Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations

Report of working party on the reform of UN peacekeeping operations in light of experience in Kosovo, Rwanda and SomaliaRecommendations include: Doctrine and strategy: The Panel calls for more effective conflict prevention strategies. Peacekeepers must be able to defend themselves and their mandate, with "robust rules of engagement", against those who renege on commitments or seek to undermine peace accords by violence. The Secretariat to draw up a plan for developing better peace-building strategies. Peacekeepers and peace-builders, it says, are "inseparable partners", since only a self-sustaining peace "offers a ready exit to peacekeeping forces". Mandates: The Secretariat "must tell the Security Council what it needs to know, not what it wants to hear, when formulating or changing mission mandates". Transitional civil administration: A panel of international legal experts should explore the idea of an interim criminal code, for use in places where the United Nations is given temporary executive powers (as currently in Kosovo and East Timor), pending the re-establishment of local rule of law and law enforcement capacity.Timelines: "Traditional" United Nations peacekeeping operations (sent to monitor ceasefires and separations of forces after inter-State wars) should be fully deployed with 30 days; more complex peace operations, sent to help end intra-State conflicts, within 90 days. Personnel: Member States should work together to form "coherent, multinational, brigade-sized forces", ready for effective deployment within these timelines; and should each establish a national pool of civilian police officers. The Panel does not call for a standing United Nations army, but says the Secretariat should establish "on-call" lists of about 100 military and 100 police officers and experts, from national armies and police forces, who would be available on seven days' notice to establish new mission headquarters. Conditions of service for civilian specialists should also be revised so that the United Nations can attract more qualified personnel, and reward good performance with better career prospects. Speed and efficiency: The Secretary-General should be allowed funds to start planning a mission before the Security Council approves it, so that when approved it can be deployed quickly. Field missions should be given greater freedom to manage their own budgets. Additional ready-made mission "start-up kits" should be maintained at the UN Logistics Base in Brindisi, Italy. Funding for peacekeeping support: The Panel remarks that, after 52 years, it is time to treat peacekeeping as a "core activity" of the United Nations rather than a "temporary responsibility". Headquarters support for it should therefore be funded mainly through the regular United Nations budget, instead of the current "Support Account" which has to be justified year by year and post by post.