Securing Peace: A Policy Summary

Policy Summary from the NGO Peace and Security Liaison Group (PSLG) - November 2009

IntroductionUK government polices on peace and securityissues have developed significantly since 2000.Greater attention is now given to the UK’sinternational role in preventing and resolvingviolent conflict, with an acknowledgement thatmilitary solutions alone are not appropriate oreffective in the face of complex conflicts whichcan afflict whole regions.

This report is based on a series of roundtablemeetings held between 2007 and 2009, whichexamined aspects of these policies from bothWhitehall and civil society perspectives.Issues raised included some of the trickiest inpeacebuilding: the relationship between localsand outsiders (whether multilateral agencies,national donors or international NGOs –INGOs), how sanctions and conditionality canbackfire, and the role of the military in post-conflict reconstruction.

Challenges were identified for policymakersand practitioners alike. Highly complexsituations require extended attention, in-depthengagement and consistent investment ofeconomic and human resources. How can webuild understanding of the nature ofintractable conflicts? How should we deal withthe pressure to deliver short term results ratherthan invest in long term solutions?

Given the increasingly tight economicclimate, how can national and internationalsecurity best be achieved? What is the addedvalue of investment in preventing conflict andbuilding peace, particularly in relation todefence expenditure?

These are difficult but vital issues which willcontinue to challenge governments in future,whatever their policy agenda.

Roundtable participants included officialsfrom across the relevant governmentdepartments, academics, and members ofthink tanks and NGOs. There weredisagreements on all the issues discussed,though the fault lines did not always fall clearlyor simply between government and civilsociety. Out of the interplay between their verydifferent points of view, this report highlightsnew insights and approaches, which if adopted,would make our investment in this areaconsiderably more productive.

Securing Peace

Local peacebuilding: an Afghan NGO working with a local peace council near Kabul Photo: Peace Direct

What is theadded value

of investment in preventingconflict and

building peace,particularlyrelative to

defenceexpenditure?

Preventing conflictand building peace:the UK’s role in achanging world

A Policy Summary

2 Securing Peace - Preventing conflict and building peace: the UK’s role in a changing world

BackgroundSince 2007, the NGO Peace and SecurityLiaison Group (PSLG)1 has sought to engagegovernment officials, academics, members ofthink tanks and NGOs in discussions that lookbeyond the government’s headline policies onpromoting peace and delivering security. Theroundtable meetings posed the questions:

• How do these policies work in practice?• Taken as a whole, how do they

contribute to a consistent approachtowards building peace and preventingconflict?

The meetings aimed to strengthen the UKgovernment’s conflict prevention andpeacebuilding capacity by facilitating a moreconsistent approach to the formulation andimplementation of policies which promotepeace and security. These discussions, whichtook place over the course of two years, reflectthe way foreign and security policy hasdeveloped and the changes in the politicalclimate since the series began in autumn 2007.2

In that time, many steps forward have beentaken and considerable efforts have been madein key departments to create better structuresand strategies.

When this series began in September 2007,the Comprehensive Spending Review wasabout to be launched, including Public ServiceAgreement (PSA) 30 (Reduce the impact ofconflict through enhanced UK andinternational efforts), an ambitious effort tomove conflict prevention and peacebuildingtoward the centre of policy. Key policydevelopments in 2008 included the publicationof the first National Security Strategy (NSS)and the FCO’s revised strategy, in which ‘toprevent and resolve conflict’ was one of fourstrategic policy goals.3

Other major events – in particular theelection of President Obama in November2008 and the economic crisis of 2008-09 –have created a further shift in perspectives.These filtered into the last few roundtablediscussions, which reflected renewed hope inthe field of international policy, but alsoconcerns about the longer term implications of increasingly scarce public resources.

