANITARIAN SPACE
This is the most basic ambition. It implies becoming and staying able to provide emergency relief in areas of conflict by obtaining the belligerent parties’ respect for such activities and their requirements. NGOs are ideally suited to broker such agreements, as they usually are perceived as honest, and as the need for humanitarian space is closely related to their primary task in the theatre. Ideally, NGOs should be able to operate without armed guards, as these offer only limited protection, and make the NGOs susceptible to accusations of partiality to some factions or parties rather than others.
CATEGORY 11: ADDRESSING ROOT CAUSES OF CONFLICT
This is an indirect approach, not aimed at the violence within conflict, but rather at the causal complexes underlying it, which need to be addressed in order to bring about lasting solutions. Addressing root causes means working to re-arrange unevenly distributed resources, and in all ways to seek to provide alternatives to violent articulation of demands. NGOs have good prospects for success in this field, through their understanding of development problems, and with their experience in seeking solutions through long term approaches, in close co-operation with the recipient society.
CATEGORY 111: MANAGING CONFLICT
The most ambitious projects attempt to broker high-level solutions to conflict, or try to modify the behaviour of parties to violent conflict. These high-profile approaches are directly aimed at making the conflict non-violent. In many theatres it is a tall order, and the prospects for success will often be modest if proper attention is not paid to the root causes of the conflict. There is a distinct possibility that such projects may be irrelevant, as conflict resolution models, proven to be successful elsewhere, may be imposed without due consideration for the causes and complexities of that particular conflict. Often NGOs will have a deeper understanding of a conflict, advising against such projects, and as previously mentioned, nothing in the nature of NGOs’ primary activities suggest any natural talent for taking on such tasks. It should further be kept in mind that such matters are heavily politicised, and too high a profile may damage the NGO’s primary humanitarian or development tasks. However, during conflict a margin for such initiatives will often occur, where NGOs will be natural candidates for brokering mediation attempts as a result of their position and integrity.
NGOs PARTICIPATING IN PEACEKEEPING CONSORTIUMS
This article seeks to demonstrate the huge challenges entailed in undertaking peacekeeping operations in chaotic and unstable theatres. This calls for a co-ordinated approach to peacekeeping in the NGO community. There are currently three major shortcomings. They are, respectively, insufficient up-front funding, insufficient rapid deployment capability, and insufficient inter-agency co-ordination.
UP-FRONT FUNDING
Humanitarian NGOs’ budgets are based mainly on government grants, donated in response to particular disasters and emergency situations. This allocation of funds leaves very little for general administrative overheads, effectively ruling out planning functions such as policy and operational development. When appealing for private funding, the fear of ‘high’ administration costs is taken to the extreme, due to oversimplified popular perceptions of what constitutes good aid. As NGOs are dependent upon maintaining goodwill among donors, they are reluctant to run the risks inherent in educating the donor community in the need to have at least some planning capacity. Subsequently, awareness of directing attention to the root causes of man-made emergencies is not raised. Thus, these emergencies perpetuate themselves, while the NGO community fails to develop methods to arrest their repetition.
It is necessary to convince the donor community of the virtues of early, resolute and concerted action in order to prevent or to limit violent conflict. There is conceptual room for such convincing, as most people agree that peacekeeping operations is the best instrument for this task. The NGO community should point out that the concept of peacekeeping needs development to cope with the more complex scenarios currently encountered. By including civilian agencies in the concept, one can both lower the cost of the operations, and at the same time improve the prospects for lasting peaceful solutions.
RAPID DEPLOYMENT CAPABILITY
For NGOs to become peace keepers on an equal footing with the military, they will have to develop an equally rapid deployment capability. The demands of war have always required national armed forces to maintain high levels of preparedness and training standards. This has rendered them convenient instruments for UN peacekeeping, as they can swiftly deploy in response to sudden demands, in most cases for low-intensity conflict not exceeding their military capability. However, the limitations inherent in military organisations make them unsuited to address the deeper causes of violent conflict. For this NGOs are better suited. However, they need to develop a similar deployment capability to assume this role. Well-conceived solutions can lead to NGOs adding considerable effectivity to peacekeeping scenarios at relatively modest cost, particularly when compared to the returns from the same investment made in additional military peacekeeping preparedness.
