Major Steplyne Buyaki Nyaboga of Kenya was named the UN 2020 Military Gender Advocate of the Year.

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2021 (IPS)

Major Steplyne Buyaki Nyaboga of Kenya singles out the establishment of gender-responsive military patrols in farming communities in Central Darfur, Sudan as one of the proudest moments of her two-year mission with the African Union–United Nations Hybrid Operation (UNAMID).

Before these patrols, displaced women farmers expressed crippling safety concerns over getting to their farms, which hindered their ability to provide for their families.

The patrols brought security and peace to the women – hallmarks of the UN Security Council’s resolution 1325 of 2000, which recognises the unique impact of armed conflict on women and girls.

They also represent the type of action for which Nyaboga has been named the UN 2020 Military Gender Advocate of the Year.

The award, bestowed annually since 2016, recognises the “dedication and effort of an individual peacekeeper in promoting the principles of women, peace and security”.

In a video message, she said she was receiving the prestigious accolade with “great humility and unprecedented joy.”

“With this award, I receive a high commendation to continue championing the ideals of the women, peace and security agenda, as anchored in the United Nations Security Council resolution 1325,” Nyaboga said.

She is the first Kenyan peacekeeper to receive the UN award.

Representatives of her country’s Defence Ministry congratulated her on her achievement, stating that “she performed in an exemplary manner” making all Kenyans, particularly women, proud.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres commended Nyaboga for her commitment to making life better for women who suffered greatly during Sudan’s armed conflict. He told the virtual award ceremony on May 27 that women who endured forced displacement, sexual violence and political marginalisation found their voices and an advocate in the Kenyan Peacekeeper.

“Through her efforts, Major Nyaboga introduced new perspectives and increased awareness of crucial issues affecting women and children across the Mission and helped strengthen our engagement with local communities,” he said, adding that “she organised campaigns and workshops aimed at addressing issues that affect Darfuri women.”

Nyaboga was also recognised for training the mission’s military contingent on issues such as sexual and gender-based violence.

“This helped our peacekeepers better understand the needs of women, men, girls and boys, and strengthened the mission’s bond with local communities. Her enthusiastic hands-on approach made a profound difference for her colleagues and for the people of Darfur. Her efforts, commitment and passion represent an example for us all,” the Secretary-General said.

The award ceremony is held annually on May 27^th, the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers. It is also the day when peacekeepers who lost their lives the previous year, are recognised for their service to the organisation. 

This year, 129 military, police and civilian peacekeepers were awarded posthumously with the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal. They came from 44 countries and died while serving the UN in 2020 and January 2021. The award is named after a former UN Secretary-General, who also died in service. He was involved in a plane crash during peace negotiations in the Congo.

According to the UN, some of the 129 fallen peacekeepers honoured this week died as a result of malicious acts, others in accidents, while some succumbed to illness – including COVID-19.

Their deaths bring to 4,000, the number of women and men who have lost their lives since 1948 while serving the UN.

Secretary-General Guterres told the ceremony that peacekeepers continue to face ‘immense’ challenges and threats.

“They work hard every day to protect some of the world’s most vulnerable, while facing the dual threats of violence and a global pandemic,” he said.

“Despite COVID-19, across all our missions, peacekeepers have not only been adapting to continue to deliver their core tasks, they are also assisting national and community efforts to fight the virus. I am proud of the work they have done.”

UN Peacekeeper’s Day was observed this year under the theme “The road to a lasting peace: Leveraging the power of youth for peace and security.” 

It focuses on the importance of youth contribution to the UN agenda and the important role of young people in peace efforts, globally.

“From CAR to DRC to Lebanon, our peacekeepers work with youth to reduce violence and sustain peace, including through Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration and Community violence reduction programs,” the Secretary-General said.

As the international organisation honours the men and women of its peacekeeping missions, the UN Chief said the world must remember them and be grateful for their bravery, commitment, service and sacrifice.

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Excerpt:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks to journalists Aug. 12 on allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse of civilians by UN forces, particularly in the Central African Republic. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Aruna Dutt
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 13 2015 (IPS)

It was two a.m. on Aug. 2 as peacekeeping forces from the U.N. Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) searched for a criminal suspect in the PK5 Muslim enclave of the capital city of Bangui.

As one house was searched, the men were taken away, the women and crying children were brought together by yelling troops, and a 12-year-old girl hid in the bathroom out of fear, according to accounts by the girl and her family."It is a small minority of troops who are directly responsible. However it is a system-wide problem. The people who commit these abuses think they can get away with them." -- Joanne Mariner

The girl was allegedly dragged out of the bathroom by one of the blue-helmet troops, where she says she was groped, taken behind a truck and raped. A medical examination later found evidence of sexual assault.

“When I cried, he slapped me hard and put his hand over my mouth,” the girl told Amnesty International.

One of her sisters recalled: “When she returned from the back of the courtyard, she cried ‘mama’ and fainted. We brought her inside the house and splashed water on her to revive her.”

“I had her sit in a pan of hot water,” the mother explained — a traditional method of treating sexual abuse.

Amnesty International heard about the incident almost immediately, and spent the past week conducting an intensive investigation.

If the allegations prove to be true, it would not be the first incident of misconduct and abuse by U.N. peacekeepers in the Central African Republic (CAR). In May, leaked documents showed that high-level U.N. staff knew of sexual abuses by soldiers in CAR and failed to act, all while planning the removal of U.N. whistleblower Anders Kompass.

The documents showed that the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had evidence of abuse by the soldiers on May 19, 2014. Then, during a June 18 interview, a 13-year-old boy said he couldn’t number all the times he’d been forced to perform oral sex on soldiers but the most recent had been between June 8 and 12, 2014 – several weeks after the first UNICEF interview.

Twenty-three soldiers from France, Chad and Equatorial Guinea were implicated in the abuse, according to one of the reports. In June, the U.N. set up an External Independent Review (EIR) to probe the allegations.

In addition to the alleged rape of the 12-year-old girl, the more recent incident included the fatal shootings of two civilians, a young boy and his father.

Balla Hadji, 61, and his son Souleimane Hadji, 16, were struck by bullets in front of their house. Balla was apparently shot in the back, while Souleimane was shot in the chest. A neighbour who witnessed the killings told Amnesty International that “they [the peacekeepers] were going to shoot at anything that moved.”

On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon announced that the U.N. envoy to CAR, Babacar Gaye, had resigned his post.

“The initial response of the U.N. was very lackadaisical,” Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Advisor, Joanne Mariner, told IPS. “It wasn’t until we issued a press release and it got international attention that suddenly the system kicked in and action was taken.”

“It is a small minority of troops who are directly responsible. However it is a system-wide problem. The people who commit these abuses think they can get away with them. They are not trained well enough to carry out their duties in the appropriate way.”

She noted that “The U.N. has no power to prosecute them, and that does create a structural tension. It’s the U.N.’s responsibility to put pressure on its Member States to prosecute these individuals.”

“We have not seen the U.N. being vigilant or active enough on these issues. There has been much more talk than real action,” Mariner said. “We are just trying to make sure that the UN is doing what it should be doing.”

U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon said, “I want to be clear that this problem goes far beyond one mission or one conflict or one person. Sexual exploitation and abuse is a global scourge and a systemic challenge that demands a systemic response.”

He said sexual abuse and exploitation in Central African Republic would be investigated further by a high-level external independent panel, and he urged victims to feel safe in coming forward.

“I have been often asking Member States to provide more female police officers, because many victims feel very shamed in coming out to bring these crimes, so we really need to have these victims come out.”

“I will not tolerate any action that causes people to replace trust with fear. Those who work for the United Nations must uphold our highest ideals,” Ban said, adding that the forces are not completely accountable to the U.N., but to their home countries.

“I want Member States to know that I cannot do this alone,” Ban added. “They have the ultimate responsibility to hold individual uniformed personnel to account and they must take decisive preventive and punitive action. They should be brought to justice in accordance with their national laws.”

“Before [troops] are being deployed, [Member States] should educate and train them properly for the importance of human rights and human dignity.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A displaced family in Bouar, Central African Republic. As of February 2014, the town and region around Bouar were experiencing ethnic cleansing, principally against Muslim civilians. Credit: Nicolas Rost for OCHA

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 3 2015 (IPS)

The United Nations, which came under heavy fire for its failure to act swiftly on charges of sexual abuse by French troops in the Central African Republic (CAR) last year, has decided to set up an External Independent Review (EIR) to probe these allegations.

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters Wednesday the review will be broad in scope and the composition of the team will be announced next week.“If Mr. Ban Ki-moon and Member States want to rescue zero tolerance, they must cleanse the UN system of negligence and misconduct once and for all." -- AIDS-Free World

He said the EIR will not only examine the treatment of the specific report of abuse in the Central African Republic – by soldiers not affiliated with the United Nations – but also a broad range of systemic issues related to how the U.N. responds to serious information of this kind.

The establishment of the review panel is also the result of strong criticism from civil society organisations (CSOs), which lambasted the United Nations for its alleged “cover-up” and for not responding fast enough.

Among the allegations were charges that French soldiers traded food in exchange for sex with starving minors and teenagers.

Paula Donovan, co-director of AIDS-Free World, who helped break the story of a long-suppressed report on sexual abuse in CAR, told IPS she welcomes the appointment of the EIR and “it was a step in the right direction.”

But, she cautioned, no one from the U.N. staff or the Secretariat should be associated with the team, primarily because they cannot investigate themselves.

Donovan said she sincerely hopes this EIR is not a thinly-disguised excuse to allow U.N. staffers to refuse to comment on any ongoing or future sexual abuses on the ground because “the panel is at work.”

Amongst the many demands by CSOs was for any review panel to be armed with subpoena powers in order to strengthen the scope of the investigation.

As has been stated over the past few weeks, Dujarric told reporters, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon “is deeply disturbed by the allegations of sexual abuse by soldiers in the CAR, as well as allegations of how this was handled by the various parts of the U.N. system involved.”

His intention in setting up this review is to ensure that the United Nations does not fail the victims of sexual abuse, especially when committed by those who are meant to protect them.

In a statement released Wednesday, AIDS-Free World, which over the last several weeks has launched its Code Blue campaign demanding answers for the sexual abuse in CAR, said the secretary-general has three challenges.

First, this must be a truly external and independent inquiry. No member of existing U.N. staff should be appointed to investigate nor to act as the investigators’ secretariat.

Second, it must be understood that top members of the secretary-general’s own staff will have to be subject to investigation. This must go right up to the level of under-secretaries general (USG).

No one can be excluded, whether the director of the Ethics Office or the USG of the Office of Internal Oversight Services or the secretary-general’s own Chef de Cabinet.

“It would appear that all of them acted inappropriately in response to the dreadful events in CAR,” the statement said.

Third, the reference in the secretary-general’s announcement to a review of ‘the broad range of systemic issues’ is crucial to the inquiry.

“What happened in the Central African Republic was an atrocity, but the fact that the U.N. stood silent for nearly a year after its own discovery of widespread peacekeeper sexual abuse (even if by non-U.N. troops) is itself a bitter commentary on the Secretary-General’s declared policy of ‘zero tolerance’,” the statement said.

“If Mr. Ban Ki-moon and Member States want to rescue zero tolerance, they must cleanse the UN system of negligence and misconduct once and for all.”

Last year, there were more than 50 cases of sexual abuse at the hands of U.N.-supported field personnel, although the actual number is said to be far higher.

The existence of diplomatic immunity is said to allow perpetrators to go unpunished and avoid legal constraints.

A longstanding proposal, going to back to 2008, for an international convention to punish those accused of sex crimes in U.N. operations overseas never got off the ground.

But against the backdrop of the current campaign, called Code Blue, the proposal may be revived, even though it could be shot down by developing countries which provide most of the soldiers in the 16 peacekeeping operations currently under way, with an estimated total of 106,595 military personnel and 17,000 civilian staff.

The largest contributors of peacekeepers include Bangladesh (9,307 troops), Pakistan (8,163), India (8,112), Ethiopia (7,864) and Rwanda (5,575), according to the latest U.N. figures.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Anders Kompass, Director for Field Operations and Technical Cooperation of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, was asked to resign after handing the report on child abuse by French peacekeepers in the Central African Republic to French authorities. Credit: UN Photo/Violaine Martin

By Roger Hamilton-Martin
UNITED NATIONS, May 29 2015 (IPS)

Leaked United Nations documents show high-level staff knew of abuses by soldiers in the Central African Republic and failed to act, all while planning the removal of U.N. whistleblower Anders Kompass.

Twenty-three soldiers from France, Chad and Equatorial Guinea are implicated in the abuse, according to one of the reports.

The documents, released Friday by the organisation AIDS-Free World as part of their Code Blue campaign, implicate the U.N. in making no attempt to stop the ongoing crimes or protect children, and then scrambling to cover up inaction.

“The documents indicate a total failure of the U.N. to act on claims of sexual abuse, even when they know that U.N. involvement might be the surest route to stopping crimes and ensuring justice,” said Paula Donovan, AIDS-Free World’s co-director, in a statement.

Included in the leak is Anders Kompass’ own account of the events, which shows his claim that he was asked to resign by the High Commissioner for Human Rights Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, who was acting on a request from the head of U.N. Peacekeeping, Herve Ladsous.

Another revelation is an email chain involving Joan Dubinsky, Director, U.N. Ethics Office; Susana Malcorra, Chef de Cabinet, Executive Office of the Secretary-General; Carman Lapointe, Under Secretary General for Office for Internal Oversight Services; and Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, High Commissioner for Human Rights, with the subject “CONFIDENTIAL — Call from DPR Sweden regarding Anders Kompass”, dated Apr. 7-10, 2015, detailing discussions across U.N. departments about Kompass’ case.

AIDS-Free World suggested that the latest documents bring into question the independence of the U.N.’s Office for Internal Oversight Services and Ethics Office, which is supposed to operate at arm’s length from the rest of the U.N. system, to ensure accountability.

The documents show that the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had evidence of abuse by the soldiers on May 19, 2014. Then, during a June 18 interview, a 13-year-old boy said he couldn’t number all the times he’d been forced to perform oral sex on soldiers but the most recent had been between June 8 and 12, 2014 – several weeks after the first UNICEF interview.

“By agreeing to be interviewed by the UN, the children expected the abuse to stop and the perpetrators to be arrested. When children report sexual abuse, adults must report it to the authorities. A child needs protection and, by definition, does not have the agency to decide whether to press charges. They deserved the protection they assumed they would receive once the UN knew of their abuse,” AIDS-Free World said in a statement.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

By Dr. Palitha Kohona
COLOMBO, May 26 2015 (IPS)

As the U.N. enters its 70th year, it is legitimate to ask whether it has been a success so far. Over the years, the media, in particular the Western media, has tended to highlight the U.N.’s failures.

Amb. Palitha Kohona. Credit: U.N. Photo/Mark Garten

The still unfinished business in the Korean Peninsula, the morass that was Congo, the impotency in Vietnam, it’s ineffectiveness during much of the cold war, the paralysis in Rwanda, it’s inability to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an end, and many such unedifying instances have tended to garner the headlines.

But as Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold so succinctly proclaimed, the U.N. was not created to send humanity to heaven, simply to stop it from going to hell. Likewise, it has been said that if the U.N. did not exist we would have had to invent it.

Given the current global suspicions and rivalries, it is unlikely that we would succeed in creating a U.N. today from scratch. Despite all the criticisms for its failures, it has achieved much in its 70 years of existence. It could be described as the most successful and truly global political organisation ever created.

One of the key goals of the United Nations, created on the ashes of the devastating Second World War, was to prevent another world war. In this it has succeeded. The major powers have not battled each other militarily in the last 70 years. While innumerable regional, bilateral, and internal conflicts and proxy wars have caused millions of deaths and inestimable property damage, a global conflagration has been avoided.The end of the Cold War brought hope that the world body would be able to make useful progress on many fronts. But the rekindling of confrontational attitudes again among the major powers has introduced a new era of uncertainty.

The U.N. has been described as a private club. Its members decide what the club should do. Although the world at large may have other higher expectations, the U.N. is able to do only what it’s membership and the Charter would permit it to do. The most effective results are achieved where a consensus is obtained.

The way it’s constitution (the Charter) is formulated ensures that it’s powers are strictly constrained. (More about this later). At the same time the rights and privileges of those who won the Second World War are well and truly entrenched in a blatantly undemocratic manner, causing much disenchantment in a world where the political, economic and social power centres have shifted significantly.

Due to the manner it was designed, especially due to the power of veto conferred on the P5 in the Security Council, its freedom of action is limited to situations where the veto wielders agree. The Cold War paralyzed the U.N. substantially hobbling it during those dangerous years of East -West confrontation.

The end of the Cold War brought hope that the world body would be able to make useful progress on many fronts. But the rekindling of confrontational attitudes again among the major powers has introduced a new era of uncertainty.

Similarly, North South relations have always been clouded by suspicions traceable to the colonial experience. This constraint continues to influence attitudes and is not helped by an overbearing, “we know best” approach of the West. The Group of 77, originally intended to be the platform of developing countries on economic and social issues, is no longer 77. Taking in China (a P5 country), it has grown to 134. Not all of its members are poor developing countries.