Since the series of meetings was completedin June 2009, the NSS has been updated andDfID has launched a new white paper.4 Bothof these documents reflect concerns aboutglobal economic turmoil, increasingmarginalisation of the world’s poorestcommunities, and the need to focus on fragileand failing states. The government has alsopublished its Roadmap to 2010 – the NPTRevCon5 reflecting the marked changes in theclimate of opinion on disarmamentinternationally, as well as in the UK sinceMargaret Beckett’s June 2007 speech asForeign Secretary at the Carnegie Endowmentin Washington DC.

Notes and References1 The NGO Peace and Security Liaison Group (PSLG) brings together

NGOs engaged in peace and security issues. See the box on page 8 for moredetails, including a list of member organisations.

2 For a summary of changes in foreign policy and the structures that supportit, see for example, British Foreign Policy Since 1997, House of Commonsresearch paper 08/56, 23 June 2008.

3 Cabinet Office, The National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom:Security in an interdependent world, Cm 7291, March 2008; FCO, BetterWorld Better Britain, February 2008.

4 Cabinet Office, National Security Strategy of the UK Update 2009: Securityfor the next generation, June 2009; DfID, Eliminating World Poverty:Building our Common Future, Cm 7656, July 2009.

5 Cabinet Office, The Road to 2010: Addressing the nuclear question in thetwenty first century, July 2009.

US army soldiers question an Iraqi woman in Mosul 2008 Photo: U.S. Army / Pfc. Sarah De Boise

The election ofPresidentObama in

November 2008and the

economic crisisof 2008-09 havecreated a shift in

perspectives.

Policy Summary from the NGO Peace and Security Liaison Group (PSLG) - November 2009 3

Key themesWhat follows is a policy summary of thediscussions in the eight roundtables (all heldunder the Chatham House Rule), arranged asseveral interrelated themes:

1. The direction of national security policy:What is national security and does thecurrent UK strategy reflect it? Can a counter-proliferation policy work withoutdisarmament?

2. The effectiveness of conflict prevention,conflict resolution and peacebuilding: Howis conflict prevention understood? How canthe UK government best support peaceprocesses and peacebuilding?

3. The impact of these policies on theground: Should the UK be involved in statebuilding and how does this relate topeacebuilding? What role can localcommunities have in peacebuilding? Can themilitary have a humanitarian role in conflictsituations?

4. The role of the UK within internationalinstitutions: How can UN early recoverypolicies be more effective? What is the role ofthe UK in EU conflict prevention policies?

1. National security policyThe NSS exemplified the growing recognitionof complexity in the understanding of driversand threats, and the importance of seeing thelinks between domestic and internationalsecurity risks in new ways. From thegovernment’s viewpoint, the document wasthe result of a set of deliberate choices, one ofwhich was that counter-terrorism was not thedefining criterion but that the focus should beon identifying the full range of securitychallenges. On implementation, there wasacceptance that the culture in governmentneeds to move beyond traditional processes.Nonetheless, despite recognition of the newsecurity challenges, the responses proposedwere still couched in terms more relevant tothe old, narrower understanding of ‘security’.

The difficulties in addressing the new threatslie to a great extent in dealing with theirinteractions. So far, there has been less effortto tie together the consequences of thesethreats – for example, the NSS addressesclimate change and inequality as key issues,but does not make sufficient links between thetwo. Climate change and inequality, combinedwith global communications, mean thatcommunities are increasingly aware of theirown marginalisation, but the NSS does notacknowledge this. Climate change needs to beintegrated into UK foreign policy (just as the‘war on terror’ has been). That meansstrengthening the response at home, but alsopromoting integrated responses in relationswith other countries.

An ‘elephant in the room’ is the failure tomake sufficiently clear links between the UK’sforeign policy and its security. The NSS assertsthat the UK faces no state threats but does nottake into account possible threats created bythe UK’s alliances, particularly with the USand NATO. It is not set out publicly what thesealliances are for, and what the limits are to theUK’s loyalty. For example, although Russiaposes no direct threat to the UK, it does pose athreat to Georgia. Likewise, how far does thealliance with the US extend? What are theimplications for UK policy on Iran or Pakistanand Afghanistan, when the impact of policyand actions in one country underminesobjectives in another? Although there aredifficulties in including such issues in the NSS,these are exactly the kinds of questions aneffective strategy needs to address.

