Press Kit
Fact Sheet 6

Today’s Peacekeepers

As peacekeeping changes, military components remain the backbone

An interview with Major General Patrick Cammaert, Military Adviser, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations

Some 37,000 troops and civilian police from 89 countries form the backbone of UN peacekeeping missions. UN Senior Military Adviser Major General Patrick Cammaert, a former Force Commander of the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), is overseeing their evolution into a well-trained, well-resourced corps, supported by the Military Division of the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).

For a peacekeeping mission to be successful, he explained, two things are necessary. The parties to the conflict must subscribe to the peacekeeping effort. And UN Member States must ensure the mandate is both well defined and flexible, the troops professional and the resources adequate.

“If Member States don’t give us resources, troops available for rapid deployment, money to do a sound, well-organized peacekeeping job, then the challenge is almost impossible. It is like tying someone’s hands behind his back and pushing him into a pool with instructions to swim,” says General Cammaert.

Peacekeepers’ duties vary from monitoring withdrawal of troops, to guarding buffer zones, assisting with the demobilization and disarmament of former combatants, and ensuring a secure environment for elections. DPKO also puts strong emphasis on imparting skills to local and regional security forces and institutions, so that when UN troops leave, stable democratic structures remain equipped to ensure the peace is sustainable.

Many current peacekeeping missions are undertaken in areas that don’t feature prominently in the international media. General Cammaert pointed to the UN’s missions in Ethiopia and Eritrea, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste as particularly successful.

In Sierra Leone, “we started on the wrong foot,” he explained. “The first group of peacekeepers deployed in the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) were not prepared or equipped to face the challenges they encountered, and the mandate they were given by the Security Council was not robust enough. The subsequent kidnapping of several hundred peacekeepers in May 2000 made it clear that we needed troops who were able to deal with all possible challenges and scenarios.” 

Subsequently, the Council provided a stronger mandate, he continued, allowing UN peacekeepers to send a clear message to all warring factions that they were ready, willing and able to defend themselves against attack.  To underscore this message, the mission was also provided with attack helicopters and artillery with armoured personnel carriers. 

Today, as that mission downsizes from a maximum of 16,900 troops in November 2002 to some 13,000 at the end of May 2003, it has been training the restructured Sierra Leone army and police force, and handing over responsibilities to them at a pace that should ensure UNAMSIL’s draw-down process does not precipitate renewed instability. UN peacekeepers are expected to be completely out of Sierra Leone by December 2004.

Results: a country that had experienced 10 years of conflict is now on the road to a stable peace. Elections have produced state authorities, which are now consolidating their administration over the country. And a Special Court and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission are operating to render justice for past crimes.

But nearby, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN’s mission (known by its French acronym, MONUC) continues to lack sufficient troops to support a different, and extremely fragile, peace process. Currently, the UN has more than 4600 troops deployed in a country the size of Western Europe with an extremely limited infrastructure. Horrendous atrocities still take place. The UN has had difficulty getting the troops it needs to properly support the peace process and the establishment of a transitional government.

One of the major challenges facing DPKO is to reinvigorate Member States’ interest in, and responsibility for, committing troops to Africa, where the majority of UN peacekeeping operations currently take place.

“Since the early nineties we have witnessed a decline in the number of troops that developed countries have been prepared to contribute to peacekeeping missions,” General Cammaert noted. In 1991, only two of the top 10 troop contributing countries were developing countries, Ghana and Nepal. The top 10 this year are: Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, India, Ghana, Kenya, Jordan, Uruguay, Ukraine, Australia. Less than one-eighth of currently serving UN troops come from the European Union; far fewer from the US.

Cammaert suggested that Member States’ political interest may determine whether troops go to Africa, rather than the commitment they made in the UN Charter to accept a collective responsibility for maintaining international peace and security: “We don’t see any North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops in Africa. NATO is in the Balkans because it’s their back yard,” he noted.

He called on all Member States to live up to their responsibilities under the UN Charter to “undertake to make available to the Security Council…armed forces, assistance and facilities…necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security”. 

“You cannot say Africa is not the responsibility of the United States and Europe. The problems of the developing world are intertwined with problems that Northern countries

face. You cannot close your eyes. Northern countries have history in Africa. They are privileged with democratic institutions. Building a democracy takes time.

“The extension of NATO and the European Union (EU) could also add to our difficulties in this regard, because the UN, the EU and NATO may find themselves competing for troops to address conflicts. Cooperative and complementary arrangements — partnerships between organizations — would be much more efficient than competition. Regional organizations can play a particularly useful role in keeping the peace. Their capacity to deploy quickly and forcefully in a non-permissive environment, which would not be immediately suitable for a UN operation, is a valuable asset,” he said, citing as models the current INTERFET in Timor-Leste and ISAF in Afghanistan.

Many developed countries are spending less on their armies today, which has added to the difficulties the U.N. faces in attracting troops from the developed world for peacekeeping. “Defence budgets are shrinking in many northern countries,” said General Cammaert. “They can’t afford to let their troops go to the UN and at the same time have them engaged elsewhere. My country (the Netherlands) has 4,000 troops deployed that are not under the UN flag, although they are in UN authorized missions.

So why should a country commit troops to UN peacekeeping?

 “The UN’s approach to peacekeeping has changed in the last few years,” General Cammaert noted. “The UN is now much better equipped to support its peacekeeping missions.”

  • The 2001 Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel on UN Peace Operations (the “Brahimi report”) stimulated significant investment in DPKO’s headquarters, to better serve and guide the field missions.
  • DPKO’s situation centre is now staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
  • A Military Division of well-qualified staff officers has been created in DPKO.
  • The UN has improved selection procedures for senior military officers for peacekeeping missions: DPKO now pays the salaries of Force Commanders,  and Member States, urged to send top officers, have responded positively.
  • DPKO now has a well-developed logistics base in Brindisi, Italy, which can support quick and effective deployment of peacekeeping missions with equipment,
  • Training programmes, exercises, and a roster of civilian and support staff, who can be rapidly deployed to the field.

“Moreover, the international community now understands the important role that can be played by the UN peacekeepers in the post-conflict and post-electoral phases of peace processes,” said General Cammaert. “It has begun to see the value of continuing to deploy troops during the transitional phase from peacekeeping to peace-building…and to recognize the contribution that peace building combined with peacekeeping has on the long-term stability of a country.”  

When troops are well prepared and militarily capable, military power has a tremendous impact on containing the escalation of war and in deterring former factions from re-engaging in war, General Cammaert concluded. UN peace operations will continue to benefit from the use of military components.