Two conceptual frameworks: ‘subcontracting’ and ‘partnering’

In the most general terms, the relationship between the UN and regional organisations in peacekeeping has two variations that may be called ‘subcontracting’ and ‘partnering’ respectively.

‘Subcontracting’Footnote ⁹ refers to an arrangement whereby regional organisations are responsible for the main onus of peacekeeping and yet authorised, monitored and directed by the Security Council. In the subcontracting mode of global-regional cooperation, regional peace operations are in essence UN operations delegated to regional organisations. At the general level this idea is anchored in the role of the UN as the global international organisation responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. Insofar as regional peacekeeping operations are intended to contribute to international peace and security, they are expected to seek formal authorisation or at least some sort of endorsement (for example, through presidential statements or in preambular paragraphs in related resolutions) by the Security Council. This is bolstered by provisions in Chapters VII and VIII of the UN Charter. Chapter VII gives the UN Security Council a unique power to determine the situation as a threat to international peace and security. Chapter VIII of the UN Charter conditions regional organisations and their activities in the field of international peace and security in three ways: (a) they should be consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the UN; (b) no enforcement action should be taken by them unless authorised by the Security Council and, (c) the Council should at all times be kept fully informed of activities undertaken or in contemplation by them for the maintenance of international peace and security. Combined, these provisions make clear the centrality of the Security Council in the decision-making of collective conflict management efforts, especially those involving the potential use of force, even when they are initiated by regional organisations. The UN's primacy in this field resides in this disparity of decision-making powers between the UN and regional organisations.

Peacekeeping missions have never been outright military interventions, but one of the trends in the evolution of peacekeeping in the past decade concerns the use of force for the implementation of mandated tasks. This reflects the fragile operational environments in which many peacekeeping missions now have to operate as well as of the complexity of tasks with which they are entrusted.Footnote ¹⁰ Like UN peacekeeping where such ‘robust’ peacekeeping has already become the norm,Footnote ¹¹ regional peacekeepers are facing similar situations. In this context, the availability of the Chapter VII authorisation to use ‘all necessary means’ is an important source of legitimacy for regional organisations.

Subcontracting can bring several benefits to the UN and regional organisations. For the UN, this arrangement can bolster the credibility of the UN with a lesser operational burden. For regional organisations, as mentioned, the UN authorisation to use force will add clear legality to their robust operations. It will also help bolster the legitimacy of their activities internationally and the acceptance level of the host population. Moreover, as the case of the AU demonstrates, liking their operation to the UN authorisation creates an avenue through which they can demand the UN to mobilise resources in their support. Subcontracting, however, presumes a hierarchical relationship that many regional organisations are rather cautious and even reluctant to develop and formalise. Some examples of such cautiousness or hostility will be shown in the UN debates below.

‘Partnering’Footnote ¹² implies a more horizontal relationship wherein the UN and regional peacekeeping bodies form a network of peacekeeping partners with interconnected capabilities. The UN should partner with regional organisations to create such global network of capabilities. This ‘partnering’ model brings several advantages. One is its non-hierarchical, interactive nature that lessens the kind of wariness on the part of regional organisations. This may be important in expanding the network towards regional actors which are already conducting peacekeeping operations (for example, NATO) or beginning to develop such capacity (for example, the Collective Security Treaty Organization: CSTO)Footnote ¹³ but whose institutional partnership with the UN have not yet seen much progress. Relatedly, the ‘partnering’ model may also be credited for openness to regional organisations that differ greatly in their capacities as well as other bodies and organisations with which peacekeeping missions are likely to coordinate their activities. Indeed, ‘Peace Operations 2010’, an influential memorandum on peacekeeping reform issued by the then chief of the DPKO, Jean-Marie Guehenno, in November 2005,Footnote ¹⁴ proposed cooperation not just with regional organisations but also with the other UN organs and the World Bank group. The mandate of a newly created section within the DPKO dedicated to cooperation with external partners reflects this orientation. The aptly titled Partnerships Section, initially proposed by the Secretary-General in February 2007 and approved by the Special Committee in June,Footnote ¹⁵ is designed to develop ‘strategic peacekeeping partnerships’ with UN agencies, funds and programmes, regional and sub-regional entities, international financial institutions, regional development banks, and development and humanitarian agencies; support integrated operational teams within the Secretariat for specific missions; and ‘work closely with the African Union peacekeeping support team, taking responsibility for assisting the African Union in the operational development of its peacekeeping capabilities’.Footnote ¹⁶ The ‘partnering’ concept thus encourages initiatives to foster new institutional partnerships with a wide variety of actors.