Similarly, the Non Aligned Movement, originally intended to be the force not aligned to the East or the West, has tended to pull in different directions with no cohesive non aligned focus. Some have dropped out of this group. The growing tendency of the Security Council to adopt decisions binding on all member states on a range of issues that should properly be the responsibility of the General Assembly, has also come in for criticism.

The Security Council, dominated by the P5, has taken upon itself the task of legislating to the entire international community in certain situations, denying the vast majority of Member States any opportunity to influence such law making.

On the positive side, the human, social and economic rights standards of the world have improved substantially due to the work of the United Nations. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the Organisation has progressively adopted a range of multilateral conventions setting standards on civil and political rights, social, economic and cutural rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, indegenous rights, disabled persons’ rights, racial discrimination, etc.

With these globally agreed benchmarks in place, the world is certainly a better place today than it was in 1945. Admittedly, the conclusion of a multilateral treaty or becoming party to a treaty does not per se advance the condition of individual persons. But the very existence of these universally accepted standards, creates the incentive to strive for those higher goals. some times with a little bit of added pressure.

The U.N. has been mainly responsible for the unprecedented development of the international rule of law. The secretary-general’s office is the repository of over 550 multilateral treaties, the vast majority of them negotiated under the auspices of the U.N.. They cover almost every aspect of human interaction, including the environment, the oceans, aviation, trade, human rights, disarmament, terrorism, organised crime, the outer space, shipping, road rules, etc.

The complex network of rules encompassed in these treaties have established standards for the conduct of individual states as never before. The international rule of law thus established, seeps down to national level in many areas influencing the development of the rule of law within countries.

The U.N. and its agencies have been successful in mobilising the international community on various issues of common interest. As the scourge of terrorism surged across borders and became a threat to many countries, the U.N. was able to mobilize states and resources to address this threat.

Expertise was assembled, resources were mobilised, training was provided to countries that needed it, and awareness was raised to a high level. In the absence of the U.N. and it’s agencies, it is doubtful if these advances could have been achieved. Much more remains to be done.

Similarly, the global response to health threats such as the AIDS pandemic, the swine flu and avian flu threats that had the potential to cause havoc and the more recent Ebola epidemic were countered due to the existence of the U.N. and it’s agencies. The U.N. has developed an impressive ability to raise awareness rapidly and mobilise member states to respond quickly to threats of this nature.

The manner that the world body has responded to natural and man made disasters has saved countless lives and alleviated much misery. The U.N.’s ongoing work in the areas of the environment, the oceans and sustainable development will bring further benefits to humankind.

The U.N. has been successful in restoring normalcy to a number of global situations that threatened to continue causing untold violence and misery. Cambodia has emerged as a stable and increasingly prosperous country after a decade of conflict largely as a consequence of the U.N. brokered peace and the subsequent peacekeeping operation.

Timor Leste, after a quarter century of conflict, has established itself as a peaceful member of the international community. The U.N. prodded and cajoled Mozambique and Angola to a new era of peace.

South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy and majority rule was painstakingly facilitated by the U.N. The role of the world organisation in guiding the Former Yugoslavia’s successor states to peace, after the initial explosion of violence, was not insignificant. Even the complex legal question of succession was dealt with imaginatively by the world body.

This brings us on to a vital and expanded area of U.N. activity – peacekeeping. Since its first peacekeeping operations on the borders of Israel and between India and Pakistan, its peacekeeping role has expanded substantially, with peacekeepers being given multidimensional mandates.

Today the U.N. is actively engaged in peacekeeping operations in 16 countries. It has over 122,000 staff performing peacekeeping functions, including civilian, police and military personnel, contributed voluntarily by 122 Member States.

The cost of peace keeping exceeds 7.1 billion dollars, making it the costliest segment of U.N. operations. Now, U.N. peacekeepers may be permitted to play an offensive role to defend their mandates, including the protection of civilians.

While there are impressive success stories, peacekeeping related criticisms also abound. The U.N.’s peacekeeping efforts may meet with greater success if their mandates are formulated with better information originating at ground level and following more structured consultations, including with host governments, if the mandates are clearly defined and the peace keeping troops are better briefed, equipped and selected on the basis of experience and training, if operations are regularly reviewed and exit strategies are well defined. Unfortunately, there has been a tendency for some missions to be extended indefinitely.

As the world moves forward there is an increasing clamour to reform the United Nations to reflect contemporary political and economic circumstances. The most difficult challenge will be to reform the Security Council which substantially reflects the power structures of the post World War world. Two of the P5 are Europeans and members of the EU. It is quite likely that two elected members would also be members of the EU.

At the moment, the WEOG group in the Security Council with New Zealand has six members out of 15. Africa has three of the elected members, Latin America and the Caribbean two and Asia two plus the Permanent seat (China).

This imbalance in the Security Council structure can not be sustained. While an entity that reflects the privileges of the victors of a war concluded 70 years ago may not be modified by another war. But dramatically altered global socio-economic realities might help to introduce change.

Making the international civil service of the U.N. truly effective has been another challenge. Constantly criticised by the major contributors, it has chugged along for 70 years. While intermittent efforts have been made under different SGs to make it more dynamic and responsive to contemporary needs, it is probably the time to approach this task in a comprehensive manner. The Organisation must be able to deliver on its mandates efficiently to the satisfaction of member states.

By Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Different jurisdictions and immunities apply to civilian and military personnel, made more obscure by a lack of transparency and detail in the U.N.’s reporting of abuse cases. Photo: UN Photo/Pasqual Gorriz

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, May 13 2015 (IPS)

“We can really argue as much as we want but if we put ourselves in the skin of victims, we just have to do something to stop this.”

This was Graça Machel’s appeal at the launch of Code Blue, the campaign to end impunity for sexual violence by United Nations (U.N.) peacekeeping personnel Wednesday.“Each country will act according to what it thinks is appropriate and more often than not rather than a full-fledged investigation you simply see a plane arriving and a bunch of people being put on a plane and disappearing." -- Lt. General Roméo Dallaire

Machel, a renowned human rights advocate, spoke of her own dismay when researching the landmark U.N. study ‘The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children’.

“We came across, eye to eye, women and girls who had been abused by U.N. peacekeeping personnel – it was shocking to us,” Machel said.

Peacekeeping is about more than military peace but also about bringing peace in people themselves, Machel said.

Her sentiments were shared by a panel of international leaders, including Lt. General Roméo Dallaire, Force Commander for the U.N. mission during the Rwandan genocide; Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, former Under-Secretary General; Theo Sowa, CEO of the African Women’s Development Fund; and Paula Donovan Co-director of AIDS-Free World, the organisation spearheading Code Blue.

The panel implored the United Nations and world leaders to act, and called for a truly independent Commission of Inquiry, with unobstructed access to U.N. records and correspondence, and full subpoena power.

Mahel called for the response to cut through the complex technicalities that raised many questions from the media present at the launch.

The problem is truly complex, with different jurisdictions and immunities applying to civilian and military personnel, made more obscure by a lack of transparency and detail in the U.N.’s reporting of cases.

One issue discussed at the forum was Code Blue’s decision to first focus on civilian personnel. The founders of Code Blue argued that this is an important first step to addressing the overall problem.

IPS spoke with Dr Roisin Burke, author of the book ‘Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by U.N. Military Contingents,’ who said that while she agreed that the “jurisdictional vacuum” surrounding civilian personnel needed to be addressed, she also hoped that Code Blue would equally tackle sexual abuse and sexual exploitation by both military and civilian personnel.

“The vast majority of U.N. operations, 70-80 percent of the people who are deployed are military, so you’ve got hundreds of thousands of military personnel deployed across the world,” Burke said.

“Per person, it’s happening more with civilian personnel, the problem is that doesn’t mean that in terms of numbers that it’s happening more.”

The panel also discussed the problems among military personnel, which Code Blue plans to address after first tackling the problem of bureaucratic delays around immunities impairing investigations into civilian personnel.

Lt. General Dallaire also discussed the problems associated with investigating allegations against military personnel who continue to fall under the jurisdiction of their home country.

“Each country will act according to what it thinks is appropriate and more often than not rather than a full-fledged investigation you simply see a plane arriving and a bunch of people being put on a plane and disappearing,” said Dallaire.

“There is far too much centralisation and taking away the ability of those in the field to be able to do the investigation in a timely fashion,” he said.

The panel disagreed with the idea that troop contributing countries will be less likely to send troops if their troops risk prosecution for sexual abuse.

“I come from Bangladesh, the largest troop contributing country. Bangladesh will welcome very much setting the standards high,” Chowdhury said.

Dallaire also agreed that this argument did not hold up and that it was holding the U.N. to ransom.

The first problem Code Blue plans to address though is immunity for civilian personnel. Donovan said that it was often not possible to substantiate allegations against civilian peacekeepers because bureaucracy gets in the way.

“The first step that kicks off the bureaucracy is immunity,” she said.

Immunity is not meant to cover sexual exploitation and abuse because personnel are only covered by immunity during their normal functions as a U.N. staff member. However, Donovan said that there are significant delays because each individual case has to be reviewed by the secretary-general before immunity can be waived. During this time evidence is eroded and witnesses disappear, making a successful investigation almost impossible.

Chowdhury told IPS he believed the U.N. should no longer hide behind legal difficulties and should take the moral high ground in these situations. He added that addressing sexual exploitation and abuse was important if the U.N. was serious about involving more women in peacekeeping operations.

An internal expert report leaked by AIDS-Free World earlier this year said that there is considerable under-reporting of these cases.

Sowa spoke passionately, saying it was heartbreaking this issue had to be discussed, “when the U.N. becomes the protector of predators instead of the prosecutor of predators, that destroys me because I believe in the U.N.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, addresses a press conference on the investigation into alleged sexual abuse of children in the Central African Republic by foreign military troops during the French military intervention in that country on May 8, 2015. Credit: UN Photo/Violaine Martin

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 12 2015 (IPS)

A rising tide of sexual abuse in U.N. peacekeeping operations has triggered the launch of a high-level campaign to end the continued attacks on women and children and an urgent call for the creation of an independent commission of inquiry.

The latest “horrible” sexual attacks have been attributed to French peacekeeping forces in the Central African Republic (CAR) although U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said they were “not under the command and control of the United Nations.”"The truth is startling and simple: No new mechanisms, no new methods of operation, no new policies can ever work in practice to prevent or punish sex abusers on staff who commit sexual offenses at present, because the U.N. bureaucracy responsible for implementing changes is completely dysfunctional." -- Paula Donovan

“We do hope that anyone who engaged in the atrocious activities involving children in the Central African Republic face justice and are prosecuted,” he told reporters last week.

Paula Donovan, co-director at AIDS-Free World, who helped break the story of a long-suppressed report on sexual abuse in CAR, told IPS: “From confusion and ineptitude on the ground, to cover-ups at the highest levels of the U.N. in New York, Member States must subject U.N. peacekeeping to a rigorous, entirely independent commission of inquiry with complete access to documents and staff.”

Until that happens, any new polices or procedures will fail, just as the current policies and procedures do, in their implementation, said Donovan, a former executive officer at the U.N. Children’s agency UNICEF and regional advisor, East and Southern Africa.

Last year, there were more than 50 cases of sexual abuse at the hands of U.N.-supported field personnel, although the actual number is said to be far higher.

But the existence of diplomatic immunity is said to allow perpetrators to go unpunished and avoid legal constraints.

A longstanding proposal, going to back to 2008, for an international convention to punish those accused of sex crimes in U.N. operations overseas never got off the ground.

But against the backdrop of the current campaign, called Code Blue, the proposal may be revived, even though it could be shot down by developing countries who provide most of the soldiers in the 16 peacekeeping operations currently under way, with an estimated total of 106,595 military personnel and 17,000 civilian staff.

The largest contributors of peacekeepers include Bangladesh (9,307 troops), Pakistan (8,163), India (8,112), Ethiopia (7,864) and Rwanda (5,575), according to the latest U.N. figures.

Asked whether an international convention will deal more effectively with sexual exploitation and abuse by U.N. staff, police and experts on mission (who are currently covered by the 1946 Convention on Privileges and Immunities), a sceptical Donovan told IPS “jurisdictional issues are incredibly complex in peacekeeping operations.”

“But the truth is startling and simple: No new mechanisms, no new methods of operation, no new policies can ever work in practice to prevent or punish sex abusers on staff who commit sexual offenses at present, because the U.N. bureaucracy responsible for implementing changes is completely dysfunctional,” she declared.

Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, international coordinator, Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, a programme partner of the International Civil society Action Network, told IPS the proposed convention is long overdue.

“If not now, when?” she asked. “It’s time to close the accountability gap. We have addressed this point in our recent international security sector workshop.”

She said: “I am hopeful about this convention and we will advocate for its adoption and ratification. We, in civil society, are always hopeful—as that is one of our sources of strength amidst growing conservatism among governments and as a result, repression of civil society.

“At the same time, we are also realistic as we have our ears close to the ground. We know what is happening. The information we receive is not filtered—unlike what U.N. headquarters and government missions receive.”

So, realistically speaking, she had doubts that troop contributing countries (TCCs) will actually support such a convention—except maybe the European countries and Canada.

However, these are not the biggest troop contributing countries. The biggest TCCs are in the developing world, she pointed out.

“We should do active lobbying with the big TCCs and show them that the convention will be useful to them—it can serve as a guide for Member States to monitor their troops; and in investigating and prosecuting troops who have committed crimes,” she added.

A 2008 report of the ‘Ad Hoc Committee on Criminal Accountability of U.N. Officials and Experts on Mission’ said “some delegations reiterated the view that it was premature to discuss the possibility of negotiating an international convention on the topic, as had been proposed by the Group of Legal Experts, and as had been subsequently supported by the Secretariat in its note.”

It was argued, the report said, that it was necessary to understand the actual impediments to prosecution, before embarking on the negotiation of a convention.

Some delegations expressed support, in principle, for a convention requiring member states to exercise jurisdiction over their nationals participating in U.N. operations.

The report further added: “It was noted that while bilateral agreements existed in the area, they provided incomplete coverage and did not usually address judicial cooperation between States and the United Nations.”

Cabrera-Balleza told IPS the TCCs should also put themselves in the shoes of the recipient countries. Don’t they want to see accountability if crimes are committed against their own people?

“I am also hoping that this convention would include mandatory training on U.N. Security Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, 1820 and supporting resolutions on women, peace and security (WPS). The TCCs should be mandated to train their troops prior to deployment and debrief using the WPS resolutions as guide after deployment.”

She said the United Nations also has a Conduct and Discipline Unit under the Department of Field Support that maintains global oversight of the state of discipline in peacekeeping operations and special political missions.

“However, I once had a discussion with a Conduct and Discipline Officer in a peacekeeping mission and we asked him if they are integrating UNSCR 1325 in their training and he had no clue what I was taking about,” she said.

The U.N. is committed to a zero- tolerance policy against sexual exploitation and abuse but its Member States are not. The convention will bring some coherence, she declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The leaked report evaluated risks to Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse prevention efforts of U.N. Missions in Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and South Sudan. Credit: UN Photo/Albert González Farran

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 16 2015 (IPS)

An internal United Nations expert report released Monday by the non-governmental organisation AIDS-Free World reveals serious contradictions in the U.N.’s reporting of sexual exploitation and abuse by U.N. peacekeepers.

The leaked expert team report, dated Nov. 3, 2013, begins by stating, “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse has been judged the most significant risk to U.N. peacekeeping missions, above and beyond other key risks including protection of civilians.”Victims of sexual assault may not feel confident to come forward, particularly if “they fear that the system doesn’t work, that justice will never be served and that they may be in a worse situation than if they hadn’t reported.” -- Paula Donovan

AIDS-Free World, which released the report, is concerned it “contains valuable material that differs profoundly from the Secretary-General’s own annual report on progress.”

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon released his 2015 update on Feb. 13.

Some of the key issues highlighted by AIDS-Free World include problems with the way the U.N. collects information about sexual exploitation and abuse by U.N. peacekeepers; delays in action taken which lead to effective impunity for U.N. peacekeeping personnel; and what the expert’s report described as “a culture of extreme caution with respect to the rights of the accused, and little accorded to the rights of the victim.”

In an open letter addressed to “Ambassadors of All United Nations Member States” sent Monday, AIDS-Free World wrote, “We know that the UN has never disseminated the Expert Team’s Report. We therefore suspect that few if any governments are aware that independent experts, commissioned by the Secretary-General, made pointed criticisms about the way sexual violations in UN peacekeeping missions are handled.

“We are releasing the Report today because we believe it contains valuable material that differs profoundly from the Secretary-General’s own annual report on progress. It should be seen by all the Member States of the United Nations.”

Inadequate reporting mechanisms

IPS spoke with Paula Donovan, co-director of AIDS-Free World, who said that the expert team that compiled the 2013 report had the required expertise to address the complex problem of abuse by U.N. peacekeepers and asked pressing questions.

Donovan explained that by contrast, the secretary-general’s recent report used inadequate and incomplete reporting mechanisms that didn’t account for the complexities of addressing an institutional culture of impunity towards sexual exploitation and abuse.

