Peace Missions' Technical Security: Towards a Security Culture for Enhanced Peacebuilding Effectiveness (PDF)

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict Studies, Security, grade: 65, Coventry University (Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies), course: Peacebuilding, language: English, abstract: Peacebuilding operations are organizational structures in emergency
environments or post-conflict areas working to restore and maintain stable
peace. The specificity of the geographical or political instability makes it
necessary for these entities to count on with technical security departments
in charge of securing the well-being of staff members and protecting
programs and assets. To effectively perform these tasks, mission internal
security departments produce a set of security regulations comprised in three
different operational blocks: security plans, security standard operation
procedures and contingency plans, and risk and threat assessments. These
norms are then communicated, trained on, and enforced to all mission staff
members.
Often staff members in peacebuilding missions disregard security
regulations, either conscious or unconsciously, causing secondary negative
effects on mission's operations, perceptions, and relations, and slow down or
even stop programs. Often, as well, technical security departments
employ a larger amount of time to enforcement than required due to lack of
compliance with security policy.
The aim of this study is to present a set of methodologies at the
operational, perceptual, and relational level that implemented and
coordinated by missions' technical security departments could positively
support and enhance missions' performance in security and safety, but
extrapolated to peacebuilding activities and mandate objectives.
It is understood and explained that security regulations can affect the
interoperability of a mission, in the sense that it can slow down and restrict
programs, especially in high risk environments. Therefore, the focus is
placed in peacebuilding operations with a moderate risk level, defined in the
United Nations language as Security Phases one and two.