Military

170. Creating effective Headquarters support capacity for peace operations means addressing the three issues of quantity, structure and quality, that is, the number of staff needed to get the job done; the organizational structures and procedures that facilitate effective support; and quality people and methods of work within those structures. In the present section, the Panel examines and makes recommendations on primarily the first two issues; in section VI below, it addresses the issue of personnel quality and organizational culture.

171. The Panel sees a clear need for increased resources in support of peacekeeping operations. There is particular need for increased resources in DPKO, the primary department responsible for the planning and support of the United Nations’ most complex and high-profile field operations.

172. Expenditures for Headquarters staffing and related costs to plan and support all peacekeeping operations in the field can be considered the United Nations direct, non-field support costs for peacekeeping operations. They have not exceeded 6 per cent of the total cost of peacekeeping operations in the last half decade (see table 4.1). They are currently closer to three per cent and will fall below two per cent in the current peacekeeping budget year, based on existing plans for expansion of some missions, such as MONUC in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the full deployment of others, such as UNAMSIL in Sierra Leone, and the establishment of a new operation in Eritrea and Ethiopia. A management analyst familiar with the operational requirements of large organizations, public or private, that operate substantial field-deployed elements might well conclude that an organization trying to run a field-oriented enterprise on two per cent central support costs was undersupporting its field people and very likely burning out its support structures in the process.

173. Table 4.1 lists the total budgets for peacekeeping operations from mid-1996 through mid-2001 (peacekeeping budget cycles run from July to June, offset six months from the United Nations regular budget cycle). It also lists total Headquarters costs in support of peacekeeping, whether inside or outside of DPKO, and whether funded from the regular budget or the Support Account for Peacekeeping Operations (the regular budget covers two years and its costs are apportioned among Member States according to the regular scale of assessment; the Support Account covers one year — the intent being that Secretariat staffing levels should ebb and flow with the level of field operations — and its costs are apportioned according to the peacekeeping scale of assessment).

^a Based on financing reports of the Secretary-General; excluding missions completed by 30 June 2000; including rough estimate for full deployment of MONUC, for which a budget has not yet been prepared.

^b Estimated.

^c Figures obtained from the Financial Controller of the United Nations, including all posts in the Secretariat (primarily in DPKO) funded through the regular biennium budget and the Support Account; figures also factor in what the costs would have been for in-kind contributions or "gratis personnel" had they been fully funded.

174. The Support Account funds 85 per cent of the DPKO budget, or about $40 million annually. Another $6 million for DPKO comes from the regular biennium budget. This $46 million combined largely funds the salaries and associated costs of DPKO’s 231 civilian, military and police Professionals and 173 General Service staff (but does not include the Mine Action Service, which is funded through voluntary contributions). The Support Account also funds posts in other parts of the Secretariat engaged in peacekeeping support, such as the Peacekeeping Financing Division and parts of the Procurement Division in the Department of Management, the Office of Legal Affairs and DPI.

175. Until mid-decade, the Support Account was calculated as 8.5 per cent of the total civilian staff costs of peacekeeping operations, but it did not take into consideration the costs of supporting civilian police personnel and United Nations Volunteers, or the costs of supporting private contractors or military troops. The fixed-percentage approach was replaced by the annual justification of every post funded by the Support Account. DPKO staffing levels grew little under the new system, however, partly because the Secretariat seems to have tailored its submissions to what it thought the political market would bear.

176. Clearly, DPKO and the other Secretariat offices supporting peacekeeping should expand and contract to some degree in relation to the level of activity in the field, but to require DPKO to rejustify, every year, seven out of eight posts in the Department is to treat it as though it were a temporary creation and peacekeeping a temporary responsibility of the Organization. Fifty-two years of operations would argue otherwise and recent history would argue further that continuing preparedness is essential, even during downturns in field activity, because events are only marginally predictable and staff capacity and experience, once lost, can take a long time to rebuild, as DPKO has painfully learned in the past two years.

177. Because the Support Account funds virtually all of DPKO on a year-by-year basis, that Department and the other offices funded by the Support Account have no predictable baseline level of funding and posts against which they can recruit and retain staff. Personnel brought in from the field on Support Account-funded posts do not know if those posts will exist for them one year later. Given current working conditions and the career uncertainty that Support Account funding entails, it is impressive that DPKO has managed to hold together at all.

178. Member States and the Secretariat have long recognized the need to define a baseline staffing/funding level and a separate mechanism to enable growth and retrenchment in DPKO in response to changing needs. However, without a review of DPKO staffing needs based on some objective management and productivity criteria, an appropriate baseline is difficult to define. While it is not in a position to conduct such a methodical management review of DPKO, the Panel believes that such a review should be conducted. In the meantime, the Panel believes that certain current staff shortages are plainly obvious and merit highlighting.