One cadre consisting of five to ten instructors, specialising in generating vocational training and subsequent employment for demobilised soldiers in unstable scenarios, will probably give a more lasting net contribution than a 200-soldier infantry company. Likewise, available funding to reward good governance in a recipient society will probably yield higher returns in terms of lasting peacebuilding, than any military contribution.
The point is not to try to do this cheaply. Civilian contributions to peacekeeping will only succeed if it is well conceived, and based on thorough assessments of likely scenarios. Towards this end, the donor community should accept the need for investments and some running expenses related to planning and co-ordination, and for surge capability preparations.
INTER-AGENCY CO-ORDINATION
Peacekeeping operations are by nature both technically complex and politically delicate. NGOs should acknowledge that an efficient contribution to such operations demands extensive preparation in terms of co-ordination of missions and methods. An enormous potential can be released through proper co-operation and allocation of missions between NGOs, and between the NGO community and the UN. Such preparatory co-ordination should be conducted in a vertical and an horizontal dimension.
In the vertical dimension, representatives of the NGO community can do mission preparation and conceptual development with the UN departments of Humanitarian Affairs (UNDHA) and Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). This will contribute to UNDHA’s goal of optimal utilisation of all humanitarian assets inside and outside the UN system, and for optimal co-ordination of civilian and military assets in future peacekeeping operations.
Within such a framework, a layered division of labour for peacekeeping operations can be established. At the bottom, UN civilian police and military peace keepers contain conflict by maintaining public order and enforcing truces. Above this level, NGOs and specialised UN agencies conduct their programmes aimed at relieving human needs and removing root causes of conflict. Through close co-ordination, the UN police and military forces will support operations which demand armed support, for instance disarmament and protection of demobilised soldiers, and protection of emergency operations in dangerous areas.
The top level will be a small UN leader group, usually led by a Special Representative of the Secretary-General (UNSGSR), and assisted by NGO and UN liaison officers from the lower level. In this way, the UNSGSR will have a well co-ordinated and flexible instrument at his disposal, providing him with a wide array of civilian and military tools to manage different situations.
An horizontal dimension is necessary among the different NGOs to plan the allocation of responsibilities within the framework envisaged above, in greater detail. Many NGOs are experienced in providing basic services, such as food distribution, primary health care and sheltering, but future peacekeeping operations call for additional specialised functions. To allow the NGO community to become knowledgeable in these fields, a system of specialisation must be encouraged. Several highly specialised tasks will be increasingly in demand, for instance:
- identification and registration of persons, and subsequent issuing of documentation, for disarmament, demobilisation and repatriation purposes;
- tracing of family members, with subsequent swift re-uniting of families, for general humanitarian and social stabilisation purposes;
- transport services: swift and reliable transport of large numbers of persons to different destinations can be necessary to prevent tensions and to support other projects in a wider peacekeeping operation. Good transport solutions must include proper reconnaissance procedures, and plans for optimally cost-effective combinations of air, land and sea transport relevant to different scenarios. It must cater for the particular needs of infants, elders, and general stress disorders often encountered in emergencies;
- elementary education services for children, in order to retain the highest possible degree of normality in otherwise chaotic situations, and to prevent longer term educational deficiencies. Curricula and methods of education must be prepared in advance for various likely scenarios;
- community services: it is important to encourage all attempts at self-sustainability in societies ravaged by violent conflict. Child care, renovation, drainage, shelter or housing distribution must be provided, and the recipient society should be encouraged to become involved. Recipients should assume overall responsibility for as many aspects of community life as possible, as early as possible. Decision-making and implementation must be close to traditional methods, as it improves a feeling of ownership in projects;
- adult education: this is important for demobilised soldiers, otherwise prone to recur to violence. Curricula should be a combination of theoretical and vocational training, adjusted to perceived general skills levels among pupils, and to the immediate and longer term needs of the recipient society. Cadres of culturally trained instructors must be able to deploy swiftly, to make use of windows of opportunity as they occur;
- employment schemes: parallel with the adult education schemes presented above, cadres must prepare for large scale employment of candidates as they graduate. They should be employed in trades related to their training, and which are needed in post-violence scenarios, i.e building, rehabilitation, road and bridge construction, water supply, purification and sewage, primary health care and vaccination, etc. Recipients can be employed on a food-for-work basis. Again, it is important to use windows of opportunity, to demonstrate the profitability of education, and the prestige to be derived from building a society; and
- humanitarian demining: many theatres of violent conflict have been indiscriminately mined. Landmines hinder repatriation, resettlement and rehabilitation projects. This should be addressed through humanitarian demining, with the emphasis on the transfer of knowledge and responsibility locally. Proper demining solutions should be able to clear valuable areas swiftly by mechanical means, and to perform less time-critical tasks through labour-intensive methods.
