Source: International Herald Tribune | by Thorsten Benner, Stephan Mergenthaler and Philipp Rotmann
A French diplomat, Alain Le Roy, has been appointed by the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, as the world’s chief peacekeeper. With UN peace operations facing the most serious crisis since Rwanda and Srebrenica, the timing could not be more critical.
UN peacekeeping is the victim of its own success: Never before in their 60-year history have blue helmets been in such high demand. About 110,000 personnel are deployed in 20 peace operations around the world, more than a six-fold increase from 10 years ago.
However, UN member states have neglected making crucial investments in the support infrastructure for an expanding network of large peace operations with increasingly complex tasks, from protecting civilians to rebuilding defunct institutions in post-conflict states. As a result, the UN apparatus is severely overstretched, exhibiting increasingly serious pathologies ranging from sluggish deployments to shocking sexual abuse scandals.
Worse yet, the Security Council has returned to the ill-fated practice of sending peacekeepers into ever-more hostile environments where there simply no peace to keep.
Recent reports from Darfur, the largest and most expensive UN mission to date, are reminiscent of the news from Bosnia in the weeks before the fall of Srebrenica: UN peacekeepers, facing a logistical and political nightmare, are unable to defend themselves, let alone protect the civilian population. Were further large-scale atrocities to occur under the UN’s watch in Darfur, the repercussions would threaten to undermine the entire business of peace operations.
There is a risk of an all-out anti-UN backlash overshadowing the good work UN peacekeepers have done in exceptionally difficult circumstances over the past decade. UN members need to act now and give the new head of peacekeeping the tools and support necessary to pull UN peacekeeping back from the brink.
To accomplish this, member states need to clearly commit to the doctrine that a UN peace operation should only be deployed if there is actually a peace to keep, underwritten by a credible commitment by the major conflict parties to work toward a political solution. If taking the “Responsibility to Protect” seriously in some cases requires military intervention, member states should not rely on the instrument of peacekeeping, which is ill-suited for this task.
Therefore, under present circumstances the UN should not deploy peacekeepers to Somalia or Chad, where the absence of political will among rival parties renders peacekeepers as little more than turquoise targets.
Key member states must also lower expectations on what peacekeepers can realistically achieve in Darfur. They must make it crystal clear to the public that the absence of peace in Darfur is not the fault of UN peacekeepers but a result of the international community’s inability to force the conflict parties into a lasting political settlement.
In addition, UN members urgently need to invest in the infrastructure for peace operations worldwide. Resources need to match the grandiose rhetoric and ambitious goals set out in Security Council mandates. This includes seriously enlarging the UN’s standby blue helmet capacity – with a clear manpower commitment on the part of the United States, Canada and Europe, not just Asian and African states who currently supply the vast majority of peacekeepers.
It also means expanding the team of rapidly deployable police officers and complementing it with a team of judicial and legal experts who can play a critical role in struggling peace operations worldwide.
To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
0 Responses to “The United Nations and the future of the Blue Helmets”