Global Governance 20 (2014), 95–118

Hybrid Peace Operations:

Rationale and Challenges

Thierry Tardy

Hybridity is the new term for multidimensional, modular, and multiactor

peace operations. Hybrid peace operations bring together several institu-
tions that to an extent cooperate in a joint endeavor. This article aims at
unpacking the concept of hybridity by looking at its rationale and chal-
lenges. It first examines the typology of peace operations and analyzes the
meaning of hybridity. It then looks at why international organizations
have hybridized their conflict management policies and contends that fur-
ther integration is the way forward for legitimacy and efficacy reasons, de-
spite the difficulties encountered by existing hybrid missions. Finally, the
article looks at some of the challenges of an increasing integration of in-
stitutional actors within peace operations. While integration is a response
to the evolution of conflict management needs, it also carries risks rang-
ing from interinstitutional competition to issues of accountability and
ownership as well as impacts on the coherence of the global maintenance
of international peace and security. KEYWORDS: peace operations, hybridity,
cooperation, United Nations, African Union, European Union.

PEACE OPERATIONS HAVE EVOLVED OVER THE PAST TWO DECADES IN A WAY
that has fundamentally changed their structure. Not only are they multidi-
mensional in the sense that they imply a wide range of military and civilian
activities across the conflict management spectrum, but they also increasingly
bring together various institutions in parallel, support, or even joint peace-
keeping and peacebuilding programs. From Darfur to Kosovo, Somalia, and
Mali, international organizations have cooperated in peace operations on the
basis of their respective comparative advantages or agendas to the extent that
it is difficult today to imagine a single-institution response to fragile states’
instability.
Hybridity has appeared as the new term to depict these modular, multi-
actor operations. This concept has been used in two different, but related,
contexts in the peace operations arena over the past decade. First, hybridity
refers to the UN–African Union (AU) joint peace operation established in
Darfur in 2007–2008. More broadly, hybrid peace operations bring together
several institutions that to an extent cooperate in a joint endeavor, as in
Kosovo and Somalia. Second, the concept of hybrid peace has been intro-
duced to describe the kind of peace that is established in postconflict settings

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96 Hybrid Peace Operations

as a result of the interplay between external and local actors. It aims at rec-
onciling two visions of postconflict peacebuilding: one that sees peace as
being solely imposed by external actors and one that envisages it mainly as
a purely homegrown process.
This article deals with the former sense of hybridity; that is, the idea that
contemporary peace operations are evolving toward integration of their main
institutional stakeholders. I aim at unpacking the concept of hybridity by
looking at its rationale and challenges. What does hybridity mean in practice
and what distinguishes it from multidimensional peace operations? What
explains that international organizations have hybridized their conflict man-
agement policies and what purpose does hybridity serve? Furthermore, what
challenges are posed by the evolution toward hybrid operations? These are
the questions that are explored here.
The article first examines the typology of peace operations and ana-
lyzes the meaning of hybridity. Then it questions the rationale for the
process of hybridization and contends that further integration of peace oper-
ations is the way forward for legitimacy and efficacy reasons, despite the
difficulties encountered by existing hybrid missions. Finally, the article
looks at some of the challenges of an increasing integration of institutional
actors within peace operations. While integration is a response to the evo-
lution of conflict management needs, it also carries some risks ranging from
interinstitutional competition to issues of accountability and ownership as
well as impact on the overall coherence of the global maintenance of inter-
national peace and security.

Hybrid Operations: The New Typology of Peace Missions

Observers of peace operations have well captured their evolution toward mod-
ularity, multidimensionality, and integration of different peacekeeping actors.
In line with the literature on the regionalization of peace operations,1 several
studies in the mid-2000s noted the move toward some form of hybrid opera-
tions as a response to parallel evolving models of cooperation among conflict
management institutions. Bruce Jones presents hybrid operations as a “preva-
lent” phenomenon that deserves attention, but that are also sui generis by
nature and, therefore, difficult to categorize.2 While he acknowledges that the
phenomenon is not entirely new as “variants of hybrid operations” existed in
the 1990s, he also observed a steady evolution toward integration of peace-
keeping actors. Along the same lines, a Challenges Forum background paper
found in 2007 that “40 out of a total of 54 recent missions were operated in
some form of joint, coordinated, or sequenced operation by more than one
institution—what has been referred to as ‘hybrid’ operations.”3 The same year,
a Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) report noted that the African
Union/United Nations Hybrid operation in Darfur (UNAMID) was the first
mission to be “officially labeled as a hybrid operation,” although operations

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predating UNAMID had been characterized by their hybrid nature; for

instance, the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS II) with cooperation
between the AU, European Union (EU), NATO, and UN.4
These various documents offered elements of definition of hybridity, yet
no generic definition has emerged. In substance, hybrid peace operations are
operations that bring together two or more international actors that operate
simultaneously or sequentially and the activities of which imply a certain
degree of interinstitutional cooperation. They are hybrid in the sense that they
are not run by one single institution and, therefore, are not the exclusive
product of any actor involved. Rather, they are the result of the interaction
of at least two different conflict management policies or cultures, as much as
a hybrid species is the product of the interaction between two different breeds
or varieties. What distinguishes hybrid operations from traditional (nonhy-
brid) peace operations is the level of integration among the actors. Presum-
ably, it takes more than mere interaction to get a hybrid. In reality though, the
interplay between several institutions that cooperate at different levels
directly impacts the nature of the operation as it shapes to a degree decision-
making processes, financing procedures, command and control arrangements,
operational practices, and accountability and reporting mechanisms. With the
increasing prevalence of multiactor peace operations, hybrid has now entered
the peacekeeping lexicon as a generic term to reflect the evolution toward
both the plurality of actors and a certain level of integration among them.
As of 2013, there are many examples of hybrid peace operations. The
main ones are:

• Kosovo: NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR), EU Rule of Law Mission in

Kosovo (EULEX), and UN Organization for Security and Co-operation
in Europe (OSCE) presence;
• Darfur: African Union/United Nations Hybrid operation in Darfur
(UNAMID);
• Somalia: AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), with the support of the
UN—logistics capacity support package (UN Support Office for AMI-
SOM [UNSOA]) financed with the UN budget, and UN Political Office
for Somalia [UNPOS] and then UN Assistance Mission in Somalia
[UNSOM])—the EU (financial through the African Peace Facility and
training with the EU Training Mission [EUTM]5), and some neighbor-
ing countries (Ethiopia);
• Côte d’Ivoire: UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) with the sup-
port of the French-led Operation Licorne;
• Mali: UN Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) that took over
the African-led mission (composed mainly of ECOWAS [Economic
Community of West African States] contingents with the support of the
AU), operating in parallel with an EU training mission and the French
Operation Serval, which acts in part in support of MINUSMA.