But these potentials of partnering need to be kept in perspective. Constructing a global network of peacekeeping capabilities depends on the willingness on the part of the regional organisation, and eventually its member states, to join it. For a regional organisation to enter into institutional partnership with the UN at least three things need to take place: states in the region agree to establish a regional organisation; to include peacekeeping among its functions; and to enter into an institutional partnership with the UN. In this regard, it could be said that the cases of the AU and the EU, though important, may be still unique. For regions such as northeast Asia, there has not been any regional organisation in place. For others such as southeast Asia, south Asia, and the Middle East, there has been no concrete progress towards the institutionalisation of peacekeeping within their organisations. Even for the AU and the EU, it is logically possible to decide not to join the network by working with the UN only on an ad hoc, mission-specific basis. It has been the experiences of multiple conflicts in the Balkans and on the African continent that made peacekeeping an important conflict management tool for the two organisations, which found partnership with the UN useful for different reasons. For the AU, as will be shown below, it is the availability of logistic and financial support; for the EU, the expectation that its mission can be followed on by UN missions and that it can thereby cut short its peacekeeping commitment. These backgrounds and incentives are not necessarily present in the other regions; and when they are, the actual terms of partnership are suited to the interests of the respective regions. Because of its horizontal nature deferential to the interests of the regional partners, the resultant network will be a loosely knit one with in-inbuilt limitations on it.

These two models are not mutually exclusive. As the examination of institutional partnership with the AU and the EU will show, an institutional partnership can be described through some combination of the two models. Nevertheless, they provide a global perspective from which to evaluate actual cases of institutional partnership.

UN Debates

Subcontracting and partnering have been the conceptual models, implicitly and explicitly, behind debates at the UN fora since the early 1990s. A review of UN debates suggests that there were ebbs and flows in the interest in the issue of UN-regional peacekeeping cooperation, but there are two periods in which the issue was actively debated at the UN: from 1992 to the mid-1990s, and from the early 2000 to the present.Footnote ¹⁷ Each period was entailed by new initiatives to forge institutional partnerships with the (O)AU and the EU respectively.

The issue of UN-regional cooperation in peacekeeping first appeared in the 1992 Agenda for Peace and was elaborated through its 1995 Supplement. Both documents saw UN cooperation with regional organisations on peacekeeping matters as promising and yet guarded against the danger of the UN credibility undermined by active regional initiatives. The Agenda for Peace pointed out that ‘regional arrangements or agencies in many cases possess a potential that should be utilized in […] preventive diplomacy, peace-keeping, peacemaking and post-conflict peace-building’ and argued that this ‘regional action as a matter of decentralisation, delegation and cooperation with UN efforts could not only lighten the burden of the Council but also contribute to a deeper sense of participation, consensus and democratisation in international affairs’.Footnote ¹⁸

In response, the Security Council issued a note by its president inviting regional organisations to study how they can strengthen their security functions and coordinate their activities with the UN.Footnote ¹⁹ Several regional bodies submitted their views.Footnote ²⁰ The years between 1992 and 1993 was the period in which major regional organisations took important initial steps toward conflict management in their respective regions. At the July 1992 summit, the Conference for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (CSCE) declared its status as a regional arrangement under the Chapter VIII of the UN Charter and decided to enhance its conflict prevention and management capabilities including through potential deployment of peacekeeping operations.Footnote ²¹ NATO adopted ‘a broad approach to security’ in the new Strategic Concept of November 1991 and stated its readiness to support CSCE peacekeeping activities in June 1992.Footnote ²² The Western European Union (WEU) in the same month announced that the scope of its operational role would include ‘humanitarian and rescue tasks’, ‘peacekeeping tasks’, and ‘tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking’.Footnote ²³ A few weeks later, the OAU also decided to institutionalise a mechanism for conflict prevention, management and resolution within its remit.Footnote ²⁴ While they in general expressed support for the idea of strengthened cooperation with the UN, there are differences in tone among them. On the one hand, for instance, the Organization for American States (OAS) repeatedly emphasised respect for the different spheres of competence of the UN and regional organisations that should be utilised only for a common purpose and in a complementary and reciprocal manner: ‘OAS could not be a mere executor of decisions issuing from the UN or any of its organs.’Footnote ²⁵ OAS argued that states are free to establish regional organisations and, once they do so, are ‘entitled to determine their areas of competence and their purposes, frame their principles, delimit their spheres of action, and adopt their governing provisions, instruments and operating mechanisms as they see fit. The only limitation on their sovereign decisions in this respect is imposed by the necessity for the regional agencies and their activities to be conformable to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the UN.’Footnote ²⁶ This argument, in essence, derives the autonomy of the regional organisation from the autonomy and sovereignty of its member states. If not with the same level of wariness, many other regional organisations expressed similar opinions. Citing his own argument in the Agenda for Peace, the European Community (EC) reminded the Secretary-General that ‘no two regions or situations are the same’ and therefore that a rigid formula for cooperation ‘seems to be neither necessary nor desirable’.Footnote ²⁷ The EC's call for ‘flexible forms of interaction’Footnote ²⁸ was based on its ongoing peacemaking role as part of a complex international engagement in the former Yugoslavia, but also clearly intended to inform a general preference for maintaining the existent, less binding relationship with the UN. As regional bodies involved in the Balkan crisis and at the same time in the process of devising their frameworks for conflict management, NATO and WEU both outlined recent institutional developments and stopped at a call for better consultation links with the UN.

