Achieving a balanced and meaningful partnership between internal and external peacebuilding agents is thus one of the most important success factors for any post-conflict peacebuilding system. The process of developing and adjusting a common country strategic framework, and continuously sharing this information with all the agents in the system, thus acquires a critical role in the complex peacebuilding systems approach. It could become the catalyst for such a larger strategic process, but there is also a danger that it may generate such internal momentum, and become so wrapped-up in its internal planning processes, benchmarking and reporting, that is neglects the need to connect the UN planning process with the wider peacebuilding strategic framework.

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There is now broad consensus that inconsistent policies and fragmented programmes entail a higher risk of duplication, inefficient spending, a lower quality of service, difficulty in meeting goals and, ultimately, a reduced capacity for delivery.13 There is, however, a considerable gap between the degree to which the benefits of coherence are held to be of self-evident and operational reality. Citation styles vary so we recommend you check what is appropriate for your context. The article concludes with recommendations for improving future partnerships between insiders and outsiders in Cambodian peace-building projects.

A peacebuilding or post-conflict reconstruction system consists of a large number of independent agents that collectively carry out a broad range of activities across the dimensions of the system. This paper is focused on one of the aspects that contributes to the lack of sustainability in the latter context, namely the coherence dilemma that continues to cause stress to international peacebuilding systems. This article analyses the coherence and coordination dilemma in peace-building and post-conflict reconstruction systems, with special reference to the United Nations’ integrated approach concept. It also stressed the need to monitor, on an ongoing basis, the effect the overall peacebuilding strategy is having on the host system, so that the strategy can be continuously adjusted to the dynamic environment, and so that the individual peacebuilding agents can independently make course directions to their own activities, and in so doing contribute to the synchronisation of the overall peacebuilding system. In this context, the role of coherence and coordination is to manage the interdependencies that bind the peacebuilding system together.

• The case of Lebanon was presented to explain how restoration of historic sites, buildings and markets promoted urban recovery and cohesion between various factions of society.
• The second identified a few priority areas where improved coherence and coordination are likely to have the most meaningful impact.
• In fact, attempts aimed at controlling operational and tactical implementation planning at some central point are likely to cause dysfunction as a result of the simplification that any such central planning process would have to impose.
• It is still being refined and piloted, but it is primarily a UN System planning tool and its link with the need for an overall strategic framework that goes beyond the UN family is still unclear.

Pursuing Coherence

The framework calls for these plans to be complemented by an enabling institutional structure and a sustainable financing strategy. The framework starts with the establishment of a common urban information baseline regarding damages and needs. The session also reflected on the drivers of urban conflict such as unmanaged population movement and growth, and increase in poverty and overall fragility. Recently developed by the World Bank and the UNESCO, the CURE Framework places culture at the core of reconstruction and recovery processes by embedding cultural heritage and creativity at the foundation and intersection of place-based and people-centered policies. The project applied an area-based multi-sectoral approach aimed at coordinated reconstruction activities in different sectors such as water, health, transport, and education. Urban reconstruction in post-conflict settings needs to be spatially coherent, inclusive of different social groups and vulnerable populations, and attentive to cultural heritage.

Without a clear country strategy, and without feedback on the progress made in achieving that strategy, individual agents are unable to position, adjust and Massive student loan debt tips forum thread monitor the degree to which they may be making a contribution to the achievement of the overall peacebuilding goal. According to the Commission’s annual report the purpose of an integrated peacebuilding strategy is ‘to ensure coherent, prioritized approaches that involve international donors and agencies’ (Peacebuilding Commission 2007). For an overall peacebuilding strategy to be a meaningful vehicle for system-wide coherence, it needs to be transparent, readily available to all agencies, open for input and consultation, and regularly revised and updated. It is thus important to distinguish between a strategic framework on the one hand, that identifies common goals and objectives, milestones and benchmarks, and the broad processes through which they should be pursued, coordinated and integrated, and operational and tactical implementation planning on the other.

If every peacebuilding agency has access to the strategic framework, and information related to the effect it is having on the peace process, they would be able to use this information to inform and adjust their own strategic processes and implementation planning. The first is the need to generate a clearly articulated overall peacebuilding strategy that can provide the various peacebuilding agents with a common frame of reference which it can use as a benchmark for coherence, i.e. the framework with which it should be coherent. A distinguishing feature of a peacebuilding or post-conflict reconstruction system, however, is that all the agents and their activities are interdependent, in that no single agency, network or sub-system can achieve the ultimate goal of the peacebuilding system – addressing the root causes of the conflict and laying the foundation for social justice and sustainable peace – on its own.

The pressure to rapidly respond, achieve planned outputs and to disburse funds within fixed time-frames (donor budget cycles) often result in external actors compromising on the time and resources needed to invest in identifying credible internal counterparts, generate consultative processes and develop meaningful local ownership. The internal peacebuilding agents report that they typically feel intimidated by the momentum, scope and depth of casino1 the external intervention. The internal actors also typically lack the time, resources, technical expertise and support systems to engage meaningfully with the external actors. However, this is easier said than done and external actors have reported that they have encountered a number of obstacles when trying to implement policies that encourage local ownership, especially in the fragile state and post-conflict contexts.