Foreword It is my sincere pleasure to launch this DPKO-DFS Planning Toolkit. Whilst developed primarily for rule of law and security institutions components in UN Field Missions, it can equally be used by any other mission component. The Toolkit provides guides, templates, checklists and lists of examples of good practice to help field practitioners develop a wide variety of plans — ranging from a UN-wide Integrated Strategic Framework to the Mission’s Results-based Budget and a component’s annual workplan. I hope that you will find it useful throughout your UN Field Mission’s lifecycle, from start-up to transition and draw-down. This Planning Toolkit will help components prioritize their work in accordance with the “The Contribution of United Nations Peacekeeping to Early Peacebuilding: a DPKO/DFS Strategy for Peacekeepers” (2011). The Planning Toolkit will assist UN Field Missions to prioritize those activities that advance the political objectives of a UN Field Mission and/or a peace process, and which may also contribute to strengthening immediate stability and security, and/or lay the foundations of institution building together with partners. By prioritizing more rigorously and planning to implement those activities for which peacekeepers have a comparative advantage within the UN system, peacekeeping operations should deliver assistance in a more
efficient and cost-effective manner and be able exit sooner. As Under-Secretary-General L adsous recently remarked to the Fourth Committee, “we need to further improve our efforts to plan and manage missions in an integrated manner so that they, in turn, respond to the complex demands of countries and populations emerging from conflict.” The Planning Toolkit fosters integrated planning across mission components, and helps UN Field Missions plan in close partnership with other UN and non-UN actors in support of shared objectives. In addition to delivering rapidly and efficiently we are seeking to gather empirical evidence of the impact or effectiveness on the ground. The Planning Toolkit contains examples of indicators and benchmarks to help UN Field Missions gather such evidence and ensure wellinformed decisions on plans, staffing and other resource requests. I would like to thank those at Headquarters and in the field as well as our UN partners who provided input into the development of this Toolkit. The Planning Toolkit should be seen as a living document, which will be updated in the coming years as planning guidance and UN peacekeeping evolve.
Dmitry Titov Assistant Secretary-General Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations
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