What Role for Business Actors in Peace Operations? By Josie Lianna Kaye

 

What role for business actors in peace operations? Examples from Yemen (2011-2016)

Josie Lianna Kaye PhD

 

The evolving discourse on business and peace

 Business actors play an important role in conflict management, and the majority have an interest in peace. And yet, engaging business actors in peace, security and stability is an under-explored area for the international community as a whole, and for the United Nations (UN) in particular. Indeed, whether formal or informal, public or private, licit or illicit, the UN has a blind spot when it comes to business actors in countries in conflict. 

 The business case for peace is relatively strong: there are diverse frameworks, policy guidelines and trainings that seek to support the notion that business actors operating in countries in conflict should not only ‘do no harm’ but, where possible, also ‘do good’. The peace case for business i.e the notion that peacemakers should include business actors in peace, however, is comparatively weak and has yet to translate into any meaningful change on the ground. 

Indeed, whilst business actors are expected to incorporate ‘peace’ into their operations, actors from the peace and security architecture are not required to incorporate business actors into theirs – even though business actors may be actively hampering, or may be well positioned to ameliorate, the achievement of peace-related mandates. 

 

The ongoing blind spot towards business actors in practice

The blind spot towards business actors is even more surprising in light of the UN-led discourse on ‘inclusion’. The UN Guidance on Effective Mediation defines inclusion as ‘the extent and manner in which the views and needs of conflict parties and other stakeholders are represented and integrated into the process and outcome of a mediation effort’- whether for principled or pragmatic reasons.

As with civil society, youth, women and non-state armed groups, there are both normative and pragmatic reasons for including business actors in peace. However, there are no protocols, conventions, UN Security Council resolutions, frameworks, or trainings on how to engage business actors in peace. This blind spot is not only a missed opportunity; the exclusion of business actors from the mandates and strategies of UN peace operations may inadvertently be contributing to pervasive cycles of violence and conflict, and undermining prospects for the emergence of sustainable peace.  

 

A framework for understanding the roles of business actors in conflict and peace

Figure 1 demonstrates how business actors play four key roles in conflict contexts: as beneficiaries, benefcators, agitators and intermediaries. The fact that business actors play these roles have direct and indirect implications for the mandates of peace operations.

 
 

When applied to Yemen, it is surprising that despite the extensive roles played by business actors in each of these categories – as demonstrated in the visual above - during the period from 2011-2016:

·       No political economy analyses were conducted by the Special Envoy(s) or his team his team; 

·       The main conflicting parties aside, business actors did not participate formally or informally in the negotiations around the Gulf Cooperation Council Agreement (GCCA); 

·       Business actors played only a very marginal role in the National Dialogue Conference (NDC) due to the allocation of seats (only 3 out of 565 were given to the private sector); 

·       They played no formal or informal role in the negotiations held in Kuwait or Geneva; and; 

·       Business actors were not included deliberately in any outreach strategies – with one exception in 2016. 

 As stated by one UN official in an interview, ‘business actors are so important and it is one of the huge gaps in our engagement and our approach’.[1]

The imperative to engage more meaningfully with local power dynamics

Businesses are not excluded from peace operations because they are irrelevant actors who have little bearing on the way in which conflicts erupt and evolve over time, nor as a result of their (in)capacity, resources or willingness to influence - positively and negatively - the effectiveness and sustainability of peace operations. 

Given the inclusion of NSAGs, terrorist groups and so-called ‘pariah groups’ - whose ability to inflict indiscriminate violence on innocent civilians has caused incalculable suffering and damage to livelihoods - their exclusion, furthermore, cannot be explained by a simple reference to moral or ethical quandaries around which actors, according to which ‘yard stick’, can and should be recognised, acknowledged and included in efforts to resolve conflict and build peace. Their exclusion, therefore, raises important questions for the field of peace mediation, and points to critical implications for policy.

One of the most important conclusions we can draw is that despite the efforts of diverse actors, mediation endeavours continue to be insufficiently linked to the realities of local power dynamics. Because - if mediation actors were engaging meaningfully with local power dynamics, it would be impossible to ignore the roles played by business actors.

Policy implications

There are two major implications for peace and security actors: 

  • First, policy changes are required amongst Member States, within the UN Security Council, the UN Secretariat and the partners it works with– starting with a UN Security Council Resolution on including business actors in peace.

  • Second, UN special envoys and other mediation professionals must engage more meaningfully with local power dynamics broadly speaking, and more specifically, apply a ‘business lens’ to their efforts to ensure business actors are included in efforts to foster peace – as a result of their core operations, supply and value chains.

 
Josie Lianna Kaye is the Director of TrustWorks Global, which engages public and private actors to resolve intractable conflicts and sustain peace. She holds a PhD from the University of Oxford.

[1] United Nations Official, Phone Interview, 2018. 

Catherine Turner