Peace Policy Publications

By Céline Monnier (March 2025)

Understanding the impact of prevention efforts is a key focus of this year’s Peacebuilding Architecture Review (PBAR). However, measuring this impact has historically been challenging, particularly due to the difficulty of assessing what did not happen (e.g., the outbreak of conflict or violence).

This paper outlines a pioneering approach by developing an analytical tool for practitioners and decision-makers.

• The first section examines how measuring changes in risk and protective factors can help national actors assess their vulnerabilities and strengths.

• It then explores how member states, through the PBAR, can enhance the United Nations (UN) peacebuilding architecture to better support national and local actors in identifying and addressing these factors. In particular, integrating this risk and protective factors approach into national prevention strategies can be critical in ensuring their effectiveness

UN Photo/Amanda Voisard

By Joanne Richards (March 2025)

When discussing why individuals join non-state armed groups, practitioners often refer to factors such as poverty, unemployment, and ideological indoctrination. As a result, many recruitment prevention efforts focus on counter-narratives and job creation. In contrast, this policy brief highlights three factors linked to recruitment that are often overlooked: situational avoidance, defection from non-state armed groups, and sensation seeking. These factors open up creative avenues for the prevention of voluntary and/or forced recruitment, including opportunities for situational prevention, links to the prevention of gender-based violence (GBV), and programs for non-violent sensation seeking.

Practitioners should examine these (and other) overlooked factors and incorporate them into national strategies and action plans. They should also explore links between recruitment prevention efforts and programs that provide support to ex-combatants.

Photo: UNICEF/ Matas

By Céline Monnier and Joanne Richards (March 2024)

This policy brief argues that UN and member state efforts to prevent violence are often ineffective because why violence occurs is not well understood. The authors highlight the critical role of risk and protective factors in violence prevention work and outline 11 facts that are frequently overlooked when policymakers attempt to stop violence from occurring. To increase the effectiveness of prevention efforts, policymakers should be aware of these critical points and incorporate risk and protective factor analysis into existing UN diagnostic tools and inter-governmental processes.

Photo by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash

By Céline Monnier, Sophie Rutenbar, Betty N. Wainaina, Marta Bautista Forcada, and Natalie Briggs (November 2024)

Over the past few years, national prevention strategies (NPS) have risen on the United Nations (UN) political agenda.

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres advocated for their universal adoption in his New Agenda for Peace, while member states, through the Pact for the Future, pledged to develop them. In parallel, member states have shown an increased interest in using the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC)to discuss NPS.

This report explores how the PBC can provide effective support to member states on NPS in four areas:

• Fostering buy-in for prevention.

• Exchanging good practices.

• Coordinating support.

• Financing.

After considering these four avenues for supporting NPS through the PBC, the report then considers transversal challenges. The first one is the impact of universality. The second transversal challenge is the issue of continuity, as developing an NPS is a complex and long-term endeavor that may require sustained support.

This report is based on close to sixty interviews with members of the Peacebuilding Commission, the UN Peacebuilding Support Office, the World Bank, Regional Development Banks, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), UN Development Coordination Office (DCO), UN Development Programme (UNDP), and civil society organizations.

UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Céline Monnier and Vincenza Scherrer (October 2024)

In July 2023, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres called for the development of national prevention strategies in his New Agenda for Peace (NAfP)—a call now reflected in the Pact for the Future adopted just last month. These strategies are an opportunity to make concrete progress on the UN prevention agenda.

However, there are ongoing concerns about what those strategies mean in practice, as member states face fatigue from managing an ever-growing number of national planning frameworks.

This brief seeks to identify pragmatic approaches to bringing national prevention strategies into the fold through a method not burdensome for national actors and international partners by building on what exists. Particularly, it aims at providing concrete examples of how to link existing plans through a system of efforts to prevent violence, rather than start a new national strategy from scratch.

It also illustrates this by exploring opportunities to link security sector governance and reform (SSG/R) to a broader national prevention strategy. The insights gained from this analysis are not limited to SSG/R; they can also inform any other initiative or plan that seeks to address risk and protective factors for violence.

This policy brief is a joint publication with DCAF — Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance.

UN Photo/Sylvain Liechti

By Céline Monnier (September 2023)

The New Agenda for Peace (NAfP) calls for a shift to focus more attention on national prevention strategies, with a universal and more upstream approach to preventing all forms of violence.