On the other hand, the OAU took a more affirmative approach to the issue, emphasising ‘complementary and mutually reinforcing’ roles of the two organisations. The UN has a global scope and greater material and financial resources, whereas the OAU draws its strength from its ‘proximity to and better knowledge of local African conflict situations, the shared historical experience and culture of its member States and the political will to resolve its own problems’. Against this background, the OAU suggests the UN could provide logistical, material, military and financial support to OAU activities, including through strengthening the relevant parts of the OAU General Secretariat.Footnote ²⁹

The diversity of positions taken by regional organisations on this issue can be seen in the Declaration on the Enhancement of Cooperation between the UN and Regional Arrangements or Agencies in the Maintenance of International Peace and Security, adopted at the General Assembly on 9 December 1994. It acknowledged that cooperation between the UN and regional organisation should take place in accordance with ‘their respective mandates, scope and composition’ and ‘in forms that are suited to each specific situation, in accordance with the Charter’. It also stated that regional efforts should be ‘encouraged and, where appropriate, supported by the Security Council’. But the declaration also showed the fairly tentative stage of the debate itself, with its calls for regional organisations and their member states to continue to explore how regional conflict management efforts should be developed and better coordinated with the UN.Footnote ³⁰

The Supplement to the Agenda for Peace, published in January 1995, in fact expanded on this theme by articulating the forms and principles of coordination between the UN and regional organisations in peacekeeping. The forms of coordination include: (a) consultations; (b) mutual diplomatic support; (c) mutual operational support; (d) co-deployment of field missions and, (e) joint deployment of a mission. The principles are: (a) the need for agreed (if not necessarily formal) mechanisms for consultation; (b) the primacy of the UN; (c) the need to set out a clearly defined and agreed division of labour and, (d) the need for states to pursue a consistent policy in tackling the same situation through the UN as well as the regional organisations.Footnote ³¹

For our purposes, the Supplement's argument is interesting in that, despite the argument voiced by several regional organisations that strengthened cooperation with the UN might undermine their autonomy, the primacy of the UN was clearly stated as a principle of global-regional cooperation in peacekeeping. The Supplement did carefully take into account their concerns by combining it with a clearer division of labour and agreed consultation mechanisms. But the Secretary-General argued, somewhat bluntly:

In this we can see a clear expression of the subcontracting model. Based on provisions of the UN Charter, Boutros-Ghalis's argument emphasises the disparity of decision-making powers between the UN (Security Council) and regional organisations in matters of international peace and security; and on that basis, the Security Council can ‘assume’ that it can utilise them to implement its decisions, but this prerogative does not apply to regional organisations.

The second period of renewed interest in global-regional peacekeeping cooperation was triggered by two major developments. For one, at least by 2003, the surge of the demand for peacekeeping was clearly recognisable, especially in Africa. Between 2000 and 2003 new missions were created in situations concerning Ethiopia/Eritrea and Liberia. The UN's transitional administration in Timor-Leste as well as robust operations in Sierra Leone and the DRC required substantial commitment of resources. In November 2001, the number of uniformed personnel of UN missions reached a peak of 47,778,Footnote ³³ a nearly four-fold increase within the space of two and half years.Footnote ³⁴ In addition, African regional operations in Ivory Coast and Burundi were newly created with expectations for eventual UN take-over. For another, as already noted, the year 2003 witnessed the launching of fully fledged military peacekeeping missions by the AU and the EU. From that time on they have remained active in organising new missions, making themselves the most important partners with the UN in peacekeeping. The overall picture, then, is characterised by a growing overall demand in peacekeeping and increasing activities by regional actors.Footnote ³⁵

Against this background, the terms of the debate on global-regional peacekeeping cooperation appears to have changed from the earlier one. The predominant question now was not so much a question of principles and forms of cooperation per se but rather a practical one of how to ‘meet the increase in demand for UN peacekeeping, particularly in Africa’ and ‘to find ways to meet that demand by working with the multiplicity of today's peacekeeping partners’.Footnote ³⁶ The new sense of pragmatism is best represented by the following remarks by Annan. In his report to the Special Committee in January 2004, he described the developments of 2003 as:

In July 2003, he also told representatives of regional organisations to the following effect:

These statements can be seen as substantive expressions of the notion of partnering. Partnering involves efforts to create and, as Annan indeed stated in 2004, institutionalise an emerging network of peacekeeping partners whereby the UN and regional peacekeeping suppliers could expect to coordinate their deployments and count on each other's peacekeeping resources and expertise.

