Researcher
Cedric H. de Coning
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Summary
Cedric de Coning is a Research Professor in the Research group on peace, conflict and development at NUPI.
He co-directs the NUPI Center on United Nations and Global Governance, and the Climate, Peace and Security Risk project. He coordinates the Effectiveness of Peace Operations Network (EPON) and contributes to the Training for Peace programme, the UN Peace Operations project (UNPO) and several others. He is also a senior advisor for ACCORD. He tweets at @CedricdeConing.
Cedric has 30 years of experience in research, policy advise, training and education in the areas of conflict resolution, peacekeeping, peacebuilding and peace and conflict studies. Cedric has a Ph.D. in Applied Ethics from the Department of Philosophy of the University of Stellenbosch, and a M.A. (cum laude) in Conflict Management and Peace Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Expertise
Education
2012 PhD, Applied Ethics, Department of Philosophy, University of Stellenbosch
2005 M.A., Conflict Management and Peace Studies, University of KwaZula-Natal
Work Experience
2020- Research Professor, NUPI
2012-2020 Senior Researcher, NUPI
2006-2012 Researcher, NUPI
2002- Senior Advisor (Consultant), ACCORD
2002 Training Officer, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO)
2001-2002 Political Affairs Officer, Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG), UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET)
2001 Civil Affairs Officer, Office of District Affairs, UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET)
2000 Assistant Director: Programmes, ACCORD
1999-2000 Civil Affairs Officer, Bobonaro District UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET)
1997-1999 Programme Manager: Peacekeeping, ACCORD
1988-1997 Assistant Director, Department of Foreign Affairs, Pretoria, South Africa
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Clear all filtersUN Peace Operations and Changes in the Global Order: Evolution, Adaptation, and Resilience
Changes in the global order are contributing to a more pragmatic era of UN peace operations. Peace operations are likely to become less intrusive and more supportive of locally-led solutions. Three overarching themes are identified. First, the degree to which a peace operation contributes to strategic political coherence will become a key measure of its effectiveness. Second, the principle of minimum use of force is likely to remain a defining feature of peace operations. Third, the scope of peace operations mandates may be trimmed down to focus on protection, stability, and politics. Whilst UN peace operations have shown a capacity to continuously adapt to new challenges, they will also remain resiliently identifiable by their enduring principles of peacekeeping.
Africa and UN Peace Operations: Implications for the Future Role of Regional Organisations
Over the last decade and a half, Africa’s peace operations capacity has significantly increased. African states have deployed operations of their own and they now contribute half of all UN peacekeepers. The African Union (AU) and the UN have developed a strategic partnership that plays out at the political, policy, and operational levels, and reflects the reality that neither will deploy peace operations in Africa without close consultations and some form of cooperation with the other. While the UN peacekeeping model is not found to be well-suited to enforcement, counter-terrorism or trans-national operations, the AU, sub-regional organisations and ad hoc regional coalitions have developed capabilities designed to address these challenges. These African capabilities help relieve the pressure on the UN to conduct such operations.
United Nations Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order
This edited volume generates a discussion about UN approaches to peace by studying challenges and opportunities that the organisation is facing in the 21st century. We use some of the findings from the HIPPO report as an inspiration and put both its recommendations and broader UN actions in a wider context. We identify four transformations in the global order and study what implications these have on UN peace operations. The first two transformations emanate from the changing relations between states and reflect the increasingly multipolar character of contemporary global governance. The latter two transformations reflect the changing relations between state and non-state actors. These two broad groups of non-state actors are fundamentally incompatible in their outlook on how and whether the international community should be intervening. That notwithstanding, both groups of non-state actors also force the UN and its member states to rethink the centrality of state-based approaches to security and intervention. In this volume, we identify four transformations in the global order and study their implications on the United Nations peace operations. We ask: - How is the rebalancing of relations between states of the global North and the global South impacting the UN’s decision-making, financing and ability to design operations that go beyond the minimum common denominator; - How is the rise of regional organisations as providers of peace impacting the primacy of UN peace operations and how and whether the UN can remain relevant in this era of partnership and competition; - How have violent extremism and fundamentalist non-state actors changed the nature of international responses and what does this mean for previously advanced longer-term approaches to conflict resolution; - How are demands from non-state actors for greater emphasis on human security impacting the UN’s credibility, and whether, in light of the first three transformations, is the UN even able to prioritise people-centred approaches over state-centred ones. Our core finding is that with the entry of new actors from the global South as important players in the peace arena, we seem to be entering a more pragmatic era of UN peace operations. As contributions to this volume show, there is a greater willingness to innovate and experiment with new forms of conflict management, including more robust interpretations of UN peacekeeping and an increasing reliance on regional actors as providers of peace. At the same time, the UN is facing a classic struggle between the promotion of liberal international norms and realist security concerns. The resolution of this struggle is less clear. The contributors to this volume emphasise the importance of people-centred approaches, conflict sensitivity and longer-term thinking as key aspects to continued relevance of the UN, but their conclusions as to how achievable these are by the UN are not as clear cut.
How effective have the peace operations in Somalia, DR Congo and Mali been?
