As nominees compete to be selected as the next United Nations secretary-general and diplomats display their concerns in questioning them, the dominant issue is the organization’s role in peace and security. Each nominee is promising more vigorous use of “good offices” and their personal presence to seek to mediate conflicts.

The personal role of the secretary-general is certainly of high importance. But much more is required. This is best illustrated by instances where the UN has in the past contributed successfully to ending conflicts and implementing paths to peace.

The two of us worked together in two such cases: The path to self-determination of what is today independent Timor-Leste and Nepal’s emergence from a 10-year civil war. Both countries have remained at peace overall since the periods of intense UN involvement.

Each required years of patient UN engagement before developments created the opportunities for active mediation. As a result, when the moments came — political change in Indonesia, recognition of stalemate in Nepal — the UN had established the understanding and trust to be accepted and effective as the key partner in the transition to lasting peace.

East Timor and Nepal

In East Timor, over 15 years of good offices had made the UN indispensable by the time political change came to Indonesia in 1998. It then mediated the agreements under which it conducted the 1999 self-determination referendum and subsequently oversaw the territory’s transition to an independent Timor-Leste.

In Nepal, the UN monitored restrictions on arms and armies under the terms of the peace agreement, while supporting the election of an assembly to draw up a new constitution.

Early UN engagement included diplomacy with external actors whose influence on the parties to the conflict proved to be important. In the end, Indonesia’s neighbors helped to persuade it to accept intervention to restore security in East Timor and to respect the referendum for independence. Eventually, India overcame its reluctance to recognize the necessity of a UN role in neighboring Nepal.

In each case, the UN’s disposition as a principled normative actor was significant. For East Timor, the UN remained committed to its right to self-determination in accordance with the UN Charter and Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. In Nepal, UN human rights monitoring not only mitigated the costs to civilians in armed conflict but also helped to pave the way toward political negotiation.

Behind the scenes

Most of the years of engagement in each case featured the quiet use of the secretary-general’s good offices, with neither situation being discussed in the Security Council. But at a key moment, when East Timor was in the grips of devastating post-referendum violence orchestrated by elements within the Indonesian military, it benefited from a striking use of a visiting mission from Security Council members, who persuaded Indonesia that it was in its interest to seek international assistance to restore security.

In each case, a Security Council mandate eventually became necessary for the UN’s role on the ground and was agreed with unanimity. Each of the governments concerned saw that it was in their interest to request a mandate, and key member states had been kept abreast of the UN’s good offices and mediation work.

The role of the secretary-general in each case was mostly low-key or behind the scenes until events demanded a more public profile. But it was soon after taking office as secretary-general in 1997 that Kofi Annan prioritized East Timor, appointing a personal envoy to head the longstanding efforts of the UN’s political department. And when violence broke out after the ballot in East Timor, Annan worked the phones night and day to mobilize the international response.

Additionally, it was Annan who also who took the initiative to offer in his 2002 annual report to the General Assembly that he would consider the use of his good offices to help achieve a peaceful solution to Nepal’s conflict.

Experience, money, leadership

When political outcomes and agreements had been achieved, the UN was ready to move rapidly to support their implementation. In Timor-Leste, this involved not only conducting the referendum but also deploying subsequent peacekeeping missions to manage two years of transitional administration and beyond. With neither Nepal nor its neighbors wanting armed peacekeepers, the UN designed a political mission with unarmed military and ex-military personnel to monitor arms and armies during the implementation of its peace accord.

Active as he was from New York City, Annan did not visit East Timor until after conflict was resolved. The effective use of the secretary-general’s good offices requires a strong political department with a staff who have developed experience over the years; a travel budget to enable them to be present on the ground and in the region for continuous rather than episodic engagement with the parties; and leadership that encourages initiative and creativity. It requires judicious selection of special envoys, independent of member state lobbying.

In both cases of East Timor and Nepal, the sustained focus of the-then Department of Political Affairs, including its top leadership, was instrumental. The secretary-general and the Secretariat were not merely responsive to the Security Council and its penholders — they persuaded them to support the initiatives they proposed, most strikingly in the Council’s key visit to East Timor amid its crisis.

The Secretariat needs to work together across its departments and with agencies to shape its presence in a country, including, where necessary, peace operations, according to context and unconstrained by templates or departmental possessiveness. Neither the UN mission (UNAMET) in East Timor nor the one (UNMIN) in Nepal conformed to any precedent for a peace operation.

Consideration of the just-released review by Secretary-General António Guterres on the future of all forms of peace operations needs to move decisively away from a bifurcation between peacekeeping operations and special political missions. It is overdue to fully embrace the concept of a spectrum of peace operations managed by one department with a single planning capacity and funded through a single assessment mechanism, as argued by the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) in 2015.

Is this another world, too distant from today to be worth looking back on? Today, we see hasty agreements imposed without adequate understanding of context, “mediators” with no commitment to norms, “ceasefires” in which killing is allowed to continue, putative stabilization forces based on no relevant peacekeeping experience, transitional administration planned with no real respect for national ownership and an incapacity to carry out the consolidation of peace.

If the current candidates for UN secretary-general and diplomats are serious about restoring the UN’s role in peace and security, they need to commit to much more than a promise that the secretary-general will play visiting firefighter.