“Each year the secretary-general is required to report to the General Assembly on how he is doing. Are these special measures for protection against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse working? Are we getting closer to zero [cases]?”

However, the expert team reported that were a number of reasons for underreporting of sexual exploitation and abuse and that “U.N. personnel in all the missions we visited could point to numerous suspected or quite visible cases of SEA that are not being counted or investigated.”

“The U.N. does not know how serious the problem of SEA [sexual exploitation and abuse] is because the official numbers mask what appears to be significant amounts of underreporting of SEA,” the report said.

Donovan said that the secretary-general’s focus on reporting a decrease in the number of allegations was problematic for a number of reasons. “One thing that people who understand these issues know is that when numbers go down, it doesn’t necessarily indicate that incidents have gone down. It may be a lack of confidence in the reporting process.”

Donovan added that experts on sexual violence would advise that, “when you put a programme in place that actually begins to prevent and punish sexual exploitation and abuse, one indicator that your programme is working is that people feel safe enough to come forward.”

She said that U.N. peacekeepers were working “to protect the most vulnerable people on earth.”

For many reasons, therefore, victims of sexual assault may not feel confident to come forward, particularly if “they fear that the system doesn’t work, that justice will never be served and that they may be in a worse situation than if they hadn’t reported.

“If you make it clear to people that you can demonstrate that it is a safer decision to report than to stay silent, that’s an indication that your programme is working,” Donovan siad.

Donovan added that the U.N.’s focus on reporting “allegations” as against actual cases meant that its reporting bears no resemblance to reality.

She also added that the numbers reported by the secretary-general were incomplete as well as inaccurate, because they did not include data from UNICEF, which has its own separate reporting mechanism.

Hopes for high-level review

There are hopes that the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations will help find practical solutions to issues of impunity and transparency within U.N. Peace Operations, including those raised in this report.

Noting that the review panel was not entirely independent, given one of it’s members had been simultaneously U.N. under secretary-general in charge of Field Support for the first several months of the panel’s work, Donovan said that she still had hope that the review could address these complex issues.

Donovan said that Aids-Free World has sent a copy of the expert team’s report to panel chair José Ramos-Horta and that “if he chooses to independently take this on and insist that the U.N. take this on than there is the possibility of success.

“Under the leadership of José Ramos-Horta, it is possible that it won’t just be another panel,” she added.

Ramos-Horta shared a link to an article about Sexual Abuse by U.N. Peacekeepers with his more than 30,000 Facebook followers on Mar. 6.

Lack of U.N. freedom of information policy

Donovan told IPS that when Aids-Free World originally learned that there had been an expert inquiry, they wrote to the U.N. and asked for a copy of the report.

“We were told that it was not a public document,” she said.

Most governments have quite a clear Freedom of Information policy, which includes ways of categorising classified and unclassified documents. That is not necessarily so for the U.N. so it is unclear why this particular report was not released, Donovan said.

Asked for a response, the Office of the Spokesperson for the U.N. Secretary-General said in a statement, “The proposals and initiatives presented to the General Assembly in A/69/779 reflect an integrated approach aimed at strengthening prevention, enforcement and remedial action in connection with sexual exploitation and abuse by United Nations personnel.

“The report also revisits a number of proposals set out in the seminal 2005 Secretary-General report to the GA ‘A comprehensive strategy to eliminate future sexual exploitation and abuse in the United Nations peacekeeping operations’ which was prepared by a special task force chaired by Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein, then Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of Jordan to the United Nations.

“The report included recommendations for holding courts martial in host countries and establishing a trust Fund for Victims. Prevention, combatting and remediating acts of sexual exploitation and abuse are a top priority for the organization and will continue to be focus of sustained efforts to address the issue.”

Follow Lyndal Rowlands on Twitter @LyndalRowlands

Edited by Kitty Stapp

U.N. Peacekeepers patrol the South Sudanese village of Yuai. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 1 2014 (IPS)

Finding ways to better integrate the two arms of U.N. Peace Operations – Special Political Missions and Peacekeeping Operations – will be one of the priorities for a new review panel headed by Nobel Peace Laureate and former president of Timor-Leste José Ramos-Horta.

The review panel will look at how combined U.N. Peace Operations can respond to demands from the international community for increased responsiveness and effectiveness.“The international community is demanding that the U.N. intervene faster and more effectively to end conflicts.” -- Jose Ramos-Horta

In light of recent reports of incomplete or untruthful reporting from U.N. Peace Operations, such as the investigation into an alleged mass rape in Tabit, Sudan, another pressing issue for the panel will be transparency and accountability.

In an interview with IPS, Ramos-Horta explained that the review was not a fact-finding mission but that serious events that happen on the ground “illustrate the need for serious thinking and changes, in the whole of the peacekeeping and political missions.

“The U.N. cannot be seen to shy away from reporting to the powers that be what happens on the ground. Because in not doing so we add to impunity,” he said.

The 14-member Panel on Peace Operations was announced on Oct. 31 by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and quickly drew criticism for only having three female panel members. In response, an additional three female panel members were announced Monday.

The low representation of women on the panel, particularly initially, was considered incongruous with the U.N.’s public talk about greater participation from women in its peacebuilding activities.

Ramos-Horta told IPS last week “it is acknowledged that there is significant discrepancy, and as I understand there are well-placed, well-argued criticisms in regard to this imbalance.”

Ramos-Horta said that utmost in the thinking of the panel will be the protection of women and children and the role of women in dialogue and peace agreements.

One of the new panel members is Radhika Coomaraswamy, a former Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, who is expected to help ensure the panel works together with plans for implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325.

This may represent some recognition of the need to move towards action after several years of talk on women’s role in the peace building agenda.

Ramos-Horta told IPS that the panel will work closely with U.N. Women and will listen to civil society and representative women’s groups more so in regions where they suffer the brunt of conflicts.

José Ramos-Horta (right), Chair of the High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, briefs journalists. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

Balancing act with finite timeline

That the panel is also missing members from countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Sudan, where seemingly intractable conflicts have caused significant challenges for U.N. Peacekeeping in recent years, is another area for concern.

Ramos-Horta’s own experience with U.N. Peace Operations includes in his home country of Timor-Leste and in his recent role as U.N. Special Envoy to the Special Political Mission in Guinea-Bissau.

Consultation with representatives from countries at the receiving end of peace operations could help to identify new ways to control these conflicts that in some cases seem out of control.

Ramos-Horta said that one of the reasons that difficult conflicts have continued is in part due to a lack of local leadership and cooperation from local governments. For this reason, more consultation with representatives from these countries may be strategically wise.

But it is likely the the panel will feel that it is more pressed to focus on consulting with the governments of major troop and fund contributing countries, as well as the African Union and the NATO as the two other sources of multilateral peacekeepers.

Considering the spiraling scale and cost of U.N. Peace Operations, this will certainly be a priority for the review.

During the interview, Ramos-Horta also discussed the absence of a standing army or training camp for U.N. peacekeepers that would be ready to respond when crises erupt.

Ramos-Horta said that his own country of Timor-Leste had to turn to bilateral support in 2006, because the U.N. was unable to provide immediate assistance when violence re-ignited.

However, although a standing army may be able to bring conflicts under control faster through a faster response time, it would undoubtedly also provide new challenges in terms of financing.

Although one role of the panel will be to review peace operations in light of the changing nature of conflict, Ramos-Horta had a measured view of modern conflict.

He said it was important not to forget the horrors of past wars, such as the killing fields of Cambodia or the Iran-Iraq War.

Indeed, notwithstanding the complexity and severity of contemporary conflicts such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Syria, the average number of people killed by war each year has decreased since the end of the Cold War.

Over this same period, the scale of U.N. Peace Operations has increased.

Ramos-Horta said that there are now greater expectations on the international community to act quickly in response to conflict.

“Civil society has more access to information and demand action from governments, that’s why you see today much greater demand and pressure on the international community to act,” he said.

“I wish that in my own country [Timor-Leste] from 1975 onwards there had been digital media and there had been international outrage from the very beginning as it is now happening in regard to Central African Republic, for instance, or in regard to Iraq, Libya, Syria conflicts”, he said.

“The international community is demanding that the U.N. intervene faster and more effectively to end conflicts.”

One way of making Peace Operations more efficient is to also look at conflict prevention measures.

To this end, Ramos-Horta said that one of the aims of the review will be to look at how to better finance the Special Political Missions, the arm of U.N. Peace Operations that aims to reduce the need for peacekeepers by stemming conflicts at their source.

Currently the funding available to Special Political Missions, of which there are currently 11 worldwide, is limited.

While peacekeeping has it’s own separate, ballooning, budget that currently stands at seven billion dollars for the 2014-15 financial year, the secretary general has to find funds for the Special Political Missions from the already cash-strapped U.N. General Budget.

At the end of the day, the limited financial capacity of the U.N. to do the work the international community expects of it may be the greatest priority for the panel, despite the other practical considerations it will have to make.

Follow Lyndal Rowlands on Twitter @lyndal.rowlands

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A mother and children walk amongst flooded shelters at the Tomping IDP camp. Credit: UN Photo/Isaac Billy

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 24 2014 (IPS)

After a week that saw a massacre inside a U.N. base and wide-scale ethnic-based slaughter in an oil-producing region, the international community is grappling with what, if any, options remain to save lives in South Sudan.

In a closed door meeting Wednesday, the Security Council was shown video from Bentiu, where between last Tuesday and Wednesday, rebels executed hundreds of civilians in a mosque and the town’s hospital.“You have a situation where civilians are taken out of a mosque and killed and people are calling on the radio for the rape of women of certain ethnicity." -- Philippe Bolopion

In a terrible harkening to the Rwandan genocide, the U.N. reports that after capturing the town, rebels commandeered a local radio station and broadcast messages urging supporters to take revenge on Dinkas and Darfuris by raping women from those communities.

In a statement, the members of the Security Council “expressed horror and anger at the mass violence in Bentiu” and condemned the Friday attack on a U.N. camp in Bor, where at least 48 of the 5,000 mostly-Nuer residents it was sheltering were killed by a heavily armed mob that opened fire after breaking into the compound.

“The members of the Security Council strongly reiterated their demand for an immediate end to all human rights violations and abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, and expressed their readiness to consider appropriate measures against those responsible,” the statement added.

The “measures” will likely entail targeted sanctions against officials linked to atrocities like those in Bentiu and Bor.  On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch publicly called on the Council to “impose sanctions on individuals in both government and opposition who are responsible for grave abuses.”

Earlier this month, U.S. President Barack Obama opened the door to travel bans and the freezing of assets of military and political leaders in South Sudan, but administration officials have yet to name individuals.

In many cases, the threat of U.S. action is enough to scare commanders, but U.N. sanctions would go farther in South Sudan, says Philippe Bolopion, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch.

“U.S. sanctions are a welcome development but a lot of the leaders involved in the current violence have bank accounts in neighbouring countries – U.S. sanctions alone would not be enough,” said Bolopion. “U.N. sanctions send a powerful message to the people on the ground that they will have to pay a price for their crimes.”

Violence in the world’s youngest country broke out in December, when gunfire erupted in capital, Juba, between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and breakaway factions of the SPLA that claim allegiance to former vice-president Riek Machar, himself sacked by Kiir during a putsch in July.

Kiir is an ethnic Dinka, Machar a Nuer, and the conflict, though it revolves in essence around unresolved questions of power, oil money and politics, has split the country along ethnic lines.

In December, the Security Council authorised 5,500 additional peacekeepers to assist the U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), but bureaucratic wrangling, disputes among member states and an overstretched Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) have seen fewer than 700 arrive by April.

Should all 12,500 mandated “blue-helmets” deploy in short order, it is unclear if they’d be capable of doing much outside of bases where they’ve sheltered tens of thousands since December. But even this capability is called into question by the attack in Bor.

“This is not what the mission was designed for, this is not what the compounds were designed for,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the U.N. Secretary General, told reporters.

Regional solution

The Security Council expressed support for the African Union’s Commission of Inquiry in South Sudan, though that effort has been slow to begin. This month, the commission announced it would meet with regional leaders to discuss the conflict, including Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, both under indictment by the International Criminal Court.

The commission will also meet with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, whose troops have been fighting alongside South Sudanese government forces – even as Ugandan representatives, as part of the regional bloc IGAD, attempt to broker peace at increasingly futile negotiations in Addis Ababa.

On Jan. 23, those talks saw the signing of a cessation of hostilities agreement, only for it to be broken within hours. Between periods of convalescence, both sides have fought continuously since.

“We see that neither party is ready to, in any way, cease the hostilities,” Herve Ladsous, U.N. peacekeeping chief, told reporters after the Council session.

“The agreement on that, which was signed exactly to this day three months ago, has never been implemented. They do not give indication that they want to sincerely participate in the peace talks,” said Ladsous.

At the U.N., there was a sense that the executions and wanton murders in Bentiu had jarred delegates accustomed to a slow-burning but nonetheless deadly civil war, one that could always be addressed tomorrow, or the next week.

The Council quickly asked that the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights send human rights officers to Bentiu and launch an investigation there.

“You have a situation where civilians are taken out of a mosque and killed and people are calling on the radio for the rape of women of certain ethnicity… we have reached a turning point in the crisis where all bets are off,” Bolopion told IPS.

Despite signs of life at the Security Council, the solution in South Sudan likely will have to come from regional leaders, who until now have expressed neither neutrality nor a willingness to apply real pressure on Kiir and Machar.

IGAD has announced its intentions to replace Ugandan soldiers with a regional force, but that plan too has been slow in materialising and wouldn’t necessarily allay concerns over impartiality.

“These sanctions could help but they are not going to solve the problem,” said one high-ranking human rights official who spoke to IPS on the condition of anonymity. “I think the big players at the U.N. realise that it’s key for the regional powers to be more active and do the right thing.”

“IGAD is key and the neighbours are key, if they don’t solve it politically, it will get much worse,” the source added.

Rwandan Defence Forces deploy to the Central African Republic in late January. Credit: U.S. Army Africa photo by Master Sgt. Thomas Mills

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 10 2014 (IPS)

Amid alarming reports of ethnic cleansing in the Central African Republic, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Thursday to send an official peacekeeping mission to the conflict-torn country where the minority Muslim population has all but disappeared in much its Western half.

The French-authored resolution would rely on a force of some 10,000 troops and 2,000 police to restore order and prevent further sectarian violence that has left thousands dead and displaced roughly a quarter of the population.“The roads and bridges need to be fixed, all the transportation infrastructure. In Bangui there are only two hotels." -- spokesperson for U.N. peacekeeping

The Council in December mandated a joint AU-French force that thus far has proven unable to clamp down on violence against the Muslim communities, particularly outside of the capital Bangui, where peacekeepers have been light on the ground.

The Council’s morning session was preceded by reports of anti-balaka attacks in the central town of Dekoa, 300 kms north of Bangui, that left some 13 dead.

Despite Thursday’s vote, rights groups point out it will be a full six months before the mission, known as MINUSCA, is operational.

“There are tens of thousands of vulnerable Central Africans who need protection and assistance right now,” said Mark Yarnell, senior advocate at Refugees International.

“Clearly, a U.N. peacekeeping operation, once fully deployed, can contribute to peace and stability over the long term. But this mission will not address the atrocities, displacement, and dire humanitarian needs on the ground today.”

A “re-hatting” of many of the 5,000 AU troops would take place on Sep. 15, the official start date of MINUSCA’s peacekeeping operations. It is unclear, given a paucity of peacekeepers in several other countries, how long it will take the mission to reach full capacity.

“You will not even be getting to 10,000 troops by September given the global shortage,” Yarnell told IPS. “There is no guarantee they will arrive by that date.”

A spokesperson for U.N. peacekeeping told IPS the landlocked country is a particularly difficult location to build the infrastructure for a mission from scratch.

“We can send engineers to assist and we’ll ship some equipment and cargo to Cameroon, the nearest port,” he said. “The roads and bridges need to be fixed, all the transportation infrastructure.  In Bangui there are only two hotels – we will need to construct our bases, starting with sanitary facilities and offices.”

The transition will come nearly two years after the Séléka, a loose coalition of predominantly Muslim rebels from CAR’s neglected northwest and Chad, announced their alliance and took up arms against the government of former president François Bozizé.

In March of 2013, the rebels captured Bangui and for nearly a year presided over a state of anarchy, pilfering what was left of the state infrastructure and targeting Christians with impunity.

Christian anti-balaka self-defence militias with unclear ties to the former regime formed to combat the rebels. Following the arrival of French and African Union troops in December, the militias began gaining the upper hand.

In January, under international pressure, former Seleka leader Michel Djotodia resigned the presidency and ex-Seleka forces began pulling back from the capital, creating a power vacuum and leaving Muslim communities under threat from the vengeful Christian majority.

Peacekeepers were slow to recognise the anti-balaka as a new and larger threat, even as militias repeatedly carried out massacres in Muslim enclaves. The result, according to the U.N., has been the “ethnic-religious cleansing” of the West of CAR.

In a report, Amnesty International called the exodus of Muslims from CAR “a tragedy of historic proportions.”