DECIDING WHEN AND WITH WHOM TO ENGAGE
Joint operations should be tried only when the political circumstances in a theatre are favourable, as every failed attempt surely will prevent later attempts, some of which could have proven successful. As previously pointed out, peacekeeping fatigue is a fact of life, in the donor community, as well as in recipient societies. The failure of UNAVEM II in Angola have instilled a scepticism and a cynicism among the Angolan population, making the task harder for the current, better conceived UNAVEM III operation.
WHEN TO ENGAGE
Favourable windows of opportunity for joint operations are before eruption of large-scale violence, and after protracted periods of large scale violence. Obviously, intervention before violence is the most favourable in terms of avoiding human suffering. However, there is currently no strong international regime supporting early warning and intervention to prevent violent conflict. Thus, violence will often have started and one will have to wait for the best possible moment to intervene, keeping in mind the pressing need to avoid failure or irrelevance. It is better to wait it out, as violent conflict follow its own logic in a cyclical fashion, with limited susceptibility to external attempts at halting the violence outside these cycles. The end of a cycle will be distinguished by mutual combat fatigue among the parties, and increased legitimacy for voices advocating negotiation and reconciliation. These forces need to be given prestige and active support by the international community during lulls in fighting. This has to be done in non-provocative ways.
WITH WHOM TO ENGAGE - LOCAL CO-OPERATION
Co-operation with local organisations or authorities is vital to the NGO mode of operation in conflict areas. Such co-operation serves a double purpose. It develops local organisational skills, always important in establishing civil society, and it provides the external NGO with an important source of information and advice on local affairs. In the absence of trustworthy local organisations, one may consider co-operation with organisations from the neighbouring countries for the same reasons, provided these organisations are acceptable to local authorities. Selection of local or regional co-operation partners is a tricky affair, but the potential for really addressing root causes in a purposeful manner far outweighs its possible risks. Local or regional partners can help identifying parties to a conflict, ready to consider alternative initiatives, and they can suggest categories of projects particularly suited to the situation in that particular area, often derived from their own experiences in similar projects in the same region.
WITH WHOM TO ENGAGE - INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION
Each NGO has to choose when to introduce itself in a conflict area, but this article suggests a certain hard-headedness in these questions, as the profits to be reaped from concerted action are obvious. Consortiums of NGOs should again seek to align their actions in time with those of international organisations like the UN, as this usually will lend more authority to the initiative, thus improving the prospects for success. Within such wider initiatives, each NGO has a better chance of finding the niche where its comparative advantages are best put to use.
WITH WHOM TO ENGAGE - CIVIL-MILITARY CO-OPERATION
As a rule, NGOs should avoid association with military forces, as the military’s function as a political instrument for its government can create problems for NGOs. However, in real scenarios, such co-operation has proved to be indispensable. Co-operation should preferably be undertaken with UN peacekeeping troops, or other units with an explicit non-offensive mandate. Military assets of value to NGOs include transport, medical evacuation, radio and telecommunications, briefings on behaviour in combat environments, and general protection and evacuation support.
