The Draft Policy Paper on Peace Support Operations, prepared by the departments of defence and foreign affairs [1], has a number of limitations. While the title suggests the formulation of national policy, the text focuses largely on procedural matters. It does not offer any political or strategic criteria for deciding when and how South Africa should become involved in peace operations. It insists that these operations are fundamentally political and that military deployment should always be viewed as subordinate to political objectives, but it concentrates on military means and ignores the question of political ends.

The document does not analyse the dynamics and causes of conflict scenarios in which military deployment might be contemplated. It ignores the international debates on peace operations. It presents lengthy definitions of preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, peacebuilding and peace enforcement, without assessing the viability and value of these activities in different situations. In short, it does not provide the perspective required of a government policy paper.

The pressure on the international community to undertake peace operations stems largely from humanitarian concerns about massive human suffering, depicted graphically by CNN and other media. The moral impulse to alleviate suffering does not constitute a sufficient basis for action, however. External interventions also have to be based on a pragmatic assessment of their potential effectiveness. Such assessment obviously depends on the circumstances of each case. Less obviously, it depends on the manner in which conflict (`the problem’) and peace (`the desired outcome’) are understood at a more general level.

This is not a matter of abstract theorising. Every planned action is based on some kind of analysis, whether or not the analysis is conscious and sound. If the problem or the desired outcome are misconceived, then peace endeavours will be ineffectual or counter-productive. Since the efforts of the international community to promote peace in Africa have not yielded great success, this paper adopts a radical stance, both in the sense of questioning conventional wisdoms and in the sense of shifting focus from the symptoms to the causes of crises.

The paper presents a framework for understanding conflict and peace, and explores the implications for peacemaking and peacebuilding, in the context of intra-state crises in Africa. It argues that military operations have limited utility in this context and that the emphasis of the Draft Policy Paper should therefore lie with the broader dimensions of peace initiatives. This would be consistent with South Africa’s comparative advantages, which derive from the success of its transition to democracy and not from its military capacity.

In using terms like `Africa’, `the international community’ and `local actors’, the paper obscures significant differences within each category. There may consequently be important exceptions to the generalisations made below, and the framework should be accompanied by country- and actor-specific analyses when determining appropriate strategies in a particular case. Apart from the section on military operations, the paper draws on the experience of practitioners at the Centre for Conflict Resolution and its partner organisations in Africa. For reasons of space, it does not address the role of civil society; for lack of expertise, it does not deal with macro-economic issues.

The pattern of co-operation in West Africa has been marked in a most remarkable manner by its colonial past. Among the sub-regions into which the OAU has divided Africa, none has been polarised as West Africa. Indeed the sub-region was described as the most varied in Africa in terms of the size of countries, colonially [...]

First published in Global Society, Vol 11, No 2, 1997
Peace operations and the practice of development are currently shifting between archetypal stages of organization. The complexity of political systems evolves in stages distinguished by their arrangement of four universal elements of social organization, corresponding in the modern state to population, territory, government and sovereignty. [...]

This paper was prepared as background for the meeting on “Resources for Humanitarian Assistance,” which was held on September 11-12, 1997 at the Pocantico Conference Center in New York. It reflects the aggregate set of responses of the primary intergovernmental and non-governmental humanitarian service providers to an inquiry regarding their financial, managerial, and staffing concerns, as well as discussions with them and with other experts in the field. Without denying the importance of longer term development assistance and its interconnectedness with humanitarian relief, this paper’s focus has intentionally been limited to humanitarian assistance in complex emergencies, with the recognition that effective emergency aid must be understood within the broader humanitarian framework. The paper briefly analyzes the overall financial situation facing the humanitarian enterprise; examines the ways in which patterns of funding, as well as gross amounts, affect the delivery of assistance; and identifies several options which could strengthen the capacity and performance of the humanitarian system, including investment in preparedness measures and in staff recruitment and training.

The end of the cold war and the aftermath of the Gulf War gave birth to an overoptimistic view on peace and stability. From an ethical point of view, a pacifist tradition is in place chanting the theoretical merits of peace. Politicians, using phrases like “The New World Order”, with references to “the End of History” were now fostering the impression that peace was practically feasible. Action researchers engaged in conflict and peace studies were eager to take up the scientific gauntlet. Early warning systems and conflict prevention became serious issues, if not fashionable language. As we are engaged at our institute for quite some time with problems of conflict prevention, the main aim of this article is to save the scientific concept from expectations which cannot be fulfilled. If, for reasons of high ethics, we place voluntarism above realism and emotions above aseptic scientific standards, we could end with politics lacking any moral standards.

This article will investigate the process of demilitarization as conducted by the United Nations in Mozambique, first examining the framing of the objectives and demilitarization programme, secondly the implementation of demilitarization and finally analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the demilitarization programme in Mozambique.

In this article, Brian Neldner responds to issues raised in RPN 19 (NGOs and host governments). He discusses the nature of the NGO/UNHCR partnership and the significance of the NGO contribution to refugee work, concluding that NGOs have made and will continue to make a critical difference.