ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the purpose and flaws of the peacebuilding architecture. Boutros-Ghali's conceptualization of the need to integrate political, security, social, and economic issues in the post-conflict context notwithstanding, he was unable to make it fully operational at the UN Secretariat. Key multilateral players swaddled themselves in the coat of many colours provided by post-conflict peacebuilding, making little or no effort to adjust their priorities or practices so as to synchronise them with the fundamentally political objective that it was meant to enshrine. The chapter focuses on the elements that are necessary to analyze the impact that the architecture has had with regard to improving the capacity of the organization to deal with the economic and social aspects of peacebuilding. An improvement in the operational capacity of the organization could have been achieved by reforming, consolidating, and beefing up the existing operational capacity in the political and peacekeeping departments at headquarters and in UN operations on the ground.
