Securing the rule of law in Liberia: Evaluating the contributions of United Nations peace operations

Conference by Dr. Jeremy Matam Farrall, Centre for International Governance and Justice at the Australian National University, Thursday 9 October, 10h-11h30, Amphi G
In this public lecture Dr. Jeremy Farrall of the Australian National University will examine the efforts of United Nations peace operations to promote the rule of law in the West African nation of Liberia over the past two decades. Dr Farrall argues that the UN Security Council and its peace operations in Liberia have interpreted and employed the rule of law quite narrowly, as a concept that is intricately interlinked with the idea of security. When approached in this manner, the rule of law is more akin to the idea of ‘law and order’ than to the broader, more dynamic definition of the rule of law articulated by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his 2004 report on transitional justice and the rule of law in post-conflict societies. A key question is whether this narrowing of rule of law ambition is essential or detrimental to efforts to build and sustain the rule of law in post-conflict environments.

The lecture will be presented in five parts. Part I provides a brief history of UN peace operations in Liberia, focusing on how the UN’s peacekeeping and peacebuilding mandates evolved over the past two decades. Part II describes how achieving and maintaining security has been the dominant priority throughout this period. Part III investigates how the UN has sought to strengthen ‘the rule of law’ in the country, focusing in particular on the activities of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) from 2003 to 2014. Part IV examines the close relationship between ‘security’ and ‘the rule of law’ and how the UN Security Council has used those terms to characterise and authorise the UN’s intervention in Liberia. Finally, Part V explores the extent to which the evolution of the relationship between security and the rule of law in Liberia reflects, and is reflected in, the approach of UN peace operations in general.

BIO:

Dr. Jeremy Matam Farrall is Australian Research Council Linkage Fellow at the Centre for International Governance and Justice at the Australian National University. He also holds the positions of Fellow at the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy and Fellow of the Research School of Asia and the Pacific, both of which are located at the Australian National University. Dr. Farrall has worked for the United Nations in a range of positions, including as UN Facilitator for the Secretary-General’s Good Offices Mission in Cyprus and as Political Affairs Officer for the UN Security Council in New York and the UN Mission in Liberia. Jeremy is the author of United Nations Sanctions and the Rule of Law (Cambridge, 2007) and editor of The Role of International Law in Rebuilding Societies After Conflict (Cambridge, 2009, with Brett Bowden and Hilary Charlesworth). He is currently Chief Investigator on the Australian Research Council Project ‘Strengthening the Rule of Law through the UN Security Council’. The project is a collaboration between the ANU Centre for International Governance and Justice and the Australian Civil-Military Centre.