“Not only does the current pattern of ethnic cleansing do tremendous damage to the Central African Republic itself, it sets a terrible precedent for other countries in the region, many of which are already struggling with their own sectarian and inter-ethnic conflicts,” the report said.

In response to a Central African government request, the resolution gives MINUSCA the emergency capacity to supplement the state’s meagre police force by authorising peacekeepers to make arrests and carry out basic law and order functions.

The first of an expected 1,000 EU peacekeepers arrived this week and are expected to spell French troops that have guarded a makeshift camp for displaced persons at Bangui’s aiport. Until MINUSCA is fully functional, EU advisors are meant to assist local authorities in rebuilding the criminal justice system. Several recent arrests of anti-balaka leaders have seen them flee or be released only hours later.

The Security Council had an opportunity to mandate a peacekeeping mission as far back as November, but due to logistical and financial concerns gave the AU time to demonstrate its capacity at peacekeeping on the continent.

Though observers have highlighted the efforts of troops from Rwanda and Burundi, Chadian peacekeepers were implicated in atrocities of their own, including the deaths of over 30 civilians in a market on Mar. 29. The Chadians were allegedly attempting to evacuate residents from one of Bangui’s few remaining Muslim enclaves when they opened fire.

Chad has since withdrawn its battalion from the AU mission, forcing African leaders to search for a further 850 troops.

The CAR vote comes as Rwanda commemorates its own 100 days genocide that began 20 years ago this week.

Flee or die: refugees from CAR in Cameroon. Credit: European Commission/cc by 2.0

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 2014 (IPS)

Budget constraints in Washington and obstinacy at the highest levels of the African Union (AU) have combined to dangerously delay a possible U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (CAR), according to sources close to negotiations currently underway in New York.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon was set to deliver his report on CAR to the Security Council this past Friday.“We agree with the principle of African solutions to African problems, but it should not come at the expense of African lives.” -- Philippe Bolopion

But the document, believed to contain a damning portrayal of ethnic cleansing and atrocities as well as a recommendation for an official mission, was held up at the last moment and delayed to this week, raising fears that its language could be toned down to accommodate the reservations of the U.S., AU and others.

Whatever the immediate outcome, the struggle illustrates an evolving and at times tense relationship between the Security Council, a more assertive AU and the U.N. over interventions on the continent.

“The reality is that a U.N. mission is absolutely essential to stabilising CAR, and the secretary-general’s reporting is spot-on as to the desperate situation on the ground,” said a high-ranking human rights officer in Bangui who spoke with IPS on the condition of anonymity.

But there is hope that this time Ban will not wilt in the face of pressure.

In December, with violence ratcheting up, the Security Council, after initially considering a French proposal for a full mission, chose instead to mandate and enlarge the existing AU mission in the country – thereafter called MISCA – and authorise the deployment of French “Sangari” troops, currently numbering 2,000.

The move saved hundreds of millions of dollars in the short term, but has proved a stop-gap measure.

Underpinning the tension between the AU and the U.N. is a push by the Africans and international partners to encouraged “African solutions to African Problems,” in this case, letting MISCA handle its mandate without calling in the U.N.

“We agree with the principle of African solutions to African problems, but it should not come at the expense of African lives,” said Philippe Bolopion, U.N. director of Human Rights Watch.

CAR “is not the time or the place for the AU to make a point,” Bolopion told IPS. “It’s pretty clear that the AU-French combination on the ground is not enough to protect civilians. A huge chunk of the Muslim population has had to flee under their watch.”

Smail Chergui, African Union Commissioner for Peace and Security, speaks to journalists following a Security Council meeting on the situation in the Central African Republic on Feb. 20, 2014. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

In April, 700 EU troops are set to spell French troops stationed the Bangui airport, allowing the Sangaris to travel out into more rural areas where the peacekeeping presence is thin and small bands of lightly armed Christian anti-balaka militias can wipe out entire villages.

In an interview with African Arguments, Amnesty International’s senior investigator Donatella Rovera said neither the French nor AU forces, by now numbering 6,000, have been effective.

“The military efforts belonged to the AU and French and they have had huge coordination problems,” said Rovera. “They weren’t present where things were happening, when they could have made a difference, when they could have stopped some of the massacres. They did not seem to be very willing to confront the new actor.”

The small U.N. political mission already in place, BINUCA, is grossly underfunded and ineffective at fulfilling its basic mandate. At the time of the December vote, observers expressed concern to IPS that without a bona fide, well-funded intervention, though violence might be temporarily snuffed out, the inequities and development shortfalls that led to the crisis would kicked down the road.

At the time, logistical concerns were also raised: where would an already overextended Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) raise troops?

Money was an issue as well: in the U.S., which funds over one-quarter of peacekeeping operations, Congress would soon set a 2014 budget that left a 12-percent funding gap in their dues and allocates exactly zero to a recently announced mission in Mali. How could they afford another venture in CAR?

Yet later that month, the Security Council saw fit to increase the number of peacekeepers in an already in-place mission in South Sudan. Many wondered if CAR was being shortchanged.

U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, who has publicly pleaded the case of CAR before the Council, was put in an awkward position by budget considerations. In a workaround, the U.S. provided 100 million dollars of direct assistance to a trust fund set up for MISCA, thereby making themselves investors in their success alone.

But MISCA is in many ways a poster child for AU stubbornness.

“It is important to remember that the MISCA mission has been around in various forms since 1996, so this is a country where many of the officers have been posted often. Many even learned [the local language] Sango,” said the human rights official in Bangui.

“The AU itself is very much opposed to a U.N. mission because they want to claim success in CAR and want to keep the MISCA mission, which suits the U.S. as well,” said the official. “The AU has long misrepresented the reality on the ground.”

In December, the AU’s envoy to the U.N., Smaïl Chergui, brushed aside accusations that Chadian MISCA troops had repeatedly attacked civilians in CAR. But last week, Chadian troops were again charged by locals with killing three civilians in a Christian neighborhood of Bangui.

At a Jan. 14 meeting of the AU’s Defence Committee, Chergui told gathered ministers in Addis Ababa “we are hopeful that we will soon significantly improve the security situation and prove the prophets of doom wrong.”

Yet in February, the U.N.’s refugee agency and the human rights group Amnesty International identified rampant ethnic cleansing against the country’s Muslim minority.

After an initial bout of violence committed by predominantly Muslim Seleka rebels left a thousand dead in December, the French Sangaris set about disarming and arrested the group, who had held power in Bangui since taking the city in March.

At the time, observers, including U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay, expressed concern over the potential for revenge killings against Muslims in areas vacated by the Seleka. Those fears proved disastrously correct and peacekeepers proved no match for containing disparate but potent attacks by Christian anti-balaka militias.

In Bangui, where upwards of 150,000 Muslims lived prior to the conflict, by some accounts fewer than 10,000 remain.  Palm fronds hanging outside houses in formerly diverse neighbourhoods indicate where Christian families have seized a home deserted by their former neighbours, either murdered or attempted to flee, likely to Cameroon or Chad.

At least 100,000 Muslims have left the country entirely and countless displaced persons have fled to the bush.

In December, members of the Security Council explained their piecemeal solution to the violence in CAR by pointing to the six-month time frame for implementing a full U.N. mission. But three months later the same reasons are given for dampening hopes of a mission now.

Though the French have publicly spoken in favour of an official mission, they remain in delicate negotiations with regional power-broker Chad over existing missions in Mali and their basing rights in the country.

And they, like the AU, have reason to want the current mission to be seen as a success. President Francois Hollande, who visited Bangui Friday, wants to impress a sceptical populace after he made interventions in former colonies a cornerstone of his foreign policy.

Earlier this month, out of sight of peacekeepers, 70 Muslims were killed over the course of two days in the southwest town of Guen, made to lie down on the ground then shot one by one.

Rwandan soldiers wait in line at the Kigali airport Jan. 19. U.S. forces will transport a total number of 850 Rwandan soldiers and more than 1,000 tons of equipment into the Central African Republic to aid French and African Union operations against militants during this three week-long operation. Credit: U.S. Army Africa photo by Air Force Staff Sgt. Ryan Crane.

By Matthew Newsome
ADDIS ABABA, Feb 4 2014 (IPS)

There are growing concerns that the massive funding crisis for peacekeeping operations in the Central African Republic (CAR) will jeopardise any prospect of restoring stability to the country. 

“The resources being allocated to the crisis are so inadequate to the task. The notion that a few thousand troops – even if they were well-trained and equipped, which is true for the French and some, but certainly not all, of the African contingents – are enough to provide security for an area larger than France itself is risible at best,” Peter Pham, director of the Africa Centre at the Atlantic Council, a research institute for U.S. and European policy approaches to Africa, told IPS. “The notion that a few thousand troops ... are enough to provide security for an area larger than France itself is risible at best.” -- Peter Pham, director of the Africa Centre at the Atlantic Council

As peacekeepers in CAR recaptured the key town of Sibut from rebel fighters on Feb. 2, donor countries made a 315-million-dollar pledge to boost peacekeeping operations in the conflict-ridden country. But this response from the international community has been criticised for being tardy and insufficient to adequately equip the fledgling African Union (AU) mission and fill a security vacuum that has caused 2,000 deaths.

“That’s why the forces have largely limited their activities to Bangui, the country’s capital, and one or two other centres while the countryside has largely been left unsecured,” Pham said.

Last year, inter-religious violence gripped the Central African nation after Michael Djotodia, backed by the Islamist Seleka rebel group, seized power from elected Christian leader Francois Bozizé.

Vicious attacks and counter attacks between Seleka-aligned Muslims and Christian vigilante militias displaced a quarter of the country’s 4.6 million people and plunged the land-locked nation into bloody anarchy.

The new funds offer modest support to the cash-strapped International Support Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA) – an AU-led operation currently around 5,500-strong supported by 1,600 French troops. But Pham says a poverty of resources for overstretched peacekeeping troops will fail to de-escalate violence spreading throughout the lawless jungle countryside. The impact of the conflict goes beyond CAR as the violence threatens to destabilise the region.

To try and close the funding gap the international community, including Japan, Norway and Luxembourg, pledged 315 million dollars – which is just short of MISCA’s operational budget of 409 million dollars for 2014. The largest single donation came from the Central African Economic Community, which pledged 100 million dollars to the MISCA force.

In addition, the United Nations World Food Programme has requested 95 million dollars from donors to stem a spiralling humanitarian crisis and provide food assistance to the population.

The European Union (EU) donated 61 million dollars, half of which will support MISCA. The other half will be dedicated to the preparation of elections at the earliest date possible to hasten a return to constitutional order. The EU also plans to send 600 troops by March to support the AU force.

“The EU is committed to financially supporting the AU to find military equipment for the troops, MISCA is still establishing its modus operandi and is in urgent need of equipment to support the troops,” Nicholas Westcott, Africa director at the European Union, told IPS.

Although France has requested that the U.N. take over the peacekeeping operation, the AU maintains that MISCA should lead the mission for at least 12 months to allow the regional force to show its military mettle. MISCA comprises soldiers from the Central African countries of Burundi, Rwanda, Chad, Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville.

The appointment of Catherine Samba-Panza, mayor of Bangui, as interim president of the transitional government, has also raised hopes that a return to political process might stem the blood-letting between Christian and Muslim groups. Her election follows the resignation of Djotodia and his prime minister on Jan. 10 due to international pressure.

“The new transitional government does not have more financial capacity than the previous one but, when it comes to the reconstitution of state security forces, it has three advantages. It has more competence within its ranks, it has more legitimacy in the eyes of the Bangui population and it has the backing of the African and French security forces and the Europeans,” Thierry Vircoulon, from the International Crisis Group, told IPS.

The newly-elected interim prime minister, Andre Nzapayeke, attended a donor event at the AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and said his country needed “a real Marshall plan” and that “in a period of international economic crisis these pledges have a special value.”

Pham says that if there is to be a lasting solution to the crisis, a non-military campaign for dialogue and reconciliation between sparring factions must be considered as being just as important in ending the orgy of violence as the need to buttress peacekeeping troops with funds and equipment.

“Uncoordinated, atavistic violence of the sort we are seeing in CAR cannot be stopped by military force alone since both the would-be killers and their victims are largely civilians. Rather, it requires massive police forces to prevent multiple small-scale atrocities over a sustained period and, then, an extended period of dialogue and peace building to restore peace in the community,” Pham said.

Over 900,000 people have so far been uprooted from their homes since the conflict in CAR escalated. Close to half a million are in the outskirts of the capital Bangui with 100,000 taking refuge at the airport. Credit: © EU/ECHO/Pierre-Yves Scotto/cc by 2.0

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30 2014 (IPS)

Reports of horrific revenge killing continued to emerge from the Central African Republic Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the Security Council voted to increase the international troop presence there and levy sanctions against those it suspects of war crimes.

Over 2,000 people have been killed and one million – a quarter of the population – displaced since a coalition of northern, predominantly Muslim rebels calling themselves Seleka (“alliance” in the local Sango language) seized power in March 2013.“Today, two men were killed in the street - one had his head cut off. They were cut to bits." -- Joanne Mariner

Following the deployment of peacekeepers and the resignation of president and former Seleka leader Michel Djotodia earlier this month, the group began a hasty but violent retreat from the capital and several contested rural towns.

Violence against the Christian community was highest in early December, when marauding ex-Seleka elements killed hundreds of civilians. But since then, the 1,600 French and 5,000 African Union peacekeepers have proved unable to fill the security vacuum left in the Seleka’s wake and civilians in areas where fighters had based themselves have come under increasingly vicious attacks from Christian anti-balaka militias seeking revenge.

“The Seleka are the worst thing that could have happened to Muslims in the Central African Republic,” said Joanne Mariner, senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty International, who estimates over 100,000 Muslims have already fled.

“I’ve spoken to hundreds of Muslim civilians and almost every single one tells me that at this point they want to get out of the country,” she told IPS.

On Tuesday, interim president Catherine Samba-Panza told French radio she would request that an official U.N. peacekeeping mission take over from the joint French-African Union mission that the 15-member U.N. Security Council authorised in December, something human rights groups have called for since last year.

But the council again stopped short of sending such a “blue-helmet” mission, authorising only 500 additional European Union troops who will be expected to spell French “Sangari” soldiers guarding 100,000 displaced people camped at Bangui’s airport.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch emergency director Peter Bouckaert tweeted a photograph taken at the airport appearing to show a crowd mutilating the corpses of two Muslim men, just 15 yards, he said, from French troops.

Last week, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay warned “the disarmament of ex-Seleka carried out by French forces appears to have left Muslim communities vulnerable to anti-balaka retaliatory attacks.” Other officials have warned of the potential for genocide in the country and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged for a peacekeeping mission with up to 9,000 soldiers. But the Security Council demurred.

Rwandan soldiers wait in line at the Kigali airport Jan. 19. U.S. forces will transport a total number of 850 Rwandan soldiers and more than 1,000 tons of equipment into the Central African Republic to aid French and African Union operations against militants during this three week-long operation. Credit: U.S. Army Africa photo by Air Force Staff Sgt. Ryan Crane.

In recent days, anti-balaka have made regular incursions into Bangui’s two remaining Muslim enclaves, known locally as PK5 and PK12, killing dozens of residents and driving out hundreds. PK12 is a main transit point and Muslims from villages surrounding Bangui have congregated there, awaiting passage to Chad and Cameroon.

Last Friday, 22 civilians were murdered in a convoy on the highway to Cameroon, many hacked to death with machetes.

“In PK5, when people leave that area there are lynchings,” Mariner told IPS from the northwest town of Bozoum. “Today, two men were killed in the street – one had his head cut off. They were cut to bits.”

She added, “Bangui used to be an enormously mixed city. That is completely over.”

In PK13, another traditionally Muslim neighbourhood now emptied of its residents, newcomers have already written their names on abandoned houses and made plans to turn the local mosque into a youth centre.

“You come back in a year and you’ll never know that there were Muslims there,” said Mariner. “Unless there’s real action taken, that’s where the country is going.”

Information is sparse outside of Bangui but the situation is believed to be dire north and northwest the capital, where the peacekeeping presence is light and where anti-balaka have actively pushed Muslims out of their towns.

In the western town of Baoro, the only Muslims left have taken refuge in a local church guarded by peacekeepers. But elsewhere, in towns like Bossembele, Yakole and Boyali, most have fled.

Until the Chadian-backed Seleka began fighting, sporadic violence in the country had never broken so deeply along religious lines.

Disorganised violence

Because the Christian militias are only loosely coordinated at best, negotiations have been impossible in many parts of the country.

“There’s no command and control structure, so even within a single region, they may have five anti-balaka groups vying for power,” said Mariner.

But unlike in the capital, where better organised gangs have access to automatic weapons and grenades, the lightly armed and often young anti-balaka in the countryside travel on foot and are seen fleeing from peacekeepers.

“Obviously you can’t have peacekeepers on every block, but you can have peacekeepers in every town. Even a few peacekeepers make a huge difference,” said Mariner.

“They mostly have hunting rifles, shotguns, you see a lot with bow and arrows, they are no match to real soldiers. And when there are real soldiers they get out of the way. There are attacks that almost certainly could have been avoided had there been peacekeepers in place.”