The NSS also has budgetary implications. In the longer term, how will futuregovernments, whatever their approach, chooseto invest in mitigating the threats theyidentify? So far the tendency has been to focuson high profile crises with the emphasis onshort-term security and military solutions,rather than on conflict prevention. Militaryexpenditure still makes up the vast majority ofsecurity spending, while conflict prevention isunder-resourced.

So far thetendency has

been to focus onhigh profile

crises with theemphasis onshort-term

security andmilitary

solutions, ratherthan on conflict

prevention.


Nonetheless recent experience, especially inAfghanistan, has led to an acknowledgementthat the military is less part of the solutionthan was envisaged. More work is now beingcarried out on horizon scanning and earlywarning, but experience suggests that inpractice many decisions are still made underpressure at the top of government without fullconsideration of their long-termconsequences.

Since 2007 there have been efforts tostreamline conflict prevention structures,leading to some improvement in crossdepartmental work between the three keydepartments. Yet this is still best characterisedas coordination – a division of roles andavoidance of clashing priorities – rather than a‘whole of government approach’. There is still astrong sense of difference betweendepartmental cultures despite the structuresthat have been established inside governmentwhich were intended to counter thesecentrifugal tendencies (for example, theMinisterial Committee on National Security,International Relations and Development –NSID – in the Cabinet Office).

A particular challenge to the consistency ofcurrent UK policy has come from the growingbody of opinion, which crosses party lines inboth the UK and US, that nucleardisarmament must be made a priority.Opportunities have also been created bymovement on the Conference onDisarmament after many years of deadlock.

The UK government has moved to supportthis view and to advocate strengthening theNon-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime.However this stance sits uneasily with itscontinued insistence on the need to renewTrident.

Trust building is critical if the NPT is tosurvive and become more robust. This appliesboth among nuclear weapons states (NWS)and between NWS and non-nuclear weaponsstates (NNWS). This will entail movingbeyond the approach which puts nationalsecurity first, above all other internationalpriorities. The NWS are still influenced by theCold War concept of disarmament, in whichrelinquishing nuclear weapons is seen asgiving up a form of security. Work onverification, such as has been put into place bya UK/Norway initiative, can help to buildconfidence, for example in verification of theComprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty(CTBT).

There are difficult specific challenges, forexample, North Korea and Iran, but there arealso systemic drivers that prevent movementtowards a world without nuclear weapons: lackof trust is fundamental and the continuedpossession of nuclear weapons by NWSundermines trust. There is a need to build onthe drivers that will encourage trust and agenuine attempt to see different perspectives.

A Trident submarine isescorted out to sea

from Barrow. Photo: Bob Stroughton

A particularchallenge to theconsistency of

current UKpolicy has come

from thegrowing body ofopinion, whichcrosses party

lines in both theUK and US, that

nucleardisarmament

must be made apriority.


2. Understanding conflictprevention and peaceprocessesPreventing conflict and building peace arenow recognised as important ways to avoidcostly wars, increased migration andhumanitarian disasters, yet within governmenta common understanding of these concepts isstill to be achieved. Although there is nowmore awareness of conflict prevention andpeacebuilding as a non-linear process, with upto 40% of conflicts slipping back into violence,there is still a tendency to view conflictprevention as ‘upstream’ of violence, andpeacebuilding ‘downstream’, when in fact theprocess is frequently circular.

PSA 30, which laid out government thinkingfor 2008-11, has ambitious targets: to reduceviolent conflict; promote the increasedeffectiveness of international organisations;improve government coherence, showingimpact on conflict across all departments andactivities; and use both statistics and narrativeto evaluate outcomes. But demonstratingeffectiveness is a challenge, with an unresolvedtension between this approach and theTreasury’s requirement to demonstrate outputsand value for money. This seems likely tobecome more of an issue as budgetaryconstraints increase, both in the UK and in theEU.

