So what is the UN and what's it got to do with peacekeeping?
The United Nations, for all it's faults, is the most important international organisation in history. Established through the San Francisco Conference in 1945, it is effectively the League of Nations 2.0. Except this time it was a truly global organization with 193 member states (the latest state to join being South Sudan). It has 4 main principles, laid out in the UN Charter:
- Safeguard peace and security in order 'to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war'
- To 'reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights'
- To uphold respect for international law
- To 'promote social progress and better standards of life'.
We can see that maintaining peace and security is an important aspect of the UN, but just how effective is the institution when it comes to peacekeeping?
It is hard to ignore the failures of the UN, for example the thousands of executions in Bosnia in the presence of UN troops. However, the most horrific of these failures has to be the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. At least 800,000 people died in the space of 100 days because of Hutu extremists. The UN failed to supply the mission with adequate resources, gave unclear directions which in turn resulted in peacekeepers unable to use force to defend themselves let alone stop the slaughter. To make matters worse most of the 2,500 UN peacekeepers in Rwanda at the time were withdrawn after the deaths of 10 Belgian soldiers. The UN procrastinated, holding onto the false hope that a political process could be achieved- they stood by whilst populations were being murdered by the thousands. In 2000 the UN's accepted full responsibility for failing to prevent the genocide, and in April last year the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stated the UN was "still ashamed" over the issue.
In response to such failures, Chapter 7 allowed the UN to use force to keep the peace. In many was the mission in Congo was a test, but this test was failed after the town of Kiwanja was taken over by rebels while the UN stood by and did not open fire. 150 people died, and less than a mile away 100 UN troops were stationed at a base. These troops had orders to protect the people, using force if necessary. A local human rights worker called the base for help during the massacre- the UN told him there was nothing they could do.
These failings are also due to the lack of political will and conflicting priorities of the Security Council- for example the consistent veto blocking from Russia and China over UN action in Syria. Another problems with UN peacekeeping is it's capacity to keep the peace is being stretched thin as it takes on more asymmetric and complex threats when the UN security council can only muster so many troops. Former US Ambassador Susan Rice described this as a "growing gap between supply and demand".
Even the head of the peacekeeping operations admitted there are problems. He called for the security council to consistently support peacekeeping operations and ensure that they have adequate resources to perform the mandates that the security council sets. As the UN doesn't have it's own army it relies on other member states to volunteer resources, this means negotiation which takes time. Furthermore, UK, US, and other western countries failed to step up and put troops in Congo. The majority came from India, Pakistan, South Africa and Nepal. Only 2% of UN troops in Africa came from North America and Europe. With richer countries not contributing this means the UN lacks resources as it relies on member states for equipment.
Furthermore, a significant amount of sexual abuse by peacekeepers have been reported. According to a report released by UN's Oversight body, one-third case of reported sexual abuse by peacekeepers between 2008-2014 were on children. The UN has recently (November) sent a fact-finding team to investigate new allegations of sexual exploitation from peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. These new allegations follow 63 allegations of misconduct (confirmed by the UN) since the operation began last year.
Having said that, we have to give credit where it's due. The UN can be seen to learn from it's mistakes, for example following the 1992 report An Agenda for Peace the UN has acknowledged that peacekeeping is not enough on it's own- rather peace-building is required in order to prevent a relapse of conflict.
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