Information gathering and dissemination are always at a premium in complex scenarios, and the military has an inherent capability for this, one the NGOs sorely need. Through timely and reliable information, NGOs can realise a huge potential for rationalisation and co-ordination of tasks between themselves. However, one should keep in mind that one man’s information-gathering is another man’s espionage, particularly when conducted through military means. For this reason, maximum transparency should be emphasised. All information should be forwarded to all parties, NGOs, UN, and belligerent parties alike, whether they need it or not. Information too sensitive to be distributed to all parties, should not be distributed or processed in any way.
DECIDING HOW TO ENGAGE
Some suggestions will be offered of how NGOs can contribute to peacekeeping operations. The emphasis will be on addressing the root causes of conflicts, Category II in the list of possible NGO ambitions in peacekeeping operations. Category I projects are more limited in complexity and scope and will therefore not receive much attention in this article. Neither will Category III projects receive much attention, as these lie within a field of operations best left to diplomats and international bodies, and because such projects are contextually dependent, they are difficult to plan in advance.
Projects in Category II, however, put the NGOs’ comparative advantages to maximal use. There is a wealth of experience suggesting in detail how such projects should be designed, and how they should be integrated with other components of the same operation.
On account of the premises laid down in the introduction to this article, it must be assumed that the typical peacekeeping operation of the future will take place within the borders of one state, rather than between two or more states, in a typical civil war scenario. The logic of such conflict suggests that a situation of guerrilla warfare will be encountered, with no established front-lines, and no clear distinction between combatants and non-combatants. In such conflict, conventions on the conduct of warfare will rarely be observed, resulting in degraded norms of general conduct. Subsequently, violence will spill over into other arenas of society.
The result of protracted conflict will often be a society bereaved of infrastructure, such as safe roads, reliable water or power supplies, without institutions like free elections, a functional bureaucracy, or a predictable judiciary. Education and health services will be dysfunctional. In short, typical peacekeeping operations of the future will take place in societies lacking everything. Peace cannot take hold, because violence perpetuates itself among people with no values or valuables to lose. Violence becomes endemic.
TWO APPROACHES TO CONFLICT
NGOs can approach root causes to endemic violence in two ways. These approaches can be termed ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’. The first category aims at providing soldiers and their families with the basic needs for a decent life, making them less susceptible to revert to violence. The second category aims at developing a society’s instruments of government, a lasting local capability for good governance and the peaceful settlement of conflict. Together, these two approaches will meet and overlap midway, allowing a stable civil society to develop.
BOTTOM-UP
Central to any peacebuilding after protracted civil war is the need to tie up demobilised soldiers. If they are not provided with peaceful sources of income, they can retreat to looting and violence in order to feed themselves and their families. This denies civil society the opportunity to develop, changing areas into lawless wastelands. This must be avoided at all cost.
Between them, smaller consortiums of like-minded NGOs should prepare complete schemes for the demobilisation of soldiers. This must comprise all needs in such a process, from initial registration, through basic education and vocational training, followed by relevant employment schemes or agricultural starting kits for farmers. These schemes must simultaneously provide for the basic needs of the soldiers’ families, within existing standards of living for such people.
These are traditional development measures, but employed here for specific peacekeeping and peacebuilding measures. Participation in such programmes will only be offered in exchange for the surrendering of weapons in specific places within specific time limits.
Registration and disarmament programmes are technically demanding and politically delicate projects. They should only be initiated after thorough analysis of their prospects for success, and only if they run parallel to projects which can cater for the soldiers’ diverse needs after disarmament, namely financial, social and security needs of the soldiers and their families. Participation of military peace keepers in receiving, registering, guarding and destroying arms is absolutely necessary. Credible security arrangements are crucial to the success of such programmes, implying that the overall political situation in the theatre must be improved, and physical protection should be offered to soldiers and their families by UN civilian police or military peace keepers. This will be greatly demanding on the body responsible for the overall conduct and co-ordination of the operation.