179. The Military and Civilian Police Division in DPKO, headed by the United Nations Military Adviser, has an authorized strength of 32 military officers and nine civilian police officers. The Civilian Police Unit has been assigned to support all aspects of United Nations international police operations, from doctrinal development through selection and deployment of officers into field operations. It can, at present, do little more than identify personnel, attempt to pre-screen them with visiting selection assistance teams (an effort that occupies roughly half of the staff) and then see that they get to the field. Moreover, there is no unit within DPKO (or any other part of the United Nations system) that is responsible for planning and supporting the rule of law elements of an operation that in turn support effective police work, whether advisory or executive.

180. Eleven officers in the Military Adviser’s office support the identification and rotation of military units for all peacekeeping operations, and provide military advice to the political officers in DPKO. DPKO’s military officers are also supposed to find time to "train the trainers" at the Member State level, to draft guidelines, manuals and other briefing material, and to work with FALD to identify the logistics and other operational requirements of the military and police components of field missions. However, under existing staffing levels, the Training Unit consists of only five military officers in total. Ten officers in the Military Planning Service are the principal operational-level military mission planners within DPKO; six more posts have been authorized but have not yet all been filled. These 16 planning officers combined represent the full complement of military staff available to determine force requirements for mission start-up and expansion, participate in technical surveys and assess the preparedness of potential troop contributors. Of the 10 military planners originally authorized, one was assigned to draft the rules of engagement and directives to force commanders for all operations. Only one officer is available, part time, to manage the UNSAS database.

181. Table 4.2 contrasts the deployed strength of military and police contingents with the authorized strength of their respective Headquarters support staffs. No national Government would send 27,000 troops into the field with just 32 officers back home to provide them with substantive and operational military guidance. No police organization would deploy 8,000 police officers with only nine headquarters staff to provide them with substantive and operational policing support.

Table 4.2
Ratio of military and civilian police staff at Headquarters to military and civilian police personnel in the field^a

^a Authorized military strength as of 15 June 2000 and civilian police as of 1 August 2000.

182. The Office of Operations in DPKO, in which the political Desk Officers or substantive focal points for particular peacekeeping operations reside, is another area that seems considerably understaffed. It currently has 15 Professionals serving as the focal points for 14 current and two potential new peace operations, or less than one officer per mission on average. While one officer may be able to handle the needs of one or even two smaller missions, this seems untenable in the case of the larger missions, such as UNTAET in East Timor, UNMIK in Kosovo, UNAMSIL in Sierra Leone and MONUC in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Similar circumstances apply to the logistics and personnel officers in DPKO’s Field Administration and Logistics Division, and to related support personnel in the Department of Management, the Office of Legal Affairs, the Department of Public Information and other offices which support their work. Table 4.3 depicts the total number of staff in DPKO and elsewhere in the Secretariat dedicated, full-time, to supporting the larger missions, along with their annual mission budgets and authorized staffing levels.

183. The general shortage of staff means that in many instances key personnel have no back-up, no way to cover more than one shift in a day when a crisis occurs six to 12 time zones away except by covering two shifts themselves, and no way to take a vacation, get sick or visit the mission without leaving their backstopping duties largely uncovered. In the current arrangements, compromises among competing demands are inevitable and support for the field may suffer as a result. In New York, Headquarters-related tasks, such as reporting obligations to the legislative bodies, tend to get priority because Member States’ representatives press for action, often in person. The field, by contrast, is represented in New York by an e-mail, a cable or the jotted notes of a phone conversation. Thus, in the war for a desk officer’s time, field operations often lose out and are left to solve problems on their own. Yet they should be accorded first priority. People in the field face difficult circumstances, sometimes life-threatening. They deserve better, as do the staff at Headquarters who wish to support them more effectively.

Table 4.3
Total staff assigned on a full-time basis to support complex peacekeeping operations established in 1999

184. Although there appears to be some duplication in the functions performed by desk officers in DPKO and their counterparts in the regional divisions of DPA, closer examination suggests otherwise. The UNMIK desk officer’s counterpart in DPA, for example, follows developments in all of Southeastern Europe and the counterpart in OCHA covers all of the Balkans plus parts of the Commonwealth of Independent States. While it is essential that the officers in DPA and OCHA be given the opportunity to contribute what they can, their efforts combined yield less than one additional full-time-equivalent officer to support UNMIK.

185. The three Regional Directors in the Office of Operations should be visiting the missions regularly and engaging in a constant policy dialogue with the SRSGs and heads of components on the obstacles that Headquarters could help them overcome. Instead, they are drawn into the processes that occupy their desk officers’ time because the latter need the back-up.

186. These competing demands are even more pronounced for the Under-Secretary-General and Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations. The Under-Secretary-General and Assistant Secretary-General provide advice to the Secretary-General, liaise with Member State delegations and capitals, and one or the other vets every report on peacekeeping operations (40 in the first half of 2000) submitted to the Secretary-General for his approval and signature, prior to submission to the legislative bodies. Since January 2000, the two have briefed the Council in person over 50 times, in sessions lasting up to three hours and requiring several hours of staff preparation in the field and at Headquarters. Coordination meetings take further time away from substantive dialogue with the field missions, from field visits, from reflection on ways to improve the United Nations conduct of peacekeeping and from attentive management.