Mission confusion

The EU contingent will add a third element to an already piecemeal force that has at times appeared overwhelmed.

After the initial Security Council vote in December, observers expressed concern that a streamlined mission – of the kind that had seen moderate successes in Mali against an organised foe – would fail to prevent violence that had devolved into communal, tit-for-tat killings, nor would it address long-term development needs that fostered conflict.

French Ambassador Gerard Araud spoke this week of the need for a full U.N. mission replete with up to 10,000 peacekeepers. But Tuesday’s vote accomplished neither of those goals.

Ainsley Reidy, senior legal advisor at Human Rights Watch, says the international community has a responsibility to bolster the intervention.

“We see protection of the civilian population and accountability for crimes committed by all as the two priority responsibilities of the international community,” said Reidy. “For that reason we continue to remain convinced of the need for the quick deployment of a properly resourced U.N. peacekeeping mission to respond to the scale of the violence.”

Such a mission would augment BINUCA, the small, non-military “peace-building” office already in the country. Groups have for months criticised what they see as a lack of public human rights reporting coming from observers there, a problem they place in the generally disjointed nature of the intervention. Without a unified mandate for all observers and peacekeepers, human rights groups worry accountability and reconciliation will be waylaid.

“We think ultimately there needs to be a fully fledged U.N. mission that addresses both the security needs and can contribute to holding people accountable,” Reidy told IPS.

The December resolution left the door open for the possibility of a larger U.N. peacekeeping mission and would only require an additional vote to initiate a transition. At the time, there was speculation that Security Council members, in particular the United States, were hesitant to budget for another peacekeeping mission at a time when the U.N. has more troops deployed worldwide than ever before. That state of affairs appears unaltered.

In neighbouring South Sudan, where the Security Council voted earlier in December to increase the blue-helmet mission there by 5,000, the transfer of troops has been delayed and thousands have yet to arrive.

“We do know these deployments tend to be slow and can take up to six months,” said Reidy.

“If we take what has happened to civilians between mid-December and mid-January as an indication of how quickly things can happen on the ground in CAR, then six months is too long a time. The U.N. and others can’t afford to drag their feet on this.”

Rwandan genocide survivors exhuming the bodies of their relatives killed and buried in a mass grave during the 1994 100-day massacre. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15 2014 (IPS)

On Jan. 11, 1994, Romeo Dallaire, force commander of the United Nations Mission in Rwanda, sent a fax to U.N. Headquarters in New York, telling officials there a source close to the government had confided to him that Tutsis were being forced to register themselves in Kigali.

“He suspects it is for their extermination,” wrote Dallaire.“Having 26,000 people running around [DRC] just with a rifle doesn’t mean you are going to actually have a solution." -- Romeo Dallaire

In five months, a million, mostly Tutsi, Rwandans would be dead, victims of a meticulously planned 100-day genocide unleashed by Hutu extremists after they shot down the plane of President Juvénal Habyarimana, fearful he would soon seal a lasting peace in the country.

On Wednesday in New York, the U.N. marks the sombre 20th anniversary of what most consider its greatest failure – and the lives that proved the price required to force peacekeeping into the 21st century.

“Twenty years ago, humanity turned itself inside out,” Dallaire told reporters Tuesday. “The international community did its best to ignore Rwanda. It wasn’t on their radar, it was of no self-interest, it had no strategic value.”

Simon Adams, executive director of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, who joined Dallaire and Rwandan ambassador Eugene-Richard Gasana, said the genocide, along with ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, was a turning point for the U.N.

Eleven years after the genocide, in 2005, the U.N. launched the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) initiative, obliging states to protect their own population from mass killings and holding the international community accountable for taking collective action to prevent genocide.

“Without the tragedy of Rwanda, we wouldn’t have had the Responsibility to Protect,” Adams told IPS. “There’s no way that would have happened without the process of sad reflection afterwards and the utter failure of the U.N. in 1994.”

Yet in 2009, the U.N. came under heavy criticism for not doing more during the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war, when up to 40,000 civilians were killed in a conflict which had, for most purposes, already been decided.

A 2012 internal U.N. report echoed investigations from the 1990s, finding “the UN’s failure to adequately respond to events like those that occurred in Sri Lanka should not happen again. When confronted by similar situations, the UN must be able to meet a much higher standard in fulfilling its protection and humanitarian responsibilities.”

Still, U.N. peacekeeping missions now prioritise the protection of civilians and sovereignty no longer takes precedent when they are targeted. Today it is expected that peacekeeping operations, such as recent interventions in South Sudan and the Central African Republic, will receive Chapter Seven mandates, authorising peacekeepers to use force in order to prevent the deaths of non-combatants.

Dallaire’s mission had no such mandate.

Coming a year after the disastrous failed mission in Somalia, countries were hesitant to send troops to Rwanda. Even when Dallaire asked the U.S. to jam radio transmissions emitting instructions to kill, Washington declined, afraid doing so would violate Rwanda’s sovereignty.

“The onus is on every sovereign state that makes up this U.N.,” said Dallaire. “Every sovereign state washed its hands, didn’t want to get involved, saw another Mogadishu catastrophe coming on line and did its best to avoid being engaged. So there was no prevention. There were words, but there was no prevention.”

Not only did the U.N. not heed Dallaire’s pleadings, but during the worst of the genocide, when seven Rwandans were being murdered every minute, the Security Council voted to cut its peacekeeping mission in the country by 90 percent.

Ordered to leave the country, Dallaire, along with several hundred soldiers, refused. They tried desperately to protect civilians, but the killing subsumed the ill-equipped and overwhelmed troops.

Only three weeks before Tutsi rebels took the capital and ended the genocide, the Security Council finally approved a French intervention force, but the 3,000 French troops soon after gave safe passage to fleeing interahamwe and Hutu soldiers, even allowing them to keep their weapons. Pursuit of the genocidaires continues today, both abroad and in the jungles of eastern Congo.

“History has judged the U.N. very harshly for its inaction in Rwanda, and we must learn the lessons of the past,” Adams told IPS.

In March 2013, the Security Council authorised the “U.N Force Intervention Brigade,” a rapid response force that aggressively and successfully pushed into submission the M23 rebels in Eastern Congo.

“The new force there, having offensive capabilities, is a significant departure from the mandates that were so restricted,” said Dallaire.

“Peacekeeping always suffers from a lack of rapid reaction,” said David Curran, lecturer in peacekeeping, peace building and conflict resolution at University of Bradford. “There is a strong need to examine concepts of rapid deployment.”

Curran says countries still complain about erratic mandates and many member states – mostly developing – are remiss to send soldiers on orders from a security council whose members offer few or none at all.

“Certain states, mainly from the non-aligned movement, find they are being pushed to provide peacekeepers in situations where there is little peace to keep,” Curran told IPS. “They say they are being given vague mandates pertaining to protection of civilians from the Security Council, which certainly has a majority of states who do not provide troops to peacekeeping operations.”

Dallaire says peacekeeping often is a question of money and resources, no more evident than in Congo missions, which for many years were seen as failures.

“Having 26,000 people running around there just with a rifle doesn’t mean you are going to actually have a solution,” Dallaire told reporters. “So until developed countries get reengaged in peacekeeping and peacemaking operations we will continue to have forces that are not necessarily effective on the ground but also we seem to also continue to have mandates that are so restricted.”

But, he added, there is “a whole new generation of conflict resolution in which peacekeepers can be deployed but with the ability to influence the situation and not stand there and observe it, report, a sort of referee without a red card.”

Recent mandated French-led interventions in Mali and Central African Republic – cheaper than full blue-helmet missions – have seen mixed results, but observers raise questions concerning those actions’ long-term viability and development prospects.

Dallaire spoke encouragingly of the recent deployment of troops from other missions to augment the peacekeeping force in South Sudan, which the Security Council voted to increase by 5,500 shortly before Christmas.

But Adams says the mission in South Sudan is tentative and unwilling to enforce its mandate. On Tuesday, gunfire burst through the walls of an UNMISS camp in Malakal but the U.N. did not report any engagement. Groups say 10,000 have died, many of them civilians.

“In the case of South Sudan, they have a responsibility to protect mandate, it’s written in there,” says Adams. “There’s no problem with doctrine, which is very different from 1994. I think what we see in South Sudan is a question of resourcing, political leadership and will.

“What we often lack in mass atrocity crime situations is not early warning but timely response,” he added.

Closer to Rwanda, Gasana said the interahamwe that the French let slip so easily through their grasp continue to operate as FDLR rebels in the Eastern Congo, and for that, celebrations were not yet in order.

“I don’t think that they’ve learned anything. MINUSCO’s been there 13 years. And everybody, all of us here, knows what FDLR represents and they are still there,” said Gasana. “But we learned a lesson, we are part of the U.N., we don’t want this to happen anymore and that’s why we contribute peacekeepers to see how we can do our duty and serve the people all over the world.”

UNMISS officers provide water to civilians seeking refuge from fighting in Juba on Dec. 17, 2013. Credit: UN Photo/UNMISS

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 11 2014 (IPS)

As the death toll rises from South Sudan’s spiraling political and ethnic conflict, the ability of the U.N. to enforce its peacekeeping mandate in the country is coming under increased scrutiny.

On Thursday, U.N. under-secretary general for peacekeeping Hervé Ladsous told reporters the toll well exceeded 1,000 and reiterated that “the situation in terms of violations of human rights remains terribly critical.” The next day, the International Crisis Group released its own estimates that put the figure at up to 10,000."It's 11 million people across a country the size of France. How could we promise that we could protect everyone all of the time against everybody?” -- Kieran Dwyer of DPKO

Yet since the deaths of two Indian peacekeepers during a Dec. 19 attack by Nuer militia on an UNMISS base in Jonglei State, the U.N. has engaged militarily neither the loose coalition of rebel forces led by former vice-president Riek Machar nor government SPLA troops fighting for President Salva Kiir.

Vastly outnumbered by combatants, peacekeepers have been directed to protect UNMISS compounds where NGOs and the U.N.’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, have struggled to provide for upwards of 60,000 displaced South Sudanese who have sought shelter.

“We cannot protect those people from being overrun while at the same time doing patrolling in an area the size of France,” said Kieran Dwyer, chief of public affairs at the U.N.’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).

As fighting raged and the government appeared to retake the northern city of Bentiu Friday, Mongolian peacekeepers there remained near the city’s compound, where 9,000 residents had taken refuge.

“It’s not our job to stand in the way of the anti-government forces fighting the pro-government forces,” Dwyer told IPS.

Dwyer says UNMISS utilises local channels to inform combatants of the location of civilians and threatens them with accountability should they attack, but he admits peacekeepers themselves are fearful of being overwhelmed and killed and even of reprisal attacks within UNMISS camps if they were to engage one side or the other in a firefight.

That state of affairs means little stands in the way of potential human rights violators, says Cameron Hudson, director of policy at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and former director for African Affairs at the National Security Council.

“You can’t do peacekeeping with the mentality that you accept zero casualties,” Hudson told IPS. “If that’s how you enter into these missions, they will never be fully successful and carry out their mission mandates.”

Fighting began on Dec. 15 when Nuer and Dinka factions of the SPLA skirmished in the capital. President Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, immediately ordered the arrest of 11 high-profile opposition leaders and accused Machar, a Nuer, of plotting a coup, a charge Macher has denied. Despite international scepticism of Kiir’s account, Machar fled Juba and took command of rebels.

The rebellion has displaced 400,000 people and pushed unknown numbers into the bush where they remain unreachable by humanitarian agencies and peacekeepers. The fate of those who fled their homes but didn’t make it to U.N. compounds lingers as a glaring question that neither the U.N. nor its critics appear capable of answering.

Human rights

The violence comes as the U.N. unveils “Rights Up Front,” its new genocide prevention initiative – an attempt to address failures to avoid civilian deaths in past conflicts in places like Bosnia, Rwanda and Sri Lanka.

Though it remains unclear how many civilians have perished in South Sudan, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay in December reported mass graves had been found in Juba and Bentiu and cited “extrajudicial killings” and “the targeting of individuals on the basis of their ethnicity.” Observers believe more will be uncovered.

“It is irrefutable, and needs repeating, that serious human rights violations are the best early warning of impending atrocities,” said Deputy Secrety-General Jan Eliasson, speaking before the General Assembly on “Rights Up Front.”

But in South Sudan, UNMISS has been tentative.

“They don’t have that many forces on the ground,” said EJ Hogendoorn, deputy programme director for Africa at the Crisis Group. “They also obviously have significant logistic challenges in terms of moving around safely.”

Still, in a Christmas Eve letter to the U.N. secretary general, Crisis Group President and CEO Louise Arbour wrote that the U.N. needed to do more to ensure the safety of civilians.

“We feel that UNMISS, using its existing forces until additional troops arrive, should take a number of immediate, specific steps to prioritise protection of civilians, above all other mandated tasks,” said Arbour.

“Clearly not enough is known about what’s going on,” Hogendoorn told IPS. “This is part and parcel of the fact that peacekeepers are not patrolling as much as they normally would.”

From its beginning in 2011, UNMISS was mandated to protect with force “civilians under imminent threat of physical violence.” But despite signs of political instability in the SPLM governing coalition and an uprising earlier in 2013 in Jonglei state, the mission remained unequipped to prevent or intervene in violence on the scale seen in the past month.

On Dec. 26, Hilde Johnson, the U.N. special representative to South Sudan, told reporters, “I don’t think any South Sudanese nor any of us observers in country or outside expected the unraveling of the stability so quickly.”

But others have said those investments meant the U.N., Johnson, and NGOs on the ground were more hesitant to criticise the government and highlight warning signs.

Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation, says UNMISS was unprepared from the start. After South Sudan declared independence in 2011, peacekeepers that had already been in the country to enforce the 2006 comprehensive peace agreement between the north and south were shifted into the new mission.

“It was the power of inertia,” de Waal told IPS. “There were contracts, jobs, infrastructure and the U.N. said, let’s maintain it.”

“There was no deep analysis – what will these troops actually be doing? So they are really there by default.”

But Dwyer says part of the problem is some observers’ inaccurate expectations of the mission.

UNMISS “was never set for a situation where you have almost a civil war,” said Dwyer. “The primary responsibility to protect civilians is the government’s and our job is to support the government.”

“The U.N. will intervene militarily against any armed group who threatens civilians if we are there and have the capacity to do so.”

The rationing of intervention isn’t a new strategy for U.N. missions. Though DPKO oversees the second-largest deployed army in the world, peacekeepers are spread thin among 15 missions and further divided among bases within countries.

“It’s [South Sudan] 11 million people across a country the size of France,” said Dwyer. “How could we promise that we could protect everyone all of the time against everybody?”

Last month, the Security Council voted to increase troop levels in South Sudan from 7,000 to 12,500, but a lengthy approval process has slowed their deployment. Ladsous, who previously told reporters the 5,500 new troops would arrive by the middle of January, now says they may not all be in the country until March.

Meanwhile, as the conflict threatens to morph into a wider civil or regional war, information on deaths and human rights violations has become increasingly obscured by the fog of war.

Adding to the dilemma facing peacekeepers is the presence of Ugandan troops fighting for the government. Ugandan President Yuweri Museveni is a strong ally of Kiir, but Uganda is also one of the countries mediating at U.N.-endorsed negotiations taking place in Addis Ababa.

Observers say the talks in Ethiopia are unlikely to achieve a ceasefire until one side has gained a significant military advantage.

All of this only makes a show of force more important, says Hudson.

“There’s no question they could be doing more,” he said. “The humanitarian part of the mission appears willing to accept a much higher risk than the actual armed peacekeepers. That’s not how it’s supposed to be, that’s a fundamental flaw in the system.”

But Dwyer says that at a certain point, little can be done “if two people are really intent on their destruction.”

“The leaders of South Sudan, on both sides, bear responsibility for this conflict and for ending the fighting,” he said.

CAR refugees seek safety in a church. Credit: ©EU/ECHO/Ian Van Engelgem

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDÉ, Dec 19 2013 (IPS)

“We couldn’t stand the violence anymore,” said 27-year-old Baba Hamadou shortly after alighting from a chartered flight at the Douala International Airport earlier this week.

Hamadou is one of 202 Cameroonians repatriated from the Central African Republic (CAR) on Tuesday, bringing the total number of Cameroonians who have returned from the war-ravaged country to 896 in four days.“My neighbour was butchered like an animal.” -- David Nchami

As the sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims worsens, Cameroon’s President Paul Biya decided that it was time to evacuate Cameroonian citizens living there. Altogether, there are about 20,000 Cameroonians in the Central African Republic.

The new arrivals have been narrating gory tales of violence they witnessed.

“Four Cameroonians – a man, his wife and two children – were roasted to death in Bangui before my very eyes,” Hamadou told IPS.

“My neighbour was butchered like an animal,” added another Cameroonian, David Nchami, who worked as a builder in Bangui.

“A woman was raped and her genitals removed in the capital,” said yet another, Marie-Louise Tebah.

Divine Abada, a miner from southwest Cameroon, told the Cameroon state broadcaster CRTV that the scale of the violence was so terrible he decided to return home.