The Peace Operations 2010 directive shared this thinking. Intended as a plan of action for the period 2005–2010, its overall purpose was to reset the UN peacekeeping reform agenda in view of new challenges: overstretch in the field as well as in the headquarters, demand for deployment in volatile areas, and introduction of new tasks. The directive then proposed to the Secretary-General five main areas of reform: recruiting best-qualified personnel, securing necessary resources, promoting effective integration of various sectors within a peacekeeping mission, creating generic peacekeeping doctrine, and establishing ‘effective partnerships’ with bodies both in and out of the UN system engaged in related activities. As for cooperation with regional organisations, the priority was ‘to establish predictable frameworks for cooperation with regional organizations in peace operations, including common peacekeeping standards; joint training and exercises; and modalities for cooperation and transition in peace operations’.Footnote ³⁹ Unsurprisingly, the directive shows that the DPKO sees the EU, NATO and the AU as important partners in this regard; and its plan of action proposed development of a DPKO strategy for the enhancement of AU peacekeeping capacities; ‘technical modalities and procedures for the engagement of EU Battle Groups in support of UN Peace Operations’; and an ‘action plan to take forward practical UN-NATO cooperation in peacekeeping’. At the same time, the directive describes the AU as a ‘key external partner’ and confirms a commitment to supporting the building of African peacekeeping capacities ‘over the next 10 years’.Footnote ⁴⁰

This directive, with its five identified areas of reform, was elaborated in the Secretary-General's report to the Special Committee, which after its deliberations in later February 2006 ‘takes note of the Secretariat's reform agenda as a furthering of the process begun in the report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations […] and looks forward to ongoing consideration of that agenda over the next five years’.Footnote ⁴¹ The Peace Operations 2010 reform agenda has thus become a framework of the new stage of peacekeeping reform to this day. Given this, and, importantly, in view of the fact that its two backgrounds mentioned above have continued to accelerate – the number of uniformed personnel exceeded 90,000 for the first time in 2008 – it is reasonable to expect this pragmatic approach to the issue of cooperation with regional organisations to remain predominant in the future.Footnote ⁴²

For the UN, the partnering model is based on the realistic acknowledgement of the emergence of regional organisations as peacekeeping actors ‘in their own right’ and the assessment that this ‘offers substantial opportunities’ for the UN.Footnote ⁴³ That is, there is a reasonable prospect that major regional organisations will continue to organise peacekeeping missions outside the UN umbrella; and, while this means that significant military and police resources, especially from European countries, are not directly available for service to the UN, there is a possibility that the UN could tap into these resources by asking these organisations to take the lead. The participation of regional organisations into peacekeeping would increase the overall pie of resources and add at least an option for the UN. However, that does not mean that the UN has done away with the formal position of the UN primacy in international peace and security and more specifically the subcontracting model expressed by Boutros-Ghali. ‘[T]he Security Council’, Annan argued in his 2006 report on global-regional security cooperation, ‘must always retain primary responsibility for that task, but, within that context, it should be able to rely upon, and should seek, a willing and capable subsidiary role on the part of regional and other intergovernmental organizations in peace and security from every region of the world, without exception’.Footnote ⁴⁴ Overall, however, it is clear that the UN leadership's position has become more flexible by incorporating the partnering model.

Institutional partnership with the African Union

Given the relatively warm reception to the idea of global-regional peacekeeping cooperation we saw earlier, it was perhaps unsurprising that the UN embarked on concrete processes of building institutional partnership with the OAU and its successor, the AU. The partnership dates back to the early 1990s, and in fact started to take shape in the context of the UN debates in that period. As the aforementioned OAU response in the 1992–1993 UN debates indicates, the predominant context for building this partnership was the issue of peacekeeping capacity-building in Africa. In the meetings between the UN and OAU senior officials on 8–10 September 1993, they agreed on the following recommendations:

1. (a) The organisations should engage in regular joint activities regarding peacemaking and peacekeeping in Africa, especially through OAU involvement with, and participation in, UN missions;

2. (b) In such cases where OAU undertakes peacekeeping activities, such as cease-fire observations, the UN should provide technical assistance to OAU to help it carry out such activities successfully;

3. (c) The UN should help to mobilise financial and logistic support to specific peacemaking and peacekeeping activities of OAU;

4. (d) The UN should assist OAU in organising training programmes for military contingents from its member States that may participate in UN peace-keeping activities.Footnote ⁴⁵

Technical assistance, marshalling financial and logistic resources, and helping run training programmes for African peacekeepers would thus set the baseline for the institutional partnership between the two organisations.

