Building Peace in a World Losing Its Way: A Peacekeeper’s View from the Ground
The United Nations Headquarters stands tall along Manhattan’s East River in New York City, serving as a global symbol of international diplomacy, peacebuilding, and multilateral cooperation. | Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst/Unsplash
We live in a world where conventional values and norms that we often take for granted—such as democratic norms, liberal values, institutions, civil rights, and civil liberties—are increasingly under attack globally. From the massacre the world has witnessed in Gaza and the fragile possibility of a two-state solution in the Middle East to the fresh wars in Iran and Lebanon, as well as the continuing aggression in Sudan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, it seems that the world has lost its path to peace. The world appears to be on the precipice of nuclear proliferation and Armageddon.
The assault on the rules-based liberal international order has clearly had a negative impact on global peace and tranquility, as well as on individual nations. This escalating, chaotic, and belligerent international environment disproportionately harms developing nations that are still engaged in nation-building. The need of the hour is to defend the liberal values and institutions that helped shape the 20th century and the current world order. Though imperfect, institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, along with other multilateral and international aid organizations, have made tremendous strides in addressing global poverty and largely preserving world peace.
In this article, I highlight my international experience working with the UN in various capacities to rehabilitate post-conflict societies in Sudan, Haiti, Bosnia, and the former Yugoslavia. My work in helping restore peace and promote collective healing in highly polarized communities demonstrates that multilateral organizations such as the UN can play a vital role in restoring harmony and promoting healing around the world.
While at UN Headquarters in New York, working with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions (ORLSI) between 2010 and 2012, I was assigned to oversee and support the UN team working to avert the emerging crisis in Sudan in 2011. The mission of which I was a part was the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. Sudan, since gaining independence in 1956, has endured three civil wars. The second civil war was driven by growing animosity between Arab Sudanese communities in the North and Christian Sudanese communities in the South. The conflict lasted 22 years, claimed roughly 2 million lives, and displaced around 4 million people in South Sudan.
Matters came to a head in 2011, when Sudan split into two countries: Sudan and South Sudan. Consequently, Sudan effectively lost 78 percent of its oil fields to the newly formed South Sudan. We had a dual mandate: first, to liquidate the UN mission already operating in Sudan; and second, to establish a new mission in South Sudan. My team and I traveled to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and Juba, the capital of South Sudan, to oversee the conflict-resolution process. Our goal was to provide security guarantees and help institutionalize and reinforce peacekeeping in the conflict zone. This task involved a high degree of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
We began with a situational analysis and risk assessment of the conflict zone. After completing the assessment, we had to determine whether to invoke Chapter VI or Chapter VII of the Security Council Resolution. Chapter VI, which is non-binding, empowers UN peacekeeping forces to help conflicting parties resolve disputes through peaceful negotiation, mediation, and arbitration by providing recommendations with which the parties may comply. Chapter VII, which is legally binding, empowers UN peacekeeping forces to identify threats to peace in the region and guarantee security through military intervention on the ground.
Following a thorough and rigorous analysis, my team determined that Chapter VII of the Security Council Resolution should be invoked. This gave us the mandate not only to support national law-enforcement institutions on the ground but also to provide concrete security guarantees through the presence of UN peacekeeping forces. The work we undertook helped restore law and order and establish a degree of peace between Sudan and South Sudan. It was a major achievement for our team and for the UN, contributing to the cessation of conflict between the two countries and helping the Sudanese people move toward a more peaceful future.
Sadly, Sudan is currently embroiled in a fresh civil war in the Darfur region, requiring conflict-resolution skills, resources, and UN support. Sudan’s story shows how fragile peace can be and why nations and institutions must consciously invest in building peace among communities within the nation-state. My other responsibilities at UN Headquarters included overseeing various UN missions and helping formulate policies to guide the UN’s peacebuilding efforts.
Another UN commitment was my work with the peacebuilding mission in Haiti in 2005, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Haiti, a country with a checkered history in its struggle to become a stable nation-state, has faced enormous challenges in building a cohesive community and society since its independence in 1804. These challenges have stemmed from forces ranging from colonialism to its brutal legacy of slavery.
Over time, the unhealed, intergenerational traumas of colonialism inherited by Haiti’s citizens have left enduring and indelible scars on the nation’s history. When I was there in 2005, Haiti had become a modern state that had failed to maintain a monopoly on violence. Rather than the state exercising control over violence, the country had fractured into armed gangs that controlled their own territories and regions of the capital and the country. Any semblance of civil law and order had vanished.
My team had a dual mandate: to invoke Chapter VII of the Security Council Resolution to counter armed-gang violence and restore law and order by providing security guarantees, and to help conduct the country’s senatorial elections so that Haiti could embrace a democratic form of government. We were able to achieve both objectives. Sadly, the mission was not extended, and smaller missions with limited resources took its place. This exacerbated Haiti’s situation, leaving it in a deep political quagmire ever since.
My further engagement in conflict management and resolution with the UN took place in Bosnia in 2001, where the mission aimed to restore peace after the harrowing episode of ethnic cleansing involving Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs, and Catholic Croats. Within the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH), I was part of the International Police Task Force (IPTF), which sought to support national law-enforcement agencies in reforming the security sector and building public trust. I was also part of the Selection Assistance Team, which was responsible for selecting UN peacekeepers. As part of that process, I visited Pakistan to assist in the selection of UN peacekeeping personnel.
Our mission was to safeguard the delicate peace achieved in Bosnia and Herzegovina, formalized through the Dayton Accords, which brought ethnic cleansing and violence to an end. In 1993, I was involved with the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in the former Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia had splintered into various entities, descending into armed conflict driven by ethnic grievances in the early 1990s.
The UN mission there was responsible for protecting civilians, delivering humanitarian assistance, and investigating war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. I was stationed in Krajina to support national security forces and restore law and order through the invocation of Chapter VI of the Security Council Resolution. This involved demilitarizing and disarming all conflicting parties. One heart-wrenching incident I remember from the mission was when our team discovered and exhumed mass graves containing victims of genocide.
The conflict later spread to other regions, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, as discussed above. These related conflicts were subsequently addressed through UN missions and the efforts of peacekeeping forces. My experience in nation-building and peacebuilding in Nepal, during and after the Maoist insurgency in 2006 and the Madhesh Revolution of 2008, also included restoring law and order, disarming conflicting parties, and countering separatist forces. These are further examples of my experience in securing peace.
Today’s chaotic world needs enduring peace. Institutionalizing peace requires strengthening multilateral institutions and engaging actors capable of delivering it.
(Sarbendra Khanal, the 26th Chief of Nepal Police, is a former senior Nepal Police officer with extensive experience in national security, law enforcement, conflict resolution, and international peacekeeping. He has served in several United Nations peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions, including in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haiti, and Sudan. His international experience spans conflict management, security-sector reform, peacebuilding, and post-conflict reconstruction.)