When the Flames are Licking at the Door: Standing Mechanisms for Conflict Prevention
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12676 |
When the Flames are Licking at the Door:
Standing Mechanisms for Conflict Prevention
Laurie Nathan
Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame
Abstract
Enhancing the effectiveness of conflict prevention is a major preoccupation of the international community. This article
focuses on operational prevention of conflict, which entails diplomatic efforts to avert imminent violence in crisis situations.
The conventional understanding is that these efforts are short-term and sporadic. In contrast, this article identifies and ana-
lyzes a type of operational prevention that has been institutionalized in order to engage in continuous preventive action in a
particular conflict. I define ‘institutionalized operational prevention’as a standing mechanism that aims to prevent a conflict
from becoming violent and prevent low-level violence from escalating into large-scale violence. The article discusses a number
of such mechanisms that have been successful in this regard, and offers an explanation for their success. Policymakers should
consider establishing standing prevention mechanisms in other situations that have a persistent risk of large-scale violence.
Where structural reforms are required to reduce this risk but are politically unfeasible, the standing mechanisms may be the
only viable means of avoiding violence.
The challenge of conflict prevention
Conflict prevention has long been part of the repertoire of
the UN and other international actors concerned with peace
and security (Ackermann, 2003; Lund, 2009). Over the past
few years it has received renewed attention. The 2015
report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Oper-
ations (2015, p. ix) referred to the prevention of armed con-
flict as the ‘greatest responsibility of the international
community’and called for increased investment in this area.
In his inaugural address to the UN Security Council, Secre-
tary-General Ant
onio Guterres (2017) declared that conflict
prevention ‘is not merely a priority, but the priority’. In the
first-ever joint report by the World Bank and the UN (2018),
the focus was on the theme of conflict prevention.
Against the backdrop of civil wars in the Central African
Republic, Libya, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen, the contem-
porary discourse on conflict prevention conveys an acute
sense of failure. The High-Level Independent Panel on Peace
Operations (2015, p. 16) stated emphatically that ‘the inter-
national community is failing at preventing conflict’. Guter-
res (2016) is convinced that ‘our most serious shortcoming –
and here I refer to the entire international community –is
our inability to prevent crises’. Similarly, the World Bank–UN
report warned that violent conflict is surging after decades
of decline, undermining the international community’s com-
mitments to sustainable development.
How, then, can conflict prevention become more effec-
tive? I address this question with respect to operational pre-
vention of conflict. Unlike structural prevention, which is a
long-term and multifaceted endeavor to tackle the root
causes of violent conflict, operational prevention entails
immediate diplomatic, political or military efforts to avert
imminent violence in crisis situations (Carnegie Commission,
1997; UN 2001, p. 8; Ackermann, 2003, pp. 341-342). In the
academic and policy literature, operational prevention
entails short-term and sporadic interventions. In contrast,
this article identifies and explores a type of operational pre-
vention that has been institutionalized in order to engage in
continuous preventive action in a particular conflict. I define
‘institutionalized operational prevention’as a standing
mechanism for preventing a conflict from becoming violent
and preventing low-level violence from escalating into
large-scale violence. To date, these mechanisms have not
been subject to comparative research and have not been
included in inventories and typologies of conflict prevention
instruments and strategies (Hampson and Malone, 2002, pp.
88-9; International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty 2001, pp. 22-27; Lund, 2009, pp. 292).
This article discusses the following standing prevention
mechanisms: the National Peace Committee (NPC) in Nige-
ria; the National Peace Accord (NPA) in South Africa; the
African Union High Level Implementation Panel for Sudan
and South Sudan (AUHIP); and the UN Interim Force in
Lebanon (UNIFIL) and UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon
(UNSCOL). These mechanisms are diverse in terms of the
identity of the conflict parties, the identity of the prevention
actors and the nature of the conflicts they have addressed.
This diversity indicates that standing mechanisms for opera-
tional prevention have varied political and organizational
manifestations, tailored to different circumstances. What
these circumstances have in common is that they are situa-
tions of ‘precarious peace’,defined as a protracted conflict
that has a persistent risk of large-scale violence.
All the above-mentioned mechanisms achieved significant
success, albeit not complete success, in managing conflict
©2019 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2019) 10:Suppl.2 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12676
Global Policy Volume 10 . Issue Supplement 2 . June 2019
46
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