The objective of this institutional partnership was to build the capacity for peacekeeping both in the OAU and at the national level. The African argument for forming such partnership involved two moves that presumed the notion of the UN primacy but took advantage of it in its own favour. One move was stated in the OAU reply of September 1993: ‘[W]here necessary, recourse could be had to the UN to provide the necessary financial, logistical and military support for OAU's activities relating thereto, in keeping with the provisions of Chapter VIII of the Charter of the UN on international peace and security’.Footnote ⁴⁶ Based on the presumption of the UN primacy in matters of international peace and security, Chapter VIII encourages pacific settlement of local disputes by regional organisations before submitting them to the Council and in that context encourages the development of such capacity by these organisations. What the OAU attempted here was to make use of these provisions to obtain necessary assistance – an attempt, in other words, to turn the UN primacy vis-à-vis its regional partners into an obligation to assist them.

This move was deftly combined with another that, in itself, is more compatible with the partnering model. It is the idea of African ownership, that is, that Africans should shoulder the primary responsibility for their own problems. ‘While Africa, like any other region’, the OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim told the Security Council at its first foreign minister-level meeting on Africa on 25 September 1997, ‘has the responsibility to address its own problems as a matter of priority – and African States have clearly demonstrated their determination to do this – the UN cannot exonerate itself from its Charter responsibilities towards the continent’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Extended to its logical conclusion, the idea of African ownership may undercut the grounds for international assistance. As this statement demonstrates, however, it is used predominantly to mould the form of UN assistance in its favour. Indeed, the term ‘responsibility’ is here used to operate in two different ways: while for the OAU member states their responsibility borders on a right to be the main actor in resolving the continent's problems, for the UN the responsibility is translated into a Charter obligation to assist the regional efforts. This is the point acknowledged by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who remarked at the same meeting: ‘There is a new consensus that the primary responsibility for the solution of Africa's problems rests with Africans themselves […] This new realisation also calls for a re-evaluation of the role of the international community in support of Africa's goals’.Footnote ⁴⁸

Discussion on institutional partnership with the OAU continued after the 1995 Supplement. In a presidential statement of February 1995 on the Supplement, the Security Council welcomed ‘the Secretary-General's willingness to assist regional organizations and arrangements as appropriate in developing a capacity for preventive action, peacemaking and, where appropriate, peace-keeping’ and drew ‘particular attention in this regard to the needs of Africa’.Footnote ⁴⁹ The Special Committee also made similar recommendations in June.Footnote ⁵⁰ In November, the Secretary-General, arguing that the role of the OAU and sub-regional organisations in peacekeeping is ‘likely to remain limited, at least for the near future’, suggested the posting of a UN liaison officer at the OAU headquarters; establishment of a staff exchange programme to strengthen the newly created Mechanism on Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution: provision of logistical and planning expertise for future OAU missions; assistance to the establishment of an OAU situation room; and collaboration in conducting training programmes for peacekeeping.Footnote ⁵¹ The ensuing three years saw a gradual realisation of these and earlier suggestions. A UN Trust Fund for Improving Preparedness for Conflict Prevention and Peacekeeping in Africa was established in July 1996 and a UN Liaison Office was created at Addis Ababa in April 1998;Footnote ⁵² later, by early 2000, at least one military liaison officer would be posted at the Office in connection with the conflict in the DRC.Footnote ⁵³ Resolution 1197 (18 September 1998) broadly endorsed these developments, and also invited the Secretary-General to assist the OAU and sub-regional organisations in logistical assessment, develop common indicators of early warning, and arrange various working-level and expert meetings. In February 1999, Kofi Annan further suggested expanding staff exchanges including through provision of funding to African military officers to visit and consult with UN peacekeeping staff and establishing a special peacekeeping programme for African police officers.Footnote ⁵⁴

Though the first decade of the new millennium saw other bodies such as the EU and G8 playing increasingly prominent roles in this regard,Footnote ⁵⁵ the UN Secretariat's support to its counterpart, the AU Commission, has continued incessantly. Apart from continuous provision of training for African peacekeepers as well as for AU and sub-regional organisation staffs,Footnote ⁵⁶ it was closely involved in the development of the peace and security aspects of the newly created AU. The AU's Constitutive Act went into force on 26 May 2001, and the organisation was officially launched on 10 July 2002. Soon afterwards an interdepartmental task force was created within the UN Secretariat to respond to the AU's request for the development of institutional capacity in peace and security fields.Footnote ⁵⁷ The Secretariat was closely involved in finalising the proposals for the ASF.Footnote ⁵⁸ A policy framework document on the ASF, approved at the third AU Summit in July 2004,Footnote ⁵⁹ envisioned the development of the AU's ability to mount and manage its missions in various conflict scenarios as well as the institutionalisation of five sub-regional standby forces by 2010. For the development of these capabilities, the AU will be ‘expected to continue to be the recipient and beneficiary of external support programmes’ from the UN as well as other regional and national partners.Footnote ⁶⁰ The roadmap document for the development of the ASF also expects support from the international community in four ‘priority areas’ – financing, training, logistics (establishment of the AU and sub-regional logistic depots and provision of equipment, sea and airlift support), and planning and management (creation of pre-deployment structures, including their ‘relevant activities and running cost’).Footnote ⁶¹