These highly complex situations requireextended attention, in-depth engagement andconsistent investment of economic and humanresources. When addressing a protractedconflict that has undermined social cohesionand economic wellbeing, and led to thecreation of militias or predatory elites, thereare no quick fixes or easy answers. Achievingand maintaining stability cannot be a short-term goal – this approach risks creating onlythe trappings of peace (such as in SierraLeone). Effective engagement entails 10- to 15-year thinking, which is in no way part of thecurrent political framework.

Taking this longer-term perspective, a largeconceptual gap can be identified on thequestion of how to deal with the communitiesand states involved in conflict. Bridging thisgap entails addressing intangible issues such asinequality, exclusion and abuse, as well as‘deliverables’ such as collecting arms and ruleof law work. The kind of targets set by theMillennium Development Goals (MDGs) maynot prove to be effective indicators of success.For example, in Burundi, there has been anoverall increase in educational provision (anMDG goal), but some communities are stillexcluded.

Increasing volumes of aid and promotion ofdemocratisation are often seen as necessarysteps to achieve peace but they may entailrisks and unintended consequences. Whilesound economic development is widely agreedto be a basis for sustainable peace, the processof development itself risks generating conflictin divided and war-torn societies. Equally, instates with weak institutions, democratisation(especially if focused mainly on elections)does not necessarily create stability, and mayexacerbate sectarian or ethnic rivalries –recent events in DRC being an example ofthese risks.

Supporting peace processes is an importantrole for the international community and forthe UK government, yet it is another areawhere the complexity of conflict has to beacknowledged, as do the competing andsometimes conflicting interests ofinternational players. Sanctions are often oflimited effectiveness in persuading warringparties to come to the table and remain there,and they risk further fuelling conflict. Aid isoften used as an incentive, but it has to beunderstood as inherently political, so thatwhen aid is used to put pressure on thewarring parties, it can exacerbate conflict.Using it to incentivise the parties may ignorehuman rights abuses and repression. DfID hasput effort into sharing conflict analysis amongdonors, helping to challenge some of theassumptions about the role of aid in peaceprocesses.

While sound economicdevelopment is

widely agreed tobe a basis forsustainablepeace, theprocess of

developmentitself risksgeneratingconflict in

divided andwar-tornsocieties.


A key question is whether external attemptsto bring an immediate end to violent conflicton humanitarian grounds may jeopardise atransformative and lasting peace based on alocally owned process. In peace negotiationsinterlocutors also have to weigh up whether itis better to sustain peace talks at the cost ofavoiding bringing human rights abusers tojustice (examples include DRC and Sudan).

3. Early recovery andpeacebuilding at ground level In all engagements on conflict, whethermultilateral or bilateral, the importance ofperception – of understanding the position oftarget governments and populations – iscentral.

In Afghanistan, there is a disconnectbetween two levels of activity: attempting tosupport a centralised state which has littleeffective power; and at the same time offeringlimited support for local peacebuilding effortsby indigenous NGOs and civil society groups.Post conflict recovery has emphasised physicalrebuilding rather than social building,peacebuilding and relationship building,which are essential to restore links and ties inAfghan society, eroded by many years of war.

Meanwhile Afghans perceive a lack ofunderstanding of these processes and a lack ofinterest on the part of the internationalcommunity.

The UK has wished to see itself as a force forgood in the world, but this must be squaredwith its responsibilities as a party to conflicts.This is an area that UK military forces havehad to wrestle with – what is required of themoutside conventional combat roles? Can the military be a credible humanitarianactor, or are its actions inherentlycompromised by the preoccupation withwinning ‘hearts and minds’, and by theperceptions of those they attempt to serve?

