Reflections on Peacebuilding and the United Nations Development Assistance Framework

In each country where the United Nations agencies are present, the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) defines a strategy for assistance over five years that must be coherent internally as well as coherent with national strategies and the plans of other donors. Conflict prevention and peacebuilding have become more important to aid donors in recent years, and have entered the mainstream of development assistance; consequently the UNDAF needs to be rethought in its approach to conflict prevention and peacebuilding in contested, fragile, and post-conflict states. This is because, first, in such states political issues become particularly dominant in the UNDAF process, and second, legitimate national processes to promote reconciliation and to develop a vision for a better future cannot easily be time-constrained to fit into externally driven programming exercises. This article reviews the nature of the UNDAF, examines some illustrative experiences in Rwanda and Sri Lanka, and summarises key elements of effective conflict prevention and peacebuilding practice. It then identifies the main ‘process’ issues that need to be dealt with by international assistance actors wishing to support conflict prevention and peacebuilding, and suggests a realistic perspective on the UNDAF as a mechanism in this respect.