In a sign that suggests continuous close collaboration between the AU and UN secretariats in this project, the roadmap's ‘four priorities’ neatly corresponded to the four ‘systemic’ factors that Annan identified four months earlier in his report on African peacekeeping as needing improvement: absence of a common doctrine and training standards; lack of equipment and adequate logistical support, including strategic sea and airlift capabilities; inadequate funding; and lack of institutional capacity for the planning and management of peacekeeping operations.Footnote ⁶² To address these four deficits, Annan proposed concrete measures such as provision of training to African middle-level police managers; establishment of a revolving fund to flexibly obtain needed equipment from other missions or sources; use of common or standardised equipment; expanded logistics training; and ‘a small core planning and advisory capacity’ to support the AU's mission planning and start-up processes.Footnote ⁶³ This plan found support in the Special Committee, including for the assistance capacity.Footnote ⁶⁴ Since this capacity, however, was conceived and implemented as a temporary measure to support the AMIS,Footnote ⁶⁵ the Secretary-General separately proposed in December 2005 the creation of a full-time capacity within the DPKO that ‘could serve as a single point of contact for AU and other partners on matters related to AU peacekeeping’.Footnote ⁶⁶ A Peace Support Team was endorsed by the Special CommitteeFootnote ⁶⁷ and its budget proposal eventually approved by the General Assembly in 2006. In September of the same year, the DPKO and the AU Peace Support Operations Division agreed a Joint AU-UN Action Plan for UN Assistance to the African Peacekeeping Capacity Building for whose implementation the team will be responsible.Footnote ⁶⁸ The team, based in Addis Ababa and New York, started work in January 2007.Footnote ⁶⁹

Annan's proposal for the full-time support team drew its momentum from the high political attention paid to the issue. The importance of institutional partnership with the AU was reaffirmed by the General Assembly at the occasion of the October 2005 World Summit and by the Security Council that adopted a resolution to that effect in the same month.Footnote ⁷⁰ The Summit Outcome Document also called for a ten-year capacity-building plan. The plan, which was in actuality a general declaration covering a broad range of issues, was signed by the UN Secretary-General and the AU Commission Chairman on 16 November 2006.Footnote ⁷¹ With a support team and a joint action plan in place now, the institutional partnership with the AU has become an established part of the DPKO activities.Footnote ⁷²

Institutional partnership with the EU

Progress in UN-EU institutional partnership in recent years corresponds to the second period of reinvigorated interest in global-regional peacekeeping elaborated earlier, and yet shows a different trajectory of development than the one in the case of the AU. Shortly after the first EU military deployment in the DRC (June–September 2003), the Secretary-General underlined the need for ‘coherent and robust over-the-horizon rapid response capability’ and suggested that ‘[r]egional entities may be in a position to respond to those needs’.Footnote ⁷³ The two organisations also agreed, in September 2003, to establish a working-level consultation mechanism (EU-UN Steering Committee),Footnote ⁷⁴ one of whose tasks was to identify ‘the modalities under which the EU could provide military capabilities in support of the UN’.Footnote ⁷⁵ The EU paper approved by the European Council in June 2004 pointed out that its nascent rapid response capability, deployed in support of the UN, ‘would bring a particular added value’.Footnote ⁷⁶ The same paper described the proposal by the UN Secretariat of two modalities of using such capability: a ‘bridging model’ in which an EU entry force of short duration would be followed by a UN operation; and a ‘stand by model’ whereby an EU force serves as an over-the-horizon response force for the UN mission.Footnote ⁷⁷ The paper did not show the EU's commitment to either of the two modalities at this point, although it noted the potential complications in coordination and risks involved in the stand-by operation. As the Peace Operations 2010 directive specifically referred to, it was the EU Battlegroups that was the focus of the discussions. With the Battlegroups declared fully operational in January 2007,Footnote ⁷⁸ a joint UN-EU statement issued on 7 July 2007 said that the Battlegroup concept would ‘provide the possibility’ for its employment in support of the UN.Footnote ⁷⁹ Though the use of any types of EU mission in support of UN activities likely remains to be based on a case-by-case request by the UN and its acceptance by the EU,Footnote ⁸⁰ groundwork has been done to facilitate operational cooperation when such scenario does arise. In June 2008, the UN and the EU developed working-level guidelines for coordination in the planning of an EU military mission in support of a UN mission. The Guidelines for Joint UN-EU Planning Applicable to Existing UN Field Missions explains the linkage between UN and EU planning processes and provides for the creation of a UN-EU planning coordination group.Footnote ⁸¹