Experts from around the world will take a closer look at how effective UN Peace Operations actually are.
UN Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order
Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix will talk about the status of UN Peace Operations.
Adaptive Mediation
Traditional state-based and determined-design models are ill-equipped to help mediators manage increasingly dynamic, complex and unpredictable violent conflict systems. In this paper we explore an alternative approach, namely an iterative adaptive mediation process that enables the parties to generate solutions themselves, and that responds more nimbly to the challenges posed by complex conflict dynamics. With Adaptive Mediation, the aim of the mediator is to provide the benefits of external intervention without undermining self-organisation. When this approach is applied to conflict analyses, planning, monitoring and evaluation, the ability of mediation processes to navigate uncertainty and adapt to changing dynamics will be enhanced. In order for more resilient and more self-sustainable agreements to emerge, adaptive mediation requires mediators to apply a lighter touch. This encourages greater interdependence among the parties, and discourage dependence upon the mediator. As a result, utilising an adaptive mediation approach should result in generating peace agreements that are more locally-grounded, that are more self-sustainable and that are better able to withstand set-backs and shocks.
WORLD PEACEKEEPING DAY: UN Peacekeeping at 70
UN peacekeeping faces significant challenges and some question whether it can remain relevant, but most countries agree on the importance of the UN as the centrepiece of global governance, and that peacekeeping is its flagship enterprise.
Towards a Comprehensive Results-based Reporting and Performance Assessment Framework for UN Peacekeeping Operations
This report considers the tools and processes that DPKO and DFS currently use to assess the performance of senior personnel, individual units and peacekeeping operations, and proposes a methodology for reorganizing these tools into a single overarching comprehensive planning, reporting and performance assessment framework. We argue for a shared analytical framework for performance assessment, across the UN system, and show how the terminology used by the United Nations Evaluation Group can be applied in peacekeeping operations. Currently, performance assessments of peacekeeping operations are undertaken as a number of independent processes which serve different constituencies and a range of purposes. This report identified eight different tools, each performing its own data collection and analysis. They are concentrated in two distinct areas across the spectrum. On the one hand a group of tools focus on outputs (measurable actions undertaken), and on the other a few tools focus on strategic analysis of the context – where the link to the peacekeeping operation is very tenuous. As a result, the information generated by the current tools are not able to be aggregated into a meaningful overall assessment of the performance of a given peacekeeping operation. The report endorses the principle of establishing a single comprehensive planning, reporting and performance assessment framework (the Framework) which brings the existing policies and tools together into more efficient interaction. In addition to what exists already, we recommend developing a performance assessment design that supports the Framework and the RBB with information on the performance of the mission against its plans, objectives and mandate. 1. We recommend the establishment of a single comprehensive planning, reporting and performance assessment Framework that incorporates the current planning and evaluation policies and tools, including the RBB, and that adds a new performance assessment tool and a predictable planning and decision-making cycle. 2. The Framework needs to envision a strategic planning horizon that is linked to the timeframes necessary to achieve the mission’s mandate, and should not be limited to the period for which the mission is currently authorized. 3. The Framework should contain a performance assessment tool should consisting of three elements, namely a set of indicators for each performance area, a process for analyzing and reporting on performance, and a platform where all the information gathered is stored for current and future use. 4. For each mission, the Framework should be grounded in a context analysis that identifies the key drivers that shape developments in the conflict-system that the peacekeeping operation is intended to influence. It should include in particular the identification of key drivers of change, which are the events or trends which will trigger significant change. The context analysis identifies, and analyse the critical conditions that influence these drivers, and the mission’s effects-based plans should be aimed at influencing these critical conditions, so as to have an impact on the key drivers. 5. Central to a performance assessment is defining the manner in which outputs are intended to influence the critical conditions around key drivers and actors. Clearly articulating the intended influence (the so-called ‘theory of change’ in evaluation terminology) helps to anticipate what impact a peacekeeping operation can be expected to have on a conflict-system, as the triggers, or drivers of the process of change have been clearly identified as part of the context analysis. Operationalizing the Framework requires three streams of elaboration, aimed at different functions within the organisation. It should be noted that it does not add significant new tasks, but aims to bring together what exists into three categories of capacities: • Assessment capacity, existing staff who will be trained in performance assessment; • Planners and managers, who would be given concrete points of reference on which to base decisions (resources, outputs, critical conditions, assumptions under review); and • A digital platform which can capture, through big data solutions, the information in the existing systems, and present it into a single dash-board interface.
Can a new approach change the UN?
The world is facing enormous challenges in light of protracted crises and conflicts. The United Nations are looking for answers with the new ‘sustaining peace’ approach. What are the chances of the new approach to change the UN and create sustainable peace? Cedric de Coning offers a current overview.
Sustaining Peace: Can a new approach change the UN?
When António Guterres started as UN Secretary General, he emphasised that conflict prevention had to be a top priority of the United Nations. This is why the United Nations are currently working on specifying the new ‘sustaining peace’ approach, passed by concurrent resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the Security Council in 2016. What are the challenges with their implementation? How does the current geopolitical situation impact the concept? And does it have the potential to make the UN fit for the 21 century?