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98 Hybrid Peace Operations

These definitions and examples should inform the establishment of

typologies of hybrid missions. The existing ones mix categories based on the
relationship among the main institutions with a functional approach that
draws on the various types of organizations’ activities (e.g., military/civilian,
peacekeeping/peacebuilding).6 For example, the Center on International
Cooperation in New York distinguishes between three types of multiactor
operations: sequential, parallel, and integrated.7 Sequential operations involve
several organizations that intervene at different stages of the international
response. Examples include the ECOWAS missions in West Africa that were
taken over by the UN in the 1990s and 2000s, NATO missions handed over
to the EU in Macedonia (2003) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (2004), the EU
mission taken over by the UN in Chad and Central African Republic (2008–
2009), and the African-led operation taken over by the UN operation in Mali
(2013). In parallel missions, several organizations operate simultaneously on
the same theater and deal with a particular aspect of the mandate. Such was
the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina (in the post–Dayton accords phase) and
in Kosovo (as of June 1999); in Somalia with the simultaneous involvement
of the AU, UN, and EU; and in Mali with the UN, EU, and French presence.
In many of these cases, some institutions come in support—in the military,
logistical, financial fields—of others. Finally, integrated operations are mis-
sions where two institutions “share command or where one organization sub-
ordinates its command to another.”8 The UN-AU operation in Darfur is the
best example of this model.
The functional approach looks at the issue of cooperation from a differ-
ent angle as it distinguishes between different types of contribution. Hybrid-
ity would then result from the interaction between the military component
provided by one institution and the civilian assets provided by another one
(as in Kosovo between NATO and the EU), or between a traditional peace-
keeping mission and its rapid reaction force (as in Côte d’Ivoire between
UNOCI and Operation Licorne and in Democratic Republic of Congo
between the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo [MONUSCO] and the Intervention Brigade), or in the
civilian sphere among various institutions fulfilling different tasks within the
same mission (as in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s when the EU,
OSCE, and UN were all implementing different aspects of the Dayton Peace
Agreement). The Somalia case, where different institutions contribute at var-
ious levels of support to the AMISOM, provides another example of the func-
tional categorization.
Although typologies are difficult to build, one common feature of most
hybrid operations is the legal authorization of the mission given by the UN
Security Council resolution. This is not per se an indispensable feature of
hybridity, yet it does characterize the great majority of them,9 which is the
sign of the attachment of most peacekeeping actors—be they states or inter-
national organizations—to the legal centrality of the Security Council. This is

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all the more notable as another feature of hybrid missions is a certain distrust
vis-à-vis the UN as a peacekeeping operator, which encouraged other actors
such as regional organizations to fill the gap and subsequently challenge the
UN preeminence in conflict management.
Interestingly enough, the term hybrid peace is also being used in the con-
text of peace operations to refer to the peace that is established as a result of
the activities of both external and internal actors. According to Roger Mac
Ginty, the type of peace that international operations are supposed to promote
is hybrid in the sense that it is a “composite of exogenous and indigenous
forces”; it is the result of the interplay of international (top-down) and local
(bottom-up) activities10 where, as Keith Krause puts it, “the goals and inten-
tions of external actors are bent and fused with the interests and power of
local actors into new forms of governance.”11 For Oliver Richmond, what he
calls a “liberal-local hybrid form of peace” should enable peace actors to
“bring back the local voices which are supposed to be a part of the social
contract upon which the liberal state is built.”12 In this article, I do not deal
with this aspect of hybridity, which looks at the interplay of conflict man-
agement actors from a different angle. Yet the two approaches are conceptu-
ally close and the use of the term hybrid in both cases reflects the same kind
of evolution; that is, the fact that engineering peace in fragile states implies
or results from a mix of policy responses from different actors. In other
words, hybridization takes place both horizontally within peace operations
(hybrid peace operations) and vertically between external actors and recipient
states and societies (hybrid peace). Ultimately, the peace that is established is
the outcome of these two processes of hybridization, an area that would
require further research but that goes beyond the remit of this article.

Rationale for the Hybridization Process

Why do international actors come together to create new species of peace
operations? What is the added value of hybrid operations? Is hybridization
the result of strategic thinking about how to best respond to crises or is it an
ad hoc reaction to crisis management needs? Three main reasons seem to
explain why international actors have hybridized their conflict management
responses. They can be summarized as follows: hybridity as burden sharing,
hybridity as strategy, and hybridity as flexibility and selectivity.

Hybridity as Burden Sharing

Multidimensional peace operations require a large scale of human, financial,
and operational capacities. Their purpose is to establish sustainable or positive
peace through a series of short- and long-term activities that range from secu-
rity to economic recovery and development, institution building, the promo-
tion of good governance and the rule of law, justice, and reconciliation.
International actors have developed important capacities and know-how over

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100 Hybrid Peace Operations

the past two decades in order to face these needs. Some of them, like the UN
and EU, are even mandated to provide the most holistic response possible,
with the aspiration to play a role at all stages of the conflict cycle (conflict pre-
vention, peacemaking, peacekeeping, postconflict peacebuilding) and with the
largest range of tools (e.g., military and civilian, security and development).
However, the nature of conflict management is such that no single actor
can pretend to be positioned or equipped to respond to all needs. As a conse-
quence, burden sharing among various peace operations actors has become
indispensable. As the 2009 UN report on peacebuilding noted, “Partnerships
and coordination among the main regional and international actors is essen-
tial since no single actor has the capacity to meet the needs in any of the pri-
ority areas of peacebuilding.”13 Burden sharing has been one driver of the
regionalization of security governance with the development of regional
organizations such as the EU and AU as conflict management actors.
Although theoretically, burden sharing does not necessarily imply a process
of hybridization; in practice, it has meant the development of more or less
institutionalized partnerships among international organizations that have
found themselves increasingly involved simultaneously in peace operations.14
Institutions develop capacities and comparative advantages that are
sought by others and that may induce cooperation. Through cooperation, inter-
national organizations have been able to get access to resources, information,
or legitimacy that they were short of.15 By making available resources that
would otherwise be missing, or by creating new institutional structures, coop-
eration among these institutions alters the nature of peace operations. De facto,
they are no longer single-actor endeavors, but ones that bring together a vari-
ety of players that in the end contribute to their hybridization.
A quick look at operations in the Balkans and Africa shows how coop-
eration has developed partly on the basis of comparative advantages and the
respective mandates and capabilities of the actors in presence. In most cases,
the UN is part of the hybridization since it provides an overarching legiti-
macy to the operations together with a long-term commitment and a genuine
know-how on a wide range of peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities. In
the postconflict phases in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, burden shar-
ing among the UN, NATO, the OSCE, and the EU has given birth to hybrid
forms of conflict management where the respective capacities and institu-
tional cultures of the organizations have shaped the nature of the response. In
Africa, the EU has also been able to provide some robust military capacity
in support of the UN (Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003 and 2006,
Chad and Central African Republic in 2008–2009) and plays a key role—
albeit still limited in scope—in the civilian sphere (e.g., training, security sec-
tor reform, elections). Most importantly, it is one of the largest funders of
peace operations, most notably of the AU’s as well as subregional organiza-
tions’ (Economic Community of Central African States [ECCAS] and

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ECOWAS) operations.16 The AU is more on the receiving end. However, the

Darfur case also showed how the AU can bring legitimacy to a UN-only
operation that was not accepted by the host state. With the UN-AU hybrid
operation coming as a response to the Sudanese president’s opposition to the
UN mission, the political burden was shared by the UN and the AU that both
brought something to the table to make the operation possible. Furthermore,
the AU has demonstrated in Burundi, Darfur, and Somalia a propensity to
deploy troops in nonpermissive environments that the UN does not necessar-
ily display. Finally, NATO has developed robust peacekeeping capacities over
the past two decades, which led it to contribute to stabilization efforts in areas
such as the Balkans (together with the UN, EU, and OSCE), Afghanistan
(together with the UN and EU), and Africa (with the provision of logistical
support to the AU in Darfur, for example). For these organizations, hybridity
is partly a response to a credibility deficit, financial, or capability gaps at a
time when all institutions face such shortages.17 More precisely, peace actors
enter into more or less institutionalized partnerships to address a material or
legitimacy deficit, which in turn creates hybridity.