“These crazy Séléka rebels caught me in the bush, beat us very well, took everything away from us. The only thing that saved me was that they did not see my passport,” he said.

Identifying Abada’s nationality would likely have made things worse, given the apparent hatred the Séléka rebels have for Cameroonians since President François Bozize was ousted from power in March and sought refuge there. The transitional government that took his place has failed to quell the armed clashes and attacks on civilians.

Séléka has also targeted Cameroon for reprisals. In November, a group of suspected rebels crossed over from CAR and attacked military installations at Biti, a border village in Cameroon’s East Region.

A firefight between the rebels and Cameroon’s security forces led to the deaths of seven people, two of them Cameroonians.

The African Union is boosting its troop levels in CAR to 6,000 soldiers, who join 1,600 French soldiers already on the ground in the former French colony.

The governor of Cameroon’s East Region, Samuel Dieudonne Ivaha Diboua, also says his own government has strengthened security along the border.

“We have deployed troops along the 800-km-long border line that divides the two countries,” he told IPS.  “We can’t afford to leave our compatriots at the mercy of evident death.”

Even as Cameroonians at the CAR border live in perpetual fear of attacks by Séléka rebels, thousands of Central Africans are flocking into Cameroon, escaping the violence and bloodshed in their own country.

In early November, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced that Cameroon was already host to some 90,000 Central African refugees.

Thousands more fled last weekend by boat across the Oubangui River to Zongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), even though the border is officially closed and they risked being shot at.

According to U.N. figures, some 210,000 people have been forcibly displaced by violence in the last two weeks in the embattled capital, Bangui.

The rather large influx of CAR refugees into Cameroon has been causing a lot of unease among the local population.

In September, hundreds of the refugees abandoned their camp in Nadoungué, a small village in Cameroon’s East Region, and relocated to a nearby village in search of better services.

“All we are looking for is water, healthcare, food…these things are not found here,” Dominique Mendo, a CAR refugee, told IPS.

But the continued influx has brought them into conflict with the local population, sometimes necessitating the intervention of security forces.

The Cameroonian government has committed over 500 soldiers to join the AU peacekeeping force, according to Defence Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o.

In addition, the 1,600 French troops used Cameroon as a transit port, along with ammunition, bound for Central Africa.

Mebe Ngo’o said Cameroon cannot stay indifferent to the mayhem that is affecting millions of people in CAR.

According to the United Nations, over 500 people have been killed in the capital Bangui alone since Dec. 5.

The U.N. also says the conflict has affected the entire 4.6 million population, with one in 10 fleeing their homes and a quarter of the people going hungry.

A view of the briefing room as Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left, facing camera) addresses journalists at his annual end-of-year press conference. At his side is his spokesperson Martin Nesirky. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 16 2013 (IPS)

As the ongoing crises in some of the world’s hot spots – including Syria, the Central African Republic, Mali, Libya, Palestine and Darfur, Sudan – continue unabated, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Monday singled out some of the biggest challenges facing the international community in 2014.

At his traditional year-end press conference, Ban said 2013 was the year in which the Syrian conflict, now in its fourth year of relentless killings, has “deteriorated beyond all imagination”."I can think of nothing I would rather see in 2014 than for world leaders to emulate [Mandela's] example in upholding their moral and political responsibilities." -- Ban Ki-moon

“The people of Syria cannot afford another year, another month, even another day of brutality and destruction,” he added.

And 2013, he noted, was also the year in which the Central African Republic “descended into chaos”.

The situation in the Central African Republic has become “one of the most serious crisis issues for the United Nations to manage,” he said.

“I am gravely concerned about the imminent danger of mass atrocities,” Ban warned, appealing to the country’s transitional authorities to protect people.

The crisis in both Syria and the Central African Republic will remain two of the primary issues high on the U.N. political agenda in 2014.

The Syrian crisis is furthest from a resolution since the Security Council remains deadlocked with two veto-wielding permanent members, Russia and China, opposed to any sanctions against the beleaguered regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

A conference of the warring parties is scheduled to take place Jan. 22 in Geneva. But it is in danger of unraveling over several contentious issues, including the composition of the rebel forces’ representation at the conference, and whether or not Iran and Saudi Arabia should participate, besides the five permanent members of the Security Council, namely the United States, UK, France, Russia, China, plus Germany (P5+1).

Meanwhile, the fighting between the government and rebel forces in the Central African Republic has been temporarily thwarted with the deployment of French and African forces.

But as the battle intensifies, Ban is expected to call for an upgrade of the joint military force, called the International Support Mission for the Central African Republic, into a full-fledged U.N. peacekeeping force.

Asked about the important lessons he may have drawn after six years in office, Ban said he was “just amazed there are still so many challenges unresolved”.

The number of crises now seems to be increasing than during his first term, which began in January 2007. At that time, the situation in Darfur was the most serious issue, he said.

“Now you have so many issues,” said Ban, specifically Syria, the Central African Republic and Mali.

Making a strong case for international collaboration, he said “nobody, no organisation, no country, however powerful, however resourceful” can singlehandedly resolve the current crop of problems.

“That is a very important lesson which I learned, and that is why I have been appealing and reaching out to member states: please, let us work together.”

But he cautioned that he himself or even the United Nations cannot do it alone. “We need support from many regional and sub-regional organisations,” he said.

As the situation in Syria continued to deteriorate, there was a humanitarian appeal Monday for a staggering 6.5 billion dollars in funds. The collective appeal came from several U.N. agencies involved in humanitarian assistance to 9.5 million people affected by the fighting in Syria.

The U.N.’s Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos, and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, described the crisis as “appalling”.

Jens Laerke, spokesperson and public information officer at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, (OCHA), told IPS the combined appeal is “the largest ever appeal for a single emergency.”

Asked how much of this will be realised, he said, “We certainly hope the generosity shown by donors in previous years will also apply this time round. Having said that, appeals are rarely if ever 100 percent funded.”

At the press briefing, Ban also laid out some of the key success stories of 2013.

Alongside the new and ongoing crises, he said, 2013 was also a promising year for diplomacy.

The United Nations reached a landmark agreement on the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons programme, while the 193-member General Assembly adopted the Arms Trade Treaty, “realising a long-held dream.”

At the same time, member states agreed on a roadmap for shaping the post-2015 development agenda, which will include a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a logical successor to the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) whose deadline is 2015.

Ban also said the climate change conference in the Polish capital of Warsaw last month “kept negotiations on track for an agreement in 2015.”

And across the Sahel and West Africa, peacekeeping and mediation promoted stability, with the people of Mali conducting peaceful legislative elections last week.

Saturday’s “bombing attack in Kidal will not deter us,” he added.

Ban also referred to “another highlight of 2013”: the agreement reached last month between Iran and the P5+1 countries on Iran’s nuclear programme.

“I hope this initial understanding will be followed by a comprehensive agreement on all outstanding concerns,” he declared.

Finally, 2013 will be remembered, he said, as the year in which the world bid a sad but celebratory farewell to former South African President Nelson Mandela.

“I can think of nothing I would rather see in 2014 than for world leaders to emulate his example in upholding their moral and political responsibilities,” Ban said.

Rebel in northern Central African Republic. Credit: hdptcar/cc by 2.0

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 26 2013 (IPS)

France has said it will circulate a Security Council draft resolution Monday night that would create a U.N. peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic, as violence in its former colony threatens to morph into an ethnic conflict.

Earlier in the day, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who last week said conditions in the country “verged on genocide,” announced France would triple its troop presence there to 1200, bolstering 2,500 regional African troops who have been largely helpless to stem increasingly anarchic conditions.“Attacks like these on populated areas are causing massive devastation and fear among the population of the Central African Republic." -- Daniel Bekele

“There are no more state security services in Bangui or the rest of the country,” said Thierry Vircoulon, Central Africa project director at the International Crisis Group. “People are left to themselves – only churches can offer anything.”

Since fighting began nearly two years ago, 400,000 people have been internally displaced.

In March, Seleka, a loose-knit coalition of rebel groups from the country’s Muslim north, captured the capital, Bangui, and forced the president, François Bozizé, who rebels accused of failing to abide by previous peace agreements, to flee the country.

The rebel’s leader Michel Djotodia was appointed interim president, becoming the first Muslim to hold the office.

But Djotodia’s announcement in September that Seleka would be disbanded set off prolonged bouts of looting and violence committed by disgruntled rebels.

Amnesty International reports that since Bozizé’s overthrow, the number of militants identifying as Seleka has actually increased from 5,000 to 20,000.

And Human Rights Watch Monday accused a Seleka commander of explicitly killing civilians in a Nov. 10 attack in Camp Bangui.

“Attacks like these on populated areas are causing massive devastation and fear among the population of the Central African Republic,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

Last week, the United States pledged 40 million dollars to prop up the regional force that has been holed up in Bangui for months.

Though the International Support Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA) has plans to increase its numbers from 2,500 to 3,600, leaders in the region are convinced little can be done without the authorisation of a U.N. peacekeeping operation.

Recent reports of attacks on mosques and churches are stirring echoes of times when the U.N. has been slow to prevent genocide.

Following an internal report highlighting the U.N.’s inaction during the final months of civil war in Sri Lanka, the U.N.’s response in the Central African Republic will be seen as a test of promises to act earlier and more decisively to prevent genocide.

Muslims, who dominate Seleka, make up only 15 percent of the Central African Republic.

The conflict comes after “years of marginalisation and discrimination of Muslims in the northwest” of the country, said U.N. Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson.

Reports claim that elements of Seleka do not speak Sango, indicating they may have come from neighbouring countries such as Sudan or Chad.

In many parts of the country, members of the Christian majority have responded to the violence by creating their own militias, known as “anti-balaka”, or anti-machetes.

“There were several clashes between Seleka and the population this week,” Vircoulon told IPS. “The African peacekeepers retreated, they cannot prevent them.”

Though the country has a long history of coups and rebellions, religion has not reared its head to such a degree – as it has in the rest of the Sahel – until now.

“This did not start as a religious conflict,” said Philippe Bolopion, United Nations director at Human Rights Watch. “Neither party had a religious agenda.”

As fighting picks up, younger and younger Central Africans are being pulled into the ranks on both sides. UNICEF estimates there are currently 6,000 child soldiers fighting in the country.

Speaking to the Security Council, Eliasson called the suffering “beyond imaginable” and said the U.N. had to act in order to “prevent atrocities.”

But very little information makes its way out of the country, where NGOs are thin on the ground.

Thousands of refugees have fled from major cities into the bush where they are susceptible to malaria and are dying from treatable diarrhea.

Until semblance of order is restored, those who have fled are expected to die in increasing numbers.

“Part of the problem is we don’t know anything,” Bolopion told IPS.

Last week, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he supported a U.N. peacekeeping force of 6,000 troops. But French representative Gérard Araud told reporters the secretary-general’s office would require up to three months to compile a plan of action, pushing into March.

That timeframe leaves many wondering what role France will play in the interim, less than a year after it launched a military operation in Mali to dislodge extremists who had created a de-facto state in the north of the country.

Troops of the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) cheer after taking control, with assistance from the Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) of the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), of a highly strategic position of the M23, an area known as Three Towers on the hills of Kibati, five 5 kilometres north of Goma. Credit: UN Photo/Sylvain Liechti

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 13 2013 (IPS)

As U.N. peacekeeping operations assume a more agressive role in conflict zones, the first concrete results came last week when the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) defeated the M23 rebel group after a 20-month-long insurgency.

That victory was thanks in part to the support provided by the 25,240-strong U.N. Stabilisation Mission in DRC (MONUSCO), but more importantly, the 3,000-strong first-ever U.N. Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) created by the Security Council last March.

An African diplomat told IPS the success in DRC may change the dynamics of peacekeeping in some of the other U.N. operations in Africa, including in Darfur, South Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire.

But any change in the mandate of the 15 peacekeeping operations – eight of which are in Africa – has to be approved by the Security Council, he added.

By accident or by design, the United Nations is currently seeking to strengthen the military component of its peacekeeping operations with “force enablers”, including military and transport helicopters, armoured personnel carriers (APCs), night vision equipment and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Traditionally, U.N. peacekeepers were armed only with light weapons, never heavy artillery.

“I see several priorities for the year ahead,” said Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous.

One is to meet the shortfalls in equipment by strengthening the military and police capabilities on the ground, he said. South Africa, one of three countries in the FIB, along with Tanzania and Malawi, has already agreed to provide three of its home-made military helicopters and two utility helicopters to MONUSCO.

Two other countries, Bangladesh and Ukraine, are already providing attack helicopters to the same peace mission in the Congo.

Western nations are also providing military equipment, including 10 APCs each from the United States and the European Union, plus two from the United Kingdom. Sweden has provided a transport aircraft for a limited period of two months.

Asked if these weapons are being purchased or provided gratis, Kieran Dwyer, chief of the public affairs division at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support, told IPS the United Nations does not purchase military equipment such as attack helicopters.

“Member states provide these,” he said, explaining that troop-contributing countries also equip their own personnel.

Some worry that the shift from defensive to offensive operations, as in DRC, may create dangers for humanitarian organisations in conflict zones.

Michael Hofman, a senior humanitarian specialist with Doctors Without Borders, was quoted by the New York Times Wednesday as saying: “You can have a helicopter, one day used to deliver the Force Intervention Brigade troops to attack a village, and next day, to deliver aid to the same village.”

“In this case, it is not even a blurring of the lines,” he added.

Currently, the three major troop contributors to U.N. peacekeeping missions are Bangladesh (8,780 military troops and civilian personnel), Pakistan (8,200) and India (7,840).

In contrast, the five big powers in the Security Council are providing relatively small number of troops: China, (1,995 troops), France (1,770), Russia (362), UK (281) and the United States (82).

The supply of weapons by developing nations, along with their troops, is also providing a boost to their domestic arms industries.

Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Arms Transfers Programme of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS many arms and other military equipment used by South African armed forces are produced locally.

Some of them, like the Rooivalk helicopter used in DRC, have been designed in South Africa, and others are increasingly from foreign designs produced under licence in South Africa, he said.

India, the third largest troop contributor, has a large arms industry that assembles and produces Russian-designed armoured vehicles. It also produces its own helicopter based on European technology, but currently it is more likely to deploy helicopters supplied directly from Russia or produced under licence from Eurocopter, Wezeman said.

“India has a nascent UAV industry but I have not heard of Indian UAVs being operational because until now India relies mainly on UAVs supplied by Israel,” said Wezeman.

Pakistan has an arms industry that licence-produces items like armoured vehicles and small arms designed in a variety of countries, including the United States and China. But Pakistan imports its helicopters.

Bangladesh has a very basic arms industry and is very dependent on arms imports, including attack helicopters provided for U.N. missions.

Nicole Auger, a military analyst covering Middle East/Africa at Forecast International, a leader in defence market intelligence, told IPS South Africa has a fast developing arms industry capable of providing the type of weapons used in U.N. peacekeeping operations. These include helicopters, armoured vehicles and UAVs.

She said South Africa relies heavily on foreign partnerships and outside assistance; in many cases a South African defence company will exchange the ownership stake for technology or financial assistance.

UAVs, which were deployed for the first time by U.N. peacekeepers in DRC, seem to be a focus for the South African defence industry right now, she noted. Denel’s Seeker 400 is expected to fly later this year. And its Bateleur MALE is also under development.

Additional domestic UAVs with longer range systems are also under development in South Africa, she added.

As of now, the 15 peacekeeping missions have a total strength of 114,000 personnel and the U.N’s 2013-2014 budget for peacekeeping is about 7.5 billion dollars.

Malaysian women peacekeepers of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) at a medal ceremony in Kawkaba, south Lebanon, on Jan. 11, 2012. Credit: UN Photo/Pasqual Gorriz

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 2013 (IPS)

Amidst a rise in sexual violence in the world’s war zones, the United Nations has begun appointing women to head some of the key political and peacekeeping missions in conflict areas – and also created Gender Advisers as a second line of defence.

Still, there is growing scepticism among non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activist groups that much of the progress is scarcely more than window dressing."There is just a shortage of political will to see women in positions of power." -- Mavic Cabrera-Balleza

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has proudly claimed the appointment of five women as heads of U.N. peacekeeping missions, in Liberia, South Sudan, Cyprus, Cote d’Ivoire and Haiti.

But Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, international coordinator of the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP), a programme partner of the International Civil Society Action Network, told IPS, “We also need to look beyond the top leadership positions. We need to examine where women are in the overall architecture of peacekeeping missions.”

She said the middle level positions are just as critical because they are the ones who directly interact with the local populations who are directly affected by the conflicts.

Regarding Gender Advisers, she said it is equally critical to know where these advisers are located in the hierarchy of peacekeeping missions.

“They are the ones who ensure that a gender perspective is fully integrated in the functions of the peacekeeping missions,” she noted.

The problem is that often, the Gender Advisers are very low in the pecking order of the missions, said Cabrera-Balleza, whose GNWP is a coalition of women’s groups and civil society organisations from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, South Asia, West Asia, Latin America, Eastern and Western Europe.

Last month, the secretary-general said that more women occupy the senior ranks of the United Nations than ever before.

