UN peacekeepers frequently operate in the context of protracted conflicts, fragmented societies and weak governance and institutions. By addressing conflict drivers, strengthening local efforts for peace and promoting social cohesion, peacekeepers contribute to conflict prevention and sustaining peace.
Peacekeeping missions increasingly engage at the sub-national level to better understand conflict drivers so as to address them. Ultimately, preventing future conflicts implies strengthening national and sub-national capacities to address the root causes of conflict, such as discrimination, inequalities, and marginalization. This is done through inclusive and participative practices that involves women, youth and marginalized groups.
Sitting with community representatives to understand their grievances and fears can lead to dialogues between groups that have been locked in conflict. Such engagement can eventually lead to a peaceful resolution of disputes.
Working with government officials and other partners to help redeploy civil servants to rural areas can help develop institutional responses to grievances and strengthen mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
Bringing together herders and farmers to discuss issues of transhumance, sharing of resources, access to water and grazing rights can diffuse growing tensions. Financial support by the UN through Quick Impact Projects to drill waterholes and set up veterinary clinics also go a long way in building confidence.
While no single part of a UN Peacekeeping Mission can act on its own, Civil Affairs is the component of the mission that works at the grassroots level, including through its Community Liaison Assistants, to make some of these activities possible.
The Role of Civil Affairs in Peacekeeping
Civil Affairs officers are a key civilian component that help address conflict drivers and facilitate interactions between peacekeeping missions, partners, and local communities to prevent conflict. Civil Affairs work depends on a mission’s mandate and the evolving situation on the ground.
Three key activities that civil affairs officers undertake are:
- Engaging local communities and facilitating the mission’s work at the local level;
- Managing local conflicts and promoting social cohesion; and
- Supporting the extension of state authority.
Civil Affairs is one of the largest civilian components in peacekeeping operations. In 2022, 554 Civil Affairs officers were deployed in eight UN Field Missions, including many national Community Liaison Assistants (CLAs), who play a key role in early warning and situational awareness of conflict dynamics on the ground.
Facilitation at the local level
Interactions by Civil Affairs personnel at the local level are crucial to implementing mission-mandated tasks and enhancing a mission’s credibility. Community engagement is a critical element in the effective implementation of many mandated tasks, whether these are to protect civilians from physical threats, improve situational awareness, promote inclusive political processes or address local conflict drivers.
UNMISS, in South Sudan, and MINUSCA, in the Central African Republic, use a whole-of-mission approach with community engagement. MONUSCO, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was the first to deploy Community Liaison Assistants to reach deeper into local communities to better understand their protection needs and concerns, a lead followed by MINUSMA in Mali, MINUSCA, and UNMISS.
Local conflict management
Local conflict dynamics are deeply rooted in the societal grievances of a host country. They are vulnerable to national political power struggles and are a destabilizing factor for fragile peace processes. These disruptions can be triggered by different factors, including land disputes, competition over natural resources, cattle migration patterns, ethnic or cultural divisions.
Civil Affairs officers prevent and mitigate these disruptions by supporting communities at the sub-national level, generating opportunities for community dialogue, mediation efforts, localized peace agreements and reconciliation processes that can reduce civilian casualties and livelihood disruption.
Support to the extension of state authority
The extension of state authority focuses on activities to ensure that state’s institutions are present throughout the territory of the country, providing goods and services, and that its authority is perceived as legitimate in the eyes of the population. This is an area of work in which peacekeeping operations in Mali, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic, among others, provide technical support and capacity building to state institutions. Such support is especially provided in the area of security and the rule of law. Missions promote good governance practices by working closely with local authorities, civil society actors and local communities to foster dialogue and accountability.