The future of peacebuilding under the auspices of the United Nations

There has been extensive debate on the future of peacebuilding missions, concerning issues such as the role of peacebuilding missions and the length of missions. After flawed peacebuilding missions in the past, as in Liberia in 1997, where hasty elections led to neither free nor fair elections, the United Nations has critically examined its role in peacebuilding. In 2000 it commissioned the "Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations," or the Brahimi Report, to evaluate the UN's current peacebuilding strategy and to list a series of recommendations to strengthen the planning and management of complex peace operations, which were summarized in to twenty objectives.The UN after noticing a gap in the "relief-to-development" continuum continued its efforts by establishing the UN Peacebuilding Commission in 2005, and since then has gathered over $267 million in pledges from the international community to carry out about forty peacebuilding missions around the world. The commission hopes to work towards having developing the best practices for peacebuilding activities and acting in concert with related actors in sectors such as politics, security and development, and to provide continued financial support for rebuilding activities.
A recent speech from the Norwegian Ambassador to the United Nations offered his suggestions for improving peacebuilding missions, which included increasingly emphasizing national ownership in peacebuilding efforts and relying on locals to help with rebuilding institutions, and increasing training opportunities so that more locals could get involved. The ambassador also emphasized that these efforts "must be done to empower national authorities further, not to replace them." The ambassador confirmed the need for long term recovery efforts, as Roland Paris suggests, but also reminded that there needs to be a distinction made in situations are emergencies and require immediate humanitarian assistance, which the UN calls "quick impact projects," and others which are long term projects.
Although there has been much work to work on peacebuilding, there are many challenges that are faced in peacebuilding. For example, as with any effort involving many actors, coordination is always an issue and acting under common goals (as each group has their own interests), which the Peacebuilding Commission has done work to reconcile by bringing together involved actors; however it still remains that the coordination effort remains difficult as it involves many people over a long period of time. Aside from the individual actors involved in peacebuilding effort on the ground, even within the UN there are many groups involved in the process, from the Crisis Prevention and Recovery branch of the United Nations Development Program to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, so inter-agency coordination also remains an issue. In order for these current peacekeeping missions to be successful, and in order for the Commission to adequately prepare for future missions, these issues must be given further improved.