This is good news. By calling for all member states to create these strategies, the secretary-general is assuaging member states’ fears that prevention may be used to meddle into their internal affairs or that the need for prevention can be stigmatizing. Member states are now in the driver’s seat of this agenda.

The upcoming Summit of the Future is an opportunity to establish a coherent vision for the role and the relevance of the UN in prevention—aligning approaches across different parts of the UN system—and to provide tailored-made packages and expertise for “member states seeking to establish or strengthen national infrastructures for peace,” as promised in the New Agenda for Peace.

As the first in a new series of policy briefs on “Operationalizing the New Agenda for Peace,” this piece is a conversation starter on the conditions to consider in designing, implementing, and supporting effective nationally led violence prevention strategies and it calls on member states to lead on the development of an evidence-based framework for nationally led prevention strategies, and for experts, practitioners, and UN staff to feed into this discussion based on research and past experiences.

This brief is based on research on violence and on violence prevention strategies—particularly crime prevention, prevention of violent extremism, and infrastructures for peace—and interviews of experts and practitioners.

UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Céline Monnier (March 2024)

Making progress on prevention has been a priority of the United Nations secretary-general (SG).

But difficulties have emerged in implementing the agenda from member states pushbacks due to fear of intervention and stigma as well as a general sense of confusion as to what prevention means in practice.

In his New Agenda for Peace, the SG addressed these concerns by recommending all countries to develop national prevention strategies and for the United Nations to provide relevant support. But ill-designed strategies can also be ineffective and do harm. This policy brief unpacks how member states can use the prime opportunity afforded by the Summit of the Future to significantly advance the prevention agenda by embracing this call for national prevention strategies and adopting an evidence-based approach for more effective prevention efforts.

UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Céline Monnier (October 2024)

The New Agenda for Peace is a key opportunity to give new momentum to nationally led prevention strategies. This policy brief looks at how these strategies are fertile ground to make progress on the UN prevention agenda for four reasons.

• First, in the current divided geopolitical context, nationally led prevention strategies benefit from strong support among member states across these divides

• Second, from a technical perspective, they are essential to reduce internal violence.

• Third, nationally led violence prevention strategies are not a new approach, but build on efforts that already take place in all countries.

• Lastly, the New Agenda for Peace is a good opportunity to focus on the nationally led prevention strategies because the UN is well-placed to help member states to address the main challenges that hinder progress on such strategies, namely national actors’ lack of cognizance regarding the benefits of nationally led prevention strategies; the lack of technical expertise to navigate the complexity of setting up such a system; and the lack of funding to develop a strategy.

UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Paige Arthur, Céline Monnier and Leah Zamore (September 2020)

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the newly released secretary-general’s report on peacebuilding and sustaining peace contains, as usual, a wealth of examples of the steps that the United Nations (UN) system is taking to implement the sustaining peace resolutions. It also suggests a welcome and surprising finding: the conflict prevention agenda—once thought to be on life-support at the UN—has found new vigor.

This briefing examines the new report, finding that it moves the prevention agenda forward in several key respects, from deepening political buy-in among member states and partners, to a greater embrace of conflict-sensitive approaches in the field. The briefing also identifies key opportunities for prevention to take root in the UN’s practice—including continued strengthening of expertise on prevention; deepening partnerships with the IFIs; leveraging links with violence reduction initiatives, especially relating to SDG16; focusing on area-based approaches to address multiple risks; and more action on humanitarian-development-peacebuilding nexus approaches.

UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Céline Monnier and Daniel Mack (July 2021)

This policy paper makes the argument that the UN can and should adopt a more integrated violence prevention strategy across these three forms of violence. It draws from desk review of UN and academic documents, interviews with UN staff working on different types of violence prevention across the UN system, and a workshop among them. The paper discusses why there is a need for more integrated prevention approaches across different types of violence, what benefits that would bring, and what challenges need to be overcome first. It concludes by making four recommendations: governments should use the SDG 16.1 framework to bring actors together at national level; member states should ask the UN to develop evidence-based guidelines on prevention for countries to implement themselves; the UN should initiate a strategic dialogue at headquarters between fields to better identify commonalities in approaches; and country teams should develop an integrated strategy with specialized sub-strategies.

UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

By Paige Arthur and Céline Monnier (August 2019)

Development is an essential tool for conflict prevention, as often root causes are related to lack of equitable access to economic opportunities, or a combination of political and economic inequalities that fuel grievances—as highlighted in the 2011 World Development Report and the 2018 UN–World Bank Pathways for Peace report.

