Mission activity: Factors influencing mission effectivenesss (Level 3) | Mission impossible? Police and justice capacity building by international peacekeeping missions

This section inventories factors that influence the effectiveness of mission activities aimed at strengthening civilian police and state justice systems in (post-)conflict societies at the level of activity content, design and implementation. Such activities are part of a broader thematic area that is usually referred to as the ‘rule of law’, i.e. efforts to increase the quality of governance and social justice by ensuring that political contestation, policy formulation and dispute resolution are as much as possible bound by rules that are seen as fair, transparent, universal and enforceable.[47] One key observation from our literature review indicates that little hard empirical evidence exists about the extent to which rule of law reform is significant (or not) in transitions from war to peace, or about the nature of progressive pathways of rule of law development that are compatible with the types of hybrid, informal and fragile political orders that characterise most conflict settings.[48] In addition, our review indicates that the ‘success rate’ of much rule of law work is low due to persistent design and implementation problems.[49]

In contrast, normative assumptions abound on what and how rule of law promotion efforts should be conducted. Activities promoting the rule of law generally consider a well performing and human rights respecting state-based justice system that is grounded in principles of fairness, accessibility, equality, and affordability as a template. While this is fine as an over-the-horizon aspiration, it is risky as a starting point for designing programmatic activities in (post-) conflict settings. The gap between aspiration and reality is significant in most of these settings, requiring many intermediate steps that may have little immediate bearing on the desired ideal state.[50] Moreover, these steps do not unfold in a neat sequence that can be pre-planned but tend to be subject to intense political contestation.[51] Apart from the problem that the meagre evidence base about ‘what works in promoting the rule of law’ makes it difficult to identify factors that increase the effectiveness of such efforts, the abundance of normative views and templates also creates problems at activity level when matched against key characteristics of the ‘legal’ realities of many conflict-affected countries:

By far the majority of citizens of such places resolve their disputes outside of the state justice system and via informal or customary justice systems. This does not suggest these systems are unproblematic – they are often patriarchal, discriminatory and lack due process – but it is reflective of the fact that they generally perform much better than state justice systems in terms of access, cost, perceived legitimacy by the local population and enforcement.[52]

Many legal disputes in conflict-affected countries are about land, property rights, family matters and commercial transactions.[53] It is the effective resolution of such conflicts that their citizens would probably prioritise if they had any say in the matter. Quite a few of the associated cases are not criminal in nature. Moreover, areas such as administrative law, which exist to guarantee impartial, transparent and accountable performance of public bodies and are key to regaining popular confidence, are typically vastly underdeveloped and entirely inaccessible.[54]

State justice systems in many conflict-affected countries are profoundly politicised, corrupt, inaccessible (in terms of distance, cost, language, procedural complexity and speed), mistrusted or even alien and illegitimate to much of the population. They typically need wholesale reform if they are to earn the confidence of the population, which is usually not feasible due to vested interests.[55]

Rule of law reform is a slow and politically sensitive process that cannot be fast-tracked since political interests, institutional capabilities, mindsets, organisational capabilities, popular confidence, accessibility, and quality and quantity of performance need to improve more or less in tandem for sustained improvements to take hold.[56]

Many external interventions, international peacekeeping missions included, superficially acknowledge these realities but nonetheless take recourse to top-down and state-centred approaches to rule of law development.[57] They often prioritise improvements in criminal justice on the grounds that it represents a key function and prerogative of the state that must be centrally provided.[58] Subsequently, they tend to pursue this objective through a narrow focus on capacity building.[59] To strengthen civilian police and state justice systems, missions typically use a mix of train-the-trainer activities, seconding strategic advisers into government bureaucracies and supporting the drafting of legal reforms. In the same vein, increasing access to justice is often pursued through paralegal support schemes, mobile courts and outreach campaigns to increase public legal awareness.[60]

In other words, the exploratory and adaptive search for localised, flexible and good-enough solutions that pragmatically build on elements of informal and formal security and justice systems, which has emerged from the available literature as the more appropriate way to pursue rule of law improvements, has largely remained a niche activity.[61]

Against this background sketch, which emerged from our literature review, we have inventoried key activity content and design factors that have an influence on the likely effectiveness of mission activities that seek to strengthen civilian police and state justice systems (see Table 3). The evidence of a number of these factors lies outside the direct mission sphere and many have broader applicability, both beyond the rule of law and beyond missions (see Box 1).

Box 1

Mission activities and aid programmes in the rule of law area – Reflecting on the evidence

Mission activities that seek to strengthen civilian police and state justice capabilities in conflict-affected settings are typically organised as projects or programmes, i.e. as time-bound interventions with a stated purpose, fixed resource envelope, activity portfolio, and a set of assumptions on how inputs translate into outputs/outcomes. In this regard, mission activities are similar to developmental aid programmes with comparable objectives that take place outside of mission contexts. Instead of an aid agency, an international peacekeeping mission sponsors the intervention.

