In Part I I have shown that pro-longed and intense trauma creates dysfunctionality in many forms, and that the impact of trauma during formative periods of brain development goes even deeper¹.

(Picture taken from: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/acestudy/about.html, retrieved June 27, 2018)

The longer a young child exposed to repeating trauma through forms of childhood abuse, the higher are both chances of, and the depth of, life-long badly damaging consequences. One very important reason for the unmitigated impact of trauma sits with that parents or caregivers either are the source of the child’s trauma (abuse of any form), or that they are not appropriately able to nurture a traumatized child.

(Picture taken from: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/acestudy/about.html, retrieved June 27, 2018)

Children who, for example, get victimized by sexual abuse through third persons, depend on that their caregivers are able to respond appropriately. If they don’t or can’t, life-long dysfunctions include severe depression, compulsive pain medication leading to addiction, and a general struggle with building healthy relationships. Health problems can be severe, leading to premature death, including through substance abuse, and suicide.

In Part III I am referencing studies that confirm this for children who survive abuse in countless forms happening in conflict and war. There is evidence for that social relationships and the existence of culture-specific coping strategies, can mitigate the impact of trauma. Healing can happen. But where there is an absence of these mitigating factors, because the parents are traumatized themselves, and because cultural mechanisms struggle or have broken down entirely, dysfunctionality becomes a feature of communities and even an entire society. The plight of caregivers deprives the traumatized children from healing.

How can we expect that large percentages of trauma survivors do not influence the functioning of communities and societies? It might be difficult to find studies that confirm the relationship between trauma-induced life-long and inter-generational dysfunctional behavior on the level of entire communities and the ability of communities and a society to move to lasting peace including through its ability to reconcile. But simple logic tells that this is the case: Reconciliation is, as I have said, about restoring inner harmony, integrating memory and behavioral impact of trauma into a healthy form of living. Dysfunctional individuals can not contribute to restoring a healing and healthy community, as the community is made from these individuals who need to heal in order to contribute their healthiness to the Whole. My personal experiences in this regard, stemming from living in and visiting so many communities support this. So goes the experience of every health worker, every humanitarian, every peacekeeper. We do collectively know that a country relapses into internal conflict easier than plunging into an internal all-out conflict without having suffered from precedents. We do know that vulnerable communities in a weakened society are subject to efforts of violent extremism and international terrorism to establish control by a reign of terror.

How can we neglect a fact that is so obvious?

• Is it because we have to mainstream the understanding of what trauma really does?
• Is it because we are simply overwhelmed and do not know an answer to the question what could be done?
• Is it, as I have shown, that we collectively fail to act appropriately on assisting complex systems to regain their balance?
• Is it that we still have to act more boldly on the UN Secretary General’s vision and intent to put conflict prevention front and center? Effective peacebuilding is conflict-prevention, and thus it can not be emphasized, in my view, enough how important it is to factor early peacebuilding into peace operations. After all, the United Nation’s “Capstone Doctrine²” from 2008 emphasizes exactly that. But I know of no comprehensive follow-on to the Capstone Doctrine. It explicitly sets a framework for peacekeeping, within a larger realm that encompasses conflict prevention and peacebuilding. The larger realm remains insufficiently addressed since 2008.

• Why is global policy not matching reality?

In the most recent comprehensive analysis of UN Peacekeeping Doctrine in book form³, “UN Peacekeeping Doctrine in a New Era: Adapting to Stabilisation, Protection and New Threats“, Chiyuki Aoi, Cedric de Coning, and John Karlsrud⁴ bring it to the point when they describe how mandates given to the most recent peacekeeping operations challenge the traditional UN peacekeeping principles. The authors argue that these missions operate without a peace agreement in place and that, as a result, the current focus is on projecting more force, including undertaking offensive operations at times, engaging in intelligence and using special weapons and tactics.

We have heard the UN Secretary General and his Undersecretaries constantly referring to that we deploy peacekeeping operations into environments where there is no peace to keep. In short, the focus which is absorbing almost all energy of policy- and decision makers is heavy on the military side. More or less the rest of all energy currently goes into reform efforts of the United Nations and UN peace operations. The above book makes the case that this development widens a gap between existing peacekeeping policy and practical developments on the ground. Anticipating that more of the same may come in Syria, Yemen, or elsewhere, this is of concern for the collective of twenty authors from all over the globe and with in-depth practical and academic perspective on peace operations of the UN.

Whilst my series here on trauma is not the place for a larger analysis of these developments, it can, however, be said that the development of policy how to effectively contribute to restoring peace and security runs breathtakingly behind the rapidly changing reality on the ground. This gap may contribute to challenges on advising political bodies, such as the Security Council, on what should be done, what needs to be done when being confronted with the heavy-handed conflicts of these days, and their consequences for communities and societies. Policy with no operational impact is as problematic as operational decisions based on outdated policy.

For example, I have repeatedly argued that we continue to miss the “golden hour” of early engagement through peacekeeping operations by not being provided with the necessary expertise to address the endemic consequences of emerging transnational crime influencing such peacekeeping processes negatively: “Let us get boots on the ground first” is a mantra that can often be heard. But the difficulties addressing root causes immediately makes it almost impossible to address emerging threats later.

If we engage with peacekeeping within a larger framework as we, I believe, have to, then we want to get it right. We want to see that the enormous effort, including the human tolls that we take, do effectively help getting communities and societies on a path to peace. It appears to me that those have a point who argue giving up the traditional division between peacekeeping and other forms of activities towards a unified term “peace operations”. The entire reform of the United Nations initiated by its current Secretary General is based on this.

In this series of articles I argue that the same is true for the impact of trauma on post-conflict development: We think reconciliation only later, we associate it with peace building. Like with emerging threats that include transnational organized crime, we appear to prioritize a select toolset which, though it is necessary at times, must be incomplete if it is not taking into account threats that can not be mitigated by military capacity. We postpone other action, or leave it to others, and it may be that we collectively fail to follow up.

Reconciliation empowers societies to chart their own way towards lasting peace. Whilst this is widely acknowledged, it would also appear that efforts of the assisting international community fostering this healing power have been futile. I have witnessed many discussions about how model processes, such as the South African path towards seeking truth and reconciliation, could be adopted for different post-conflict societies. But looking just at the very same country today, South Africa’s crisis of endemic corruption also demonstrates the relevance of a truly owned rule of law for a sustainable way forward. The relevance of security and rule of law for economic development, and vice versa, has become part of the core of contemporary multidimensional mandates of peace operations. What is missing is the recognition that reconciliation belongs to the critical needs from the outset on, too, and how to support it. Today, reconciliation is considered being part of a peacebuilding process, which may be emphasized later. The “paramedic approach” of peacekeeping operations focuses on protection of civilians and on political processes. Assistance to restoring security capacities is considered a secondary task which may require later action. Even more so, this is true for reconciliation. Parts of the process are recognized in what we call “transitional justice”, but even there we seem to fail seeing the relevance of deep trauma on individuals, communities, and the society as a whole.

The triangular relationship between providing security and order, applying criminal justice, and allowing meaningful penal management based on humanitarian principles and human rights is well known and often quoted as an example for the need for integrated thinking. However, the triangular relationship between governance, rule of law, and reconciliation is less strategized and even lesser operationalized.