An Interview with Mariano Aguirre, Director of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF)

1 Jun 2015

This month, we speak to Mariano Aguirre, who is the Director of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF) in Oslo. Mr Aguirre first describes NOREF’s mission, the regional and thematic focal points of its work and its network of experts and partners. He then talks about one of NOREF’s most recent reports, which focuses on the role of norms in international peace mediation. Finally, Mr Aguirre highlights some of the most pressing challenges facing today’s peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations.

First, could you please elaborate on NOREF’s mission and purpose?

NOREF is a resource center that has two overarching roles – producing policy analyses and creating the necessary space for political dialogue in international conflicts. The center was created in 2008 at the behest of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), which saw a need for a domestic institution that would provide a bridge between original research and policy development. To fulfill our charter, we 1) commission written analyses that provide policy advice to the Norwegian MFA, certain UN bodies and other international actors, 2) keep our wider peacebuilding audience informed through our website, and 3) work to connect political and civil society actors together.

In the case of the analyses we perform, I’d like to point out that unlike other research institutes and think tanks, NOREF recruits from a wide pool of experts. They include Norwegian and international researchers, actual practitioners, former diplomats and other specialists. The potential contributors are identified by NOREF’s advisers on staff, who also specify the topics that should be analyzed and formulate the research processes and activities that are needed. (In accomplishing these tasks, the advisers pay particular attention to trends in peacebuilding and mediation, and to local and new voices.)

When it comes to our political dialogue and mediation efforts, we cooperate with an extensive network of analysts and practitioners who work in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The way we cooperate with them is similar to the type of cooperation I just described with our experts.

Finally, I’d like to point out that NOREF’s identity – that is, as a Norwegian center with a strong international orientation - is mirrored in its staff: five of them are Norwegian, six are international and they collectively speak eleven languages.

What are the main geographical areas and themes that NOREF focuses on?

When it comes to areas of the world, we pay special attention to regional trends in the Middle East and North Africa, to include the present situations in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Israel-Palestine, and also the rise of the so-called Islamic State. Second, in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa, we focus on the Sahel region and its link to the political turbulence in Libya, as well as Nigeria’s problems with Boko Haram. Finally, we carefully follow the contexts of the peace negotiations in Colombia and the Philippines, primarily by devoting our time and resources to what we hope will soon be post-conflict scenarios.

When it comes to our thematic interests, part of our program focuses on the world’s emerging powers and their peacebuilding and mediation policies. Second, external pagewe’re working jointly with the Clingendael Institute on the challenges non-state armed actors are raising in fields such as international humanitarian law and mediation. Third, we’re increasingly working on mediation and Track II theory and practice. Finally, in our program on gender, we continue to look at the role of women in armed and post-conflict situations.

Can you tell us more about NOREF’s network of experts and partners?

Our networks, which are flexible and based on common trust, have enabled us to create the analytical spaces we need to analyze current armed conflicts, their geopolitical contexts, and the conflict resolution policies that might ultimately resolve them. At the same time, NOREF connects institutions and experts among themselves, and in some cases provides advice in the creation of new initiatives, such as linking mediators together from emerging powers.

NOREF has recently co-published a new report with swisspeace on “The Role of Norms in International Peace Mediation.” What are the main findings of this report?

external pageThis report, which is based on interviews with 22 mediators and mediation experts, highlights 1) the norms that fully or partially exist in international peace mediation, and 2) attempts to orientate mediators on how to manage them effectively. In the past, mediation was conducted by personalities, practitioners or diplomats who acted according to their experiences and ‘common sense’. Today, however, there are a huge number of normative considerations and even restrictions that shape mediation practices. (Since more international organizations, NGOs and states have come to see mediation as a viable strategic tool, their varying perspectives have made mediation considerably more complex.) The practitioners we interviewed thus welcomed the opportunity not only to explain existing norms, but also to try and establish additional standards and more systematic practices that will help further professionalize the mediation field.

In regard to norms, I need to emphasize that the debate continues on how they can be categorized and prioritized, and what is the mediator’s role in promoting them. Our report proposes a threefold way to categorize norms based on whether they are 1) content-related or process-related, 2) settled or unsettled, or 3) definitional or non-definitional. In our view, distinguishing norms according to these categories helps to focus the debate. It makes underlying assumptions about the priority of different norms more explicit, and it opens up the discussion about which norms are settled or unsettled. Finally, our categorizations are sensitive to context. Mediators, for example, could work with opposing parties to match specific norms to local needs and concerns, and thereby provide themselves with an opportunity to understand the normative particularities of the environment in which they work.

The number of UN peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations has proliferated since the end of the Cold War but the track record of these operations has been mixed. In your view, what are some of the most pressing issues for peacekeeping and peacebuilding today?

The post-Cold War euphoria about deploying peacekeepers to protect victims of massive violations of human rights or even genocide is being replaced by fast, on-the-spot, and limited-in-time mandates that are designed to contain armed non-state actors. This evolution, however, has been a torturous one. In the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, the missions were designed and redesigned as peacebuilding, state-building and counterinsurgency missions. The line between peace operations and war thus became increasingly obscure. In other cases, such as Haiti, the most extreme violence has been contained, but after more than a decade of peacekeeping, peacebuilding and state-building almost nothing has changed. The country continues to be poor, violent, hopeless and without proper governance.

We’re now at the point where peacekeeping is underfunded and understaffed. There is a lack of will from most countries to risk their soldiers’ lives in complex operations. The vision of “we must do something” about victims has been replaced by doing as little as possible with minimum risks. In this context, today’s operations face the danger of simply becoming fast and limited counterinsurgency missions against militias, as France demonstrated in Mali. Combatting militias is important, but it’s just not enough. Countries have learned since the end of the Cold War that reconstructing societies is a complex task that must be led from the inside, but there is still a need for international engagement.

For additional information please see:
external pageNOREF Publications
external pageNOREF Policy Brief: The Role of Norms in International Peace Mediation
external pageClingendael-NOREF Report Series: Non-Conventional Armed Violence
external pageNOREF on Facebook
external pageNOREF on Twitter

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