Introduction: the SRSGs and the management of civil wars.

Sisk, Timothy D.

This article argues that mediation by special representatives of the Secretary-General (SRSGs) in civil wars involves a distinctly clear strategic purpose: by conducting international mediation and managing international assistance, SRSGs structure the incentives for parties in conflict to exchange the battlefield with a reformed, renewed, or created state. The article offers a substantive introduction to a special-focus section of this issue of Global Governance on the role of the SRSGs in mitigating civil wars. The introduction describes the often conflicted and multilayered role that these individuals play in managing the mediation process, serving as the principal for large-scale UN peacekeeping or political missions, in navigating within the Secretariat and in relation to the Security Council, and in coordinating on-the-ground a panoply of international organizations, regional organizations, donor agencies, and humanitarian or other nongovernmental organizations. The article concludes with three principal issues that consideration of SRSG roles in civil war termination raises: choice, context, and conduct In sum, for more effective leadership management of efforts to end civil wars, the roles and functions of the SRSGs need to become more institutionalized. KEYWORDS: civil wars, mediation. United Nations, peace negotiations.

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THREE CRITICAL, POLICY-RELEVANT FINDINGS EMERGE FROM THE LITERATURE on sustainable war termination in civil wars. First, the parties cannot do it on their own: protagonists in civil wars need reassurances throughout the transition from war to peace, and they are more likely to succeed if a robust third-party force helps consolidate the peace. (1) The second finding is that mediation must continue well into the postconflict phase, as countries emerging from war are deeply vulnerable to recurring conflict, or new crises and disputes that threaten the peace. (2) The third finding is that the process involves close, careful, and sometimes coercive stewardship of the political process by a third-party mediator to carefully design ongoing negotiation through often violent transitional moments and years beyond a peace settlement. (3)

The continuity between the war termination phase, or peacemaking, and the postsettlement agreement phase, or peacebuilding, means that international mediation is inherently long-term engagement and that context-specific leadership from the highest levels of the United Nations--typically by a special representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) (4)--is essential for bringing today's civil wars to an end. Moreover, it is clear that the choice, preparation, conduct, and efficacy of the SRSG are deeply complex processes and issues, often involving negotiation of interest-based preferences from key member states and other "disruptions from below." Surprisingly, the academic literature on SRSGs as such is relatively thin, despite the critical role these individuals play in the global management of civil wars, arguably the most directly injurious security threat the world faces.

These special focus articles present research conducted under the auspices of the Sustainable Peacebuilding Project, a joint endeavor of the Center for Sustainable Development and International Peace at the Josef Korbel School of the University of Denver and Center for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa. The project was sponsored by the Program in International Peace and Security of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The research was the subject of collective consideration at a seminar in New York on 19 February 2009. The project addressed three critical questions on the roles and challenges of the SRSGs, with the aim of bridging the gap between research and policy in this critical area.

One conclusion emerged strongly that finds its way throughout the essays that follow. SRSG mediation in civil wars involves a distinctly clear strategic purpose: by harnessing international mediation and managing international assistance, SRSGs provide the opportunity, and structure the incentives, for parties in conflict to exchange the uncertainty and cost of the battlefield and to reach an agreement by which the conflict on the battlefield is arbitrated in a reformed, renewed, or created state. Thus, their role in bringing wars to an end, and thereafter throughout the troubled transition of peacebuilding, is critical. Whether earlier in El Salvador or Mozambique (SRSGs Alvaro de Soto and Aldo Ajello) or in more contemporary conflict contexts such as Nepal (SRSG Ian Martin) or the Democratic Republic of Congo (SRSG Alan Doss), these individuals as a class are on the front lines of war termination.

SRSGs: Roles and Mandates into the Postconflict Period

Earlier work on the role of the SRSGs confirms that these high-level appointments within the Secretariat have suffered from role confusion in peacebuilding missions and that one of the most critical needs is to clarify the SRSG's role and to improve mission management in postconflict periods. (5) SRSGs roles are often conflicting, with overlapping mandates and duties without resources, and the context contingencies rarely allow for consistent action. The problem is a complex one, in part because SRSGs play multiple roles simultaneously: most have a mediator role directly with the parties in conflict; many play a coordination role as heads of wide-ranging, complex, multiorganizational, interagency missions involving sometimes thousands of personnel; sometimes they wield authority over territory, taking on the de facto functions of a sovereign; and they have a direct management role of a highly political mission that in turn must relate upward through the decisionmaking authority of the UN and the complexities of relations between the Secretariat and the Security Council.

As Terje Rod-Larsen has remarked, the SRSGs represent the Secretary-General who has a "Secular Pope" status. (6) At the same time, the SRSGs are envoys representing positions of the Security Council, which at times requires them to confront those member states that they ostensibly represent with contrary opinions or unwelcome recommendations from the field. Certainly, the Ahtisaari Plan on Kosovo's independence is indicative of this ambivalent role status. Thus, the SRSGs are analogous to a cardinal, in whose efficacy is a result of the ability to be a mediator, to build trust, and to have credibility. But the proverbial cardinal is also wearing the hat of a modern CEO, managing a complex conglomerate of differently resourced organizations that requires an extensive coordinating and managerial role. Practically, it is also hue that SRSGs are typically now a UN career diplomat whose goal and objective is to defend the universalist values of the United Nations and international law and the specific decisions of the Security Council.

