| 1948 - 1998 | | 50 YEARS OF UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS |
Panel Discussion
United Nations Headquarters, 11 June 1998Briefing Summary: On 11 June 1998 the United Nations Department of Public Information organized a panel discussion on 59 Years of UN Peacekeeping for NGO representatives at UN Headquarters in New York. A brief summary of the discussion follows.
Panelists: Mr. F. T. Liu
A veteran of the United Nations Secretariat (1949-1986) and former Assistant Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs Mr. Liu served as Senior Political Advisor for numerous UN peacekeeping operations, such as ONUC in the Congo (1963-1964); UNFICYP in Cyprus (1964); and UNTSO in the Middle East (1967). He was also the Principal Secretary of the UN Good Offices Mission in Bahrain in 1970, which played an instrumental role in that country's accession to independence.Mr. George Sherry
Former Assistant Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs [Dates] whose UN career spanned 39 years from 1946 to 1985. Involved in many of the Organization's peacekeeping and peacemaking functions in the Congo, Cyprus India, Pakistan, the Middle East and the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands situations, Mr. Sherry worked under Ralph J. Bunche and served as deputy to Sir Brian Urquhart on the team that developed the concept and practice of UN peacekeeping operations.Col. Michael J. Snell
Counsellor for Disarmament and Military Adviser of the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United NationsLt. Col. John Otte
Training Adviser in the Training Unit of the UN Department of Peacekeeping OperationsModerator: Kevin S. Kennedy
Chief, Peace and Security Section, Department of Public Information
Mr. Liu began the discussion by noting that peacekeeping was not mentioned in the UN Charter but became a practical necessity during the "cold war". The first UN peacekeeping operation, the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in Palestine(UNTSO), was created in May 1948, 50 years ago almost to the day. UNTSO was to supervise the truce ordered by the Security Council to end the first Arab-Israeli war. Similar missions were later set up in Kashmir (UNMOGIP) and elsewhere.These initial military observer missions were relatively small operations, involving a limited number of personnel. They were adequate to supervise a truce or a ceasefire agreement. However, containing a wider complex conflict requiring multiple peacekeeping tasks, a larger operation was needed. Such a need arose with the Suez crisis in 1956. After Egypt nationalized the Suez canal, which then belonged to British and French interests, and closed it to Israeli shipping, Israel and the two powers invaded Egypt and occupied large portions of its territory. In order to resolve this crisis, which necessitated withdrawal of the invading forces and establishment of a buffer zone, the UN created its first United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF I). The concept behind this force was the idea of Lester Pearson, then Canada's Foreign Minister. UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskj–ld took the practical measures to implement the concept, assembling the Force from scratch within two weeks. UNEF I became a great success of UN peacekeeping, played a key role in resolving the Suez crisis and served as a role model for all later UN peacekeeping forces.
Whether small military observer missions, or larger peacekeeping forces, all UN peacekeeping operations were originally conceived to deal with international conflicts involving Governments. While they must be authorized by the Security Council or, exceptionally, (as in the case of UNEF I) by the General Assembly they were always directed by the Secretary-General. Their functioning was governed by three fundamental principles: Consent, impartiality, and the non-use of force, except in self-defense.
At the time of their creation, Walter Lippman, one of America's great journalists, wrote that UN peace operations were based on a new, bold but sublime concept: "the concept of the soldier of peace, who is sent to an area of conflict, not to wage war, but to promote peace, not to fight enemies, but to help friends." Over the years, problems had been encountered in fully realizing this concept, due to the lack of enforcement power and lack of cooperation by the parties. While cooperation was normally forthcoming in international conflicts when two legitimate governments agreed to United Nations intervention, it has frequently been lacking when the conflicts were exceptionally complex, politically deadlocked, or involved internal factions, as in the Congo in the 1960s, and in the Middle East in 1967.
During the cold war, the performance of UN peacekeeping operations depended heavily on the attitudes of the United States and the Soviet Union, the two superpowers. Superpower rivalry prevented the Security Council in many cases from taking concrete action, but was tempered by the "balance of nuclear terror": Both superpowers knew that their awesome nuclear weapons arsenals meant that direct military confrontation between them would have incalculable consequences. They often resorted to the United Nations peacekeeping mechanism in order to avoid such confrontation. The United Nations was able to establish 13 peacekeeping operations during the cold war years. These operations helped contain potentially dangerous conflicts which otherwise could have escalated into nuclear East-West confrontation.