In consequence, existing evidence on factors that influence the effectiveness of activities seeking to strengthen civilian police and state-provided justice within the broader rule of law context, is likely to be applicable to both missions and aid programmes. Both can learn from one another.

A key difference between mission and non-mission activities (or aid programmes) is that missions typically have a greater political profile and therefore, presumably, more political clout with host country authorities to promote reforms that run counter to the vested interests embedded in the domestic political-economy.

If anything, mission activities that seek to strengthen civilian police and state justice capabilities in conflict-affected settings should be more effective than the average aid programme that seeks to achieve a similar effect.

Table 3

Key factors influencing mission effectiveness at civilian police and state justice promoting activity level

Content focus of the engagement			Design of the engagement
Factor	Indicator(s)	What is the issue?	Factor	Indicator(s)	What is the issue?
1. Activity objectives reflect security (police) and justice priorities of the people that are tolerable to elites.[62]	A security/justice needs survey and/or a political-economy analysis of the ‘state of security/justice’ exists. Results are used as a basis for activity design. Existing caseloads have been analysed in terms of most recurrent legal disputes and these are addressed first.	Working on state or international security/justice priorities is unlikely to be effective in the short term given conflict legacies and a poor track record of state-provided justice. A (latent) constituency for change must already exist if external intervention is to be successful.	1. Activities are part of a long-term programmatic engagement in terms of time and funding.[63]	Major activities are initiated for at least 5–10 years of duration. Handover of short-term activities to development actors with longer-term horizons is pre-planned and well executed. Short-term activities are designed to succeed each other.	It takes time to identify the strategic individuals, build change coalitions and contest ideas/practices that enable change. Building the required levels of trust, confidence and associated relationships is time consuming. Understanding among international staff of how rule of law provision ‘ticks’ in a particular place improves incrementally.
2. Activities include significant engagement with informal and formal justice actors.[64]	Complementarity of the respective strengths of both systems, based on analysis, is used for activity design. A permanent dialogue is established between representatives of all spheres that constitute a country’s legal plurality.	A state-only focus is bound to generate resistance from local elites and the population. A state-only focus is likely to be irrelevant in the short term.	2. Activities are organised adaptively so that they can learn from experience and adjust to environmental change.[65]	Activities feature an in-built element of strategic reflection. Part of an activity’s resources can be tapped into flexibly. Activity objectives can change rapidly if needed.[66] Activity monitoring results feed into regular strategic reflection on progress.	Adaptiveness results from practical flexibility of objectives and resources on the basis of regular and honest reviews of activity progress.
3. Training activities are part of integrated capacity-building programmes.[67]	Capacity-building efforts address values, attitudes and skills in parallel. Capacity-building efforts are made at organisational, unit and individual level at the same time.	It is not realistic to expect systemic improvements to result from individual and collective skills upgrading without duly considering the organisational environment and political interests that continue to constrain performance.	3. International police and justice staff conducting mission activities and programmes are both competent and demonstrate behaviour/ coaching skills that are locally and culturally relevant.[68]	Trainers, experts and seconded advisers are professionals and also have well-honed advisory and knowledge transfer skills. They are made familiar with the culture and social relations where they will work before deployment. They have a basic command of the language.	It is not sufficient to send in professionals who are great at what they themselves do. They may be less adept at conveying their skills in general, or in other cultures in particular. Appreciable attention needs to be given to training, job standards and on-the-job learning by international police and justice staff.
4. Activities are guided by a uniform policing/justice concept.[69]	Several troop contributing countries (TCCs)/donors use the same policing/justice concept. Key philosophical and organisational parameters for policing/justice that are locally relevant have been agreed between TCCs and donors in the mission’s concept of operations.	The introduction of multiple policing or justice concepts in an already fragmented society where, generally, the ‘rule of the strong’ prevails, is a recipe for confusion, coordination problems and inefficient resource allocation. Parameters for international policing/justice activities are not necessarily locally appropriate or relevant.	4. Activities are based on an assessment of likely political resistance against a particular rule of law reform and how it can be overcome.[70]	There is a topical analysis of the political, organisational and technical factors that explain current poor performance. An activity has mechanisms to regularly bring tacit knowledge on resistance into a conversation.	Progressive change, including more technical change, always meets political resistance because it threatens vested interests. The sources and drivers of this must be understood for change to succeed.
5. Activities that work on specific policing/justice aspects are embedded in more comprehensive reform efforts.[71]	Support for (re)drafting laws and regulations also supports implementation. Community policing is part of a broader effort to progress societal perspectives on impunity, crime and social relations.	Working on specific issues in standalone fashion assumes that islands of good practice can be created in a single institution. This is unlikely to be effective. Not everything needs to be done at once, but key linkages must be addressed.	5. Activities address key sources of popular mistrust in policing/justice behaviour and performance.[72]	Activities have clear and practical anti-corruption elements that are visible. Popular views on police/ justice credibility are actively sought.	Agents of state tend to be profoundly mistrusted for their abuse of power. Corruption is a common element. Building greater popular trust requires that these issues are addressed.