NGOs must be present during the disarmament process to identify and register the individual soldiers, and to survey their health and family status, their education and skills levels, their employment and resettlement preferences. This information must be passed on in a timely and reliable way to other NGOs participating in the consortium, as it provides the platform for all further aspects of the demobilisation programme. The programme can be divided into three phases: education, employment and self-sustainability.
Education
Based upon the initial survey, courses providing basic education and vocational training will be offered on a mandatory basis. This should be six to eighteen month courses with elementary literacy and numeracy training, combined with dissemination of basic knowledge about the construction and virtues of local and national democracy. Vocational training should be within disciplines necessary in reconstruction phases: carpentry, road and bridge construction, water and sanitation services, agriculture, transport services and vehicle maintenance. New cycles of courses should start every two or three months, to accept late-comers, and to include lessons learned from the first courses. The need for flexibility of timing is crucial, for registration and disarmament schemes invariably take much longer than initially anticipated. The Rhodesian demobilisation process, by all means a success story, took two years instead of the programmed three months. The current demobilisation in Angola, scheduled to take two months, is now being extended by three extra months, which will probably still be insufficient.
Employment
As former soldiers achieve certain levels of proficiency in various skills, they should be offered relevant employment. On a food-for-work basis, candidates from basic education and vocational training will be utilised in building, rehabilitation, basic water supply, purification and sewage, road and bridge reconstruction, maintenance and basic repairs of vehicles, hydraulic and electrical systems. All these services will be immediately needed in a post-violence theatre, and also cover longer term needs.
It has been discussed whether NGOs should employ people directly, or if they should work through local agencies or municipalities. At times, the first alternative is recommended. Through direct employment, employees can be provided with decent salaries and working conditions, in return for strict quality standards. This is necessary to carry out concrete missions in time, and to build a stable basis for the transfer of project responsibility to local organisations in future. Financial administration and auditing should be the last component to be transferred. It will often be necessary to retain control over this component years after the recipient has proved capable of assuming responsibility over all other technical aspects of the programme.
Self-sustainability
The education, as well as the employment programmes aim at developing self-sustainability in the recipient society. Through education and employment in the reconstruction of society, individual and commonly felt needs are covered. This is a direct contribution to peacebuilding. However, parallel to this is an indirect contribution to the establishment of civil society. Through the material benefits and the prestige involved in literally building the society, former soldiers are given too much to lose by reverting to violence. This is about using windows of opportunity: being able to offer protection and education when soldiers are willing to hand over their weapons, to employ them in meaningful reconstruction schemes at the completion of education, making it all aim towards eventually being able to take over themselves.
Ideally, these same schemes can be made available to women, but as scarce resources must give maximum return, they are better directed at those who would otherwise be prone to return to violence. Women are a more stable group as they tend to be tied up at home. This suggests another important role for women in war-torn societies: they represent the family, the most sturdy social structure in any society. This means that women have an unique ability to support society exactly when other institutions have been destroyed or corrupted by war. In Mozambique, NGOs run by women were used to provide information and encouragement before the elections in 1994, raising ballot participation and thus increasing the legitimacy of the election results among the population. The direct outcome of this use of formal and informal female networks is increased democratic understanding and participation among members and their families. The indirect outcome is increased prestige for organisations promoting peaceful articulation of demands, an important pillar in the construction of civil society. By supporting women’s organisations, NGOs demonstrate support to the contribution made by peaceful women in an environment otherwise often dominated by violent men.
TOP-DOWN
To support bottom-up programmes that address root causes of conflict, one should simultaneously run top-down programmes. This can be done by helping local organisations and democratically elected bodies to function properly. Another approach is to promise funds for projects brought about through co-operation between principally antagonistic groups, thus establishing negotiation as an alternative to violence in settling disputes.
Empowering local government
This means giving democratically elected bodies the means to actually implement their legislation. It is important in order to lend legitimacy to democracy, which often replaces dictatorship in chaotic phases. NGOs should co-operate with local government in areas they know. They should offer the prospect of financial support for basic, cost-effective, and high-profile projects within the areas of health, education, water supply and sewage, provided these projects are properly conceived. The promise of financial support should serve as an incentive for further improvement and consolidation of local democracy. It is important that proposed projects can be managed by the local community. NGOs should also demand strict conditionality, i.e. that support would be revoked if the project was not administered in a satisfactory way at all levels.