Hybridity as Strategy
Beyond the necessity to share the burden of security governance, hybridity
brings a strategic dimension to conflict management that traditional peace
operations do not necessarily carry. In many ways, hybridity is a tool of the
holistic or comprehensive approach that is supposed to provide both effec-
tiveness and coherence to conflict management policies. It is by bringing
together several actors and ensuring their coordination that these policies can
get to the strategic level. The 2011 UN Secretary-General’s report on UN-AU
cooperation noted that “the Security Council has enhanced collaboration with
[the AU Peace and Security Council], with a view to ensuring rapid and
appropriate responses to emerging situations and developing effective strate-
gies for conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding
on the continent.”18 In response, the 2012 AU report on the UN-AU partner-
ship was titled “Towards Greater Strategic and Political Coherence.”19 The
same imperative imposes itself on the EU and NATO, whose efforts to define
a comprehensive approach stem from the need to think and act strategically
with actors that are simultaneously operating in the same theaters.20 The 2010
NATO Strategic Concept stressed the desire of the alliance “to engage
actively with other international actors before, during and after crises to
encourage collaborative analysis, planning and conduct of activities on the
ground, in order to maximize coherence and effectiveness of the overall inter-
national effort.”21 The UN effort to integrate its peacekeeping missions with
other actors (UN country team, UN agencies) and the EU will to bring
together its economic and development arm and its more security-focused
activities fall within the same logic of maximizing effectiveness.

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102 Hybrid Peace Operations

In any given situation, the presence of only one institution may prove
insufficient to address the diversity and complexity of strategic issues that are
posed. Any strategic vision combining all aspects—for example, political,
economic, security—of conflict management policies would suffer as a con-
sequence.
Through hybrid responses international actors diversify the sources of
strategic input, which must theoretically facilitate the design of comprehen-
sive and adapted crisis management policies. Beyond the burden-sharing
dimension is also the idea that a collective and well-coordinated effort partly
drives coherence and impact. If well designed, hybridity is thus a framework
that must inform and reflect strategy. Whether it actually does, and to what
extent, is another issue (see below), but at least it should be recognized that
hybridity can serve strategy in a way that nonhybrid operations cannot.
Another area where hybridity may enhance the coherence of multilateral
conflict management policies is that of exit strategies. Richard Caplan defines
“exit strategy” as a “transitional plan for the disengagement and ultimate
withdrawal of external parties from a state or territory.”22 In many instances
though, transitions have taken the form of operations being transferred from
one organization to another. These successor peace operations were experi-
mented in the following cases:

• three ECOWAS operations in Sierra Leone (handover in 1999), Liberia

(2003), and Côte d’Ivoire (2004) handed over to the UN;
• AU missions in Burundi (2004) and Darfur (2008) handed over to the
UN (jointly with the AU in the Darfur case);
• Africa-led mission in Mali handed over to the UN;
• NATO missions in Macedonia (2003) and Bosnia and Herzegovina
(2004) handed over to the EU;
• EU missions in Democratic Republic of Congo (2003) and Chad and
Central African Republic (2009) handed over to the UN;
• UN peacekeeping missions handed over to a peacebuilding office (as
was the case in Sierra Leone in 2005 and in Burundi in 2006).

Although it has not happened yet, AMISOM in Somalia was also

designed for an initial stabilization phase that would then lead to the deploy-
ment of a UN mission.23 These successions may be necessary because of the
withdrawal of an institution that terminates its commitment to a given mis-
sion yet needs to be replaced, but they can also be guided by the evolution
in the assets required of a particular mission (e.g., from a peacekeeping force
to a postconflict peacebuilding office or from a robust posture to a less robust
one). In these cases, withdrawal is made possible by the ability and willing-
ness of another institution to take over. As examples, in Democratic Republic
of Congo in 2003 and Chad in 2009, the UN operations had become part of

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the EU exit strategy and it would have been difficult for the EU to pull out
had the UN not been in a position to take over. In the same vein, the UN is
in principle part of the AU exit strategy, as was clearly established in the
cases of Burundi, Darfur, and Somalia as well as in Mali.24 Such transition
is even smoother when some of the leaving units can be rehatted in the
takeover force.
Although in those cases the level of interaction between the two organi-
zations is not as deep as in parallel missions, sequential operations provide a
specific form of hybridity. Interestingly enough, in Darfur in 2007–2008,
hybridity was illustrated at two different levels: first through the succession
of the AMIS operation and the handover to the UN-AU mission; and, second,
with the hybrid nature of this very operation. Most importantly, it was the
hybridity of the latter (with the AU attached to the UN) that enabled the suc-
cession of the former. Hybridity through support operations also facilitates
mission successions, when the institution that is in support then takes over, as
happened in West Africa with the UN being in support of ECOWAS before
it took over (although, in this particular case, the UN faced serious challenges
as it took over from an organization whose peacekeeping standards were dif-
ferent from the UN’s25). In the same vein, the drawdown of an operation may
require the deployment by another organization of some rapid reaction capac-
ity that temporarily comes in support of the withdrawal. Finally, the operation
that comes first is part of the entry strategy of the organization that will then
take over insofar as it is supposed to prepare the ground for the successor
operation. For the EU, the establishment of its police mission (EU Police
Mission) in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2003 was facilitated by the presence
of the UN police mission (International Police Task Force) that ensured a
seamless transition with the EU.

Hybridity as Flexibility and Selectivity

A third element that explains the trend toward hybridity is the flexibility that
it offers. In a way, hybrid missions are Meccano constructions composed of
blocks coming from different institutions or states. For any of these actors, it
is theoretically possible to think of its participation in a broader conflict man-
agement policy through one component that would plug into an existing
framework. For example, the EU contributes to the financing of AMISOM
and, in parallel, has deployed three operations around Somalia; the UN also
contributes to the financing of AMISOM through the logistical package; and,
in the Balkans, various institutions have been involved in conflict manage-
ment at different levels depending on the period and type of needs.
Partnerships are constrained in many ways by legal, political, or opera-
tional issues, yet they aim at allowing the establishment of operations that
would not be possible without interinstitutional cooperation. In other words,
hybridization is also what makes multidimensional operations possible (if

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operations could be only nonhybrid, there are many activities that simply
could not take place). In Darfur, it is the flexibility offered by hybridization
that allowed UNAMID to see light. The Secretary-General’s report on UN-
AU cooperation noted that “the United Nations light and heavy support pack-
ages for AMIS and the hybrid operation (UNAMID) were the only options
available for UN intervention with host country consent.”26 In the same vein,
the feasibility of operations like the UN Mission in the Central African
Republic and Chad (MINURCAT II), UNOCI in Côte d’Ivoire, and
MINUSMA in Mali would have been very different in the absence of the EU
operation in the case of Chad, Operation Licorne in the case of Côte d’Ivoire,
and Operation Serval in the case of Mali. In a different context, institutional
flexibility has been illustrated in Mali with the UN operation, MINUSMA,
coming partly as a response to the operational and financial difficulties
encountered by the African organizations.
In the meantime, the move toward hybridization reflects the selectivity that
characterizes peace operations actors’ policies when it comes to deciding where
to intervene and how. Over the past two decades, the conflict management
environment and states’ policies have evolved in a way conducive to hybridiza-
tion. More specifically, Western states’ reluctance to commit troops to UN oper-
ations and a parallel distrust in the UN as an operational peacekeeping actor
have led them to develop other tools of conflict management such as NATO,
the EU, and coalitions of states.27 For those states, hybridization has provided
a response to the necessity to participate in conflict management—most
notably in Africa. In Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003 and 2006, the pos-
sibility to deploy EU operations as an alternative to a direct contribution to the
existing UN Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(MONUC) was welcomed by European states. Such an option was even what
made their involvement politically and technically acceptable. Similarly,
although the United Kingdom was willing to contribute to the stabilization
efforts in Sierra Leone (in 2000)28 and France for Côte d’Ivoire (as of 2002)29
and Mali (as of 2013), these countries preferred a national commitment rather
than a presence in the UN mission, thus establishing a form of hybrid mission
better suited to their institutional requirements. Indeed, the scenario where a
rapid reaction force comes in support of a UN operation but is operationally
distinct is a model that has received attention in some Western capitals.
Through operations that can be nationally led, NATO-led, or EU-led, or run by
coalitions, states can simultaneously contribute to the stabilization of a place to
an extent under their own conditions while supporting broader multilateral
frameworks. Here, the challenge is to strike a balance between keeping some
control over the use of national assets and making sure that hybridity does not
lead to the dilution of ownership (see below).
In a similar way, selectivity is illustrated by African states that are reluc-
tant to participate in AU missions because of the financial arrangements and