This institutional partnership is much newer and perhaps more embryonic, but it is clear that the nature of the partnership is different from the UN-AU case. If the latter is characterised as a partnership for African capacity-building, the former is a partnership for better operational linkage so that the two organisations can plan and manage their own missions on the basis of close consultation. Given the EU's ability to mount independent operations, progress in the EU-UN institutional partnership would have been difficult if the UN leadership had approached the EU with the sub-contracting model as the general framework. The partnering model, which respects the autonomy of regional organisations as peacekeeping actors, thus offered an opportunity for the UN to access EU resources. On the other hand, the joint declaration and the joint statement both refer to the use of EU military missions in support of the UN – a reference, in other words, that presupposes a hierarchical relationship. Indeed, it is in the interest of the EU to maintain the subcontracting mode of cooperation at least for two reasons. One concerns the fact that all the EU military operations so far have been granted necessary mandates and authorisations including, especially, for the potential use of force, by the Security Council. It is apparently the EU's policy to ground its operations on Security Council resolutions. Another is related to the fact that, as EU operations in the DRC and Chad/ Central African Republic demonstrated, EU military operations especially in its out-of-area regions are limited in duration and planned and conducted with follow-on UN operations in mind. In that sense, it is indeed in the EU's interest that its operations take place ‘in support of’ the UN.

Role of the UN as the global peacekeeper

The above review of the institutional partnerships indicates different ways in which the regional organisations engage with the notions of subcontracting and partnering. The AU bases its demand for capacity-building mainly on the sub-contracting model but cautions against outright subjugation through arguments of the African ownership. For the EU, on its part, a less hierarchical relationship is presupposed in institutionalising operational linkage with UN peacekeepers, and yet at the same time it is fairly careful in recognising – and, on that basis, utilising – the mandating authority of the Security Council. Both organisations, in other words, are selectively using both models to promote their interests.

With regards to the thesis of Morris and McCoubrey cited earlier, therefore, two points may be in order. Firstly, there is incremental progress in the development of global-regional peacekeeping cooperation over the past decade. This progress is still largely limited to the two regional organisations, and even with these cases remains work in progress. But with the global demand for peacekeeping and peacebuilding showing little sign of abating at least in the near future, it is possible to expect further developments in their partnerships and beyond; and the two models of subcontracting and partnering may be further elaborated in tracing them.

Secondly, the two cases highlight the role of the UNFootnote ⁸² in developing global-regional peacekeeping cooperation in the future. Despite the emergence of regional peacekeeping, UN peacekeeping remains the world's largest source of peacekeeping missions. Regional peacekeeping suppliers also generally defer to the Security Council's power to authorise or endorse peacekeeping missions. The UN thus still holds the key to designing the future of more globalised peacekeeping cooperation. Moreover and on a more negative note, however, the above review indicates that the expected ‘benefits’ for the UN of promoting the two models are hard to come by. That is, the two models both promised, at least conceptually, to unshoulder the burden of peacekeeping to regional organisations either by delegating the peacekeeping mandates to them or by encouraging them to be more active suppliers of peacekeeping field presence. The cases of the AU and the EU demonstrate that the actual process is not that straightforward. While their peacekeeping missions provided critical capabilities that the UN by itself may not have been able to obtain, they create new (development of African peacekeeping capacity) or continuing (follow-on missions to the EU operations) demands to the UN.

And this is unique to UN peacekeeping. In his first report to the Special Committee, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the ‘capacity to deliver a comprehensive, integrated response’ as ‘unique to the Organization’ and argues that the UN ‘must become the leading global actor in planning and implementing integrated peacekeeping operations and in working with partners in that effort’.Footnote ⁸³ Ban sees the unique identity of UN peacekeeping in the ability to mount comprehensive, integrated response to conflict situations. Because of its unique comprehensiveness, UN peacekeeping is expected to complement regional missions as well as to engage in substantive capacity-building. The danger of this logic is obvious: it translates into the demand for the UN to play ever-expanding functions for its peacekeeping. In practice, more regional peacekeeping can thus mean more UN peacekeeping. Given the resource limitations within the Secretariat as well as the finite level of contributions it can muster from Member States – both of which have been made worse in the current surge in demand,Footnote ⁸⁴ this may constitute a growing problem. If, in other words, UN and regional peacekeeping ‘thrive together’, this comes at a significant strain on the UN side.

