FULL TITLE: The Policies of Mercy: UN Coordination in Afghanistan, Mozambique, and Rwanda

AUTHOR(S): Antonio Donini

PUBLISHER: Waston Institute

PLACE OF PUBLICATION: Providence RI

DATE OF PUBLICATION: 1996

NUMBER OF PAGES: 160 pp.

The study presents a typology involving a spectrum of approaches to coordination, ranging from coordination by command through coordination by consensus to coordination by default. "Command" is not at the moment a realistic possibility for the UN system, the monograph concludes, but the experience reviewed points toward the need for more clearly deputized UN coordinating authority, separated, on the one hand, from the UN's operational humanitarian organizations and, on the other, from its political and peacekeeping activities. The lesson of all three cases is "perhaps that more rather than less coordination is required" among humanitarian actors. (122)

Humanitarian principles, humanitarian space, human rights, warfare, genocide, peacekeeping, sovereignty, international military forces, coordination, institutional cultures, consolidated appeal process, funding, local institutions, civil society, bilateralism, relief-to-development continuum, reconstruction, quick impact projects, politicization, advocacy, professionalism; Afghanistan, Pakistan, Rwanda, Zaire, France, U.S.; UN, UN Security Council, ECOSOC, IASC, UNDPA, UNDPKO, DHA, UNDP, UNICEF, UNHCR, WFP, WHO, IBRD, UNOCA, UNOCHA, UNV, OAU, UNOMOZ, UNSCERO. UNOHAC, UNREO, Operation Turquoise, UNAMIR, NGOs, the Red Cross Movement.