engaging fragile states - Woodrow Wilson International Center for ...

“
The UN is often the best
starting point for achieving
what are called The Three
C's: complementarity,
coordination, and coherence.’’
Charles Call
vociferously to any hint that its state might be weak. But member states use other
language for these phenomena, such as “peace-building.”
The United Nations system has several advantages for working within fragile
state. One is the universal legitimacy that the UN system brings to international
action. The UN is seen as the best place governments can go to for an honest
broker, even though it sometimes is not. The second is that the UN is often the
best starting point for achieving what are called "The Three C’s": complementarity,
coordination, and coherence. These advantages are demonstrated to some
extent in the UN’s several types of mandated missions. They include not only
the UN peacekeeping operations authorized by the Security Council, but also
UN political missions, such as special fact-finding missions, which are often
authorized by the UN General Assembly and organized by the Department of
Political Affairs. The UN Peacebuilding Support Office is also involved in some
of its own missions. Recent experience has shown that working through these
missions offers certain advantages.
With regard to the military deployments, where there is a counterinsurgency,
the UN generally has not been as effective as bilateral actors. The experience of the
United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia taught that lesson the
hard way. For these situations, bilateral forces are generally more effective, as seen,
for example, when the British took the lead in Sierra Leone in 2000. That does not
mean, however, that bilateral forces should not deploy as part of a multi-national
force. UN authorization is still preferable. The US has learned in the last few years
that such authorization is better for achieving the legitimacy of a deployment and
for doing the necessary post-conflict work. It also makes a lot of sense to work with
UN mandated missions where there is a stable environment.
Moreover, under the UN umbrella, the members of the Security Council have
been able to influence recent UN policy toward its military missions in positive
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