SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS
(a) The Panel endorses the recommendations of the Secretary-General with respect to conflict prevention contained in the Millennium Report and in his remarks before the Security Council’s second open meeting on conflict prevention in July 2000, in particular his appeal to "all who are engaged in conflict prevention and development — the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, Governments and civil society organizations — [to] address these challenges in a more integrated fashion";
(b) The Panel supports the Secretary-General’s more frequent use of fact-finding missions to areas of tension, and stresses Member States’ obligations, under Article 2(5) of the Charter, to give "every assistance" to such activities of the United Nations.
(a) A small percentage of a mission’s first-year budget should be made available to the representative or special representative of the Secretary-General leading the mission to fund quick impact projects in its area of operations, with the advice of the United Nations country team’s resident coordinator;
(b) The Panel recommends a doctrinal shift in the use of civilian police, other rule of law elements and human rights experts in complex peace operations to reflect an increased focus on strengthening rule of law institutions and improving respect for human rights in post-conflict environments;
(c) The Panel recommends that the legislative bodies consider bringing demobilization and reintegration programmes into the assessed budgets of complex peace operations for the first phase of an operation in order to facilitate the rapid disassembly of fighting factions and reduce the likelihood of resumed conflict;
(d) The Panel recommends that the Executive Committee on Peace and Security (ECPS) discuss and recommend to the Secretary-General a plan to strengthen the permanent capacity of the United Nations to develop peace-building strategies and to implement programmes in support of those strategies.
3. Peacekeeping doctrine and strategy:
Once deployed, United Nations peacekeepers must be able to carry out their mandates professionally and successfully and be capable of defending themselves, other mission components and the mission’s mandate, with robust rules of engagement, against those who renege on their commitments to a peace accord or otherwise seek to undermine it by violence.
4. Clear, credible and achievable mandates:
(a) The Panel recommends that, before the Security Council agrees to implement a ceasefire or peace agreement with a United Nations-led peacekeeping operation, the Council assure itself that the agreement meets threshold conditions, such as consistency with international human rights standards and practicability of specified tasks and timelines;
(b) The Security Council should leave in draft form resolutions authorizing missions with sizeable troop levels until such time as the Secretary-General has firm commitments of troops and other critical mission support elements, including peace-building elements, from Member States;
(c) Security Council resolutions should meet the requirements of peacekeeping operations when they deploy into potentially dangerous situations, especially the need for a clear chain of command and unity of effort;
(d) The Secretariat must tell the Security Council what it needs to know, not what it wants to hear, when formulating or changing mission mandates, and countries that have committed military units to an operation should have access to Secretariat briefings to the Council on matters affecting the safety and security of their personnel, especially those meetings with implications for a mission’s use of force.
5. Information and strategic analysis:
The Secretary-General should establish an entity, referred to here as the ECPS Information and Strategic Analysis Secretariat (EISAS), which would support the information and analysis needs of all members of ECPS; for management purposes, it should be administered by and report jointly to the heads of the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).
6. Transitional civil administration:
The Panel recommends that the Secretary-General invite a panel of international legal experts, including individuals with experience in United Nations operations that have transitional administration mandates, to evaluate the feasibility and utility of developing an interim criminal code, including any regional adaptations potentially required, for use by such operations pending the re-establishment of local rule of law and local law enforcement capacity.
7. Determining deployment timelines:
The United Nations should define "rapid and effective deployment capacities" as the ability, from an operational perspective, to fully deploy traditional peacekeeping operations within 30 days after the adoption of a Security Council resolution, and within 90 days in the case of complex peacekeeping operations.
(a) The Secretary-General should systematize the method of selecting mission leaders, beginning with the compilation of a comprehensive list of potential representatives or special representatives of the Secretary-General, force commanders, civilian police commissioners, and their deputies and other heads of substantive and administrative components, within a fair geographic and gender distribution and with input from Member States;
(b) The entire leadership of a mission should be selected and assembled at Headquarters as early as possible in order to enable their participation in key aspects of the mission planning process, for briefings on the situation in the mission area and to meet and work with their colleagues in mission leadership;
(c) The Secretariat should routinely provide the mission leadership with strategic guidance and plans for anticipating and overcoming challenges to mandate implementation, and whenever possible should formulate such guidance and plans together with the mission leadership.
(a) Member States should be encouraged, where appropriate, to enter into partnerships with one another, within the context of the United Nations Standby Arrangements System (UNSAS), to form several coherent brigade-size forces, with necessary enabling forces, ready for effective deployment within 30 days of the adoption of a Security Council resolution establishing a traditional peacekeeping operation and within 90 days for complex peacekeeping operations;
(b) The Secretary-General should be given the authority to formally canvass Member States participating in UNSAS regarding their willingness to contribute troops to a potential operation, once it appeared likely that a ceasefire accord or agreement envisaging an implementing role for the United Nations, might be reached;
(c) The Secretariat should, as a standard practice, send a team to confirm the preparedness of each potential troop contributor to meet the provisions of the memoranda of understanding on the requisite training and equipment requirements, prior to deployment; those that do not meet the requirements must not deploy;
(d) The Panel recommends that a revolving "on-call list" of about 100 military officers be created in UNSAS to be available on seven days’ notice to augment nuclei of DPKO planners with teams trained to create a mission headquarters for a new peacekeeping operation.
