The term ‘stabilization’ came to the fore in conflict and post-conflict programming during the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The term gained importance in the Capstone Doctrine’s reference to three phases: stabilization, peace consolidation and long-term recovery and development. In the last two decades, the UN and other multilateral and bilateral entities have increasingly used stabilization as a tool in crises marked by severe political volatility and violence.

In the early days, practitioners mostly understood stabilization as military-led or “hot” stabilization, undertaken during a violent conflict to bring the fighting to a halt. More recent stabilization approaches, including UNDP’s, aim at rebuilding trust between communities and legitimate authorities in areas affected by conflict, restoring a sense of normalcy, enabling returns, preventing protracted displacement, breaking the reliance on protracted humanitarian cycles, and laying the foundations for recovery, peace and development.

UNDP’s job in conflict and post-conflict contexts is to support national and local Governments as they respond to the needs of communities who have experienced violence and the trauma of war by employing time-bound, localised, integrated, and civilian-led interventions to enhance security, rehabilitate social and productive infrastructure and provide income support to local populations.

UNDP’s stabilization programme in Iraq, widely recognised as highly effective in addressing the immediate and medium-term needs of the newly liberated areas from ISIS, provided the foundations for our approach to stabilization. Subsequent programmes in Ethiopia, Lebanon, Libya, Mozambique, and the Lake Chad and Liptako Gourma regions adopted and adapted Iraq’s stabilization model, aligning the approach with local political and security contexts.

In these complex environments, the most important lesson learned from UNDP’s stabilization programmes is that “business-as-usual” is not an option for implementing stabilization programmes. Stabilization interventions require speed and scale to restore the social contract between the state and communities. It requires a paradigm shift in business mentality in UNDP Country Offices focusing on increased flexibility and agility in implementing UNDP’s operational policies.

Given the political and high-risk nature of stabilization, the Resident Representative should directly lead this UNDP programme, guiding staff to deliver interventions at speed and scale with a sense of urgency - always ensuring credit goes to the legitimate authority to improve the trust and social contract between the Government and communities.

A close and fully transparent partnership with donor countries and the host Government is another sine-qua-non for stabilization programming.

UNDP staff and personnel who understand the importance of the required mindset shift and receive the Country Office Senior Management’s full support will successfully deliver stabilization programmes.

The Guidance Note’s design and content will accompany Country Office Senior Management and staff in this new and exciting programming approach. As you use the Guidance Note, please share your comments and views, which my team will use to regularly update the Guidance Note.

In closing, I want to emphasise the continuous evolution of UNDP’s stabilization thinking. In the past years, we have designed stabilization programmes mostly for insurgency contexts. However, other contexts may benefit from the stabilization approach too, such as countries dealing with criminal militias that control territory and countries targeted by hybrid warfare. As our thinking evolves, we will add content on these two contexts to this Stabilization Guidance Note.

STABILIZATION

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Q&A

Is Stabilization Always the Right Choice?