These projects should only be attempted in regions where the NGO have full confidence in the local bodies, or where the NGO operates through other agencies, like local or regional NGOs that can fully assess the situation. The NGO dimension is also important for two other reasons. Firstly, it keeps the projects and the recipient communities’ expectations within reasonably modest limits. Secondly, it provides a closer and more committed follow-up, than if it was conducted through ordinary inter-government co-operation schemes.
Forcing enemies to co-operate
One obstacle to reconciliation often encountered is the reluctance among community leaders to seek reconciliation with traditional enemies, fearing resentment in one’s own constituency. One way of allowing leaders to circumvent this problem, is to create a ‘strictly non-political arena’ where they can meet to discuss matters like health, education, etc. These matters are as political as any other topic, but they can be portrayed to be ‘above’ politics, because of their general nature. NGOs can assist in creating such arenas by providing funding for joint projects along the lines outlined in the previous paragraph. By giving immediate benefits to constituencies, such co-operation should become increasingly accepted, hopefully eradicating leaders’ fear of further reconciliation. Simultaneously, by making closer contact attractive, community leaders will gain important experience in co-operation, especially useful when the time is ripe to constitute more ‘political’ bodies.
Again, this kind of projects is best undertaken by NGOs, given their non-sovereign status that enables them to ‘fly below the radar’ in politically sensitive environments. Identification of communities suitable for such projects will also be simpler for NGOs, either through their own long-standing presence, or through co-operation with local or regional NGOs. Such local groups will also be valuable in setting up criteria and indicators for sound administration of projects.
A ROLE FOR SOUTH AFRICA
This article emphasises that civilian agencies must be able to deploy swiftly alongside military units in peacekeeping operations. The goal is to use windows of opportunity to prevent or to stop violent conflict, by providing demobilised soldiers with alternative employment, and by simultaneously encouraging local models for good governance.
The most likely demands for such operations will come from sub-Saharan Africa. The best response to these demands is to develop a regional capability for such operations. It should act through regional institutions, and should benefit from regional understanding of conflict issues, and from the region’s inherent need to find lasting solutions to its conflicts.
The rest of the region expects South Africa to assume a leading role in formulating new peacekeeping and peacebuilding policies. These expectations, however, entail unrealistic expectations of South Africa’s financial capabilities, and are mixed with a fear of a new South African regional hegemony. South Africa should consider these two points carefully when formulating its policy on regional peacekeeping.
Furthermore, South Africa’s defence needs have changed. The threat no longer consists of hostile neighbouring states, best kept in check with strong perimeter defences along borders. The new threat is internal conflicts inside states in the region. The humanitarian and political spill-over effects of these conflicts concern all states in the area, and can only be dealt with in a regional context.
The new threat demands a new concept of defence. Firstly, it should be acknowledged that non-military means take on a more important role, and secondly, that the nature of the new threats demands optimal co-operation from all parties, from the state being host to the conflict, as well as from remaining states in the region.
NON-MILITARY DEFENCE
South Africa itself is involved in a demobilisation process that will make large numbers of soldiers redundant. Certain categories should be offered alternative employment in civilian peacekeeping. These former soldiers should become cadres of units specialised in logistics, health care, engineering and humanitarian demining. They must prepare to deploy at short notice, within the framework of internationally authorised peacekeeping operations. They must prepare for different contingencies, to have the optimal packages available for those scenarios most likely to be encountered in the region.
Their task is twofold: firstly, to cover time-critical basic needs that could otherwise have increased tensions and violence. Secondly, a philosophy of maximal local participation and speedy transfer of responsibility should be integrated in their work. There should be a clear emphasis on labour-intensive work. This arrangement can be constructive, as well as cost-effective. Each cadre should consist of ten to twenty men, prepared to educate, and subsequently employ several hundred people, depending on the nature of the work. Moreover, this work will solve critical immediate and longer term needs in the recipient society. Basic technology should be employed, to keep costs and complexity down, and because labour-intensity is in itself a target. The cost-efficiency will be high, in comparison to contributing military units for similar purposes, as they will use high-tech equipment, and high-cost conscripts or professionals. Such initiatives are what have been termed the ‘bottom-up’ approach to addressing causes of conflict.