SRSGs as Mediators and Coordinators

While the SRSG role in peacemaking is commonly seen as critical in the broader coordination of "multiparty" mediation in today's complex civil wars, their roles into the postsettlement period are well articulated in Katia Pappagiani's article. (7) In postconflict periods, SRSGs and their mission-level manager counterparts, the deputy special representatives of the Secretary-General (DSRSGs, who often serve as country-based resident and humanitarian coordinators), face ongoing political challenges that blur the lines between the peacemaking and peacebuilding phases. Because violence continues through the settlement period, and often crises tend to erupt around moments in the implementation process (such as electoral processes or key turning points in disarmament), SRSGs continue to mediate well into the postsettlement period. This raises the key issues of mediator leverage and the ability of mediators to organize land-exercise leverage. Secondly, it raises the question of how SRSGs work with regional organizations and with pivotal regional states.

Finally, mediators require staying power and resources to broaden and deepen the peace. In sum, SRSGs have been successful when there has been a defined process and a clear outcome. The extent to which there is a clear vision, SRSGs must design a formula for settlement and manage a volatile process toward that end with coordinated actions and deployment of resources. In doing so, they also become operationally the implementer of the most challenging issue in bringing civil wars to an end, managing so-called spoilers. Marie-Joelle Zahar's article points out how the spoiler challenge is often mischaracterized, and that SRSGs must be able to carefully craft language that describes more complex challenges to the peace than the simple label "spoiler" would imply.

As the article by Cedric de Coning reflects, coordination in postwar peacebuilding is deeply complicated in the interorganizational world that is a result of ad hoc evolution of global governance. According to Rod-Larsen, "coordination is vague in most places, and there is very little authority. So you cannot instruct without a command and control structure. ... So you have to negotiate. SRSGs end up using 90 percent of [their] time to negotiate within the UN rather than with the parties." (8) SRSGs typically work in complicated mission structures that vary in their degree of integration and autonomy, and thus the capacity to forge a truly coherent response is deeply limited by the organizational context of postconflict UN missions. Beyond the UN, there are the further layers of complexity in mechanisms such as the Group of Friends, multiparty mediation with member stales, and coordination with a vast network of international nongovernmental organizations.

In recent years, traditional SRSG roles have diverged. In some cases, such as in Sierra Leone, Burundi, or Lebanon, the roles have become diversified in nomenclature such as "executive representative of the Secretary-General" or personal representative. This diversification of roles means that generalization about this key institution is becoming more difficult, especially in the advent of the move toward a variety of integrated and semi-integrated missions.

From Research to Policy:

Improving SRSG Roles in War Termination

The concern with the pivotal role of SRSGs in war termination raises three areas of specific interest: choice, context, and conduct. Choice involves the debates that swirl around questions about what makes for a good SRSG, how lessons and experience should be shared, and how the very best of thinking and practice in mediation can be gained by these crucial interlocutors. Choice also involves personality, and clearly personality matters. In implementing often controversial Security Council mandates, SRSGs must navigate the Secretariat, especially in relationships with the Department of Political Affairs and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

It is cliche within the UN to say that context is critical. Still, the research presented in these special focus articles tends to reinforce that most general of conclusions. Nationality does matter, and no size fits all. Some situations could potentially benefit from women SRSGs as mediators. And SRSG roles may change over the course of missions. These are just a few of the contextual issues that limit broad generalizations about the rotes of the SRSGs. Indeed, the challenges of context have suggested that the very office is a bit anachronistic, and that it might be more effective to dispatch teams of highly trained envoys better able to coordinate their action in pursuit of peace and to divide the labor on the difficult challenges of mission coordination.

This requires SRSGs to have a unique set of personal qualities and the ability to forge relationships at the highest levels of the UN, especially with the Secretary-General, and at the same time carry through the diplomacy outside of the UN with heads of government of major powers and with the conflict parties. The selection process within the Secretariat is deeply complex in each case, and often the choices emanate from a delicate balancing game along nationality lines. However, there is an urgency for professionalizing the functions and conduct of the SRSGs, noting that the demands of mediation and coordination are likely to result from lifelong experience in field operations and specific skill sets in organizational development. Thus, there is the need to rethink the processes for choice and preparation of the SRSGs into the future. In sum, for more effective leadership management of efforts to end civil wars, the roles and functions of the SRSGs need to become more institutionalized.

Notes

Timothy D. Sisk is professor of international and comparative politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, and is director of both the Center for Sustainable Development and International Peace (SDIP) and the Korbel Program in Humanitarian Assistance. He also serves as an associate fellow of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy in Switzerland. His most recent publication is International Mediation in Civil Wars: Bargaining with Bullets (2009).

(1.) Virginia Page Fortna and Lisa Martin, "Peacekeepers as Signals: The Demand for International Peacekeeping in Civil Wars," in Helen V. Milner and Andrew Moravcsik, eds., Power. Interdependence, and Nonstate Actors in World Politics: Research Frontiers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 87-107.

(2.) Frances Stewart and Graham Brown et al., "Fragile States," CRISE Working Paper No. 51 (Oxford: Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, 2009).

(3.) Timothy D. Sisk, International Mediation in Civil Wars: Bargaining with Bullets (London: Routledge, 2009).

(4.) The catchall acronym actually refers to a much wider array of top-level personal and executive envoys of the Secretary-General; the current list is available at www.un.org/News/ossg/srsg/table.htm.

(5.) See the 1999 FAFO Report, "Command from the Saddle: Managing United Nations Peace building Missions," FAFO Report No. 266, available at www.fafo.no/pub/rapp/266/266.htm.

(6.) Remarks at the symposium. "Post-War Mediation in UN Peace Operations: Toward Sustainable Peacebuilding," 10 February 2009, New York. Ambassador Terje Rod-Larsen delivered a keynote address. The quotations are from his address "SRSGs: Custodians of the Peace."

(7.) See also Pamela Aall, Chester Crocker, and Fen Osler Hampson, eds., Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1999).

(8.) Remarks at the symposium, "Post-War Mediation in UN Peace Operations."