Exit and Transition: How Peace Operations End
When and how to drawdown a peace operation is an important topic that has been discussed extensively in recent years, in particular at the United Nations. The central question in this context is how multidimensional peace operations can be concluded and transitioned to another form of UN presence in the respective country while safeguarding achievements made during their tenure.
Exit or Transition?
Although the question of how to responsible close a peace operation is currently a hot topic of discussion, the issue is not new. As early as 2001, the then Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented a ground-breaking report entitled “No Exit Without Strategy.”
»Domestic peace has typically been most sustainable when it has gone beyond a stable truce or the mere capacity to deter armed rebellion. Successful cases have often included reformed systems of governance that are responsive to people’s basic needs at the local, regional, and national levels.«
Two objectives
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Safeguarding achievements
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Avoiding relapses into conflict
Transition: Different Approaches
Transitions can vary with regard to two questions in particular:
- What is the trigger for initiating a transition?
- Who assumes the tasks and responsibilities that had previously been undertaken by the peace operation?
Over the past two decades, the UN has completed 19 peacekeeping operations (in 17 different crisis regions) in a variety of ways.
Follow-up Missions
- In 14 of these 19 cases, there were follow-up missions or deployments. In over half of the cases (eight), these came in the form of a so-called Special Political Mission (SPM) deployed by the United Nations. The most recent example is Haiti, where in October 2019 the peacekeeping operation MINUJUSTH was succeeded by the BINUH mission.
- Another example: The UNMIS peace operation in Sudan was followed in 2011 by two additional missions – one in the newly independent state of South Sudan (UNMISS), and the other in the contested border region of Abyei (UNISFA).
Other Actors Take Over
- In other cases, other organisations took over: In Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, the UN peace operation UNMIBH ended in late 2002 and transferred its police-related tasks to the European Union Police Mission.
- There are also examples of successful transitions without follow-up missions. In Liberia, for example, after 15 years of peacekeeping, there was a direct transfer of responsibility to United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, the so-called UN Country Team.
Withdrawal of the Peace Operation
- In some cases, peace operations were ended due to security considerations or at the request of the host country, as was the case with UNMEE in Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2008.
Timing and Planning a Transition
Perhaps the most difficult question is when the time is right to initiate a transition. In some cases, the moment was chosen too early.
»[…] more than once during the last 10 years the United Nations has withdrawn a peacekeeping operation, or dramatically altered its mandate, only to see the situation remain unstable, or sink into renewed violence.«
- The UN ended the UNMISET mission in East Timor in 2005. One year later, following an escalation of violence, a new peacekeeping operation, UNMIT, was deployed.
- In Haiti, after the UN had deployed an SPM in the year 2000, it had to transfer to the more robust peacekeeping operation MINUSTAH in 2004.
In today’s UN system, it is common practice to require peace operations to develop an exit strategy long before a transition is mandated. A planning directive issued by the Secretary-General in 2019 requires all multidimensional peace operations to submit a preliminary transition calendar.
- The UN-AU Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has been in transition since 2018.
- For MONUSCO in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a strategic review has already been carried out.
Planning a transition should begin as early as possible, even if many things can change by the time a peace operation actually ends. Certain factors must be taken into account at an early stage if a transition is to be successful and sustainable.
- It must be clear what the local capacities in the country are, but also which of the peace operation’s tasks and functions cannot be covered or continued in a transitional phase.
- It should also be borne in mind that the end of a peace operation always has political and socio-economic repercussions within the country.
Above all, a transition is a political process, and it should be seen as a means of crisis prevention. Not least as most civil wars take place in countries that have already experienced a civil war in their recent past.