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risks implied, but less so in the UN-AU operation in Darfur that conforms to
UN rules. This was exemplified by the shift from the AU-led AMIS in Darfur
to the UN-AU hybrid mission, in which African states proved to be more
eager to contribute.30 Mali is revealing of a form of institutional shopping
that sometimes takes place with states pushing for one institution (or frame-
work) or the other depending on the respective comparative advantages of the
various options, the types of mandate, and the states’ degree of commitment.
Finally, in the Somalia case, a contribution to AMISOM through UN
support packages and EU parallel missions has also been an answer to the
call for a UN takeover. The AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) has, since
the deployment of AMISOM, appealed for a transition to a UN operation.
However, both the Secretary-General and the Security Council have resisted
this option, mainly because of the absence in Somalia of the preconditions for
the deployment of a UN operation (a peace to keep and a fair chance to
implement a mandate in a relatively secure environment).31 Some Security
Council resolutions mentioned the “willingness [of the Council] to consider,
at an appropriate time, a peacekeeping operation to take over from AMISOM,
subject to progress in the political process and improvement in the security
situation on the ground”32 and asked for some contingency planning for such
an operation. The Security Council even expressed “its intent to establish a
UN peacekeeping operation in Somalia as a follow-on force to AMISOM.”33
The idea of an “international stabilization force” in lieu of a UN operation
was also discussed, to no avail.34 In the end, the UN opted for logistical,
political, and technical support for AMISOM, which marked the limits of
what the UN and its member states were ready to do in Somalia. In many
ways, the EU policy that takes the form of financial support through the
African Peace Facility (European Development Fund) and missions falling
within the framework of the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP)
(with the EU training mission, the maritime capacity-building mission, and
the antipiracy mission) reflects the same logic. In both cases, hybridity is a
way to respond to the pressure to do something while limiting the risks, or at
least intervening on one’s own terms.
What this shows is that hybridity is also the result of a policy of inter-
vention à la carte. As far as Western states are concerned, it mirrors their
positioning and allows them to pick and choose at a time when they are reluc-
tant to commit to the UN. In other words, hybridity reveals divergences in
conceptions of what peace operations are about as well as in institutional
preferences. It follows that it can be seen as a form of renewed engagement
of (Western) conflict management actors as much as the sign of their disen-
gagement, especially when one looks at the African continent. This also
means that the above-described burden sharing does not necessarily mean
that the burden is being shared on the basis of comparative advantages of the
institutions involved. Recent examples in Darfur and Somalia, and older ones

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in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Liberia have shown that the “highest risks
and costs of peace operations are [sometimes] left to actors with the fewest
resources to manage them.”35 This is especially the case with non-UN oper-
ations carried out by weak institutions in places where no other conflict man-
agement actor is willing to go. In the long run, such a trend would undermine
both the idea of institutional burden sharing and that of the UN responsibility
for the maintenance of international peace and security.36
In many cases, these three sets of rationales are present simultaneously.
Furthermore, hybridity as burden sharing or selectivity is empirically evi-
denced while hybridity as strategy is more of an aspiration. That being said,
the above-described evolution toward hybridity has by and large been more
ad hoc than strategic. It has mirrored a great amount of caution on the part
of security actors rather than their will to embrace conflict management in a
comprehensive manner and with a needs-driven approach. Also, the question
is raised as to whether a strategic approach is ever possible if selectivity pre-
vails and, therefore, whether the various rationales presented in this article
are indeed mutually compatible.

Challenges to the Hybridization Process

If hybridity is the new form of peace operations, then one must look into the
type of challenges that it poses to conflict management policies. In this sec-
tion, I examine three sets of challenges. First, I look at the potential for and
obstacles to the institutionalization of partnerships. Second, I address the
extent to which the political agendas of states and institutions shape hybrid
operations. Finally, I question the impact that hybridity may have on the
coherence of peace operations.

How Much Can Hybrid Operations Be Institutionalized?

The debate on the degree of institutionalization of partnerships or hybrid
forms of conflict management reveals both a relatively high degree of for-
malized rapprochement among the main institutions and the limits of such a
process. To an extent, institutionalization of hybridity has indeed taken place.
Looking at the three levels of interinstitutional relationship between the UN,
EU, and AU (UN-EU, UN-AU, and EU-AU), a lot has been achieved over
the past decade with, among others, the following advances:37

• adoption of joint declarations on conflict management: UN-EU Joint

Declarations in 2003 and 2007, UN-AU Joint Declaration (“Ten-Year
Capacity Building Programme for the AU”) in 2006, and Joint EU-
Africa Strategy in 2007;
• creation of interinstitutional steering committees that meet regularly to
review present and future activities: UN-EU Steering Committee cre-
ated in 2003, UN-AU Joint Task Force on peace and security created in

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2010, and Joint Africa-EU Expert Groups and Joint Task Force created
in 2007;
• desk-to-desk dialogue;
• establishment of liaisons offices: UN office to the AU (UNOAU) in
Addis Ababa since 2010, EU office to the AU since 2004 (changed to
EU delegation in 2010), UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations
(UNDPKO) office to the EU in Brussels since 2011; EU office to the
UN in New York since 1992, AU representation to the UN;
• regular meetings at different levels, including those of decisionmaking
bodies: meetings between members of the UN Security Council and the
AU Peace and Security Council since 2007 joint consultative meetings
between the EU Peace and Security Committee and AU Peace and
Security Council, regular senior-level political dialogue between the
UN Secretariat and the EU External Action Service;
• creation by the UN and the EU of ad hoc support mechanisms (e.g.,
logistical, planning, financial) to the AU;
• cases of practical cooperation in peace operations at different levels
(logistics, planning, information, and finance in the Balkans, Demo-
cratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Darfur, Somalia, and Mali), with
the establishment in some of these cases of joint planning mechanisms
or joint assessment missions.

