ISID’s Professor of Practice in Global Governance, Michael Brown, has deep experience with the United Nations (UN), and played a central role in establishing the McGill-UNEP Partnership. Recently, he also played a critical role in developing the new UN Framework for Action on Land and Conflict. The Framework will be captured in an upcoming UN Secretary General Guidance Note that will guide UN officials on the conduct of their work, while having significant potential normative impact.
Michael is a regular consulting advisor to the United Nations on natural resource and land conflicts, mediation and peacebuilding. He is also the former Senior UN Mediator on Natural Resource Conflicts worldwide. Michael is also a Senior Mediator at the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, Mass.
Since 2015, Michael has played two key roles in developing the groundbreaking UN Framework for Action. First, he has provided key international advice and expertise on issues around land, conflict and peacebuilding. Second, as a UN mediator, he has played a critical role in creating the required consensus within the UN System on the key issues.
As a substantive expert, Michael co-authored the UN report upon which the Guidance Note is heavily grounded (Scoping and Status Study on Land and Conflict: Towards UN System-Wide Engagement at Scale, Working Paper, Nairobi: UN-Habitat, May 2016), and he contributed substantively to various drafts of the Guidance Note itself. As the mediator, Michael led and facilitated key meetings and workshops that built critical agreement across 18 different UN entities on a wide range of challenging and politically sensitive issues. The meetings were held from 2015 to 2017 in UN Headquarters in New York, and in Washington, DC.
The Framework for UN Action on Land and Conflict establishes a series of guiding principles as well as the forward-looking framework. Among key elements, the Framework prioritizes: the use of conflict analysis tools; consistent engagement of Senior UN Leadership; incorporation of land into key UN assessment, planning and financing instruments; integration of land-conflict issues in country-level interventions; enhanced system-wide capacity to address the land-conflict nexus; expanded partnerships with non-UN entities and actors; and the development and use of practical tools that address the land-conflict nexus.