With the end of the cold war, the nature of peacekeeping changed mainly as a result of two factors: The revitalization of the Security Council and the proliferation of internal (intra-state) conflicts. The combination of these factors produced a dramatic expansion in the number and scope of UN peacekeeping operations. From 1988 to 1994, 22 new operations were set up. The nature of these operations also changed, from traditional military peacekeeping tasks to multidimensional operations which involved political and humanitarian work such as the supervision of elections, verification of human rights practices or the delivery of humanitarian relief. Many of these new missions were inserted into internal conflicts and major humanitarian crises in "failed" and disintegrating States.
The new situation outpaced the capacities of the United Nations: the Organization lacked personnel, equipment and money to meet the growing demands of peacekeeping. Even more serious, the three traditional principles of consent, impartiality and non-use of force became inadequate as the UN faced internal conflicts and confronted hostile and heavily armed internal factions. However, Initial operations in the post-cold war era were immensely successful: the UN in 1988 stopped the war between Iran and Iraq, it helped bring about independence in Namibia and national reconciliation in El Salvador, Mozambique and, partly, in Cambodia.
Later operations saw setbacks: Dealing with the deepening crisis in Somalia, the Security Council established in May 1993 UNOSOM II, the first UN peacekeeping operation endowed with enforcement powers mission under Chapter VII of the Charter. Using force beyond self defense, UN peackeepers were drawn into a destructive guerrilla war with the Somali warlord of South Mogadishu, General Aidid, and suffered heavy casualties. When 18 US Rangers supporting the UN operationóalthough not under UN commandówere killed on 3 October 1993 in Mogadishu, the United States decided to withdraw its troops within six months.
Other major setbacks occurred in UN operations in Rwanda and Bosnia, ushering in a retrenchment that lasted until today. Applying the lessons learned, former Secretary-General Boutros-Boutros Ghali recommended in January 1995 a "new" approach: UN peacekeeping was to adhere strictly to the traditional principles of consent, impartiality and the non-use of force, except in clear cases of self-defense. UN operations should not blur the distinction between peacekeeping and peace enforcement. If enforcement operations were required, he recommended that the Security Council delegate the responsibility to Member States, generally led by a major power. This approach has remained valid until today.
Mr. George Sherry, in his remarks, focused on the experience of the OpÈration des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC) in the 1960s and, specifically, on the rules of engagement developed by Hammarskj–ld. In July 1960, both the President and the Prime Minister of the newly-independent Congo jointly requested the Secretary-General to dispatch a United Nations Force to bring to a halt the external intervention by Belgium and internally to stop the disorder, killings and rapes, and to put an end to the secession of Congo's Katanga province.
The Security Council called upon Belgium to withdraw its troops and authorized the Secretary-General to provide the Congolese government with military and technical assistance until its security forces were in a position to fully meet their responsibilities. That decision took into account the sovereignty and independence of the Congo, and at the same time vested important authority in the United Nations.
At its peak, ONUC counted 19,000 troops. Mr Sherry highlighted the essential peacekeeping principles developed for the force by Dag Hammarskj–ld as the key rules of engagement that made ONUC's success possible: Consensus, impartiality and non-use of force. UN forces operated in the Congo with the consent of the Government and, although serving as an arm of the Government to maintain law and order, remained under the exclusive authority of the Security Council. The operation was to refrain from use of force unless directly attacked. Furthermore, both the host Government and the Organization were to act mutually in good faith and the UN had full freedom of movement and communication. It operated as a distinctly neutral force that did not become party to the internal conflict but worked strictly in line with its Council mandate. ONUC made an important contribution to the history of peacekeeping as the first multidimensional UN peacekeeping operation to include civilian, legal, financial, training, administrative, technical and educational assistance functions.
Mr. Kennedy emphasized the importance of recognizing ONUC's multidimensional nature and elements such as its civilian police component. Most multidimensional operations since the late 1980s, beginning with the United Nations Transitional Assistance Group(UNTAG) had incorporated significant civilian police functions. Lessons learned and experience gained in early operations such as ONUC remained relevant to more recent, and future, operations. Colonels Snell and Otte had been involved in initiatives to build on these experiences.