The role of the UN, therefore, may be better articulated. This articulation not just serves to reduce the aforementioned strain on the organisation but also helps create a sense of direction with regard to how the evolution of global-regional peacekeeping cooperation should take place. With such a sense of direction also comes a sense of responsibility. For situations where different actors simply share peacekeeping duties easily lead to ‘an absence of responsibility’ that in turn leads to blame games and risk transferral among the actors and their constituent members.Footnote ⁸⁵

The role of UN peacekeeping may evolve in two ways. One is to delimit its scope into security and rule-of-law reform. After identifying the uniqueness of UN peacekeeping, Secretary-General Ban acknowledges the high demand for peacekeeping and the risk of dispersed resources, and points out that it is the Secretariat's responsibility to identify ‘core peacekeeping tasks and distinguishing those from priority peacebuilding activities that other actors are better equipped to address’.Footnote ⁸⁶ What are these tasks? He argues:

Generally speaking, this vision sees the role of UN peacekeeping as provision of security in an immediate post-conflict phase and rebuilding of security and rule-of-law institutions of the state concerned, and in that sense this may not strike one as very different from the current role. But a closer reading of this statement produces three important points. First, the priority here is security and rule-of-law reform rather than security provision itself. It states that a key strategy in post-conflict reconstruction is to assist the national authorities to (re-)establish themselves as the provider of law and order in their territory. Second and equally important, UN peacekeepers are not expected to play a major role in providing physical security. The statement does mention such capability, but this is mentioned as one of the UN capabilities conducive to ‘supporting security reform’. This is in fact acknowledgment of the predominant practice in UN peacekeeping: though protection of civilians has become a fixture in the mandate of UN peacekeeping, peacekeepers' actual use of force has been related to political and strategic tasks such as disarmament and demobilisation of armed groups.Footnote ⁸⁸ In these two areas, there can be a useful division of labour between the UN, the EU and the AU (and NATO in some situations). EU military and rule-of-law missions have been geared to precisely these purposes. The AU, though still with significant assistance from UN and non-African donors, has deployed military missions and may be able to develop rule-of-law capacities in the future; it may also be in a position to deploy peacekeepers outside the continent – at least that is one of the UN aims for enhancing African peacekeeping capacities.Footnote ⁸⁹ Moreover, multinational or national forces, though limited due to their ad hoc nature, may be able to play a crucial role in restoring and delivering security in some situations. Third, civilian peacebuilding is outside the purview of UN peacekeepers. In areas such as human rights, humanitarian assistance, governance and development, it must not be assumed that peacekeeping missions either by the UN or regional organisations can and should shoulder these tasks. Partnerships in this wider sense, that is, with other UN bodies such as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Bank, government agencies, and NGOs should be developed in order to make their early involvement a norm. Overall, this vision sees the core contribution of UN peacekeeping as support to security-related institution building, which in turn requires the UN to deploy its thus focused mission as well as coordinate its activities with the other peacekeeping actors if present.

A more radical vision of the UN peacekeeping role may see it as a ‘pure’ catalyst for peacekeeping cooperation. What is meant by this is the possibility that the UN leaves the organisation of peacekeeping operations to regional organisations, while focusing on the coordination of these non-UN missions under the authority of the Security Council and the continuation through various UN agencies and programmes of civilian peacebuilding. In the latter, the responsibility for peacebuilding will be shouldered by several departments and agencies within the UN system. For peacekeeping itself, the UN's role includes coordination of various peacekeeping and peacebuilding actors on the ground, playing a leading role in standard-setting and training efforts, and assisting regional missions with logistic and financial arrangements if necessary. In this, the DPKO will assume a similar role to that of OCHA in humanitarian assistance, while the Department of Field Support (DFS) will provide logistic support to the regional missions. This is a feasible path insofar as one recognises three unique assets available within the UN system: the authority of the Security Council, the Secretariat's ability to address resource gaps by approaching Member States, and experiences and expertise in many civilian aspects of post-conflict reconstruction. Of course, this depends on significant progress on several fronts, including the development of regional peacekeeping capacities, especially in Africa; the willingness of the EU and the AU to deploy their peacekeepers beyond the immediate regions should such need arise; the formation of new regional organisations with peacekeeping mandates and their (as well as the existing ones') willingness to form institutional partnership with the UN; and the further strengthening of civilian peacebuilding capacities within and outside the UN system. In this model, the UN will cease to provide substantive operational presence in peacekeeping – following my definition of peacekeeping, therefore, it will cease to conduct ‘peacekeeping’ by itself – and instead focus on developing and assisting a global pool of regional peacekeepers.

These two visions may be seen as different visions; or they may be two stages of the long-term change in the UN role in which it shifts from the institution-builder to the ‘pure’ catalyst. Whether one takes the former or the latter approach, what is important is to realise that articulation of the UN role helps direct the development of globalised peacekeeping cooperation; without it future cooperation in this area could sink into a patchwork of ad hoc arrangements.