187. The staff shortages faced by the substantive side of DPKO may be exceeded by those in the administrative and logistics support areas, particularly in FALD. At this juncture, FALD provides support not only to peacekeeping operations but also to other field offices, such as the Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories (UNSCO) in Gaza, the United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA) and a dozen other small offices, not to mention continuing involvement in managing and reconciling the liquidation of terminated missions. All of FALD adds approximately 1.25 per cent to the total cost of peacekeeping and other field operations. If the United Nations were to subcontract the administrative and logistics support functions performed by FALD, the Panel is convinced that it would be hard pressed to find a commercial company to take on the equivalent task for the equivalent fee.

188. A few examples will illustrate FALD’s pronounced staff shortages: the Staffing Section in FALD’s Personnel Management and Support Service (PMSS), which handles recruitment and travel for all civilian personnel as well as travel for civilian police and military observers, has just 10 professional recruitment officers, four of whom have been assigned to review and acknowledge the 150 unsolicited employment applications that the office now receives every day. The other six officers handle the actual selection process: one full-time and one half-time for Kosovo, one full-time and one half-time for East Timor, and three to cover all other field missions combined. Three recruitment officers are trying to identify suitable candidates to staff two civil administration missions that need hundreds of experienced administrators across a multitude of fields and disciplines. Nine to 12 months after they got under way, neither UNMIK nor UNTAET is fully deployed.

189. The Member States must give the Secretary-General some flexibility and the financial resources to bring in the staff he needs to ensure that the credibility of the Organization is not tarnished by its failure to respond to emergencies as a professional organization should. The Secretary-General must be given the resources to increase the capacity of the Secretariat to react immediately to unforeseen demands.

190. The responsibility for providing the people in the field the goods and services they need to do their jobs falls primarily on FALD’s Logistics and Communications Service (LCS). The job description of one of the 14 logistics coordinators in LCS might help to illustrate the workload that the entire Service currently endures. This individual is the lead logistics planner for the expansion of both the mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) and for the expansion of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in Lebanon. The same individual is also responsible for drafting the logistics policies and procedures for the critical United Nations Logistics Base in Brindisi and for coordinating the preparation of the entire Service’s annual budget submissions.

191. Based on this cursory review alone and bearing in mind that the total support cost for DPKO and related Headquarters peacekeeping support offices does not even exceed $50 million per annum, the Panel is convinced that additional resources for that Department and the others which support it would be an essential investment to ensure that the over $2 billion the Member States will spend on peacekeeping operations in 2001 will be well spent. The Panel therefore recommends a substantial increase in resources for this purpose, and urge the Secretary-General to submit a proposal to the General Assembly outlining the Organization’s requirements in full.

192. The Panel also believes that peacekeeping should cease to be treated as a temporary requirement and DPKO a temporary organizational structure. It requires a consistent and predictable baseline of funding to do more than keep existing missions afloat. It should have resources to plan for potential contingencies six months to a year down the road; to develop managerial tools to help missions perform better in the future; to study the potential impact of modern technology on different aspects of peacekeeping; to implement the lessons learned from previous operations; and to implement recommendations contained in the evaluation reports of the Office of Internal Oversight Services over the past five years. Staff should be given the opportunity to design and conduct training programmes for newly recruited staff at Headquarters and in the field. They should finish the guidelines and handbooks that could help new mission personnel do their jobs more professionally and in accordance with United Nations rules, regulations and procedures, but that now sit half finished in a dozen offices all around DPKO, because their authors are busy meeting other needs.

193. The Panel therefore recommends that Headquarters support for peacekeeping be treated as a core activity of the United Nations, and as such that the majority of its resource requirements be funded through the mechanism of the regular biennial programme budget of the Organization. Pending the preparation of the next regular budget, it recommends that the Secretary-General approach the General Assembly as soon as possible with a request for an emergency supplemental increase to the last Support Account submission.

194. The specific allocation of resources should be determined according to a professional and objective review of requirements, but gross levels should reflect historical experience of peacekeeping. One approach would be to calculate the regular budget baseline for Headquarters support of peacekeeping as a percentage of the average cost of peacekeeping over the preceding five years. The resulting baseline budget would reflect the expected level of activity for which the Secretariat should be prepared. Based on the figures provided by the Controller (see table 4.1), the average for the last five years (including the current budget year) is $1.4 billion. Pegging the baseline at five per cent of the average cost would yield, for example, a baseline budget of $70 million, roughly $20 million more than the current annual Headquarters support budget for peacekeeping.

195. To fund above-average or "surge" activity levels, consideration should be given to a simple percentage charge against missions whose budgets carry peacekeeping operations spending above the baseline level. For example, the roughly $2.6 billion in peacekeeping activity estimated for the current budget year exceeds the $1.4 billion hypothetical baseline by $1.2 billion. A one per cent surcharge on that $1.2 billion would yield an additional $12 million to enable Headquarters to deal effectively with that increase. A two per cent surcharge would yield $24 million.

