Participants then examined the applicability of the Guiding
Principles to a transition case—Somalia. The Somalia case was
provided as a read-ahead to participants. The case highlighted
a number of inflection points that influence contemporary and
future developments in Somalia with a focus on the forth-
coming drawdown and end to the African Union Mission in
Somalia (AMISOM).
Conclusions:
The group agreed that the Guiding Principles are still valuable,
but would benefit from updating. Recommendations for revi-
sions that emerged from working group discussions include:
• Add an Executive Summary to reflect the document’s
utility to practitioners and policy makers.
• Revise terminology; e.g. from “Stable Governance” to
“Viable Governance,” “Cross-cutting Principles” to “Over-
arching Principles.”
• Emphasize “Overarching Principles” as the point of de-
parture for planning each functional area in the document.
• Examine utility and implications of combining Rule of
Law and Stable Governance.
• Change the title to “Guiding Principles for Stabilization
and Recovery” to reflect a more realistic scope and time
frame; and address a common critique that the original
document was more applicable to “nation building” – a
currently pejorative term.
• Review other concepts for possible inclusion; such as,
resilience, corruption, countering violent extremism.
• Review the High Level Independent Panel on Peace
Operations and Sustainable Development Goals for com-
plementary concepts
• Add case studies and vignettes to enhance concepts
• Integrating components of the Measuring Progress in
Conflict Environments (MPICE) publication into the
Guiding Principles
• Explore other publication formats than the hard copy
textbook – e.g. E-book, App, etc.
Next steps:
A number of possible next steps were identified by the group:
• Continue to analyze the survey results on the Guiding
Principles
• Engage with other possible stakeholders to conduct more
targeted outreach to receive survey feedback.
• Use the survey results and WG recommendations to
organize a Guiding Principles update – in order to
develop cost estimates on possible Courses of Action.
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• Assess the value and cost of merging Guiding Principles
and MPICE.
• Continued outreach to those interested in participating
in revising the Guiding Principles.