Some risk factors may therefore need to be addressed with development tools. Drawing on field research and on member state reporting at the recent High-level Political Forum in July 2019, this briefing highlights development measures countries have taken to support prevention, and highlights ways the UN system can better assist these efforts.

This paper highlights practical examples of how countries are using development tools for preventive purposes. We draw on field research from Colombia, where there has been a high degree of creative and innovative initiatives to address violence, as well as presentations for the voluntary national reviews on SDG16 at the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). We conclude by drawing lessons for the UN system.

UN photo/Laura Jarriel

By Paige Arthur and Céline Monnier (August 2019)

In this policy briefing, our fifth in our series on prevention at the UN, we draw on examples from Côte d’Ivoire and Timor-Leste to illustrate how countries have developed integrated actions on prevention that cut across sectors, including security, development, and human rights. We then highlight options for the UN to better support these strategies through cross-pillar approaches and identify practical ways forward for governments implementing prevention approaches.

UN Photo/Martine Perret

By Paige Arthur and Céline Monnier (August 2019)

The fourth paper in our series on prevention at the United Nations examines the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) prevention approach, which combines both upstream and short-term preventive diplomacy and mediation initiatives.

Looking at the ECOWAS model, this paper analyzes the regional frameworks in place, particularly the Mechanism on Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping, and Security and Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance, established in 1999 and 2001 respectively, after nearly a decade of conflicts in the region. The paper highlights ECOWAS’ universal prevention approach, which seeks to increase society’s resilience to violence in the face of shocks or vulnerabilities.

Since 2013, ECOWAS has also focused on improving its early warning capability and developing effective mechanisms to respond to warnings. It has sought to build trust among its member states on the issue of prevention, employing transparent and thoughtful approaches to addressing social and political sensitivities, as well as worked to build national capacities.

The paper concludes by assessing how the ECOWAS approach to prevention can inspire broader discussion around multilateral efforts for prevention.

UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Paige Arthur and Céline Monnier (July 2019)

Member states agree that more effort should be made to prevent violent conflicts farther upstream, rather than to address them mainly when they are imminent or in progress (or on the Security Council agenda).

However, as described in our previous briefing (Unpacking Prevention: Member State Perspectives) “prevention” at the UN has not had enough conceptual clarity, which has raised sensitivities over a wide range of issues. This, in turn, has hindered implementation of a more strategic approach to prevention—especially upstream prevention—at the practical level.

Indeed, the prevention agenda arrived at the UN just at the moment when the forces shaping multilateralism were shifting underneath it. The period of liberal internationalism ushered in by the end of the Cold War—with the United States in the lead—has receded in the wake of more statist and sovereigntist approaches to multilateralism.

While member states support prevention as a general idea, they have a wide range of concerns regarding its implementation—making it difficult for member states to rally around it.

UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Paige Arthur and Céline Monnier (July 2019)

In this briefing, our second in a series on prevention at the UN, we describe nationally led approaches to building resilience and reducing risk, based on field research in Timor-Leste and Tunisia, as well as examples from a number of other countries, including the Gambia and Norway.

The focus is on “targeted” prevention, in which countries identify their key risks and protective factors, and then build a strategy around them. We then identify concrete opportunities for international accompaniment and support to these processes.

UN Photo/Martine Perret

By Paige Arthur and Céline Monnier (April 2019)

The United Nations (UN) has recognized the need for a more preventive approach in the face of protracted crises and conflicts that take years and even decades to resolve. Increasingly internal in character, such conflicts are challenging for the UN.

In response, many member states have called for a fundamental shift of the UN’s political capital and resources toward preventing violent conflicts before they arise. The General Assembly and the Security Council have adopted twin resolutions to encourage integrated, cross-pillar efforts to sustain peace, including through prevention. The current secretary-general, António Guterres, has made prevention a top priority. Evidence supports the contention that in addition to averting massive human suffering, prevention is also cost-effective.

This policy brief unpacks the different understandings of prevention operative among member states, based on discussions with a regionally diverse group of 19 countries. It explores how member states understand the prevention agenda at the UN and highlights some areas of overlapping consensus that would support operationalization of the prevention agenda. A key finding is that member states are more accepting of prevention if it is seen to apply to all countries, not just conflict-affected ones.

Photo: "Puzzle" by Alexandra, Alexas_Fotos is marked with CC0 1.0.