This institutionalization reflects the progress made and it also establishes

the framework for further hybrid operations. In the meantime, as mentioned
before, one key characteristic of hybrid operations is their flexibility and ad
hoc nature. They may become prominent as tools of conflict management, yet
in most cases they are responses to specific circumstances. According to a
report of the UN Secretary-General, “While the United Nations has under-
taken various types of peacekeeping partnerships with the African Union and
its sub-regional organizations, the form of this partnership has always come
as a result of the specific political and security circumstances of a given con-
flict.”38 Indeed, although hybridity should induce more strategic coherence,
hybridization has developed on a reactive mode rather than in a strategic
manner. Hence, the difficulty to draw typologies or identify templates for
hybrid operations. Overall, the emerging system remains very much ad hoc
and deregulated.
One ensuing challenge is the balance to strike between institutionaliza-
tion and flexibility. Partnerships need to be further institutionalized to mini-
mize the effect of improvisation or institutional redundancy, yet flexibility is
seen as an asset, particularly by institutions that are on the supply side. Inter-
estingly enough, it is in most cases the dominated organization (see below on
the dominant-dominated relationship) that tends to favor institutionalization
while the dominant one opts for a more ad hoc response. This is clear
between the AU and UN on the issue of finance where the AU pushes for a

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108 Hybrid Peace Operations

more predictable mechanism and the financing of UN-authorized, but AU-led

peace operations, by UN assessed contributions while the UN resists any sys-
tematic financial commitment and instead advocates a case-by-case
approach.39 In the same vein, the UN tends to push for some degree of com-
mitment by the EU on certain strategic enablers that the EU resists. If
progress is possible on this front, it is unlikely that support in the field of
finance, rapid reaction capacity, or intelligence can ever be guaranteed in
principle.
Furthermore, competition dynamics that inherently characterize interin-
stitutional relations is an important impediment to progress toward further
integration. Institutions are eager to preserve their autonomy and ensure their
visibility as security actors. It follows that, while burden sharing and hybrid
operations are presented as responses to the multiplicity of needs and com-
plexity of conflict management, the development of multiactor operations
may also expose these institutions to the logic of power politics and market
conquest at a time when all security actors struggle to assert their relevance
and demonstrate their impact.
Partnerships are a lot about hierarchical and asymmetrical relations
between institutions that have different capacities, institutional weight, and
political clout. Alan Henrikson points to the issues of primacy, rank, and
ascendancy of one institution vis-à-vis the other,40 which may lead to a prin-
cipal-agent or dominant-dominated relationship with one institution in a posi-
tion of supply and the other in a position of demand. Examples are many,
especially in the African context with organizations that are confronted with
a serious capacity deficit. The EU-AU relation has often been presented as a
“donor-recipient relationship”41 where capacity building prevails over any
kind of reciprocal exchange. Similarly, Timothy Murithi describes the inter-
action between the UN and the AU as vacillating “between paternalism and
partnership.”42 While “partnership” is defined as a “mutually enriching rela-
tionship based on respect and collaboration established through dialogue,”
“paternalism” is characterized as a “top-down unidirectional relationship
where one party establishes the framework and issues strictures for the devel-
opment of a second party.”43 This finds an illustration in the AU Peace and
Security Council’s frustration about the lack of responsiveness of the UN
Security Council on several requests in relation to the respective roles of the
two organizations in conflict management in Africa.44 For example, while the
AU is asking for a broader interpretation of Chapter VIII (on “Regional
Arrangements”) of the UN Charter (see below), the UN Security Council has
been anxious to reaffirm its primacy as the organ in charge of the mainte-
nance of international peace and security and is therefore reluctant to defer to
the PSC on African security-related issues.
The UN-EU partnership is similarly characterized by the asymmetry and
diffuse reciprocity between two institutions that have different resources or

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political leverage to draw on, thus making the institutionalization of their

relationship difficult. Since the early 2000s when the partnership started to be
elaborated, the EU has tended to set the agenda and define the terms of the
UN-EU cooperation, which still reflects a divide between what the UN wants
and what the EU is willing to offer.45 In the meantime, the UN Security
Council’s insistence on its centrality is difficult to reconcile with the EU’s
autonomy of decision and action. In the end, while the UN and EU are often
presented as “natural partners”46 because of the alleged convergence of their
activities and methods, an increased role for the EU in conflict management
may also take place at the expense of the UN with the idea that regional and
global multilateralism are not necessarily mutually reinforcing.

Political Divergences
This leads to the issue of political divergences among institutions. Hybridity
implies coordination of organizations at different levels of their activities. But
it also brings together actors whose positions, constraints, and strategic
visions are inevitably different. In the best case, such differences are com-
plementary and enhance the policy response. In other cases though, organi-
zations have diverged on their respective strategic analysis of a given
situation and consequently on how to handle it, thus undermining the hybrid
nature of the operation. These political divergences may emanate from the
organizations’ secretariats or political decisionmaking bodies—they have
been observed in many instances of hybrid operations, from the UN-EU part-
nership in Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003 and Chad in 2008–2009
to the UN-AU relationship in Darfur, Somalia, and Mali, or more broadly on
the very meaning of partnership.
Political divergences may mean different risk assessment or strategic pri-
orities, and therefore may have an impact on the mandate of the operation, its
format, or area of deployment as well as on the nature of guidance provided.
According to a report of the UN Secretary-General, in Sudan “the Security
Council and the Peace and Security Council have not always had the same
position with respect to the situation, which has resulted in the fact that the
Secretariat and the Commission can provide . . . two sets of strategic guid-
ance as to implementation of the mission’s mandate.”47 The AU makes simi-
lar observations when stating that, “while consultations [between the UN and
the AU] represent a significant step in the right direction, they are yet to
translate into a common understanding of the foundation of the cooperation
between these two organs.”48 Indeed divergences on Darfur,49 on Somalia
and the prospect of a UN takeover of AMISOM, on the financing of AU oper-
ations, and on the interpretation of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, let alone
the International Criminal Court and the Libya issue, have been prominent.
As far as the AU prerogatives are concerned, calls have been made for a
“flexible and creative interpretation of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter.”50

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The AU PSC contends that, “as the [AU and the UN] continue to work
together to deepen their partnership, it is important, in light of the fact that
the African continent dominates the agenda of the UNSC [UN Security Coun-
cil], that the latter should give due consideration to the decisions of the AU
and its PSC in arriving at its own decisions.”51 While the AU PSC recognizes
that “the UNSC cannot be expected to be bound by the decisions of the PSC
on matters pertaining to Africa,” it also points out that “the AU nonetheless is
of the view that its requests should, at a minimum, be duly considered by the
UNSC,” adding that “this is crucial given its proximity and familiarity with
conflict dynamics in its member states.”52 In return, the UN Security Council
has stressed that “common and coordinated efforts undertaken by the Secu-
rity Council and the African Union Peace and Security Council in matters of
peace and security, should be based on their respective authorities, compe-
tencies and capacities”53 in an unambiguous reassertion of its primary respon-
sibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Such a
position also explains why it is the member states of the Security Council
rather than the Security Council itself that meets with the PSC twice a year.
Back in the 1990s, the same debate opposed the UN and ECOWAS, at a time
when the UN was running observer missions in parallel with ECOWAS oper-
ations in Liberia and Sierra Leone.54 The Somalia case, and to a certain
degree the Mali case, also showed significant differences in the UN and AU
respective conceptions of peace operations—peacekeeping versus peace
enforcement—which further complicates interinstitutional cooperation.55 In
Mali, the tension was clearly expressed by the AU PSC right after the adop-
tion of UN Security Council Resolution 2100 (2013) establishing MINUSMA
and therefore de facto dismissing the AU and its wish to have its own mission
financed by the UN assessed budget. In its communiqué issued on 25 April
2013, the PSC noted “with concern” that “Africa [had] not [been] appropri-
ately consulted in the drafting and the consultation process that led to the
adoption of the resolution authorizing MINUSMA,” and that the resolution
did not “take into account the concerns formally expressed by the AU and
ECOWAS.”56 The PSC further stressed that “this situation [was] not in con-
sonance with the spirit of partnership that the AU and the UN have been
striving to promote for many years, on the basis of the provision of Chapter
VIII of the UN Charter.”57
These divergences also characterize EU-AU relations, with institutions
that do not necessarily share the “same understanding of concepts of state
sovereignty [or] humanitarian interventionism.”58 Similarly, the UN-EU rela-
tionship has revealed discrepancies, including: those on the role of the EU
force in Chad and Central African Republic in 2008–2009 in relation to MIN-
URCAT I (where the EU operation was initially presented as a protection
force for the UN component59); those in the Kosovo and Georgia cases with

