The United Nations Security Council is an insufficiently understood source of support for transitional justice interventions on the ground. In the best-case scenarios, the Council has assisted national and local endeavours by amplifying the voices of domestic stakeholders, exerting pressure over recalcitrant actors, guarding the integrity of existing peace agreements from internal attacks, leveraging resources, and mandating supportive mechanisms. In other cases, the Security Council’s support has backfired, frustrating national efforts or eroding local capacity. Given these contrasting outcomes, this volume seeks to provide a preliminary look across five case studies (Afghanistan, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and South Sudan) on the conditions under which support from the Security Council can positively impact transitional justice efforts on the ground. The volume provides an overview of the concept of transitional justice and its core components, situating transitional justice concepts in the broader practice of international law. It considers how the Council’s approach to transitional justice has evolved over the last three decades, the various debates within the Council on transitional justice’s relation to the Council’s broader work, and the impact of Council strategy and actions on transitional justice efforts on the ground. It describes the mechanisms used, the challenges faced, and the factors that facilitated impact in the five cases analysed. A number of overarching recommendations are outlined for the Council, the UN Secretariat, and transitional justice advocates as they think through whether, when and how to engage Council members on these issues going forward.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has placed conflict prevention at the top of his agenda. One of the key challenges he will face is that of making Resident Coordinators (RCs) in fragile and conflict-affected countries without peace operations more effective prevention actors. While so-called “non-mission settings” are widely recognised as the frontline of preventive action (peace operations are usually deployed once efforts to avert outbreak of violent conflict have failed), they also tend to be contexts where the UN faces some of its most acute challenges in making prevention work. This is because RCs, who head the UN’s development presence in such places, face significant political, mandate, and resource constraints in the pursuit of prevention. Against this background, UNU-CPR with the support of the UK Mission to the United Nations, undertook a research project to extract lessons of RC-supported preventive action in nine countries, where such support has generally been effective. The project had two central aims: first, to produce analytical narratives of success stories, detailing how RCs and UN Country Teams (UNCTs) have effectively engaged across various settings in a preventive manner; and second, to identify good practices of what has worked in RC-supported prevention in the past, and how those lessons might be relevant to RCs in other settings.

The new UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has made prevention his top priority. Conflict prevention is now understood not only in terms of averting the outbreak, but also the continuation, escalation and recurrence, of conflict. The Secretary-General has recognised that in order for the UN to shift from its current, largely reactive, posture to a prevention-oriented approach, it will need to better integrate its peace and security, development and human rights pillars of work. Sustaining peace and sustainable development will need to work hand in glove, rather than along two separate tracks as has often been the case in the past. In an effort to help shift the system toward this new approach, the UN and the World Bank are undertaking a joint flagship study on Preventing Violent Conflict. UNU-CPR produced this case study on lessons learned from the experiences of the UN and other actors in conflict resolution in Nepal as a backgrounder for the UN-World Bank study.

This paper provides insights into major recent trends in violent conflict, and analyses the implications of these trends for international actors engaged in conflict prevention and management.