Simultaneously, South Africa should offer advice on non-violent conflict settlement and courses in good governance. This relates to the ‘top-down’ approach. South Africa has considerable authority in this field, derived from experiences during its own transitional process. For reasons of cultural context, models which have proved successful in South African communities stand a better chance of success in Africa, than models adopted from European or American experiences. For the same reasons, it will be easier for South African civilian agencies and NGOs to co-operate with local NGOs and authorities. Again, this will be a cost-effective kind of peacekeeping, especially if used in conjunction with other civil and military components. It is important to institutionalise such knowledge, as it is currently tied to individuals and NGOs of variable substance. By their nature, such initiatives need a certain freedom from state control, but their usefulness in addressing violence should be appreciated, and, if necessary, nurtured in an initial phase.
Obviously, government funding would be necessary to establish, and initially run the cadres described, so they do not strictly adhere to the term NGO. However, they can operate in the same margin as NGOs, drawing on the same advantages, provided they demonstrate real independence of the South African Government. This is not impossible, as most ‘independent’ NGOs are actually mainly funded by their home governments. For historical reasons, the need to separate funding and influence is more important for South African NGOs operating in the region.
FORUMS FOR NON-MILITARY DEFENCE CO-OPERATION
South Africa should carefully tie all peacekeeping initiatives to regional bodies for three reasons:
- There will be a certain fear among its neighbours of a new South African hegemony, given its unrivaled political and economic leadership in the region. As any regional peacekeeping operation will inevitably have strong South African content, it is important to demonstrate that South Africa participates for reasons of collective regional security. This is best done by insisting that a body comprising all democratic governments in the region shall decide parameters for the aims, means, and rules of any operation. By voluntarily subjugating to such a body, South Africa sets an example for the other states in the region. This is especially important in Africa, where the peacekeeping debate still evolves around military measures, while the delicacy and complexity of its conflicts call for a far more careful and considerate approach.
- By placing responsibility with a regional constitutional body rather than with temporary coalitions of states, regional peacekeeping becomes institutionalised. It can be portrayed as ‘above’ national interests, and assume an identity of its own. If such a body can achieve successes in peacekeeping and peacebuilding based on regional resources, the idea of collective security may gain prestige and become a uniting symbol, inspiring further co-operation among the states of Southern Africa.
- Preparations for civilian peacekeeping under direction of such a body could appeal to the international donor community. Southern Africa has long attracted interest from overseas governments interested in supporting democratisation in the region. This interest is kept alive by the political dynamism precipitated by the end of apartheid, and by the need to prevent violence in the region’s many unresolved disputes. A credible regional peacekeeping capability should attract funding for two reasons. Firstly, it is an answer to the need for a regional conflict resolution capability. Secondly, the development of such regional institutions is itself a major goal. Even a tiny fraction of the development funds made available to the region annually, could be sufficient to set up civilian peacekeeping cadres. It should be kept in mind that the concept of south-south co-operation appeals strongly to the donor community, and will in itself be an argument for financial support.
CONCLUSION
The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) is probably too unwieldy, and geographically and thematically diverse for such a purpose. Further development of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) seems a safer route, in spite of the many obstacles and limitations presented by such development. Development of a security dimension in SADC is probably a better idea, than trying to establish new organisations among states with a very limited ability to shoulder additional international commitments. SADC offers the geographical concentration necessary for collective security purposes, and there is already a certain level of interaction between member states through its current economical integration projects. However, any collective security identity must be allowed to grow at its own pace, as any attempts at rushing the process would over-extend the technical and financial potential of members, forcing South Africa to pick up the bill, and thus eroding the true collective identity of such co-operation.
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