International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace

  The concept of Water diplomacy   acknowledges that water management is “embedded in societal and political settings that go way beyond the water sector” and that, consequently, policymakers and diplomats assume a critical function in this regard. Water diplomacy can be defined as the deliberative political processes and practices of preventing, mitigating, and resolving disputes over transboundary water resources and developing joint water governance arrangements by applying foreign policy means, embedded in bi- and/ or multilateral relations beyond the water sector and taking place at different tracks and levels”. While alternative definitions of water diplomacy emphasize different dimensions, scholars largely concur on a set of core aspect • Water diplomacy is a political process bringing together the different perspectives of stakeholders, also taking into account their senses of security, sovereignty, and national development priorities. Political processes must ...

Although water is of vital importance for livelihoods and for economic and social development, roughly one quarter of mankind still lacks access to safe water services. Global water resources are under severe stress due to increasing demands and reduced availability and quality. In combination with social, political, and economic factors, water stress may trigger intra- and interstate conflicts . Water diplomacy is a promising concept for addressing the linkages between water and conflict, as it takes an inclusive and cooperative approach, aiming to not only contribute to water-related issues , but rather focussing on wider goals related to stability, peace, development, and equity. Water diplomacy thus has the potential of counteracting the current global trends towards unilateralism, securitization, and water weaponization . This session analyses the benefits of water diplomacy , but also some of the challenges, which hamper its effective implementation. It also explores the inte...

  Many different factors will decide the fate of these scenarios, yet two aspects stand out as key variables. The future of peace operations critically depends on mobilizing resources. The UN also stopped mandating new large multidimensional peace operations because of budget constraints, and political missions have been supported within UN Security Council , because they are much less intrusive, but also much less expensive than sending troops. African peace operations have been heavily financed by the EU and other Western actors. At the end of 2023, an agreement was reached about the UN financing up to 75% of future African peace operations. Non-military instruments have been, on the contrary, less costly [see Figure 6]. The mobilization of ad hoc coalitions further weakens the binding character of regional norms and standards, and is likely to reduce the willingness to further invest in collective security mechanisms and to maintain the idea that international peace is ...

  In many ways, the structural environment for multilateral peacekeeping has thus changed. With a divided UN Security Council and lingering support among UN leadership and within member states, the UN is unlikely to return any time soon to multidimensional peace operations with robust mandates, although a minimum consensus for renewing mandates of existing missions has always been reached so far. Russia and China have become increasingly critical about the related sanctions regimes and arms embargoes against the governments that host these peacekeeping missions. “As a result, there has arguably been a steady reduction in the political space for proactive, unified Security Council responses to new and emerging crises”. Moreover, the UN has also been blocked regarding recent major conflicts outside Africa, such as the wars in Syria, Ukraine and Gaza. In this context, three different scenarios for the future of multilateral peace operations can be distinguished Despite all dramatic ge...

 The slow demise of UN peacekeeping is not tantamount to the end of multilateral peace missions. While the UN Charter reserves the UN Security Council monopoly on legitimately launching peace operations, other international organizations have either been delegated this right by the Security Council or sometimes ignored this rule in practice, and the number of regional organizations emerging as recognized peacekeepers increased since the end of the Cold War. This evolution reflects both an activation of the original division of labour within the UN Charter , but was also a reaction to the shrinking support of Westerns states to UN peace operations since the mid-1990s. Regional organizations thus offered the only available conflict management responses to ongoing civil wars , although some parts of the world have apparently solved conflicts without multilateral peace operations. While the UN has not deployed new military peacekeeping operations since 2014,3 more than ten such miss...

  Despite many setbacks, most of these UN missions helped end insurgencies, backstop elections and provide political stability in countries including Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire. Research has established that most of these missions were considered successful. Assessment of the UN missions were however overshadowed by the disastrous non-UN-led interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, the UN multidimensional peace operations which were eventually deployed to Mali and Central African Republic (MINUSMA 2013, MINUSCA 2014), took over the stabilization agenda which had characterized the Western-led intervention in Afghanistan. In fact, the four missions in Mali, Central African Republic, DRC and Haiti were authorized with the explicit mandate to stabilize countries in which no peace agreements had been reached yet , mandated with protecting civilians and governments against an aggressor or general destabilization, amidst ongoing violence , while at the same time being part of a larger...

  While multilateral peace operations have been authorized by a variety of international organizations, the UN peace operations remain at the centre of all major political, conceptual, and normative debates about international peacekeeping. Since their inception in the late 1940s, UN peace operations have evolved in response to novel global political dynamics and changing conflict constellations. Initially focused on monitoring ceasefires and maintaining peace between warring states (peacekeeping), during the last three decades the role of UN peace operations has expanded to include a much broader array of functions aimed at supporting sustainable peace across the entire conflict cycle, including in the midst of active armed conflicts. Until the end of 2024, the UN had deployed over 120 peace operations in more than 50 countries. Since the 1950s, UN peacekeeping has been guided by the three key principles of impartiality, consent, and the non-use of force. As a core norm of pe...