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divergences at the highest political level (Security Council); and, more

broadly, those on how much can be expected from the EU in supporting UN-
led operations. Likewise, the UN and NATO have often diverged both in
Kosovo and Afghanistan on how strategic priorities—particularly insofar as
coercive action was concerned—could be harmonized. In a different context,
EU-NATO relations are undermined by political divergences at the decision-
making level on how to best share the burden and through what mechanisms.
Although twenty-two states are members of both organizations, disagree-
ments on a series of questions (including Cyprus and the degree of duplica-
tion of capacity that is acceptable) hamper political dialogue on broad
security issues.
These divergences have to do with the institutions’ agendas and mandates,
but they also echo the type of above-described hierarchical relations and
power politics games. Institutions have more or less political clout and they
position themselves accordingly. This was illustrated in both Libya and Côte
d’Ivoire where the UN Security Council sided with the Arab League and
ECOWAS respectively, in both cases against the AU, when making decisions
on coercive policy options. In the same vein, Mali has provided a telling
example of the type of game that takes place in multiactor crisis management.
In response to the political crisis, secession of the northern part of the country,
and threat constituted by various armed groups, the role of the institutions
involved—ECOWAS, the AU, the EU, and the UN—has been determined by
their respective operational capabilities as much as by their political weight
and ability (or will) to impose themselves in the overall crisis management
policy. More specifically, the shift from an ECOWAS to an AU and eventually
a UN operation—while the EU role was confined to training of the Malian
army—has to a large degree mirrored institutions’ tactics and relative power.
In this game France, as a prominent political and military actor in the
region and as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has been able
to significantly shape the hybrid nature of the crisis response. Whether the
quest for coherence and long-term impact of the designed instruments has
prevailed over short-term considerations is not obvious at this stage.
In this context, while harmonization among various institutions’
approaches is to be sought in hybrid operations—notably through political
dialogue at the highest level, but also through the various steering committees
or joint task forces—a shared long-term strategy is likely to remain difficult
to achieve.60

Hybridity and the Overall Political Coherence

Finally, in this article I have presented hybridity largely as a response to the
evolving needs of conflict management. Since no institution can provide on
its own all the necessary capabilities of multidimensional peace operations,

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conflict situations require a multiactor, coordinated, and therefore hybrid

response. While hybridity indeed responds to some of the challenges posed
by conflict management, it is not yet clear how much it brings political coher-
ence to the international response.
There is first the issue of whether hybridity produces coherence in itself.
Interinstitutional coordination is often presented as the solution to overlap-
ping activities or to the lack of effectiveness of conflict management.61 In
reality though, as Roland Paris puts it, coordination understood as an admin-
istrative and procedural response is of little help when “statebuilding agen-
cies pursue conflicting or incompatible strategies.”62 Furthermore, hybridity
has to a large extent been just a new term for “overlapping forms of interna-
tional engagement,” and the mere rephrasing exercise does not solve “inher-
ent problems of incoherency and contradictory objectives.”63 As Sarjoh Bah
and Bruce Jones posit, hybridity does not lead to the creation of a “common
political framework for action.”64 It may set the conditions for this, but the
overall coherence of the peace operation still needs to be built. In this debate,
the UNAMID case does not play in favor of hybridity. Most analyses, includ-
ing on the UN side, are critical about the UN-AU partnership in Darfur.65 The
AU view differs in the sense that it sees the difficulties encountered by
UNAMID more as being inherent to the complex context and mandate of the
mission than to its hybrid nature.66 The Peace and Security Council even sees
“the hybrid nature of UNAMID and its African character” as “key to the suc-
cess of the Mission.”67 Nonetheless, hybridizing the operation has created
more administrative and political inertia than it has brought any sort of coher-
ence. A related issue is that of the added value of hybridity for the organiza-
tions that benefit from the partnership more than they contribute. For them,
while hybridity means the provision of capacities that would otherwise be
missing, long-term coherence makes it essential that capacity building pre-
vails over mere capacity substitution.
Second, hybridity poses the problem of the mission’s accountability and
ownership. Inevitably, an operation’s accountability and ownership are all the
more difficult to identify as they fall within several institutional frameworks.
A diluted accountability is furthermore likely to negatively impact the effi-
ciency of the operation, as the various actors involved might not feel fully in
charge. Politically, one can question the kind of ownership that the AU has on
UNAMID or AMISOM, given the structural and financial features of these
missions. But reciprocally, although the Darfur hybrid mission has largely
remained a UN endeavor, the UN de facto relinquished some of its control
over the operation (e.g., with the appointment of a joint UN-AU head of mis-
sion and the fact that decisions are theoretically taken jointly). Similarly,
while the EU covers the allowances of AMISOM troops through its African
Peace Facility, the political oversight that it exerts on the AU mission remains
limited compared with its financial commitment.

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By nature, hybridity creates—or merely reflects—institutional depend-

ency that is difficult to square with the autonomy of organizations. This is of
strategic importance for the AU, which aspires to be a fully fledged security
actor on the African continent and yet is not able to autonomously run its own
peace operations. But ownership is equally important for the EU, which is
adamant that it should have full political control over its own units and there-
fore poses the limits of the modular approach (i.e., the provision of an EU
component to a UN operation) as defined in the EU Plan of Action to
enhance EU support to UN peacekeeping.68 In the meantime, a lack of own-
ership may also suit institutions that want to contribute to an operation with-
out being politically in charge and feel more comfortable in a kind of
hands-off position, leading back to the issue of selectivity. Paradoxically,
given the centrality of their commitment, there is a sense of declined owner-
ship in the UN and EU support of AMISOM.
As said before, most operations are UN mandated, yet the type of report-
ing mechanism that is established for UN-mandated operations is so uncon-
straining that ownership remains with the implementing organization rather
than with the UN.
Overall, the coherence question leads back to the strategy rationale in the
sense that coherence is linked to the existence of a strategy more than hybrid-
ity which, as such, is unlikely to produce coherence or increase impact.

Conclusion
Hybrid operations are here to stay. Not only do they represent an innovative
way to do conflict management based on comparative advantages of security
institutions, but they are also responses to some of these institutions’ con-
cerns and priorities. More specifically, hybrid operations allow institutions
that are short of some key capabilities to benefit from the support of others
while Western actors may see in hybridity a way to contribute to conflict
management without being on the forefront, particularly in Africa.
How hybrid operations will further develop is unclear, however. For
legal as well as legitimacy reasons, operations established or at least endorsed
by the UN Security Council are likely to remain the rule. The kinds of hybrid
structure that can be put in place under that umbrella are very open and sce-
narios can evolve in many directions in the coming years. Most likely, as
illustrated in Mali in 2012–2013, such evolutions will be event driven rather
than the result of any effort to institutionalize partnerships and define sce-
narios for hybrid operations.
Looking at future scenarios, Richard Gowan and Jake Sherman mention
the following: “shared mission support frameworks,” where organizations
would share logistics; “specialized military support,” where some organiza-
tions would contribute specialized military missions in support of others;

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“niche civilian support,” where institutions could borrow civilian specialists

from other actors; and “common planning frameworks,” where organizations
would conduct joint planning in order to define a “common strategy for
action.”69 Any of these scenarios would bring hybridity forward. Yet these
evolutions could also reinforce a divide between the institutions that would
provide troops and whose member states would therefore bear the associated
risks and the institutions that would contribute through more specialized
assets that could be financially costly but politically easier to handle. In the
long run, the effectiveness and legitimacy of peace operations would not nec-
essarily benefit from this kind of hybridity. Herein lies one major risk of
hybridity: rather than drawing on the comparative advantages of various
peacekeeping actors to maximize coherence and impact, hybridity would
merely reflect a new form of Northern domination by which Northern states
and institutions would by and large dictate the rules of the crisis management
game to the rest of the world while subcontracting a large chunk of it to states
and institutions of the Global South.