10. Civilian police personnel:
(a) Member States are encouraged to each establish a national pool of civilian police officers that would be ready for deployment to United Nations peace operations on short notice, within the context of the United Nations Standby Arrangements System;
(b) Member States are encouraged to enter into regional training partnerships for civilian police in the respective national pools, to promote a common level of preparedness in accordance with guidelines, standard operating procedures and performance standards to be promulgated by the United Nations;
(c) Members States are encouraged to designate a single point of contact within their governmental structures for the provision of civilian police to United Nations peace operations;
(d) The Panel recommends that a revolving on-call list of about 100 police officers and related experts be created in UNSAS to be available on seven days’ notice with teams trained to create the civilian police component of a new peacekeeping operation, train incoming personnel and give the component greater coherence at an early date;
(e) The Panel recommends that parallel arrangements to recommendations (a), (b) and (c) above be established for judicial, penal, human rights and other relevant specialists, who with specialist civilian police will make up collegial "rule of law" teams.
(a) The Secretariat should establish a central Internet/Intranet-based roster of pre-selected civilian candidates available to deploy to peace operations on short notice. The field missions should be granted access to and delegated authority to recruit candidates from it, in accordance with guidelines on fair geographic and gender distribution to be promulgated by the Secretariat;
(b) The Field Service category of personnel should be reformed to mirror the recurrent demands faced by all peace operations, especially at the mid- to senior-levels in the administrative and logistics areas;
(c) Conditions of service for externally recruited civilian staff should be revised to enable the United Nations to attract the most highly qualified candidates, and to then offer those who have served with distinction greater career prospects;
(d) DPKO should formulate a comprehensive staffing strategy for peace operations, outlining, among other issues, the use of United Nations Volunteers, standby arrangements for the provision of civilian personnel on 72 hours' notice to facilitate mission start-up, and the divisions of responsibility among the members of the Executive Committee on Peace and Security for implementing that strategy.
12. Rapidly deployable capacity for public information:
Additional resources should be devoted in mission budgets to public information and the associated personnel and information technology required to get an operation’s message out and build effective internal communications links.
13. Logistics support and expenditure management:
(a) The Secretariat should prepare a global logistics support strategy to enable rapid and effective mission deployment within the timelines proposed and corresponding to planning assumptions established by the substantive offices of DPKO;
(b) The General Assembly should authorize and approve a one-time expenditure to maintain at least five mission start-up kits in Brindisi, which should include rapidly deployable communications equipment. These start-up kits should then be routinely replenished with funding from the assessed contributions to the operations that drew on them;
(c) The Secretary-General should be given authority to draw up to US$50 million from the Peacekeeping Reserve Fund, once it became clear that an operation was likely to be established, with the approval of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) but prior to the adoption of a Security Council resolution;
(d) The Secretariat should undertake a review of the entire procurement policies and procedures (with proposals to the General Assembly for amendments to the Financial Rules and Regulations, as required), to facilitate in particular the rapid and full deployment of an operation within the proposed timelines;
(e) The Secretariat should conduct a review of the policies and procedures governing the management of financial resources in the field missions with a view to providing field missions with much greater flexibility in the management of their budgets;
(f) The Secretariat should increase the level of procurement authority delegated to the field missions (from $200,000 to as high as $1 million, depending on mission size and needs) for all goods and services that are available locally and are not covered under systems contracts or standing commercial services contracts.
14. 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 this purpose should be funded through the mechanism of the regular biennial 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.
15. 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.
16. 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 the 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.
17. Operational support for 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 the Department of Public Information (DPI) reporting directly to the Under-Secretary-General for Communication and Public Information.
18. 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 this unit be revisited by the membership if the pilot programme works well. This 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 within the context of the Panel’s 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 the Field Administration and Logistics Division (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).
19. Peace operations support in 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.
20. Peace operations and the information age:
(a) Headquarters peace and security departments need a responsibility centre to devise and oversee the implementation of common information technology strategy and training for peace operations, residing in EISAS. Mission counterparts to the responsibility centre should also be appointed to serve in the offices of the special representatives of the Secretary-General in complex peace operations to oversee the implementation of that strategy;
(b) EISAS, in cooperation with the Information Technology Services Division (ITSD), should implement an enhanced peace operations element on the current United Nations Intranet and link it to the missions through a Peace Operations Extranet (POE);
(c) Peace operations could benefit greatly from more extensive use of geographic information systems (GIS) technology, which quickly integrates operational information with electronic maps of the mission area, for applications as diverse as demobilization, civilian policing, voter registration, human rights monitoring and reconstruction;
(d) The IT needs of mission components with unique information technology needs, such as civilian police and human rights, should be anticipated and met more consistently in mission planning and implementation;
(e) The Panel encourages the development of web site co-management by Headquarters and the field missions, in which Headquarters would maintain oversight but individual missions would have staff authorized to produce and post web content that conforms to basic presentational standards and policy.
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