196. Such a direct method of providing for surge capacity should replace the current, annual, post-by-post justification required for the Support Account submissions. The Secretary-General should be given the flexibility to determine how such funds should best be utilized to meet a surge in activity, and emergency recruitment measures should apply in such instances so that temporary posts associated with surge requirements could be filled immediately.

197. Summary of key recommendations on funding headquarters support for peacekeeping operations:

(a) The Panel recommends a substantial increase in resources for Headquarters support of peacekeeping operations, and urges the Secretary-General to submit a proposal to the General Assembly outlining his requirements in full;

(b) Headquarters support for peacekeeping should be treated as a core activity of the United Nations, and as such the majority of its resource requirements for that purpose should be funded through the mechanism of the regular biennium programme budget of the Organization;

(c) Pending the preparation of the next regular budget submission, the Panel recommends that the Secretary-General approach the General Assembly with a request for an emergency supplemental increase to the Support Account to allow immediate recruitment of additional personnel, particularly in DPKO.

198. There is currently no integrated planning or support cell in DPKO in which those responsible for political analysis, military operations, civilian police, electoral assistance, human rights, development, humanitarian assistance, refugees and displaced persons, public information, logistics, finance and personnel recruitment, among others, are represented. On the contrary, as described above, DPKO has no more than a handful of officers dedicated full-time to planning and supporting even the large complex operations, such as those in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), Kosovo (UNMIK) and East Timor (UNTAET). In the case of a political peace mission or peace-building office, these functions are discharged within DPA, with equally limited human resources.

199. DPKO’s Office of Operations is responsible for pulling together an overall concept of operations for new peacekeeping missions. In this regard, it bears a heavy dual burden for political analysis and for internal coordination with the other elements of DPKO that are responsible for military and civilian police matters, logistics, finance and personnel. But each of these other elements has a separate organizational reporting chain, and many of them, in fact, are physically scattered across several different buildings. Moreover, DPA, UNDP, OCHA, UNHCR, OHCHR, DPI, and several other departments, agencies, funds and programmes have an increasingly important role to play in planning for any future operation, especially complex operations, and need to be formally included in the planning process.

200. Collaboration across divisions, departments and agencies does occur, but relies too heavily on personal networks and ad hoc support. There are task forces convened for planning major peacekeeping operations, pulling together various parts of the system, but they function more as sounding boards than executive bodies. Moreover, current task forces tend to meet infrequently or even disperse once an operation has begun to deploy, and well before it has fully deployed.

201. Reversing the perspective, once an operation has been deployed, SRSGs in the field have overall coordinating authority for United Nations activities in their mission area but have no single working-level focal point at Headquarters that can address all of their concerns quickly. For example, the desk officer or his/her regional director in DPKO fields political questions for peacekeeping operations but usually cannot directly respond to queries about military, police, humanitarian, human rights, electoral, legal or other elements of an operation, and they do not necessarily have a ready counterpart in each of those areas. A mission impatient for answers will eventually find the right primary contacts themselves and may do so in dozens of instances, building its own networks with different parts of the Secretariat and relevant agencies.

202. The missions should not feel the need to build their own contact networks. They should know exactly who to turn to for the answers and support that they need, especially in the critical early months when a mission is working towards full deployment and coping with daily crises. Moreover, they should be able to contact just one place for those answers, an entity that includes all of the backstopping people and expertise for the mission, drawn from an array of Headquarters elements that mirrors the functions of the mission itself. The Panel would call that entity an Integrated Mission Task Force (IMTF).

203. This concept builds upon but considerably extends the cooperative measures contained in the guidelines for implementing the "lead" department concept that DPKO and DPA agreed to in June 2000, in a joint departmental meeting chaired by the Secretary-General. The Panel would recommend, for example, that DPKO and DPA jointly determine the leader of each new Task Force but not necessarily limit their choice to the current staff of either Department. There may be occasions when the existing workloads of the regional directors or political officers in either department preclude them from taking on the role full-time. In those instances, it might be best to bring in someone from the field for this purpose. Such flexibility, including the flexibility to assign the task to the most qualified person for the job, would require the approval of funding mechanisms to respond to surge demands, as recommended above.

204. ECPS or a designated subgroup thereof should collectively determine the general composition of an IMTF, which the Panel envisages forming quite early in a process of conflict prevention, peacemaking, prospective peacekeeping or prospective deployment of a peace-building support office. That is, the notion of integrated, one-stop support for United Nations peace-and-security field activities should extend across the whole range of peace operations, with the size, substantive composition, meeting venue and leadership matching the needs of the operation.

205. Leadership and the lead department concept have posed some problems in the past when the principal focus of United Nations presence on the ground has changed from political to peacekeeping or vice versa, causing not only a shift in the field’s primary Headquarters contact but a shift in the whole Headquarters supporting cast. As the Panel sees the IMTF working, the supporting cast would remain substantially the same during and after such transitions, with additions or subtractions as the nature of the operation changed but with no changes in core Task Force personnel for those functions that bridge the transition. IMTF leadership would pass from one member of the group to another (e.g., from a DPKO regional director or political officer to his or her DPA counterpart).

