Towards a model of UN-sponsored post-conflict regulation of responsible business activity

Any consideration of the business, peace and development nexus must account for the role of the United Nations peacebuilding system. This paper explores the scope for UN peace operations to influence responsible business activity in post-conflict situations. It outlines research on how UN operations have or have not engaged with business actors, as important stakeholders in building more peaceful societies, in order to shape their peacebuilding impact. The paper has three elements: descriptive (finding that UN peacekeeping has generally shown a blind-spot towards business), diagnostic (assessing that certain gaps in institutional mandates and mindsets explain this blindness), and normative (arguing that it is both appropriate and necessary for UN operations to have a strategy on regulating business for peace). Peace operations should seek to maximize the private sector's potential peacebuilding contributions, while mitigating the conflict risks that renewed business activity might hold.