IS UN Peacekeeping an Effective Program, Deserving of U.S. Support?
Harpinder Athwal
Congressional Digest: A Pro & Con Monthly, VOL. 83 NO. 7
September 2004

The need for effective and efficient UN peace operations is evident. In states considered unimportant to the global economy, the UN is often the only entity willing or able to provide security, stability and the foundation for permanent peace during times of crisis. UN member states have a responsibility to support the UN peace operations system and structure and reform it adequately to meet the needs of the post-conflict societies and regions by securing areas for the civilians, restore and maintain the rule of law, and enable economic and political reconstruction to occur successfully within a secure environment. Through the UN member states can work in cooperation to build a more stable, secure world for us all. They share the burden, use existing infrastructures to tackle problems and add legitimacy to there actions abroad.

Following the recent experience of the U.S. carrying out post-conflict peace operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has understood the value, expertise and experience the UN brings to peacekeeping. The U.S. cannot do it alone. And it should not be doing it alone. We do not have the ability, resources or training to provide military security, civilian policing as well as assist with setting up electoral structures and providing security for elections all at the same time. Our military is not trained to be peacekeepers and civilian police. However, at the UN different nations bring different expertise to a peacekeeping mission, we all work to share the burden rather than do it all alone. The role of the UN missions extends much broader than provider of security, it also provides electoral assistance and governance support as part of a broader strategy for international security. The UN is the most cost-effective means to tackle international conflict and crises, and the success of future UN missions will provide a safer, more secure world for us all.

This year has seen UN peace operations stretch across the globe. Today’s world presents the UN with diverse challenges including the development of terrorism cells in failing states, government violence against civilians and providing post-conflict security. The United Nations is now managing 15 peace missions with just under sixty thousand peacekeepers. Despite common believe, U.S. personnel in UN missions serve primarily as civilian police and military observers in seven U.N. missions, with nearly eighty percent of them posted in Kosovo. At the end of May 2005, 97 nations were contributing 55,457 personnel to these U.N. operations. Of these the U.S. is contributing only seven soldiers, 507 police and 18 observers, or about one percent of the total personnel to these missions.

The challenges facing the UN are great, and more peacekeepers are desperately needed right now. Today, ten years after the Rwanda Genocide, innocents are once again being slaughtered in the world’s latest tragedy in Darfur, western Sudan. And yet the international community is no better equipped to respond to genocide than it was in 1994. Over the past fifteen months, over 50,000 people have lost their lives in Darfur, more are dying daily and over a million people have been driven from their homes. Government-sponsored militias accused of ‘ethnic cleansing’ are continuing their attacks while the international community watches. If we do not act now to prevent these atrocities from continuing, up to one million could die by the end of the year, matching the death toll of Rwanda. It is imperative that the UN and regional security organizations have the resources and political capacity to prevent, respond, and rebuild when civilians are caught up in the horrors of war and ethnic cleansing.

Currently, when the Security Council makes the decision to deploy peacekeeping or peace enforcement missions, it takes between three and six months on average for the troops to arrive and begin their mission. In contrast, it takes much less time to carry out genocide and mass murder: in Rwanda it took only six weeks to kill at least 800,000 innocent civilians. And once troops arrive, they are most often under-equipped, under-trained, under-staffed and under-funded. In most circumstances, they have never trained together, do not speak the same languages, do not have the same operational procedures, do not use the same military and communications equipment, do not have the equipment and personnel necessary to carry out the mission, and often have been denied a strong mandate giving them permission to use force to protect civilians. The existing system of UN peace operations will fail the people of Darfur. Once again we will be pledging ‘never again’ at the graves of innocents slaughtered while the world watched, discussed and debated. The system is in desperate need of reform.

The challenges of the world today cannot be tackled effectively by the current UN peace operations system. It is under funded, under resourced and often missions are planned and carried out on an ad hoc basis. This is due to a the lack of political will of member states, including the U.S., to provide troops, finances and resources or a strong enough mandate for the UN to carry out the task at hand effectively. The UN should be reformed and strengthen to meet the challenges presented by failed states, internal civil conflicts and post-conflict environments. Such challenges can only be tackled through the UN – it is the only organization which represents all the nations of the world, it has international legitimacy as well as the existing infrastructure and mechanisms for international peacekeeping.

For the UN to be able to meet the needs to today’s world, it must have the following means available to it:

• A UN peace operations rapid response capacity, able to deploy in days or weeks, not month.

• The UN capacity should be well-trained and enjoy the benefit of standardized training, use common communications equipment and weapons systems.

• The UN peace operations capacity should be accountable to the United Nations mission under which they are deployed and abide by the rules and procedures of the UN.

• The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDKO) should be provided with staff, resources and equipment to manage deployed missions, keep best practice case studies of past missions and monitor potential crisis zones to act as an early warning system before a crisis results in massacres, conflicts and genocides.

• An intelligence and information analysis capacity is essential to support missions on the ground and to ensure their effectiveness.

• A well-trained civilian police component of peace operations, which is vital to restore the rule of law, recruit and train local police and secure the local areas for civilians and experts to move forward with reconstruction.

The existing resources of the UN will be used inefficiently over and over again until we are ready to provide it with the means necessary to meet the demands on it today. Recent events in Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur, Sudan have served to highlight the urgency to tackle the capacity and resource issues of the UN. Failing or failed states can easily become safe havens for terrorists and other criminal networks, threatening our national security. The U.S. needs to be an active partner of the international community working to protect its own interests through structures such as the UN peace operations system. Not only should it be supporting the UN peace operations but working to reform and restructure them to make them more efficient and effective.

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