Conflict Prevention

In 2003, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called for a shift from a culture of reaction to a culture of conflict prevention. His aim was to create awareness for the fact that prevention of conflicts before they eventually erupt violently is the most effective contribution to international peace and security imaginable - yet the international community was and is mostly concerned with conflicts that have already erupted. We are reacting, instead of preventing. The current famine in Niger is a sad example for this: Although all factors contributing to the disaster have been known for months, the international community only started to act as pictures of dying children appeared on TV. The same is true for many violent conflicts - the Rwanda genocide did not happen all of a sudden, as Human Rights Watch correctly points out.

But the call by Kofi Annan was not entirely fruitless. A great alliance of NGOs has formed, calling itself the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC). It has developed regional plans for conflict prevention and also a global action agenda, called "People Building Peace". GPPAC also organised a conference hosted by the United Nations in New York,, where NGO experts, UN officials and governmental representatives engaged in a fruitful dialogue about how to achieve the necessary shift to a culture of prevention.

The Action Agenda for example calls for the establishment of a Peacebuilding Commission. German Ambassador Dr. Pleuger pointed out in his speech at the final event of the conference, that such a body is needed in the UN framework, since it would fill a gaping hole in the United Nations institutional framework by helping countries with the transition from war to lasting peace. The idea behind such an institution is to have a body that accompanies countries which have suffered from violent conflict on their way to peace, thus ensuring continued supervision of ongoing programmes and avoiding inconsistent and incompatible action. Thereby a sustainable environment for lasting peace can better be achieved. This will in turn prevent the occurance of new violent conflicts or the resurfacing of old ones.

The discussion about the Peacebuilding Commission is still going on, but there is hope that it will be endorsed by the heads of state at their summit at the end of September 2005. A draft of the outcome document (although not the current version) can be found here. So far support for the PBC seems to be strong among member states, but the details like the exact composition remain to be decided.