206. Size and composition would match the nature and the phase of the field activity being supported. Crisis-related preventive action would require well informed political support that would keep a United Nations envoy apprised of political evolution within the region and other factors key to the success of his or her effort. Peacemakers working to end a conflict would need to know more about peacekeeping and peace-building options, so that their potential and their limitations are both reflected in any peace accord that would involve United Nations implementation. Adviser-observers from the Secretariat working with the peacemaker would be affiliated with the IMTF that supports the negotiations, and keep it posted on progress. The IMTF leader could, in turn, serve as the peacemaker’s routine contact point at Headquarters, with rapid access to higher echelons of the Secretariat for answers to sensitive political queries.

207. An IMTF of the sort just described could be a "virtual" body, meeting periodically but not physically co-located, its members operating from their workday offices and tied together by modern information technology. To support their work, each should feed as well as have access to the data and analyses created and placed on the United Nations Intranet by EISAS, the ECPS Information and Strategic Analysis Secretariat proposed in paragraphs 65 to 75 above.

208. IMTFs created to plan potential peace operations could also begin as virtual bodies. As an operation seemed more likely to go forward, the Task Force should assume physical form, with all of its members co-located in one space, prepared to work together as a team on a continuing basis for as long as needed to bring a new mission to full deployment. That period may be up to six months, assuming that the rapid deployment reforms recommended in paragraphs 84-169 above have been implemented.

209. Task Force members should be formally seconded to IMTF for such duration by their home division, department, agency, fund or programme. That is, an IMTF should be much more than a coordinating committee or task force of the type now set up at Headquarters. It should be a temporary but coherent staff created for a specific purpose, able to be increased or decreased in size or composition in response to mission needs.

210. Each Task Force member should be authorized to serve not only as a liaison between the Task Force and his or her home base but as its key working-level decision maker for the mission in question. The leader of the IMTF — reporting to the Assistant Secretary-General for Operations of DPKO in the case of peacekeeping operations, and the relevant Assistant Secretary-General of DPA in the case of peacemaking efforts, peace-building support offices and special political missions — should in turn have line authority over his or her Task Force members for the period of their secondment, and should serve as the first level of contact for the peace operations for all aspects of their work. Matters related to long-term policy and strategy should be dealt with at the Assistant Secretary-General/Under-Secretary-General level in ECPS, supported by EISAS.

211. For the United Nations system to be prepared to contribute staff to an IMTF, responsibility centres for each major substantive component of peace operations need to be established. Departments and agencies need to agree in advance on procedures for secondment and on their support for the IMTF concept, in writing if necessary.

212. The Panel is not in a position to suggest "lead" offices for each potential component of a peace operation but believes that ECPS should think through this issue collectively and assign one of its members responsibility for maintaining a level of preparedness for each potential component of a peace operation other than the military, police and judicial, and logistics/administration areas, which should remain DPKO’s responsibility. The designated lead agency should be responsible for devising generic concepts of operations, job descriptions, staffing and equipment requirements, critical path/deployment timetables, standard databases, civilian standby arrangements and rosters of other potential candidates for that component, as well as for participation in the IMTFs.

213. IMTFs offer a flexible approach to dealing with time-critical, resource-intensive but ultimately temporary requirements to support mission planning, start-up and initial sustainment. The concept borrows heavily from the notion of "matrix management", used extensively by large organizations that need to be able to assign the necessary talent to specific projects without reorganizing themselves every time a project arises. Used by such diverse entities as the RAND Corporation and the World Bank, it gives each staff member a permanent "home" or "parent" department but allows — indeed, expects — staff to function in support of projects as the need arises. A matrix management approach to Headquarters planning and support of peace operations would allow departments, agencies, funds and programmes — internally organized as suits their overall needs — to contribute staff to coherent, interdepartmental/inter-agency task forces built to provide that support.

214. The IMTF structure could have significant implications for how DPKO’s Office of Operations is currently structured, and in effect would supplant the Regional Divisions structure. For example, the larger operations, such as those in Sierra Leone, East Timor and Kosovo, each would warrant separate IMTFs, headed by Director-level officers. Other missions, such as the long-established "traditional" peacekeeping operations in Asia and the Middle East, might be grouped into another IMTF. The number of IMTFs that could be formed would largely depend on the amount of additional resources allocated to DPKO, DPA and related departments, agencies, funds and programmes. As the number of IMTFs increased, the organizational structure of the Office of Operations would become flatter. There could be similar implications for the Assistant Secretaries-General of DPA, to whom the heads of the IMTFs would report during the peacemaking phase or when setting up a large peace-building support operation either as a follow-on presence to a peacekeeping operation or as a separate initiative.

