Decorating the ‘Christmas Tree’: The UN Security Council and the Secretariat’s Recommendations on Peacekeeping Operations

Oksamytna, Kseniya; Lundgren, Magnus

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3636252

Cited by 7 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Peacekeepers were asked to assist with elections, reforms of the rule of law, human rights, and the security sector in addition to the more traditional monitoring tasks of earlier missions. As the normative agenda prospered under the unipolar order, tasks multiplied (Oksamytna & Lundgren, 2021). Along with regional organizations and financial institutions, UN peacekeeping missions became pieces of a broader liberal peacebuilding agenda (Paris & Sisk, 2009).…”

Section: Un Peace Operations and The Problem With Their Current Trajectorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is merit in this criticism. In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, when the normative consensus around liberal values was widely shared, mandates of peace operations grew exponentially with various states, donors, and the UN Secretariat adding their preferred recommendations (Oksamytna & Lundgren, 2021). As interested states and donors most often come from the global north, the bias was ingrained.…”

Section: Peacebuilding In a Multipolar Order: The Rule Of Law And Bottom-up Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a result, the number of uniformed UN personnel dropped from around 107,000 in December 2015 to 81,800 in December 2020 (United Nations, 2020a). The contraction of peace operations would not be problematic if the situation on the ground was improving or this was an act of "right-sizing" missions, combating the so-called "Christmas tree mandates," that is, missions that are overburdened with tasks, reflecting agendas of multiple actors (Oksamytna & Lundgren, 2021). However, experts argue that is not the case.…”

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confidence: 99%

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UN peace operations in a multipolar order: Building peace through the rule of law and bottom-up approaches

Osland

Peter

2021

Contemporary Security Policy

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UN peace operations need a new peacebuilding agenda that acknowledges both the transboundary nature of conflict drivers and the multipolar nature of the global order. This means casting aside the current stabilization approach, but also abandoning the pursuit of liberal peacebuilding of the unipolar era. Such a conflict transformation agenda would require UN peace operations to prioritize the rule of law and bottom-up approaches, thus creating the potential to be embraced by a much broader range of member states. In this article, we bring liberal peacebuilding critiques into a discussion with debates on the nature of the global order. Liberal peacebuilding critiques are rooted in the bottom-up problematization of international interventions and show what kind of peacebuilding is desirable. Conversely, the debates on the multipolar nature of the global order expose the top-down constraints as to what kind of peacebuilding is feasible. KEYWORDS United Nations; peacekeeping; peacebuilding; multipolar order; rule of law; bottom-up approaches At the turn of another decade, something interesting is happening with the United Nations (UN) flagship activity: peacekeeping. In January 2019, the UN underwent substantial institutional reform, deprioritizing the term peacekeeping and subsuming it under a broader umbrella of peace operations. The former Department of Peacekeeping Operations was restructured into the Department of Peace Operations and became more closely integrated with the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs through shared regional divisions (United Nations, 2019). This reform was

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Section: Un Peace Operations and The Problem With Their Current Trajectorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Peacebuilding In a Multipolar Order: The Rule Of Law And Bottom-up Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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UN peace operations in a multipolar order: Building peace through the rule of law and bottom-up approaches

Osland

Peter

2021

Contemporary Security Policy

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“…The three decades of post-Cold-War peacekeeping witnessed several cycles of expansion and contraction. Presently, peacekeeping mandates have become so complex that they have been compared to "Christmas trees" which various actors seek to "adorn" with their preferred provisions (Oksamytna and Lundgren 2020). 7 In parallel, negotiations on both revised and new mandates became increasingly contentious in the late 2010s.…”

Section: Why Study Un Peacekeeping Mandates?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies could also investigate internal factors (UNSC composition and power differentials or members' foreign policies and relations with the host government) and external pressures (civil society activism or media attention) shaping the Council's approach to mandated tasks. Studies could investigate the UN Secretariat's reactions to the expansion and disaggregation of mandates to complement recent research on UN officials' role at the mandate formulation stage(Oksamytna and Lundgren 2020). Furthermore, investigating whether peacekeeping budgets have kept pace with mandate expansion could add to the growing body of research on the politics of financing international organization (e.g.,Patz and Goetz 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

Introducing the Peacekeeping Mandates (PEMA) Dataset

et al. 2020

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Global consequences of the war in Ukraine: the last straw for (liberal) interventionism?

Geis

Schröder

2022

Z Friedens und Konflforsch

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The interpretation of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine as a “turning point” indicates that long-established parameters of securing peace in international politics will change. This article tentatively assesses consequences of this war for the agenda of international peacebuilding and for wider interventionist practices in contemporary violent conflict settings. It is argued that the ongoing war speeds up a preexisting phase of profound order transformation that will considerably change the ways in which states manage conflicts and attempt to secure lasting peace in the international system. The article outlines how ongoing transformations already affect—and will further affect—(liberal) interventionism at different entangled scales, ranging from the global to the local. The contribution draws on recent studies of the rise and decline of global orders and interweaves them with insights from empirical peace and conflict research and critical studies of peacebuilding and interventions. It discusses the further decline of global cooperation in the wake of the Russian war against Ukraine, outlines the consequences of the rivalry between United Nations Security Council veto powers for the global agenda of peacebuilding and the conduct of peace operations, and illustrates the local consequences for specific intervention sites, in particular the negative impact of the employment of the Russian Wagner Group in Mali.

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Decorating the ‘Christmas Tree’: The UN Security Council and the Secretariat’s Recommendations on Peacekeeping Operations

Cited by 7 publications

References 37 publications

UN peace operations in a multipolar order: Building peace through the rule of law and bottom-up approaches

UN peace operations in a multipolar order: Building peace through the rule of law and bottom-up approaches

Introducing the Peacekeeping Mandates (PEMA) Dataset

Global consequences of the war in Ukraine: the last straw for (liberal) interventionism?

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