Development and the UN peace mission: A new interface required?

Abstract

Development has increasingly become a function of the UN peace mission during the 1990s. However, it has tended to be overshadowed in a number of missions by military security and emergency relief issues. The proposition explored in this article is that a greater developmental emphasis during UN missions may be productive in terms of bringing about durable peace processes. However, this implies that development needs to be ‘recast’ in terms of its positioning within UN conflict resolution and peace missions. Development has not been coherently conceptualized within UN conflict resolution, and military security and political modes of thinking have tended to prevail in peace missions. If development is to assume a central role in conflict prevention and resolution, problematic issues relating to contending philosophical, institutional and implementational approaches within the UN Secretariat will need to be addressed.