215. While the regional directors of DPKO (and DPA in those cases where they were appointed as IMTF heads) would be in charge of overseeing fewer missions than at present, they would actually be managing a larger number of staff, such as those seconded full-time from the Military and Civilian Police Advisers’ Offices, FALD (or its successor divisions) and other departments, agencies, funds and programmes, as required. The size of the IMTFs will also depend on the amount of additional resources provided, without which participating entities would not be in a position to second their staff on a full-time basis.

216. It should also be noted that in order for the IMTF concept to work effectively, its members must be physically co-located during the planning and initial deployment phases. This will not be possible at present without major adjustments to current office space allocations in the Secretariat.

217. Summary of key recommendation on integrated mission planning and support: Integrated Mission Task Forces (IMTFs), with members seconded from throughout the United Nations system, as necessary, should be the standard vehicle for mission-specific planning and support. IMTFs should serve as the first point of contact for all such support, and IMTF leaders should have temporary line authority over seconded personnel, in accordance with agreements between DPKO, DPA and other contributing departments, programmes, funds and agencies.

218. The IMTF concept would strengthen the capacity of DPKO’s Office of Operations to function as a real focal point for all aspects of a peacekeeping operation. However, structural adjustments are also required in other elements of DPKO, in particular to the Military and Civilian Police Division, FALD and the Lessons Learned Unit.

219. All civilian police officials interviewed at Headquarters and in the field expressed frustration with having police functions in DPKO included in a military reporting chain. The Panel agrees that there seems to be little administrative or substantive value added in this arrangement.

220. Military and civilian police officers in DPKO serve for three years because the United Nations requires that they be on active duty. If they wish to remain longer and would even leave their national military or police services to do so, United Nations personnel policy precludes their being hired into their previous position. Hence the turnover rate in the military and police offices of DPKO is high. Since lessons learned in Headquarters practice are not routinely captured, since comprehensive training programmes for new arrivals are non-existent and since user-friendly manuals and standard operating procedures remain half-complete, high turnover means routine loss of institutional memory that takes months of on-the-job learning to replace. Current staff shortages also mean that military and civilian police officers find themselves assigned to functions that do not necessarily match their expertise. Those who have specialized in operations (J3) or plans (J5) might find themselves engaged in quasi-diplomatic work or functioning as personnel and administration officers (J1), managing the continual turnover of people and units in the field, to the detriment of their ability to monitor operational activity in the field.

221. DPKO’s lack of continuity in these areas may also explain why, after over 50 years of deploying military observers to monitor ceasefire violations, DPKO still does not have a standard database that could be provided to military observers in the field to document ceasefire violations and generate statistics. At present, if one wanted to know how many violations had occurred over a six-month period in a particular country where an operation is deployed, someone would have to physically count each one in the paper copies of the daily situation reports for that period. Where such databases do exist, they have been created by the missions themselves on an ad hoc basis. The same applies to the variety of crime statistics and other information common to most civilian police missions. Technological advances have also revolutionized the way in which ceasefire violations and movements in demilitarized zones and removal of weapons from storage sites can be monitored. However, there is no one in DPKO’s Military and Civilian Police Division currently assigned to addressing these issues.

222. The Panel recommends that the Military and Police Division be separated into two separate entities, one for the military and the other for the civilian police. The Military Adviser’s Office of DPKO should be enlarged and restructured to correspond more closely to the way in which the military headquarters in United Nations peacekeeping operations are structured, so as to provide more effective support to the field and better informed military advice to senior officials in the Secretariat. The Civilian Police Unit should also be provided with substantial additional resources, and consideration should be given to upgrading the rank and level of the Civilian Police Adviser.

223. To ensure a minimum of continuity of DPKO’s military and civilian police capacity, the Panel recommends that a percentage of the added positions in these two units be reserved for military and civilian police personnel who have prior United Nations experience and have recently left their national services, to be appointed as regular staff members. This would follow the precedent set in the Logistics and Communications Service of FALD, which includes a number of former military officers.

224. Civilian police in the field are increasingly involved in the restructuring and reform of local police forces, and the Panel has recommended a doctrinal shift that would make such activities a primary focus for civilian police in future peace operations (see paras. 39, 40 and 47 (b) above). However, to date, the Civilian Police Unit formulates plans and requirements for the police components of peace operations without the benefit of the requisite legal advice on local judicial structures, criminal laws, codes and procedures in effect in the country concerned. This is vital information for civilian police planners, yet it is not a function for which resources have hitherto been allocated from the Support Account, either to OLA, DPKO or any other department in the Secretariat.

225. The Panel therefore recommends that a new, separate unit be established in DPKO, staffed with the requisite experts in criminal law, specifically for the purpose of providing advice to the Civilian Police Adviser’s Office on those rule of law issues that are critical to the effective use of civilian police in peace operations. This unit should also work closely with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, the Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna, and other parts of the United Nations system that focus on the reform of rule of law institutions and respect for human rights.