Notes
Thierry Tardy is senior analyst at the European Union Institute for Security Studies.
He has researched and published extensively on military and civilian crisis manage-
ment with a particular focus on the United Nations and the European Union, interin-
stitutional cooperation in security governance, security regionalism, and the EU
Common Security and Defence Policy. He is currently coediting the Oxford Hand-
book on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (with J. Koops, N. MacQueen, and
P. D. Williams). He is a member of the editorial board of International Peacekeep-
ing. He has taught at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
in Geneva as well as at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques and the War College in Paris.
1. See L. Fawcett and A. Hurrell, eds., Regionalism in World Politics: Regional
Organization and International Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); D.
Lake and P. Morgan, eds., Regional Orders: Building Security in a New World (Uni-
versity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997); M. Pugh and W. P. S. Sidhu,
eds., The United Nations and Regional Security (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003); A.
Bellamy and P. Williams, “Who’s Keeping the Peace? Regionalization and Contem-
porary Peace Operations,” International Security 29, no. 4 (2005): 157–195.
2. Bruce Jones, “Part 2: Hybrid Operations,” in “Evolving Models of Peace-
keeping Policy Implications and Responses,” External Study (New York: Peacekeep-
ing Best Practices Unit, UNDPKO, 2003).
3. Challenges Forum, “Looking to the Future: Peace Operations in 2015,” Back-
ground Paper (Stockholm: Challenges Forum, 2007), par. 23.
4. Louise Andersen, “UN Peace Operations in the 21st Century: State-building
and Hybridity,” DIIS Report No. 11 (Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International
Studies, 2007), p. 26.
5. In addition, the EU is involved in the Horn of Africa with the antipiracy oper-
ation in the Gulf of Aden (Atalanta) and the EU Mission on Regional Maritime
Capacity-Building (EUCAP Nestor).
6. See Andersen, “UN Peace Operations in the 21st Century: State-building and
Hybridity,” p. 28.

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7. Sarjoh Bah and Bruce Jones, “Peace Operations Partnerships: Lessons and
Issues from Coordination to Hybrid Arrangements” (New York: Center on Interna-
tional Cooperation, May 2008), p. 2.
8. Ibid., p. 3.
9. Counterexamples include the ECOWAS missions in Liberia (as of 1990) and
Sierra Leone (as of 1997) and the AU missions in Burundi (as of 2003) and Darfur (as
of 2004), which were not formally authorized by the UN Security Council.
10. Roger Mac Ginty, “Hybrid Peace: The Interaction Between Top-down and
Bottom-up Peace,” Security Dialogue 41, no. 4 (August 2010): 391–412.
11. Keith Krause, “Hybrid Violence: Locating the Use of Force in Postconflict
Settings,” Global Governance 18, no. 3 (2012): 40.
12. Oliver Richmond, “Becoming Liberal, Unbecoming Liberalism: Liberal-local
Hybridity via the Everyday as a Response to the Paradoxes of Liberal Peacebuilding,”
Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 3, no. 3 (November 2009): 333.
13. “Report of the Secretary-General on Peacebuilding in the Immediate After-
math of Conflict,” UN Doc. A/63/881-S/2009/304 (11 June 2009), par. 5.
14. See Pugh and Sidhu, eds., The United Nations and Regional Security; Joachim
Koops, ed., “Military Crisis Management: The Challenge of Inter-organizationalism,”
Studia Diplomatica 62, no. 3 (2009); Malte Brosig, “The Multi-actor Game of Peace-
keeping in Africa,” International Peacekeeping 17, no. 3 (June 2010); Francesco
Mancini and Adam Smith, eds., “Partnerships: A New Horizon for Peacekeeping,”
International Peacekeeping 18, no. 5 (November 2011).
15. See K. Haugevik, “New Partners, New Possibilities: The Evolution of Inter-
organizational Security Cooperation in International Peace Operations,” NUPI Report
(Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs [NUPI], 2007), p. 8; Thierry Tardy,
“Building Peace in Post-conflict Environments: Why and How the UN and the EU
Interact,” in J. Krause and N. Ronzitti, eds., The EU, the UN and Collective Security:
Making Multilateralism Effective (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 197–220.
16. The EU member states also finance 36.81 percent of the UN peacekeeping
budget.
17. See Richard Gowan and Jake Sherman, “Peace Operations Partnerships: Com-
plex but Necessary Cooperation,” Policy Briefing (Berlin: ZIF [Center for Interna-
tional Peace Operations], March 2012), p. 3.
18. “Report of the Secretary-General on UN-AU Cooperation in Peace and Secu-
rity,” UN Doc. S/2011/805 (29 December 2011), par. 5.
19. “Towards Greater Strategic and Political Coherence,” Report of the Chairper-
son of the Commission on the Partnership Between the African Union and the United
Nations on Peace and Security, Report No. PSC/PR/2.(CCCVII) (Addis Ababa:
African Union, 9 January 2012).
20. No official or public document exists on the comprehensive approach by the
EU. For an analysis of the concept for the EU, see Eva Gross, “EU and the Compre-
hensive Approach,” DIIS Report No. 13 (Copenhagen: Danish Institute for Interna-
tional Studies, 2008). For a definition of the comprehensive approach by NATO, see
Bucharest Summit Declaration, issued by the Heads of State and Government partici-
pating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Bucharest on 3 April 2008, sec.
4; for an analysis of what multiactor environments mean for NATO, see M. J.
Williams, “(Un)Sustainable Peacebuilding: NATO’s Suitability for Postconflict Recon-
struction in Multiactor Environments,” Global Governance 17, no. 1 (2011): 115–134.
21. “Strategic Concept for the Defence and Security of the Members of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization,” NATO New Strategic Concept, Adopted by Heads of
State and Government at the NATO Summit in Lisbon, 19–20 November 2010, par.
21 (emphasis added).

