CIAO DATE: 03/2011

Conjuring Spirits from the Vasty Deep: A User's Guide to Proposals for Strengthening UN Civilian Capacity in Peace Operations

May 2010

Center for International Security and Cooperation

Abstract

Although civilian specialists in peace operations have been in short supply, the same cannot be said of proposals to alleviate the problem. Governments, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, and even the United Nations itself have issued reports to address the civilian deficit in peace operations. Most of these papers acknowledge that there has been halting improvement over time, but express concern over a wide array of gaps and shortages in response capacity. Almost all agree that demand will continue to outrun supply. Almost all warn that failure to close the gaps and address the shortages will call into question the credibility and legitimacy not only of international peace operations but also of the fragile national and local institutions that these operations hope to build. Beyond agreement on this point, the reports abound with proposals and recommendations. Most emphasize the importance of ‘rapid deployment,’ but use the term to connote different things. Various proposals use different words to describe the same deployment capacity or the same word to describe different kinds of capacity. This paper hopes to help policy makers and the attentive public make sense of the sometimes bewildering array of options.

Resource link: Conjuring Spirits from the Vasty Deep: A User's Guide to Proposals for Strengthening UN Civilian Capacity in Peace Operations [PDF] - 410K