226. FALD does not have the authority to finalize and present the budgets for the field operations that it plans, nor to actually procure the goods and services they need. That authority rests with the Peacekeeping Financing and Procurement Divisions of DM. All Headquarters-based procurement requests are processed by the 16 Support Account-funded procurement officers in the Procurement Division, who prepare the larger contracts (roughly 300 in 1999) for presentation to the Headquarters Committee on Contracts, negotiate and award contracts for goods and services not procured locally by the field missions, and formulate United Nations policies and procedures for both global and local mission procurement. The combination of staffing constraints and the extra steps entailed in this process appears to contribute to the procurement delays reported by field missions.

227. Procurement efficiency could be enhanced by delegating peacekeeping budgeting and presentation, allotment issuance and procurement authority to DPKO for a two-year trial period, with the corresponding transfer of posts and staff. In order to ensure accountability and transparency, DM should retain authority for accounts, assessment of Member States and treasury functions. It should also retain its overall policy setting and monitoring role, as it has in the case of recruitment and administration of field personnel, authority and responsibility, which are already delegated to DPKO.

228. Furthermore, to avoid allegations of impropriety that may arise from having those responsible for budgeting and procurement working in the same division as those identifying the requirements, the Panel recommends that FALD be separated into two divisions: one for Administrative Services, in which the personnel, budget/finance and procurement functions would reside, and the other for Integrated Support Services (e.g., logistics, transport, communications).

229. All are agreed on the need to exploit cumulating field experience but not enough has been done to improve the system’s ability to tap that experience or to feed it back into the development of operational doctrine, plans, procedures or mandates. The work of DPKO’s existing Lessons Learned Unit does not seem to have had a great deal of impact on peace operations practice, and the compilation of lessons learned seems to occur mostly after a mission has ended. This is unfortunate because the peacekeeping system is generating new experience — new lessons — on a daily basis. That experience should be captured and retained for the benefit of other current operators and future operations. Lessons learned should be thought of as a facet of information management that contributes to improving operations on a daily basis. Post-action reports would then be just one part of a larger learning process, the capstone summary rather than the principal objective of the entire process.

230. The Panel feels that this function is in urgent need of enhancement and recommends that it be located where it can work closely with and contribute effectively to ongoing operations as well as mission planning and doctrine/guidelines development. The Panel suggests that this might best be in the Office of Operations, which will oversee the functions of the Integrated Mission Task Forces that the Panel has proposed to integrate Headquarters planning and support for peace operations (see paras. 198-217 above). Located in an element of DPKO that will routinely incorporate representatives from many departments and agencies, the unit could serve as the peace operations "learning manager" for all of those entities, maintaining and updating the institutional memory that missions and task forces alike could draw upon for problem solving, best practices and practices to avoid.

231. There are currently two Assistant Secretaries-General in DPKO: one for the Office of Operations and the other for the Office of Logistics, Management and Mine Action (FALD and the Mine Action Service). The Military Adviser, who concurrently serves as the Director of the Military and Civilian Police Division, currently reports to the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations through one of the two Assistant Secretaries-General or directly to the Under-Secretary-General, depending on the nature of the issue concerned.

232. In the light of the various staff increases and structural adjustments proposed in the preceding sections, the Panel believes that there is a strong case to be made for the Department to be provided with a third Assistant Secretary-General. The Panel further believes that one of the three Assistant Secretaries-General should be designated as a "Principal Assistant Secretary-General" and function as deputy to the Under-Secretary-General.

233. Summary of key recommendations on other structural adjustments in DPKO:

(a) The current Military and Civilian Police Division should be restructured, moving the Civilian Police Unit out of the military reporting chain. Consideration should be given to upgrading the rank and level of the Civilian Police Adviser;

(b) The Military Adviser’s Office in DPKO should be restructured to correspond more closely to the way in which the military field headquarters in United Nations peacekeeping operations are structured;

(c) A new unit should be established in DPKO and staffed with the relevant expertise for the provision of advice on criminal law issues that are critical to the effective use of civilian police in United Nations peace operations;

(d) The Under-Secretary-General for Management should delegate authority and responsibility for peacekeeping-related budgeting and procurement functions to the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations for a two-year trial period;

(e) The Lessons Learned Unit should be substantially enhanced and moved into a revamped DPKO Office of Operations;

(f) Consideration should be given to increasing the number of Assistant Secretaries-General in DPKO from two to three, with one of the three designated as the "Principal Assistant Secretary-General" and functioning as the deputy to the Under-Secretary-General.

234. Public information planning and support at Headquarters needs strengthening, as do elements in DPA that support and coordinate peace-building activities and provide electoral support. Outside the Secretariat, the ability of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to plan and support the human rights components of peace operations needs to be reinforced.

235. Unlike military, civilian police, mine action, logistics, telecommunications and other mission components, no unit at Headquarters has specific line responsibility for the operational requirements of public information components in peace operations. The most concentrated responsibility for mission-related public information rests with the Office of the Spokesman of the Secretary General and the respective spokespersons and public information offices in the missions themselves. At Headquarters, four professional officers in the Peace and Security Section, nested within the Promotion and Planning Service of the Public Affairs Division in DPI, are responsible for producing publications, developing and updating web site content on peace operations, and dealing with other issues ranging from disarmament to humanitarian assistance. While the Section produces and manages information about peacekeeping, it has had little capacity to create doctrine, strategy or standard operating procedures for public information functions in the field, other than on a sporadic and ad hoc basis.

