In our analysis, international peacekeeping missions refer to UN-authorised political, military and civilian-military missions tasked with peace- and/or statebuilding, as well as to similar missions conducted by regional organisations on the proviso that they are mandated by the UN.[6] We largely exclude so-called ‘executive missions’ from our analysis, i.e. missions with the authority to temporarily undertake sovereign tasks and whose decisions take precedence over those of host country authorities (in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Timor-Leste and Kosovo). This is because their greater prerogatives substantially change their way of operating and their position in the domestic political economy when compared to non-executive missions. We do, however, include non-executive traditional ‘bare bones’ peacekeeping missions, multidimensional (or integrated) peacekeeping missions, as well as special political missions.
To identify factors influencing the effectiveness of mission activities that seek to strengthen civilian police and state justice systems, the report uses a multilayer framework of analysis (illustrated in Figure 1 below) to guide an extensive review of existing academic, think tank and policy literature on conflict, peacebuilding, statebuilding, peacekeeping, security sector reform (particularly engagement with police forces and justice organisations) and political-economy analysis. The multiple layers of the framework ensure that our analysis reflects the complexity of the peacekeeping environment and its many conditions for ‘success’.
As a general rule, each factor identified in the report is referenced by at least five different sources, of which at least one is prominent – e.g. a landmark UN, World Bank or governmental document that is regarded as having significantly advanced a particular insight or debate, a multi-country mission or programme review, a thematic evaluation of a set of programmes/projects, or a major research study.
Source: This framework is inspired by the World Development Report (2011 and 2017), the Agenda for Peace (1992), the Brahimi report (2000), the United Nations High-Level Panel on Peace Operations’ report (HIPPO) and the UNSG’s response (both 2015), as well as the Global Peace Operations Review series (2012–2018).
Level 1 analysis focuses on the nature of the conflict environment in which a mission operates, how a mission makes sense of its conflict context, and how/whether a mission influenced and/or adapted to its dynamics.
Level 2 analysis focuses on how the political drivers and practical aspects of mission design influence its performance.
Level 3 analysis examines mission activity content, design and implementation. It looks at the extent to which activities reflect accumulated professional insights into, inter alia, effective civilian police and state judiciary capacity building and good programming practices.
A final note of caution is in order. If all the factors identified in this report were assessed positively for a particular mission and/or activity, this would only mean that its effectiveness is likely to be more significant compared with a case in which these factors are assessed more negatively.
Judgement of actual effectiveness requires additional evaluation in terms of how outputs, outcomes and impact stack up in the mission’s context of active, latent or post-conflict conditions. In other words, most factors identified here suggest plausibility of effectiveness –ceteris paribus – rather than causality. Much will depend on practical implementation in a particular conflict context, as well as the nature of that context.