By Paige Arthur and Céline Monnier (July 2021)

After experimenting with months of lockdown and imposed social distancing measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, people everywhere now have a more immediate understanding of how prolonged crisis can create challenges for both individuals’ mental health as well as maintaining the social fabric of communities.

However, social fragmentation and mental distress created by adverse environments are not new, nor are they limited to COVID-19. Gross social injustices or armed conflicts have provoked wide-spread mental suffering, broken down social norms, and undermined social cohesion since time immemorial. Generations grow up in the midst of violence, normalizing it, or losing capacity to trust others or their institutions. Hence, neglecting the psychosocial impacts of social injustices and violence on the individual and society undermines other efforts to build peaceful societies. Nevertheless, the use of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) approaches to build peace or prevent violent conflict remains anecdotal and ad hoc.

This paper summarizes the existing arguments for why MHPSS should be more systematically used to sustain peace, and offers four opportunities to use MHPSS approaches in sustaining peace efforts at the UN.

1. Support national capacities

2. Integrate MHPSS as a normal part of sustaining peace strategies

3. Increase expertise on MHPSS as part of sustaining peace

4. Creative partnerships to support an integrated approach

Photo: UNHCR/Roger Arnold

By Céline Monnier (July 2022)

Efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 have led to a series of knock-on effects. Some measures have contributed to increased social conflict and violence. Understanding how to sustain peace, while implementing measures that had drastic psycho-socioeconomic impacts has been challenging for countries around the world. This policy brief looks at Colombia, a country with some success in the management of the pandemic, and highlights lessons learned on how the United Nations can support governments to be conflict sensitive when a country is hit by an external shock such as the COVID-19 crisis.

This policy brief analyzes how some measures to contain the spread of the pandemic, such as lockdowns may have contributed to the fluctuations in levels of violence, and provides four recommendations to prevent violence during major crises:

1. The UN should call on member states to adopt conflict-sensitive policies to respond to major crises such as COVID-19

2. The UN should support member states to develop conflict sensitive measures during a major crisis

3. The UN could undertake a “lessons learned” exercise, including, e.g., PBSO, the UNDP-DPPA Joint Program, UNODC, WHO

4. The UN could call on member states to develop a strategy to address residual risk factors for conflict deepened by the COVID-19 crisis

Photo: USAID/Colombia

By Céline Monnier (January 2022)

The COVID-19 pandemic, and efforts to control its spread—including lockdowns, social distancing measures, and border closures—have led to unprecedented health, humanitarian, and socioeconomic shocks worldwide. These shocks, in turn, are raising the likelihood that risks for many forms of violent conflict—crime, armed conflict, violent extremism—may increase. It is crucial for the United Nations (UN) to adopt a conflict-sensitive lens in all relevant operations across the humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding (HDP) nexus to prevent an increasingly volatile situation from deteriorating further.

Throughout 2021, New York University’s Center on International Cooperation has engaged UN actors from across the HDP nexus to reflect upon this challenge. Through interviews and workshops, as well as a review of conflict-sensitivity documents produced by the UN, we have explored the many challenges facing UN staff as they seek to operationalize conflict-sensitive approaches amid the pandemic. Some of these challenges are specific to the pandemic, while many others predate it. We have also facilitated discussions among a diverse group of UN staff to identify opportunities for addressing preexisting and emerging violence dynamics within and across the UN’s humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding operations. The objective of this policy brief is to amplify UN staff “asks” in these regards and, based on these, to provide recommendations for strengthening implementation of conflict sensitivity at the UN.

UN Photo/Michael Ali

By Céline Monnier (July 2020)

COVID-19 is creating a series of crises that increase the risk of conflict worldwide. Beyond the health impact, issues like worsening inequality, food insecurity, human rights abuses, and political tensions can deepen pre-existing social fractures in any country, creating additional layers of grievance. Addressing these risks early on and building resilience to them is key to preventing the potential for violence. But the pandemic also brings new opportunities for peacebuilding.

A system-wide implementation of the sustaining peace approach is critical to ensure that United Nations response contributes to decreasing risks for violent conflict in the longer term—including efforts to “build back better.” This report draws on interviews with 25+ individuals across the UN system and member states to highlight some of the key challenges for peacebuilding in the immediate COVID-19 period as well as in the longer term. The report documents how entities across the UN have made positive steps toward implementing a sustaining peace approach, and provides recommendations for deepening these gains across the system.

Photo: UN/MINUSCA / Herve Serefio