236. The DPI Peace and Security Section is being expanded somewhat through internal DPI redeployment of staff, but it should either be substantially expanded and made operational or the support function should be moved into DPKO, with some of its officers perhaps seconded from DPI.

237. Wherever the function is located, it should anticipate public information needs and the technology and people to meet them, set priorities and standard field operating procedures, provide support in the start-up phase of new missions, and provide continuing support and guidance through participation in the Integrated Mission Task Forces.

238. Summary of key recommendation on structural adjustments in public information: a unit for operational planning and support of public information in peace operations should be established, either within DPKO or within a new Peace and Security Information Service in DPI reporting directly to the Under-Secretary-General for Communication and Public Information.

239. The Department of Political Affairs (DPA) is the designated focal point for United Nations peace-building efforts and currently has responsibility for setting up, supporting and/or advising peace-building offices and special political missions in a dozen countries, plus the activities of five envoys and representatives of the Secretary-General who have been given peacemaking or conflict prevention assignments. Regular budget funds that support these activities through the next calendar year are expected to fall $31 million or 25 per cent below need. Such assessed funding is in fact relatively rare in peace-building, where most activities are funded by voluntary donations.

240. DPA’s nascent Peace-building Support Unit is one such activity. In his capacity as Convener of ECPS and focal point for peace-building strategies, the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs must be able to coordinate the formulation of such strategies with the members of ECPS and other elements of the United Nations system, particularly those in the development and humanitarian fields given the cross-cutting nature of peace-building itself. To do so, the Secretariat is assembling voluntary funds from a number of donors for a three-year pilot project in support of the unit. As the planning for this pilot unit evolves, the Panel urges DPA to consult with all stakeholders in the United Nations system that can contribute to its success, in particular UNDP, which is placing renewed emphasis on democracy/governance and other transition-related areas.

241. DPA’s executive office supports some of the operational efforts for which it is responsible, but it is neither designed nor equipped to be a field support office. FALD also provides support to some of the field missions managed by DPA, but neither those missions’ budgets nor DPA’s budget allocate additional resources to FALD for this purpose. FALD attempts to meet the demands of the smaller peace-building operations but acknowledges that the larger operations make severe, high-priority demands on its current staffing. Thus the needs of smaller missions tend to suffer. DPA has had satisfactory experience with support from the United Nations Office of Project Services (UNOPS), a five-year-old spin-off from UNDP that manages programmes and funds for many clients within the United Nations system, using modern management practices and drawing all of its core funding from a management charge of up to 13 per cent. UNOPS can provide logistics, management and recruitment support for smaller missions fairly quickly.

242. DPA’s Electoral Assistance Division (EAD) also relies on voluntary money to meet growing demand for its technical advice, needs assessment missions and other activities not directly involving electoral observation. As of June 2000, 41 requests for assistance were pending from Member States but the trust fund supporting such "non-earmarked" activities held just 8 per cent of the funding required to meet current requests through the end of calendar year 2001. So, as demand surges for a key element of democratic institution-building endorsed by the General Assembly in its resolution 46/137, EAD staff must first raise the programme funds needed to do their jobs.

243. Summary of key recommendations for peace-building support in the Department of Political Affairs:

(a) The Panel supports the Secretariat’s effort to create a pilot Peace-building Unit within DPA in cooperation with other integral United Nations elements, and suggests that regular budgetary support for the unit be revisited by the membership if the pilot programme works well. The programme should be evaluated in the context of guidance the Panel has provided in paragraph 46 above, and if considered the best available option for strengthening United Nations peace-building capacity it should be presented to the Secretary-General as per the recommendation contained in paragraph 47 (d) above;

(b) The Panel recommends that regular budget resources for Electoral Assistance Division programmatic expenses be substantially increased to meet the rapidly growing demand for its services, in lieu of voluntary contributions;

(c) To relieve demand on FALD and the executive office of DPA, and to improve support services rendered to smaller political and peace-building field offices, the Panel recommends that procurement, logistics, staff recruitment and other support services for all such smaller, non-military field missions be provided by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).

3. Peace operations support in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

244. OHCHR needs to be more closely involved in planning and executing the elements of peace operations that address human rights, especially complex operations. At present, OHCHR has inadequate resources to be so involved or to provide personnel for service in the field. If United Nations operations are to have effective human rights components, OHCHR should be able to coordinate and institutionalize human rights field work in peace operations; second personnel to Integrated Mission Task Forces in New York; recruit human rights field personnel; organize human rights training for all personnel in peace operations, including the law and order components; and create model databases for human rights field work.

245. Summary of key recommendation on strengthening the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: the Panel recommends substantially enhancing the field mission planning and preparation capacity of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, with funding partly from the regular budget and partly from peace operations mission budgets.