Restoring the Rule of Law
This project supports rule of law components in and rule of law goals of international peace operations. FOPO engages with the United Nations, governments committed to improving peace operations, and international and US organizations who work on these or overlapping issues. In 2012, project work includes doctrine development, rapid deployment, and impact assessment for international police peacekeeping, and the development of useful and valid benchmarks for the non-police rule of law work undertaken by UN peace operations.
Doctrine development and police deployment analysis
FOPO supports the UN Police Division in developing international police peacekeeping doctrine. It also provided support for the development of a UN-INTERPOL Action Plan for International Police Peacekeeping, which better positions Police Contributing Countries (PCCs) to implement the doctrine as it evolves.
Impact assessment of international police peacekeeping
The UN Police Division (UNPD) asked FOPO to conduct an impact assessment of UN policing activities to inform realistic expectations of international police impact for future missions. The experiences of current police components offer opportunities to better understand the role UNPOL play in the overall impact of peacekeeping operations and contributing to a sustainable peace. Subsequently, the UN Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions (OROLSI), which includes the Police Division, asked FOPO to broaden the scope of the study to include the justice and corrections components of UN operations, in support of OROLSI's Criminal Law and Judicial Advisory Service.
The project will help to ascertain,
(1) the extent to which certain recurring tasks or objectives have the desired impact on host country public security and on host country police, justice or corrections performance in various contexts, and could thus be considered essential tasks of capability-driven UN police, justice and/or corrections components in missions;
(2) the extent to which political or other constraints in the operating environment dominate opportunities for impact; and
(3) the extent to which early, including coordinated, UN police-, justice- and corrections-related activities and programming contribute to effective delivery of rule of law mandates and longer-term goals of sustainable peace (or "peace consolidation") and thus to ultimate mission drawdown and transition.
The project will also assess the potential for developing lighter, quicker means of monitoring the effects that UN missions have on their operational environments towards consolidation of peace, and especially in promoting the rule of law.
The project will be paying particular attention to the role and status of women and rule of law in UN missions and mission areas of operation, including prevention and mitigation of sexual and gender-based violence.
Steps Toward Structural Models of Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding
This project will scope out prospects for modeling international peace implementation efforts (peacekeeping and peacebuilding) that address the resolution of internal conflicts, building on the research results from the impact analysis project. Prototype models will be vetted with relevant communities of experts with the goal of developing tools to assist strategic planning and resourcing decisions for future peace operations.
Previous Work:
Previous rule of law work has focused on various other thematic areas including the state of play in measuring progress/benchmarking rule of law-related activities in peace operations, rapid mission deployment of UN police and other rule of law personnel, security sector reform, border security, the work of panels of experts on targeted sanctions enforcement, and the problem of corruption in post-conflict settings and how to fight it.