“And this year I want to mention a new milestone in the participation of women in our work for peace and security: for the first time, one-third of our peacekeeeping operations – five of 15 — are headed by women,” he added.

These include Hilde Johnson in South Sudan, Karin Landgren in Liberia, Lisa Buttenheim in Cyprus, Aïchatou Mindaoudou in Cote d’Ivoire and Sandra Honoré in Haiti.

Ban has also appointed the U.N.’s first woman lead mediator in a peace process: former Irish President Mary Robinson as the special envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa.

“We have more distance to travel,” he admits, “but we have never been this far before.”

Cora Weiss, U.N. representative of the International Peace Bureau, told IPS the secretary-general’s “words are fine and welcome but I wish we could feel his heart in this issue.

“When civil society women drafted what became the landmark Security Council resolution 1325 on women peace and security, we were looking at a future world without war,” she said.

Weiss also pointed out that while at least half the world’s population is female, Mary Robinson is the only woman lead mediator in a peace process: “And it’s 2013.”

“We need more women in decision making and peace making, but they need to be peace- and justice-loving women. The days of resort to force have to be over,” she stressed.

Addressing a Security Council meeting last June, Zainab Hawa Banguda, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict, said that when she visited Bosnia early this year – “where an estimated 50,000 women had been targeted with rape and other forms of sexual violence” – she found that to date only a handful of prosecutions had occurred.

Thus, the victims of those crimes “continue to walk in shadow and shame, unable to lay the past to rest, and move forward,” she added.

After visiting the war zone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) early this year, Ban admitted he met women and girls who had been raped and maimed by armed groups on all sides of the conflict.

He said many had a condition called traumatic fistula. In plain terms, they had been torn inside. Experiencing great pain and often unable to control bladder and bowels, they are disabled and often shunned by society, he added, pointing out the horrors of sexual violence in war zones.

The international community, through Security Council resolutions 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009) and 1960 (2010), has put in place a solid framework for responding to conflict-related sexual violence.

The mechanisms carry out global advocacy through U.N. Special Representatives, in collaboration with the U.N. Action Network against Sexual Violence in Conflict, comprising 13 U.N. entities.

Last month, the Security Council adopted yet another resolution (2122), also aimed at strengthening women’s participation in all aspects of conflict prevention.

“The argument that we in civil society have with the U.N. on the issue of women’s leadership remains: Practice what you preach. Lead by example,” Cabrera-Balleza told IPS.

“We also want to see more women with civil society backgrounds who have been working on peace and security issues for decades appointed to key positions in peacekeeping operations,” she said. “As we’ve seen in the past, bureaucratic experience has not contributed much in improving peacekeeping operations.”

She also said that while checking the list of peacekeeping missions again, she couldn’t fail to notice that there are three women deputy Special Representatives of the Secretary-General (SRSGs): for the U.N. Office in Burundi ( BNUB), the U.N. Integrated Peacebuilding Office in the Central African Republic (BINUCA), and the U.N. Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

“Will these three women ever become heads of peacekeeping operations?” she asked.

There’s no shortage of qualified women. “There is just a shortage of political will to see women in positions of power,” she said.

By Rousbeh Legatis
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 19 2013 (IPS)

Western analysts all too often take a distorted and reductionist approach to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), says Kai Koddenbrock, who analysed more than 50 policy papers for a study published in the journal International Peacekeeping in November 2012.

Courtesy of Kai Koddenbrock

In an interview with U.N. correspondent Rousbeh Legatis, Koddenbrock said the DRC is portrayed again and again as a “sick country” with “sick people” instead of accurately reflecting the diverse realities on the ground.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: The degree to which analysts and particularly Western think tanks have reduced realities and complexity on the ground in DRC “beyond what is required for description and intelligible communication”, as you wrote, results in a “functional pathologisation” of the Congolese society and its population. Could you elaborate on that?

A: Functional pathologisation refers to the relationship between the way think tanks and intervention actors analyse the Congo and the fact that simultaneously the assumption is made over and over again that Western organisations are urgently needed to deal with these self-identified problems.

Peacebuilding and other international actors approach the Congo and its people in a way that stresses their seeming problems and weaknesses and portrays it as a sick country with sick people only. By doing so, these outside actors create the impression that it is these outside actors that are urgently needed to overcome these supposed problems.

If policy papers and interveners were more respectful and appreciative of Congolese actors of all kinds, outside intervention would appear less natural and the abilities of the Congolese themselves to get things done would move to the forefront.

Q: What are the underlying reasons for this pattern you found in your analysis?

A: This is a difficult question. Racism and historical continuities in the ways of approaching the Congo and Africa more broadly probably play a role. The logic of the think tank market, where advice needs to be short and easily digestible, is decisive, too.

Think tanks sell ideas and decision-makers spend little time. For these reasons, reports have to reduce complexity. This is not a bad thing in itself, but the way this is done matters. If all kinds of rational and purposeful Congolese acts disappear in the course of simplifying, there is a problem.

I think that even all-out military occupations like the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are not successful as long as they do not manage to take the existing priorities and ideas of the existing government and relevant powerbrokers into account. This is a tough thing to do – especially if the power structure of the country and the region is hard to understand.

Security sector reform (SSR) in the Congo, for example, has failed for many years because President Kabila was not interested in it. Maybe this is changing at the moment. This means for peacebuilding that the relevant actors need to be on board: the Congolese government, the Rwandan government, the Angolan government, the South African government, customary chiefs and influential business people and various armed groups of the East and the ordinary Congolese.

Q: What should be done differently when analysing DRC and its peacebuilding processes, with their local, regional and international implications?

A: Analysts and think tanks follow trends because new work needs to be different than prior work to grab the readers’ attention. This is very visible in current Congo analysis.

Thanks to the good work done by Séverine Autesserre, for example, analysts now focus a lot more on local conflict than 10 years ago. However, I would argue they might focus too much on local conflict, as the recent controversy about the latest ICG [International Crisis Group] report showed. International and regional factors do play a very important role still.

What remains the same throughout all these shifts in focus from “elections will build the Congo” to “local peacebuilding” or the “international brigade” now is that the government in Kinshasa and the provincial government remains a curious blind spot.

The examples I provide in the paper are quite concrete, I think. Kabila deals with IDPs, strikes deals with Rwanda and manages the mines to a certain degree. This is more than “Congo is a failed state” or has no government. Analysts have repeatedly assumed during cyclical violence in the East that now this will be the end of the Kabila government. He is still there. How come? No analyst really deals with that.

This is part of what I see as “functional pathologisation”, which I tried to show in the paper. That Congolese – even the government’s acts – might actually make sense is never considered. This renders the analysis very one-sided and helps to sustain the belief, again, that it is up to Western NGOs, or the U.N. to improve situation in the Congo.

Excerpt:

M23 rebels near Sake, Eastern DR Congo. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Rousbeh Legatis
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 13 2013 (IPS)

Despite existing local expertise and strategies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to build peace-supporting structures at the community level, official debates and media coverage continue to focus predominantly on military interventions.

“Local actors work in isolation and their actions are not part of a global peacebuilding process in the DRC. Their recommendations and their work on the ground are not taken into account,” Eric Malolo from Reseau Haki na Amani (RHA), a network of civil society organisations, told IPS.“Violence becomes a means of expression when there is no framework of reference." -- Suliman Baldo of ICTJ

As the coordinator of RHA, Malolo works in Orientale, a province in the northeast. RHA was founded in 2004 as a direct response to ethnic tensions between the Hema and Lendu communities in DRC’s Ituri region.

Its objective is to help reconcile these two tribes and to address frequent conflicts over land, with dialogue-supporting initiatives at the community-level.

“Barzas” – large community meetings organised by RHA – proved to be a very useful tool, enabling local populations to develop a deeper understanding of local conflict dimensions and how these are perceived by the different groups living in the same community.

“Most problems identified during these gatherings do not necessarily find a solution, but the main thing is letting the communities speak out and enter a process of intercommunity and pacific coexistence,” Malolo said.

Not only are locals working and living in the affected communities not sufficiently involved in ongoing peacebuilding efforts in the central African country, they often also lack political support.

In the context of property and identity-related conflicts, Malolo said, politicians are generally elected because they campaigned on a platform of protecting their own ethnic community’s interests.

“A latent intercommunity conflict is the reason for the presence of such extremist politicians,” he said. “To not risk these votes, they hinder decisively ongoing reconciliation process between communities.

“Even administrative staff receives instructions from politicians to stop the conflict resolution process started by some local actors. Or in other words, efforts started by local actors are often blocked by politicians who don’t agree with this kind of change,” he added.

Most experts agree that to be effective, peacebuilding requires intertwined processes and structures that run from the grassroots to the national level – especially in deeply fragmented and traumatised societies like the DRC.

But a look at official policymaking appears to prove Malolo’s point. The new Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework (PSCF) agreement for DRC, an accord signed by 11 African heads of state in Addis Ababa in February, has “no mention of local civil society and it was not prepared with any involvement of those local actors,” Maria Lange, DRC country manager at International Alert, a London-based charity, told IPS.

“The domestic oversight committee established by the DRC government for the implementation of the domestic commitments under the PSCF does not include any civil society representatives – these are limited to a parallel monitoring committee which has no decision-making authority,” she said.

A military emphasis

Even though the peace agreement represents an important milestone, Aloys Tegera from the Pole Institute regards the military approach backed up by the international community with scepticism.

The U.N. Security Council’s creation in March of its 3,000-strong “first-ever ‘offensive’ combat force“, alongside the 20,500 peacekeepers already in the country, was hailed by the political elite and raised expectations among Congolese “which cannot be met”, Tegera told IPS.

People are bound to learn that realistically, a political solution is the only way forward, said the research director at the Goma-based think tank.

“When I read the current military discourse of many Congolese, however, I am afraid to say that 20 years of suffering and wars have not taught us much,” he said.

For Tegera, the conflict is rooted in a “deadly triangle” of “identity, land and power”.

Where to find the most critical conflict-drivers – inside or outside the country – to what extent they matter and how to tackle them are still controversial questions. What is clear is that a myriad of local, regional and international actors pursue their own interests, and fall back on violence as an instrument to enforce them.

This is often carried out by local armed actors such as militias and rebel groups, who are characterised more often than not by a lack of political ideology, said Suliman Baldo of the New York-based International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).

“They are fictitious creations of whoever is intervening and mainly of these very greedy neighbours,” the director of ICTJ’s Africa Programme told IPS.

At the community and provincial levels, in an atmosphere of localised violence, these groups have gained the upper hand, overruling traditional leaders who would be more disposed to resolving conflicts “traditionally”, that is to say, through dialogue and accommodation with other groups.

“Violence becomes a means of expression when there is no framework of reference. There is no state to settle disputes among the population, there is no traditional authority to moderate tendencies towards violence and to find solutions and resolutions for problems within or among different groups,” Baldo explained.

Concluding that there is a power vacuum at the local level, however, is a false assumption. Where central authority collapses, other actors step in, creating alternative governance structures.

The evolving role of civil society

Over the years, many of the gaps left by dysfunctional or nonexistent state institutions have been filled by Congolese civil society groups, which provide essential social services such as healthcare and schooling. However, they have also been co-opted into transitional institutions – for example, holding a certain number of seats in provincial and national assemblies.

“It is precisely because civil society has been forced into this state-substitution role that many have lost their awareness and practice of its fundamental role of holding the government to account,” Lange said.

While there are hardworking civil society groups pushing to achieve lasting and sustainable peace, others show core weaknesses that prevent them from fulfilling their proper functions, she added.

Many are “politicised and riven by power struggles”, organised along ethnic lines, and “follow donor priorities instead of the priorities of the people and communities they are meant to serve,” she said, citing the study “Ending the Deadlock – Towards a new vision of peace in eastern DRC” by International Alert, which included the results of extensive consultations with local NGOs, representatives of local ethnic communities, and church and academic leaders .

The study recommends a dialogue that begins at the grassroots, is revised at the provincial level, and finalised at the national level.

A bottom-up dialogue in itself would not be enough, said Tegera, stressing the importance of making strides in three key development sectors: education, roads and energy.

“With these three in place, within 20 years, there is a chance to see an emerging middle class, able to ask for accountability and proper governance. This is the only way forward for DRC everyone should press for,” he said.

M23 have conducted a number of protests against U.N. Security Council Resolution 2098, which enables an offensive combat force in the eastern DRC. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA, DR Congo , Apr 24 2013 (IPS)

When M23 rebels tried twice to arrange a protest march against a United Nations resolution to deploy an intervention brigade with an offensive mandate to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, they had to postpone it because the local population would not participate.

In Kibumba, 25 kilometres north of the provincial capital Goma, not only had the population refused to demonstrate – they had also fled town.

The rebels rescheduled the Apr. 10 march for Apr. 15. But when that day rolled around, the local residents, and especially the young people, had not returned – and once again the protest had to be postponed.

But according to Janvier Nkinamubanzi, a political analyst at the University of Goma, it was absurd for the M23 to expect the local population to march against the U.N. force. The M23 are named after a peace agreement in Mar. 23, 2009 between leaders of the former rebel group, the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDCP), and the Congolese government. The M23 is a breakaway from the CNDCP, and its members are mostly from the Congolese Tutsi community.

”The inhabitants of Kibumba or regions occupied by M23, even those in Goma, have the impression of being victims of a foreign occupation,” Nkinamubanzi told IPS. The U.N. has said that both Rwanda and Uganda supported M23 rebels in their capture of Goma in December 2012. But after a weeklong occupation of the town, M23 withdrew.

According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, since the beginning of the M23 rebellion in April 2012, more than half a million people have been driven from their homes in North Kivu province in eastern DRC.

”Asking them to protest against a brigade that comes to liberate them from this situation is a double humiliation, as the national army is unable to protect them,” he added.

M23 have conducted a number of protests against U.N. Security Council Resolution 2098, which enables an offensive combat force in the eastern DRC. This includes forced protest marches, rallies, and a five-day blockade of 11 vehicles belonging to the U.N. Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) in Rutshuru, north of Goma.

“Our men will not hesitate to retaliate if they are shot at. The blockade of U.N. vehicles is a strong message of how serious we are,” Lieutenant-Colonel Vianney Kazarama, the military spokesperson for M23, told IPS.

Congolese Foreign Affairs Minister Raymond Tshibanda told a press conference on Apr. 1 that the only future for M23 was to disband as an armed movement. If it failed to do so, the intervention brigade would step in and destroy it, he said.

“The government pretends to speak to M23 while in reality it wants to crush the rebels at the earliest opportunity,” Godefroid Kä Mana, the chair of the cross-cultural Pole Institute, told IPS. The institute works across the Great Lakes region.

While M23 were protesting against the U.N. resolution, local leaders, including village chiefs in Masisi, east of Goma, were calling for the Congolese government to integrate soldiers from the Alliance of Patriots for a Free and Sovereign Congo (APCLS) into the Congolese armed forces.

Bahati Kahembe, one of the four traditional leaders in the North Kivu provincial assembly, recognised that both the rebels and army were responsible for human rights violations in the east of the country. However, he told IPS “the APCLS is less violent towards the population than other forces.”

The APCLS is one of the most organised armed groups in the region. Self-proclaimed “General” Janvier Karairi created it in protest against the Mar. 23, 2009 agreement.

According to MONUSCO, there are between 500 and 1,000 APCLS combatants, who mostly belong to the Hunde ethnic group. They specifically target Tutsis, sometimes in collaboration with Rwandese Hutus from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, who have been refugees in eastern DRC since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

The APCLS combatants have also provided support to the Congolese armed forces against the CNDP, and now against the M23, which broke away from the latter party. “We are only defending our land against the invaders,” Karairi told IPS.

But the governor of North Kivu, Julien Paluku, retorted: “There are no good or bad rebels.”

Government police arrive on a boat at Goma's port as U.N. peacekeepers watch on in December 2012 after the M23 withdrew from the town in eastern DRC. The U.N. has changed its mandate from a peacekeeping force to an intervention one starting early May. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Stanley Karombo
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 24 2013 (IPS)

As the first of South Africa’s troops are expected to begin arriving in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of the United Nations intervention force at the end of April, governance experts have welcomed the world body’s new mandate in the Central African nation.

According to Dr. Ola Bello, the head of the Governance of Africa’s Resources Programme at the South African Institute of International Relations (SAIIA), the bolstering of U.N. forces in the DRC is long overdue.

On Mar. 28, the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolved to move its presence in the DRC from a stabilisation and peace-keeping force to an intervention one.

“The core U.N. force has been too force-shy, as evident in the rebel takeover of Goma in late 2012,” Bello told IPS. The M23 rebels seized Goma in December 2012, but withdrew after a weeklong occupation of the town.

According to the U.N., more than 500,000 people have been driven from their homes in North Kivu, a province in eastern DRC, because of the rebel conflict.

U.N. Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) spokesperson Madnodje Mounoubai announced on local radio station Radio Okapi, which is backed by the U.N., that the resolution gave the 3,069-strong brigade the mandate to neutralise about 40 armed groups operating in the country. This would be done “with or without the Congolese army” with effect from early May, he said.

