a luxury.
Second, although the UN remains the predominant actor in the field of peacekeeping, it has neither a legal monopoly on conducting peace operations nor a practical monopoly on wisdom and innovation on this issue. Partnerships have therefore emerged because of a convergence of interests or goals between these other actors and the UN. Most of the time, most of these actors saw some benefit in seeking authorization for, or recognition of, their activities from the UN Security Council.
A third factor encouraging more partnerships between the UN and regional arrangements is the vague terminology of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. Part of the debate about partnerships in contemporary peace operations grows out of the need to define what a strategic partnership between the UN and a regional arrangement might look like, particularly when the use of force is contemplated as part of a peace operation.
Dynamics in Africa have added a fourth reason for more partnership peacekeeping. For a variety of reasons related to war, underdevelopment and the US-led ‘war on terror’, Africa has hosted by far the most peace operations of any of the world’s regions. This has stimulated a specific series of partnerships: between the African Union and the continent’s regional economic communities (RECs); between these African organizations and the UN; and between African organizations, the UN and various external actors, most notably the EU, the US, France and the UK. The key driver here was that the African organizations lacked the financial and material capabilities to deploy and sustain their operations in the field and hence required external assistance. For their parts, these key external actors supported the ‘African solutions to African problems’ slogan and were therefore happy to assist if it meant they were able to deploy fewer of their own personnel.
A fifth reason for the growth in partnership peacekeeping was the different comparative advantages and weaknesses of the multiple peacekeeping actors, which made a division of labour attractive. While some actors preferred to provide personnel, others were more comfortable making financial contributions, while yet others provided enablers, training and equipment for the troop- and police-contributing countries (TCCs and PCCs) concerned. Partnerships thus offered a way to develop pragmatic solutions that built on the comparative advantages of each institution.
Finally, in a more negative sense, partnerships sometimes emerged because the actors involved in responding to a particular crisis were in competition over the right to exercise political leadership and authority. Partnerships were thus sometimes a result of diplomatic compromise when there were conflicting interests and objectives. In this scenario, partnerships developed between actors with divergent ideas about the most appropriate solutions and/or the most appropriate and legitimate instruments that should be used in a particular theatre.
The net result of all this activity has been five broad types of partnership peacekeeping (figure 2.5). First, there is simple cooperation, wherein different actors collaborate in the same theatre but without establishing an official or formal relationship.
Figure 2.5 Models of partnership peacekeeping
A second model has been cases with sequential deployments, whereby one actor initially conducted an operation and then passed the peacekeeping baton to another. Examples include cases where one international organization has handed responsibility to another and cases where a multinational coalition has passed responsibility to an international organization. ECOWAS forces handing over to the UN in Sierra Leone (1999–2000) and Liberia (2003) or NATO handing over to the EU its operations in Bosnia (2004) and Macedonia (2003) would be the former category. The Multinational Force in Haiti preparing the environment for the UN mission MINUSTAH to take over in 2004 and NATO’s decision in 2003 to take command of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan from the coalition of states that had previously run it are examples of the latter category.
Parallel operations represent a third form of partnership peacekeeping, whereby two types of actor deploy concurrently within the same conflict zone. This has most commonly taken the form of linked peacekeeping – observer operations such as UNOMIL and ECOMOG in Liberia (1993–7); UNOMSIL and ECOMOG in Sierra Leone (1998–2000); and UNOMIG and the CIS operation in Abkhazia/Georgia (1993–2009).
A fourth type of partnership peacekeeping has involved the construction of a hybrid operation where two institutions joined together to establish working procedures within a single mission. To date, the African Union–UN hybrid operation in Darfur (UNAMID) remains the only example of this type. Initially, Rodolphe Adada of the Republic of Congo was appointed Joint AU–UN Special Representative designate for UNAMID and was tasked with reporting to both the UN Secretary-General and the AU Commission chairperson. In turn, Adada received directives from both the AU’s Peace and Security Commissioner and the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations. The day-to-day functioning of the force was to be in accordance with the concept of operations jointly agreed by the AU and the UN. From the beginning of 2008, however, the command and control structures for the mission were officially provided by the UN. Given the complexities involved, it is unlikely that many missions will opt to follow this model.
Finally, there have been various forms of support models, whereby one actor delivers support packages (perhaps technical, financial and/or logistical) to another actor conducting a peace operation. Examples of such packages are the EU and UN support packages for the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), which subsequently transitioned into UNAMID, and the EU and UN assistance packages for the African Union Mission in Somalia, where these parties provided money for allowances and a full logistical support package respectively.
In general terms, while these forms of partnership peacekeeping may offer the opportunity to create pragmatic and flexible responses to difficult challenges and provide a way of pooling resources, they also suffer from a variety of problems. Among the main problems have been those related to coordination and chain of command issues, clashes stemming from distinct organizational cultures and procedures, as well as problems related to finding sustainable and flexible funding – both the potential for different compensation levels and the sustainability of finance from poorer institutions.
Conclusion
Three central conclusions emerge from our investigation into who deploys peacekeepers. First, with their functional and normative advantages, international organizations are the most significant and legitimate peacekeepers, with the UN predominant among them. International organizations can construct norms that shape state behaviour and act as legitimizing bodies – conferring the stamp of international legitimacy on state practice. The UN in particular has played a central role in the creation of new norms in international society (Claude 1966; Weiss and Daws 2007). However, the ad hoc nature of UN peacekeeping made the organization and its members slow to recognize the implications of the expansion of its post-Cold War operations and the transition from a Westphalian towards a post-Westphalian international society. As Adam Roberts (1993: 4) noted in the early 1990s, the UN’s preoccupation with making its existing peacekeeping infrastructure more efficient detracted from the even more critical task of re-examining the premises underpinning the concepts and practices themselves. In the last decade or so, this has been reflected in another discernible shift towards ‘stabilization’ as a key concept for UN – but also other types of – peace operations. Second, the increasing demand for peacekeepers encouraged an expansion of both unilateral and multilateral peacekeeping activity outside the auspices of the UN. Third, the different types of peacekeepers have developed various partnerships to tackle the significant challenges confronting them. Certainly in Africa and Europe, partnership peacekeeping has become the norm rather than the exception.