In Quick Impact Projects (QIPs) carried outin Afghanistan and Iraq, humanitarianagencies have expressed concern at the erosionof humanitarian space, which they see ascompromising their own activities and attimes endangering members of the civilianpopulation. The UK was the only countrywhich had a civilian leader of its ProvisionalReconstruction Team (PRT) in Afghanistan,yet overall the ‘militarisation’ of aid creates ablurred distinction betweenhumanitarian/development workers and themilitary on the ground, so that local peopleoften do not see the difference between them.Government departments and the militaryhave had no clear or explicitly agreedunderstanding on these boundaries, withdecisions often left to commanders in thefield. This concern has been raised withinNATO and the hope is that clearer guidelineswill be developed.

Difficulties encountered in efforts to rebuildstates – taking the examples of Afghanistanand DRC – indicate the importance ofsupporting local efforts to make peace andrebuild trust, rather than imposing formulasfrom outside. The UK has a relatively goodrecord on conflict management, but like othersin the international community has struggledwith state building. A top-down model has sofar prevailed in international efforts topromote early recovery and state building.

The UK has a relativelygood record on

conflictmanagement,but like others

in theinternational

community hasstruggled withstate building.

Angry crowd in eastern DRC disappointed at government failure to achieve peace Photo: Julien Harneis


In the case of the DRC, multilateral donorsand humanitarian agencies are spending largeamounts of money trying to recover afractured society. The internationalcommunity’s focus has mainly been onrestoring the national government and theeconomy, but voices from civil societyorganisations point to deficits in knowledgeand understanding in these very complexsituations and the lack of communication withlocal people. DfID’s current aid model focusesprimarily on inputs in an early recoverycontext. It has yet to resolve the question as towhether it is more effective to engage localcommunities through multilateral or bilateralagencies. Yet it is acknowledged that whencommunities are left out of the early recoveryprocess, progress is not made and the cycle ofviolence may be compounded.

Early recovery requires synergy betweenhumanitarian and development assistance anda clearer understanding of the local context inwhich recovery – economic, social andpolitical – can occur. The aim is to enhanceaccountability and transparency, but there arenumerous stumbling blocks, not least how toidentify interlocutors in ‘civil society’ –whether NGOs or individuals. It is alsoimportant that local government is effectiveand accountable, but the fact that it is moreresponsible to donors than the community ishighly challenging. In a conflict whereexclusion is based on sectarian or ethnic/tribalallegiances, local elites may be easier to dealwith, though the outcomes are not alwayspositive.

A major gap in local capacity is the marginalrole of women. Donors also frequently fail torecognise the importance of longer termengagement and funding commitments thatmake it possible to address and prevent sexualviolence and other issues that discouragewomen’s participation.

4. International effortMultilateral commitments have featured moreprominently in the UK’s recent policy toaddress conflict, though in practice this isproving to be a difficult arena. In situationssuch as Afghanistan, there are too manyactors, with a range of competing nationalinterests and priorities, lacking clearleadership. Whichever international bodypresides, there are frequent complaints of thefragmentation of donor effort and lack ofeffective mechanisms to manage aid.

The way the international community hasdealt with the national Afghan governmenthas marginalised it. The Bonn Agreement wassupposed to be a domestically driven andnationally owned process but, despite the UN’saim to achieve greater inclusion, a disconnectdeveloped between the UN and nationalplanning. This undermined efforts to revivethe local economy, creating artificial wagediscrepancies. Insistence on often perversetechnical assistance mechanisms alsoundermined local capacity. Local actors werefurther sidelined by the way Western donorshandled post-conflict reconstruction. Forexample, in the construction sector,international contractors were privileged tothe detriment of local competitors.

The EU has been successful in conflictprevention linked to the integration ofmember states, though there are limits to theeffectiveness of its enlargement policy. Manymore difficulties have arisen in EU efforts toengage in conflict prevention further afield.Currently there are structural areas ofincoherence: the participation of two pillars inconflict prevention policy (intergovernmentaland communities); difficulties with civilian-military relations and capacities; and thequestion of whether responsibility is primarilyto the mandate and to EU citizens rather thanto the target country and its citizens.

