2015.10.06

Institution- and Capacity-building for Peace: Implications of the UN Review Panels’ Recommendation for Future Missions

The Challenges Annual Forum 2015 was hosted by the Armenian Institute for National Strategic Studies at the Ministry of Defence and held in Yerevan in 5-6 October 2015.

The Forum, themed Institution- and Capacity-Building for Peace: Implications of the UN Review Panels’ Recommendation for Future Missions, addressed the implications of the ongoing international reviews for UN peace operations, including:

  • Uniting our Strengths for Peace – Politics, Partnership and People: Report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations;
  • The Future of United Nations Peace Operations: Implementation of the Recommendations of the High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations; Report of the Secretary-General;
  • Challenge of Sustaining Peace: Report of the Advisory Group of Experts for the Review of the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture;
  • Global Study on the Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325; and
  • Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Peace.

In addition to these reports, The Leaders’ Peacekeeping Summit, that was held in New York shortly before the Forum (28 September 2015), generated many new pledges for concrete and significant contributions to peace operations, a new factor which brought a new dimensions  to the Challenges Annual Forum 2015 deliberations in Yerevan.

The Forum brought together the international peacekeeping community from across the globe, including policymakers, practitioners and experts from different sectors, and provided a platform for the identification of commonalities, gaps, overlaps and eventual tensions in the findings and recommendations that the above-mentioned Reports make with regards to institution- and capacity-building. The Forum included a series of panel and working group sessions that allowed for in-depth discussions and case evaluation on how to improve and consolidate effective institution- and capacity-building for peace. The overall objective was to produce a set of targeted and realistic recommendations on how to more effectively use institution- and capacity-building as a way to consolidate the peacekeeping and peacebuilding nexus.

Session on institution-building as a bridge between peacekeeoing and peacebuilding with panelists Dr Cedric de Coning, Ms Leanne Smith and Prof. Alexander Nikitin

The Challenges Annual Forum 2015 report comprises a comprehensive summary of the presentations, discussions and background materials of the Challenges Annual Forum 2015 on ‘Institution- and Capacity-building for Peace: Implications of the UN Review Panels’ Recommendations for Future Missions’. It also presents a number of targeted recommendations derived from the speakers’ and participants’ views on the current challenges of peace operations.