Prevention of Violent Conflict: Tasks and Challenges for the United Nations
![handle is hein.journals/glogo13 and id is 399 raw text is: Global Governance 13 (2007), 391-408
Prevention of Violent Conflict:
Tasks and Challenges for
the United Nations
Barnett R. Rubin and Bruce D. Jones
In endorsing the recommendations of the High-level Panel on Threats,
Challenges and Change, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan commit-
ted to strengthening the organization's function to prevent armed conflict.
A review of the UN's track record in the three types of conflict preven-
tion-operational, structural, and systemic-shows its success has been
limited to cases of interstate conflict between smaller powers. Serious
political and institutional obstacles will continue to thwart the UN in pre-
venting wars between powerful states or managing internal conflicts. How-
ever, the renewed prevention agenda offers an opportunity to Secretary-
General Ban Ki-moon and his team to refocus the UN's efforts to take
advantage of the organization's potential as a catalyst and strategic center
of political action while keeping a realistic view of its capabilities to imple-
ment conflict prevention in different contexts. KEYWORDS: conflict preven-
tion, United Nations, preventive diplomacy, armed conflict, peacebuilding.
n endorsing the recommendations of the High-level Panel on Threats,
Challenges and Change (HLP) in 2004, then Secretary-General Kofi
Annan committed the United Nations to a newly elaborated doctrine of
conflict prevention.' If such an agenda is to be more than rhetorical, it will
have to overcome basic structural weaknesses of the UN that inhibit it from
preventing and managing incipient conflicts that are internal to states or
that involve great powers.
By almost any measure, the UN's record in preventing armed conflict
has been mixed to poor. UN activities in conflict prevention have centered
on the preventive diplomacy and mediating functions of the secretary-
general's office and the Department of Political Affairs (DPA). The UN has
tried to develop more comprehensive strategies for prevention through the
Interdepartmental Framework for Co-ordination on Early Warning and Pre-
ventive Action (generally called the Framework Team [FT]) established in
1995. The FT brings together all departments, funds, and agencies, plus the
World Bank, to pool information and analysis and develop multidiscipli-
nary strategies to be implemented by the UN organization itself.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/glogo13&div=36&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Prevention of Violent Conflict: Tasks and Challenges for the United Nations
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