The neighbouring countries of Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa will be contributing troops to the force.

However, Omar Kavota, the deputy chair of the North Kivu civil society platform, told IPS that they condemned the transportation of South African arms through Uganda. Experts from the U.N. have accused Uganda and Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebels.

According to Radio Okapi, the consignment from the Bloemfontein military base in South Africa was transported to Uganda and then the DRC.

Bello said that there were potential pitfalls to South Africa’s inclusion in the combat unit, as they could be perceived as not being neutral.

He added that South Africa was seen as being close to President Joseph Kabila’s government, “which could be interpreted as being anti-Rwanda and anti-Uganda.

“Confronting the M23 also carries some inherent risk since the rebel movement purports to (and in reality, does to some extent) represent the interest of ethnic Tutsis in eastern DRC.

“South Africa and the other (countries that are) committing these additional combat forces will have to be careful that their actions are not seen as taking sides in what is partly an ongoing internal conflict within the different regional and ethnic groups within the DRC,” Bello said.

However, questions have been raised about the Africa Union’s role in peace-keeping on the continent.

Bello said the AU, through its Peace and Security Council, and Africa Peace and Security Architecture, was in theory charged with the overall maintenance of peace in Africa.

“Performance has, however, been uneven with the modest success in Somalia, for example, (and has been) marred by precipitous failures elsewhere, such as in Darfur, Sudan, as well as with the AU’s marginalisation by Nato in the Libyan conflict.”

In 2003, civil war broke out in Darfur, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. In 2006, a peace deal was signed between the parties through the assistance of the AU and in conjunction with the U.N. And in 2011, Nato assisted Libya with armed strikes during the uprising against former President Muammar Gaddafi (1969-2011). The AU had instead tried to bring a peaceful end to the rebellion and then later delayed recognising the new Libyan rulers.

Dr. Annie Chikwanha, a senior research fellow at SAIIA, agreed with Bello. She told IPS that the AU’s diplomatic approach may be designed to give member states a chance to resolve their own disputes but “experience in the countries where violent conflicts have erupted have shown that this ‘ideal’ solution does not produce the desired results.

“A more energised, collaborative and quick reaction approach is likely to yield better and more sustainable results in protecting citizens from their leaders,” she added.

Chikwanha said that the limitations placed by Chapter VIII, Article 53 of the U.N. charter, that no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies without prior authorisation from the UNSC, crippled the AU and made it appear ineffective.

“The AU has thus tended to appear on the scene after much of the killing (has taken place) since its diplomatic appeals would have failed to yield the desired results. Yet it has many other options it can use to prevent such catastrophes,” she said.

A lecturer of political science at the University of Zimbabwe, Professor Eldred Masunungure, echoed her arguments. “Disconnections in the institutional functioning of the different units in the AU system prevent the much-needed collaboration in resolving conflicts in general.

“Reaction time is slowed down by well-known incapacity to mobilise quickly a peace-keeping force to prevent the escalation of the conflicts and minimise civilian casualties,” Masunungure stated in a 2012 journal article, which he co-wrote with Chikwanha, titled “The African Union and Election-Related Conflicts in Africa: An Assessment and Recommendations”.

Chikwanha said that the Peace and Security Directorate within the African Union Commission was directly responsible for attaining the AU’s goal of building peace and security.

* Additional reporting by Taylor Toeka Kakala in Goma, DRC.

Residents of Saint Marc, in the Artibonite region of Haiti, wear masks to protect themselves against cholera. Credit: UN Photo/Sophia Paris

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 22 2013 (IPS)

The United Nations has come under heavy political fire for its decision to deny compensation for thousands of victims of cholera in Haiti – a deadly disease spread by U.N. peacekeepers in the troubled Caribbean nation.

“The decision is really outrageous,” Michael Ratner of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, told IPS.

“Can it be where we live in a world where people under the U.N.s authority can cause a major epidemic and the U.N. claims its sympathetic, but will not lift a finger to compensate people of its wrongs?” he asked.If this were a private corporation that could be sued in a U.S. court, there is little doubt that it would end up paying hundreds of millions, if not billions in damages.

Ratner said the U.N.’s claims were the very definition of crocodile tears.

“When it comes to Haitians, it seems that no one cares. I believe that the secretary general (Ban Ki-moon) could have lifted any claimed immunity of the United Nations or its officials, but apparently he chose not to.”

Justice here is now delayed, “but ultimately I believe the Haitian people will prevail,” said Ratner, who also teaches international human rights litigation at Columbia University.

The United Nations could also face legal action internationally – perhaps going as far as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague – despite its legal immunity as a protective shield.

Asked if the dispute could go to the ICJ, Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), told IPS, “Well, that is another possibility.”

But it has to be kept in mind, he pointed out, that the United Nations is not just an independent actor here.

“Its actions in Haiti, like its deployment to Haiti, are determined by the United States and its allies in this situation (since there isn’t any group of nations opposing them),” he said. So, the responsibility is really with the “international community” who brought these troops to Haiti.

“If they wanted to clean up the mess they made, they could do it. And they will, if there is enough political pressure,” he added.

The ICJ, which is a judicial organ of the United Nations, primarily resolves disputes between and among U.N. member states.

On Thursday, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters that the representatives of cholera victims have been advised that their “claims are not receivable pursuant to Section 29 of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities.”

Under this Section, the United Nations is required to make provisions for “appropriate modes of settlement” of private law disputes to which the world body is a party, or disputes involving a U.N. official who enjoys diplomatic immunity.

Nesirky also said he was not in a position to provide any details.

“It’s not the United Nations’ practice to discuss in public the details of, and the response to, claims filed against the organisation,” he told reporters.

The spread of cholera in Haiti, which has killed more than 7,500 and infected over 500,000 people since October 2010, has been sourced to the Nepali contingent of peacekeepers with the 9,500-strong U.N. Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

Ban conveyed the U.N. decision to Haitian President Michel Martelly early this week.

The families of the next of kin sought a minimum of about 100,000 dollars for each Haitian killed in the cholera epidemic.

Last December, the United Nations launched a two-billion-dollar humanitarian appeal to fight the epidemic.

Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of several books on the United Nations, told IPS, “The apparently unprecedented effort to hold the U.N. institutionally accountable for the consequences of its negligence should focus on holding accountable the powerful countries – in Haiti.”

She singled out France and the United States – “whose decisions determine U.N. actions, as well as the entire list of wealthy countries who pledge funds to support peacekeeping activities, but who routinely fail to meet their promised amounts”.

Weisbrot told IPS the United Nations is not supposed to be immune from this legal action under their own rules but they are pretending to be. This is not unprecedented, he said, in that U.N. troops have committed abuse in other countries without being held accountable for it.

“One thing that is perhaps unprecedented here is that the U.N. troops don’t really have a legitimate reason for being in Haiti in the first place,” he added.

Weisbrot said there was no peacekeeping agreement for them to help enforce, or post-conflict situation.

“They were brought to Haiti in 2004 to support a coup that was engineered by the United States and its allies, against a democratic government. So that is unprecedented,” he said.

Weisbrot also said the scientific and forensic evidence that U.N. troops brought cholera to Haiti is far beyond the standard of reasonable doubt required in the U.S. criminal justice system, let alone the less exacting standard of preponderance of the evidence in a civil suit.

He said it included studies by independent scientists, articles published by the New England Journal of Medicine, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and even the U.N.’s own research.

“If this were a private corporation that could be sued in a U.S. court, there is little doubt that it would end up paying hundreds of millions, if not billions in damages,” he said.

The U.N.’s denial, he said, represents a failure not only of the U.N. system, which is abused by the rich countries, but a moral failure by the U.S. and its allies, who sent those troops to Haiti without proper safeguards and against the will of the Haitian people.

Bennis said the tragedy of the cholera outbreak in Haiti reflects two separate trajectories, both of which are rooted in international power imbalances.

Haiti’s endemic poverty results from a centuries-old legacy of colonialism, slavery, U.S.-backed dictatorship, and most recently a ruthless profit-driven globalisation that has left its people impoverished and the country without a sufficient infrastructure even to provide clean water and sewage treatment.

“The failures of the U.N.’s peacekeeping system are rooted in the dominance of major powers over UN operations, in which rich countries make the decisions while poor countries provide the troops – usually without adequate preparation, training, or, as we saw in Haiti, even decent facilities,” said Bennis, author of ‘Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN’.

Master Warrant Officer Scott Bridger, of the Canadian Contribution Training Mission – Afghanistan (CCTM-A), salutes during the 9/11 10-year anniversary ceremony at Camp Phoenix in Kabul. Credit: DND-MDN Canada

By Paul Weinberg
TORONTO, Nov 21 2012 (IPS)

Canada’s military buying binge under the current Conservative government has hit a financial brick wall in these austere times, but there is no nostalgic return in sight for Ottawa’s once robust participation in United Nations-led peacekeeping missions.

Walter Dorn is one of the very few professors in the Canadian Forces’ military schools still teaching a course on peace support operations to Canadian officers. “There is a tendency in the senior ranks to look down on U.N. peacekeeping,” he told IPS.

During the Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, Canada was a recognised international leader in terms of offering its military to mediate between warring parties in hotspots like Cyprus and the Suez.

But following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and especially after the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington, Canada has reoriented the Canadian Forces with new purchases of planes, ships and other expensive hardware to play its part in the so-called “war on terror” led by the United States.

The tipping point came in the last decade, when Canada contributed a few thousand soldiers and support personnel to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, now fighting a difficult and protracted war against the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban forces, which previously ran the Central Asian country.

Compared to the U.S. or UK contingents, it is a relatively modest deployment. But for Canada, the self-declared “peaceable kingdom”, the Afghan engagement also represented a sea change for a country that had not participated in a major war since sending soldiers to the Korean peninsula in the early 1950s.

“(We) have put so much more emphasis on counterinsurgency operations that peacekeeping dropped by the wayside. Plus, there are now so many (Canadian) officers who don’t have experience in peacekeeping operations,” added Dorn.

Another major change was the planned long-term outlay of 490 billion dollars for new military hardware, including the controversial F-35 stealth jet fighters and an array of new naval vessels, as part of the Canada First defence strategy –ironically introduced by the pro-military Conservative federal government in 2008, the year of the world financial crisis.

Canada First also included a commitment to both extended international missions such as Afghanistan and shorter term deployments “in response to crises elsewhere in the world” such as Libya, where Canadian jet fighters and one naval war ship participated in the 2011 NATO mission to assist in the overthrow of the Muammar Gaddafi.

But the promised 490 billion dollars was never very realistic and is finally being reconfigured to meet a new financial situation in Canada, said Philippe Lagassé, a University of Ottawa defence expert.

“It wasn’t affordable to begin with, and it certainly is not affordable now,” he told IPS.

Recently, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made it plain in his across-the-board austerity cuts for federal government departments and agencies that the very large Department of National Defence can easily reduce its excessive administrative costs without doing damage to the Canadian Forces operations.

“Within very real budgetary constraints, Canada needs to maintain a modern, general purpose military capability,” Harper told reporters.

Essentially, DND is being instructed to take out 2.5 billion dollars from its annual 22.8-billion-dollar annual budget.

University of South California Canada specialist Patrick James describes this announcement as a “blessing in disguise” for Harper because it permits the PM to fully implement his 2006 election promise to ramp up security for a resource-rich and insufficiently defended Arctic, now undergoing warming because of climate change.

“Canada doesn’t have anything like the military spending of the United States, even per capita for the moment. But it is getting pretty big and it is not a bad idea when you have a bureaucracy that has been expanding steadily for an indefinite period of time to have a pause as you will and take a really cold, hard look,” James, author of “Canada and Conflict”, told IPS.

Yet there is resistance in DND, resulting in a rift between these natural allies, the Conservatives and the Canadian military, observes Lagassé.

“I think this government feels burned by the procurements. They don’t feel that Afghanistan really turned out all that well for them,” he said.

“Both the military and the Conservatives approached each other with the assumption that they were going to be very close. Like any government, they are starting to realise that DND kind has a mind of its own, and it does its own thing. That is not easy for them to deal with.”

This is a complete switch from what occurred after Harper and the Conservatives came to power in 2006, initially heading a minority government, and faced an Afghan combat mission started by the previous Liberal government. The then new prime minster made the declaration that Canada would not “cut and run” from its responsibilities under NATO.

Michael Skinner, a researcher with the York Centre for International and Security Studies, argues that the differences between Harper and the military are somewhat overblown.

“Whether it is orchestrated or not, the options are really good for the government, they can play both sides. On one side they can say ‘we are pro-military and want to support Canadian forces,’ and on the other side, they can say to all of the peaceniks, ‘look we have to cut back on military spending,’” he told IPS.

Skinner says that the planned 2.5-billion-dollar cut in defence is reasonable and doable since it will probably include both buyout packages for middle-level DND administrators and close to retirement senior officers, and the winding down of the expensive Canadian Afghan combat mission.

“The Harper government is playing an accounting shell game in order to maintain its aggressive foreign policy regime while simultaneously instituting domestic austerity. Considering the CF/DND budget increased 30.9 billion since 2001, a rollback of two billion (or even 2.5 billion as one analyst claims) is not very significant,” he noted.

An infected child resting on the floor of the Doin medical centre near Saint Marc, a town in the Artibonite Region, where UNICEF has worked to contain the cholera outbreak. Credit: UN Photo/UNICEF/Marco Dormino

By Ethan Freedman
WASHINGTON, Jul 20 2012 (IPS)

U.S. legislators are appealing to the United Nations to take a greater role in addressing Haiti’s cholera outbreak, now in its third year and which has has left thousands dead.

In a letter addressed to U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Susan Rice, 104 U.S. members of Congress urged Rice to help step up U.N. concern over the outbreak.

“It is imperative for the U.N. to now act decisively to control the cholera epidemic,” Representative John Conyers, Jr. wrote. “A failure to act will not only lead to countless more deaths … and will pose a permanent public health threat.”

The cholera outbreak has been linked in analyses to Nepali peacekeepers stationed in Haiti in 2010. A 2011 study by the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that the cholera strand introduced into Haiti — Vibrio cholerae — matched a strain that was found in a South Asian source identified in 2002 and 2008.

The 2010 outbreak was the first time that a case of cholera was reported in Haiti for nearly a century, according to the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

In March, former president Bill Clinton, now a U.N. special envoy to Haiti, stated that a U.N. peacekeeper was the “proximate cause” of the outbreak.

The U.N. offered no formal comment to IPS regarding the outbreak.

The letter from U.S. representatives was welcomed by the Haiti rights group Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), based in Boston, Massachusetts. The group is currently suing the U.N. on behalf of 5,000 cholera victms, for up to 100,000 dollars per death, and 50,000 per infected person.

“Congress’ call to action reflects a growing consensus that the U.N. has a moral and legal responsibility to address Haiti’s cholera epidemic, and that it must do so urgently before more lives are lost,” Brian Concannon Jr., director of the IJDH, said in a statement.

The U.N. has never accepted full responsibility for the outbreak, however, finding in a 2011 report that a “confluence of circumstances” caused the outbreak and that the epidemic was “not the fault of, or deliberate action of, a group or individual”.

According to some, the continued denial can be put down to the U.N. trying to save face. “It’s an embarrassment for them,” Daniel Beeton, director of international communications at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive think tank based here, told IPS. “It’s the opposite of their mission.”

According to the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), an arm of the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than 7,000 people have died from cholera in Haiti since the start of the outbreak in 2010.

Jon Kim Andrus, deputy director of PAHO, said that in addition to the death tolls, the Haitian government had reported a total of more than 520,000 cases of cholera.

The influx of cholera in Haiti has had adverse effects on the country beyond just health concerns, according to the WHO.

“In addition to human suffering caused by cholera, cholera outbreaks cause panic, disrupt the social and economic structure and can impede development in the affected communities,” the WHO has said.

The WHO cites the experience of Peru, which experienced a cholera outbreak in 1991. It ultimately cost the country 770 million dollars due to “food trade embargoes and adverse effects on tourism”.

Cholera, which induces diarrhea and vomiting in the victim that potentially lead to extreme dehydration, is impacting an economy that already has an unemployment rate of 40 percent, according to the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook.

In response to the outbreak and humanitarian crises in Haiti, the U.N. requested 864 million dollars for stabalisation efforts, in 2010. The current budget for the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) is 793 million dollars.

According to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the government has already distributed more than 73 million dollars in aid to Haiti in response to the cholera outbreak.

Cholera has also been spreading across the Caribbean. Cuba now has 170 confirmed cases of the disease, though it has not yet been definitively linked to the outbreak in Haiti. However, the Cuban Health Ministry has said that the last reported outbreak of cholera in the country, before this year, was shortly after the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

Haiti has had additional problems previously with U.N. peacekeepers, notably over claims of sexual assault and excessive violence.

In March, the U.N. discharged three members of the Pakistani Formed Police Unit, who were serving with MINUSTAH, after they were accused of sexually assaulting a 14 year-old boy.

U.N. peacekeeping troops were also accused of pinning down and sexually assaulting an 18-year-old Haitian man in 2011, an event that was reportedly captured on a cell phone video.