Multidimensional peacebuilding - in operations like the ones in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor - has emerged as the most ambitious, complex, costly and risky task a changing United Nations has assumed after the end of the Cold War. The UN’s capacity, both at headquarters and in the field, to collect and integrate lessons learned is often seen as a crucial determinant for the success of such missions. At the same time, we know surprisingly little on the UN’s capacity for organizational learning on peacebuilding, and about learning in international organizations in general.

Project objectives

The main goal of the five-month pilot project was to develop a research framework for an in-depth investigation of the UN’s record on organizational learning. The project proceeded in three steps: First, a review of the relevant literature in the different disciplines (international relations, public administration, sociology of organizations). Second, a basic mapping of the UN’s institutional "infrastructure for learning". Third, an analysis of five peacebuilding missions from a learning perspective (UNMIBH in Bosnia and Herzegovina, UNAMSIL in Sierra Leone, UNTAET in East Timor, UNAMA in Afghanistan and UNAMI in Iraq). The framework developed in the pilot project informed a two-year study on organizational learning in the UN peacebuilding apparatus that started in February 2007.

Please see our project web site for more information on the project and our International Protectorates Program.