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In this chapter, Chesterman grapples with the complex challenges facing the United Nations in post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts. He first examines the dilemmas inherent in outside interventions for peacebuilding, particularly those with expanded UN mandates and/or transitional administrations. He argues that workable strategies must increase clarity with regard to the following: the political and strategic objectives of the intervention, the dynamic relationship between international and local actors, and the political and resource commitments required of international actors. In examining prospects for improvement, Chesterman evaluates both the challenges and potential of the Peacebuilding Commission to promote coordination and increase funding for more strategic peacebuilding.

International law recognizes no relationship of a general nature between the inhabitants of territory in which a foreign military forces is deployed, and the State or organization that has deployed the force, although. The State or organization concerned may nevertheless have obligations towards the local population under IHL and international human rights law. However, where a State is in occupation of territory outside its own borders as a result of armed conflict, there is an extensive body of law governing the relationship between the occupant and the people of the occupied territory, focussed on Geneva Convention IV Relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War, 1949 (Geneva Convention IV). This chapter explores the extent to which this body of occupation law applies to peacekeeping and other multi-national operations that differ from belligerent occupation as traditionally conceived.

Restitution, reparations, and punishment are all constituents of a justified peace. This chapter addresses the institutional question (though from a normative point of view) of which actors are prima facie morally justified in enforcing peace in general and peace agreements in particular. It argues in favour of the most comprehensive institutional mechanisms to be deployed post-war, namely transitional foreign administrations. Under some circumstances, to be specified here, if agents are unable or unwilling to govern themselves and, as a result, threaten prospects for peace, it is prima facie legitimate for outside actors to set up such governance structures, at least on a temporary basis. This claim is vulnerable to the charge of cosmopolitan neocolonialism—a charge which the chapter seeks to rebut.

When the UN became transitional administrator in East Timor in late 1999, the UN made a commitment to an exit strategy and convinced itself that it had designed an effective one. Yet four years after independence, in 2006, faced with the prospect of the collapse of state institutions, the UN reengaged in East Timor on a scale approaching that of the transitional administration of 1999–2002. This chapter describes the development of the strategies for the UN’s exit from East Timor as transitional administrator and for the subsequent phased exit, concentrating on two aspects: the political transition leading to independence and the post-independence drawdown of the UN police and military components. It addresses the question of why the exit strategies adopted were not successful, suggesting that despite the claimed aversion of the UN and member states to artificial deadlines, for a variety of reasons the pressures for a rapid withdrawal tended to outweigh calls for a more measured approach geared to the complexities of the postconflict environment.

One of the major issues facing the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) when it arrived in East Timor in October 1999 was the question of how those responsible for the violence of the preceding ten months were to be brought to justice. UNTAET created the Special Panels for Serious Crimes (composed of national and international judges) in East Timor's capital Dili, to try suspects in East Timor. These panels are the first specially constructed internationalized courts which have tried serious crimes within a local justice system. However, due to a lack of commitment in terms of funding, personnel, and political will, the success of this experiment has been limited. This chapter reviews the experiment in internationalized justice taking place in Dili. In an attempt to provide an overall assessment, it also discusses the progress of the ad hoc tribunal in Jakarta, Indonesia.

This chapter establishes a typology of state-building strategies based on the degree of control or influence exercised by the international community, and the areas of statehood in which it exercises such control. It focuses on strategy as the necessary condition for success, although tactical and programmatic considerations also affect the outcome of a state-building operation. The chapter develops two ways of defining strategies of state building. First, a strategy can be organized around an overarching goal that commands the state builder’s priority of effort, such as security or liberalization. Second, a strategy can be organized around the degree of an intervention’s invasiveness—that is, state builders could partner with local institutions, such as through security assistance programs, or simply take over, such as through a transitional administration. The chapter derives from these two concepts hypotheses about what causes success in armed state-building operations.