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116 Hybrid Peace Operations

22. Richard Caplan, “Devising Exit Strategies,” Survival 54, no. 3 (June–July
2012): 113.
23. See “Towards Greater Strategic and Political Coherence,” par. 66.
24. See El-Ghassim Wane, “L’Union africaine à l’épreuve des opérations de sou-
tien à la paix,” in D. Morin and L.-A. Théroux-Bénoni, eds., Guide du maintien de la
paix (Montreal, QC: Athena), pp. 63–69.
25. See “Lessons Learned Study on the Start-up Phase of the UN Mission in
Liberia,” (New York: Peacekeeping Best Practices Unit, UNDPKO, April 2004).
26. “Report of the Secretary-General on UN-AU Cooperation in Peace and Secu-
rity,” UN Doc. S/2011/805, par. 31.
27. See Alex Bellamy and Paul Williams, “The West and Contemporary Peace
Operations,” Journal of Peace Research 46, no. 1 (January 2009). See also Paul
Williams, “The United Kingdom,” in A. Bellamy and P. Williams, eds., Providing
Peacekeepers: The Politics, Challenges and Future of UN Peacekeeping Contribu-
tions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Thierry Tardy, “France,” in A. Bel-
lamy and P. Williams, eds., Providing Peacekeepers: The Politics, Challenges and
Future of UN Peacekeeping Contributions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
28. Operation Palliser was a British operation deployed in May and June 2000 as
a rapid reaction capacity for the UN Assistance Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL).
29. The French-led (and UN-mandated) Operation Licorne was deployed in Côte
d’Ivoire in February 2003 to help stabilize the country following the signature of the
Linas-Marcoussis Agreement and to protect French citizens. With the creation of
UNOCI in 2004, Operation Licorne also acted as a rapid reaction force to the UN
operation.
30. See Kwesi Aning and Mustapha Abdallah, “Exploring the Benefits and Dis-
advantages of Hybrid and Other Support Models for Peace Operations in Africa,” in
Linnéa Gelot, Ludwig Gelot, and Cedric de Coning, Supporting African Peace Oper-
ations, Policy Dialogue No. 8 (Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 2012), pp. 36–37.
31. See “Report of the Secretary-General on the Situation in Somalia,” UN Doc.
S/2007/204 (20 April 2007); “Report of the Secretary-General on the Situation in
Somalia,” UN Doc. S/2008/709 (17 November 2008).
32. UN Security Council Res. 1831 (19 August 2008). See also UN Security
Council Res. 1863 (16 January 2009).
33. UN Security Council Res. 1863, par. 4.
34. See “UN Security Council Presidential Statement,” UN Doc. S/PRST/2008/33
(4 September 2008).
35. Linnéa Gelot, Ludwig Gelot, and Cedric de Coning, “Contextualizing Support
Models for African Peace Operations,” Supporting African Peace Operations, Policy
Dialogue No. 8 (Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 2012), p. 23.
36. See Alex Bellamy and Paul Williams, “Who’s Keeping the Peace? Regional-
ization and Contemporary Peace Operations,” International Security 29, no. 4 (1995):
195.
37. See Joachim Koops, “Peace Operations Partnerships: Assessing Cooperation
Mechanisms Between Secretariats,” Policy Briefing (Berlin: ZIF [Center for Interna-
tional Peace Operations], March 2012). See also European External Action Service,
“Plan of Action to Enhance EU CSDP Support to UN Peacekeeping,” Doc. 11216/12
(14 June 2012). On EU-UN, EU-NATO, and EU-AU relations, see Sven Biscop and
Richard Whitman, eds., The Routledge Handbook of European Security (London:
Routledge, 2013), chaps. 22, 23, 25.
38. “Report of the Secretary-General on UN-AU Cooperation in Peace and Secu-
rity,” UN Doc. S/2011/805, par. 31.

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 Thierry Tardy 117

39. See “Towards Greater Strategic and Political Coherence.” See also Wane,
“L’Union africaine,” p. 73.
40. Alan Henrikson, “The Growth of Regional Organizations and the Role of the
United Nations,” in Louise Fawcett and Andrew Hurrell, eds., Regionalism in World
Politics: Regional Organization and International Order (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1995), p. 124.
41. Malte Brosig, “The African Union: A Partner for Security,” in Sven Biscop
and Richard Whitman, eds., The Routledge Handbook of European Security (London:
Routledge, 2013), p. 42.
42. Timothy Murithi, “Between Paternalism and Hybrid Partnership: The Emerg-
ing UN and Africa Relationship in Peace Operations,” Briefing Paper No. 2 (New
York, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, February 2007), p. 2.
43. Ibid.
44. See “Working Together for Peace and Security in Africa: The Security Coun-
cil and the AU Peace and Security Council,” Special Research Report (New York:
Security Council Report, 10 May 2011), p. 2.
45. See Thierry Tardy, “EU-UN Cooperation in Peacekeeping: A Promising Rela-
tionship in a Constrained Environment,” in Martin Ortega, ed., The EU and the UN:
Partners in Effective Multilateralism, Cahiers de Chaillot No. 78 (Paris: EU Institute
for Security Studies, June 2005), p. 49. See also Jan Wouters, Franck Hoffmeister, and
Tom Ruys, eds., The United Nations and the European Union: An Ever Stronger Part-
nership (The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press, 2006); Bruno Charbonneau, “What Is So
Special About the European Union? EU-UN Cooperation in Crisis Management in
Africa,” International Peacekeeping 16, no. 4 (August 2009).
46. “The Partnership Between the UN and the EU: The United Nations and the
European Commission Working Together in Development and Humanitarian Coop-
eration” (New York: UN, 2006), p. 6.
47. “Report of the Secretary-General on UN-AU Cooperation in Peace and Secu-
rity,” UN Doc. S/2011/805, par. 40.
48. “Towards Greater Strategic and Political Coherence,” par. 44.
49. See Cage Banseka, “Joint and Integrated AU-UN Mediation in Darfur: A
Model for Future African Peace Processes?” in Linnéa Gelot, Ludwig Gelot, and
Cedric de Coning, Supporting African Peace Operations, Policy Dialogue No. 8,
(Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 2012).
50. Decision of the AU Assembly, Assembly/AU/Dec.338 (XVI), 31 January
2011.
51. Ibid., par. 45.
52. “Towards Greater Strategic and Political Coherence,” par. 45.
53. UN Security Council Res. 2033 (12 January 2012), par. 5.
54. See Funmi Olonisakin, “UN Cooperation with Regional Peacekeeping: The
Experience of ECOMOG and UNOMIL in Liberia,” International Peacekeeping 3,
no. 3 (1996): 33–51.
55. See Arthur Boutellis and Paul Williams, Peace Operations, the African Union,
and the United Nations: Towards More Effective Partnerships (New York: Interna-
tional Peace Institute, April 2013), pp. 7–9.
56. Communiqué PSC/PR/COMM.(CCCLXXI) of 371st AU Peace and Security
Council meeting held on 25 April 2013 in Addis Ababa (par. 10).
57. Ibid. Regarding this, see Lori-Anne Théroux-Bénoni, “The Long Path to
MINUSMA: Assessing the International Response to the Crisis in Mali,” in T. Tardy
and M. Wyss, eds., Peacekeeping in Africa: The Evolving Security Architecture (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2013).

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118 Hybrid Peace Operations

58. Brosig, “The African Union,” p. 300.

59. “After Action Review: UN-EU Planning for EUFOR Tchad/RCA,” UN
(unpublished document, April 2008), p. 2.
60. Regarding this, see “Report of the Secretary-General on UN-AU Cooperation
in Peace and Security,” UN Doc. S/2011/805, par. 40.
61. See Roland Paris, “Understanding the ‘Coordination Problem’ in Postwar
Statebuilding,” in Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk, eds. The Dilemmas of State-
building: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations (London:
Routledge, 2009), pp. 53–78.
62. Ibid., p. 59.
63. Andersen, “UN Peace Operations in the 21st Century,” p. 30.
64. Bah and Jones, “Peace Operations Partnerships,” p. 7.
65. See “Working Together for Peace and Security in Africa,” p. 19.
66. See “Towards Greater Strategic and Political Coherence,” par. 63.
67. AU Peace and Security Council Communiqué, PSC/PR/COMM./(CCCI) (30
November 2011), par. 4. The reference to the “African character” of the mission is
interesting since this was one of the demands made by Sudanese president Omar al-
Bashir to initially give his consent to the UN-AU mission.
68. “Plan of Action to Enhance EU CSDP Support to UN Peacekeeping.”
69. See Gowan and Sherman, “Peace Operations Partnerships,” p. 3.

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