Colonel Michael J. Snell referred to an influential Canadian study containing recommendations for future UN peacekeeping operations (1993-1995), noting that the concepts of a rapid-deployment force, concrete military stand-by arrangements between the UN and Member States, and creation of a rapidly-deployable mission headquarters (RDHMQ) were now being implemented to enhance the peacekeeping capabilities of the United Nations. These conclusions and recommendations reflected concerns and experiences at the height of UN peacekeeping activitiy. However, Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda had changed the way the international community looked at peacekeeping. Peacekeeping numbers had changed as well: In June 1998. there were some 14,500 peacekeepers in the field; a seventy-five per cent decline from the 1995 peak. Of those 14,500, some 3,000 personnel were civilian police engaged in peacebuilding, rather than peacekeeping activities.
Three factors had contributed to the "retrenchment" of peacekeeping that Mr. Liu mentioned: The recent unwillingness of the Security Council to deal with internal intrastate conflicts; the financial crisis of the Organization; and uncertainty over the restructuring of the United Nations. The direct implications for the future of UN peacekeeping were the "contracting out" of peace missions to multinational forces and alliances such as ECOWAS in Liberia and NATO in Bosnia; and hesitation to deploy UN forces rapidly into acute crises. In light of the retrenchment, the Security Council's launching of the Mission of the United Nations in the Central African Republic (MINURCA) in April 1998 marked the first truly new mission since the United Nations Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES) had been set up in Croatia's Danube region in January 1996. Colonel Snell underlined the resolve of Canada to push he agenda to enhance the UN's rapid deployment capability.
Colonel John Otte of DPKO referred to the lessons recently learned from peacekeeping setbacks experienced in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. One key problem was that under the circumstances of rapidly changing tasks in complex multidimensional operations, the UN continued to deploy soldiers to the field that only possessed the basic military skills required in traditional peacekeeping operations. They lacked training to perform human rights, electoral assistance, refugee relief, and post-conflict society building skills. Consequently, the 49th General Assembly had authorized in 1994 the initiation of a Training Unit within the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The Training Unit had therefore focused on training national trainers in the many fields that the new peace missions requiredófor example civilian policing.
Colonel Otte quoted the speech by the Secretary-General on 20 April 1998 at the University of Berkeley in California, saying that "peacekeeping can no longer follow the path of unthinking neutrality." Concretely it meant, that the United Nations had to solve the problems it was given; the Organization could not pick the ones it chose to resolve.
Questions and Answers
Ensuing the plenary presentation was a questions and answers session that sought to clarify some topics touched during the seminar and to explore other aspects relating to fifty years of UN peacekeeping. On the question whether training by the UN of national forces to build up regional peacekeeping capacity with inside knowledge of their areas would be preferable to a UN rapidly deployable force, Colonel Otte answered that a UN rapidly deployable force would be the better solution since there were functions that only the United Nations could perform impartially; regional forces might carry political baggage when operating in their own areas. Having the ability and resolve to intervene quickly into a potentially escalating conflict, the UN would sent a determined message that the international community was interested in dealing with such situations and would not tolerate human rights violations, genocide or vicious civil wars.
To what extend did UN peacekeeping work towards building or restoring justice in societies, i.e. just structures which then would be maintained in peace as just laws and structures in view of the growing injustices and inequalities all over the world? Mr. Liu responded that the objective of the United Nations under the Charter was the maintenance of peace and security in accordance with the principles of justice and international law. Therefore, in any operation the UN engaged in, it kept the principle of justice in mind. Sometimes a compromise had to be found to find a solution acceptable to all parties.
Did the shift from "intergovernmental" to "internal" peacekeeping present a contradiction to the international legal norms of the sovereignty of nations and non-intervention in the internal affairs of States? How did the UN define that a conflict was appropriate for UN peacekeeping intervention if it was not clearly an international dispute? Replying to this fundamental question, Mr. Liu stated that almost all "internal" conflicts in the post cold war era carried international dimensions: the stream of refugees that crossed international borders, the arms trade that brought supplies from one country to another. Therefore, there was never a purely international or a purely internal conflict. The UN found itself obliged to intervene in such crises: The World Organization could certainly not ignore the genocide and massacres in Rwanda. Under the new political realities the UN had to deal with "internal" conflicts, which created difficulties because the Organization could by its original mandate indeed deal best with clearly intergovernmental disputes. Such clear-cut conflicts, however, became increasingly difficult to identify.
Concluding the briefing, Mr. Kennedy pointed out that in 1997 the General Assembly had decided that fifty years of UN peacekeeping should be observed in 1998 to honour those who have served in UN missions. On 6 October 1998, the Assembly would hold a special commemorative meeting to honour, in particular, the more than 1,500 peacekeepers who have lost their lives while serving in UN operations. The briefing then adjourned.
Prepared by the United Nations Department of Public Information