The European Security and Defence Policy(ESDP) is one of the more dynamic aspects ofEU architecture but there are still questionsabout how to translate EU policy and rhetoricinto conflict prevention and peacebuildingactivity on the ground.

It is acknowledged

that whencommunities are

left out of theearly recovery

process, progressis not made and

the cycle ofviolence may be

compounded.


Among the challenges are limitedbudgets, lack of a collective foreignpolicy focus among member states, thecurrently low standard of civilianrecruitment and training, and thequestion of how to ‘multinationalise’interventions that until now have beenled by individual members. The UK isseen as a model for some aspects ofthis agenda, particularly post-conflictstabilisation, but internally it stillsuffers from lack of publicunderstanding and support for the EUgenerally and for this work in particular.

The UK needs to encourage not justharmonisation in international organisationsbut creative thinking on alignment at the levelof society as well as government. At all levelsin the UK government and its internationalpartners, as well as in INGOs, the frequentlack of understanding of the local situationand the dynamics of conflict is encouraged byshort-term secondments, confinement tocapital cities and lack of linguistic expertise.This is often compounded by officials’ inwardfocus on their home organisations’ structures,priorities and work targets, rather than effortdirected to understanding the society andenvironment in which they are working. Alack of accountability to communitiesreceiving assistance, rather than simply todonors, also contributes to the gaps inunderstanding.

ConclusionA consistent theme that emerges is the failureof communication and understanding. Inrelation to communication, there aredifficulties for the government incommunicating its conflict prevention,peacebuilding and wider security policies to alargely uninformed or uninterested public.The government has even greater difficultiescommunicating these policies when they relateto the EU, where Euroscepticism always raisesits head, particularly in the tabloid media. Fortheir part, NGOs often fail to communicatetheir thinking to the right decision-makers orin ways that are helpful to government. Thepotential for using their expertise and abilitiesto act as a bridge to dialogue locally with civilsociety and internationally with both state andnon-state actors is often missed.

The issue of understanding goes evendeeper. There is a failure on the part of the UKgovernment to understand and reflect oninconsistencies and ‘double think’ in its ownpolicies. The position of pushing others to giveup their nuclear weapon ambitions while atthe same time renewing Trident is a primeexample of this – one that is not overlooked byIran and North Korea for example. In relationto conflict prevention and peacebuilding, thegovernment understanding is all-too-oftenlimited to the view from London, with littleunderstanding of local dynamics and localactors. NGOs on the other hand may fail tofully understand this view from London andmay make unrealistic policy recommendationsthat cannot work in the world of realpolitikwithin which government must often operate.

There aredifficulties

for thegovernment incommunicating

its conflictprevention,

peacebuildingand wider

security policiesto a largely

uninformed oruninterested

public.

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The NGO Peace and Security Liaison Group

The NGO Peace and Security Liaison Group (PSLG) brings together NGOsengaged in peace and security issues. The group works to establishmechanisms for policy dialogue on security-related topics between NGOsand the British government that is of practical benefit to both parties.

Its members are: British American Security Information Council (BASIC),Conciliation Resources, Conscience, Gender Action for Peace and Security(GAPS), International Alert, Medact, Oxford Research Group (ORG), PeaceDirect, Quaker Peace and Social Witness, Responding to Conflict, Saferworldand United Nations Association of the UK (UNA-UK).

The organisations that make up the PSLG bring together considerableknowledge and experience from the peace and security sector of UK civilsociety. Their fields of interest and expertise span conflict prevention,conflict resolution, peacebuilding, arms control and disarmament,international security and governance. Their remits include advocacy,research and campaigning. This Policy Summary is available to downloadfrom the PSLG website: www.PSLG.info

Award for Brig. Gen. Miller who led the European Command Joint Assessment Team (EJAT) humanitarian assistance

mission in Georgia 2008 Photo: Herald Post

Securing Peace: A Policy Summary

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