September 9, 2024
The International Crisis Group is a global conflict prevention organisation, and we have analysts covering almost all the countries where the United Nations has peace operations. My colleagues work closely with UN officials. They also talk with the governments and citizens of these countries, and where possible with non-state armed groups.
I want to share three messages with the Council based on my colleagues’ research.
My first message is simple: UN peacekeeping operations are still valuable, and retain significant strengths.
There has been much talk of the decline of UN peacekeeping; we have written about that ourselves. Some analysts suggest that regional organisations or ad hoc missions will replace UN forces. It is true that UN peacekeeping operations have shrunk overall in the last decade. And Crisis Group supports initiatives – such as Security Council Resolution 2719 on African Union-led peace operations – that can enable other organisations to take the lead in addressing some crises.
But as the process of deploying the Multilateral Security Support Mission in Haiti has demonstrated, standing up ad hoc missions can be a complex and time-consuming process. By contrast, the UN has developed a unique set of mechanisms to manage force generation, deployment and sustainment since the end of the Cold War.
There is always room for improvement to the UN’s systems.
There is always room for improvement to the UN’s systems. I am glad that the draft Pact for the Future calls on the Secretary-General to review all forms of UN peace operations. The Council and wider UN must value and reinforce UN operations, not write them off.
My second message is that we must remember that many civilians judge peace operations by the physical security that they can offer – or fail to provide.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, we have seen public discontent with UN peacekeepers’ failure to halt violence against civilians explode into angry, and even deadly, anti-UN protests. In the Central African Republic too, our analysts report that the population is sceptical of the UN’s ability to stop violence. But when violence does erupt, civilians flee toward UN bases in hope of safety. When the UN provides convoy security, as it does in the Central African Republic capital Bangui, people travel safely.
In some cases, civilians do not grasp the mandates and limits peacekeepers face. The UN still needs to do more to understand how communities perceive the UN and, in turn, how the UN can work to meet these communities’ expectations.
But it is also a reminder of an old truth: When this Council mandates UN forces to protect civilians, it must ensure that they have the means and political backing to fulfil that goal. If you do not do so, you undermine the UN’s credibility and chances of success.
My third message is that, in many of the countries that we cover, UN peacekeeping operations no longer play a major political role, even where the organisation has thousands of personnel.
In the immediate post-Cold War period, the UN mediated the ends to wars from Central America to South East Asia. The Blue Helmets helped the resulting agreements stick. Today, the UN frequently defers to other actors – whether individual states or regional organisations – to lead on peacemaking and mediation.
In many cases, this is absolutely the right strategy. Crisis Group also works with a wide range of actors to address conflict, assessing who to work with on a case-by-case basis. In some cases – as in South Sudan – the UN has succeeded in supporting community-level peace initiatives, even when its national-level leverage has shrunk.
But elsewhere – as in the case of the Western Sahara – the UN keeps peacekeepers in places where the political strategies that they were once meant to serve have long evaporated.
The Council has the capacity, and a responsibility, to address this political gap. Where Council members give good support to a UN representative – as I understand Council members have done with Ramtane Lamamra over Sudan – it can give them extra traction. Where, by contrast, members states, including those on this Council, follow policies that undermine or marginalise the UN politically it means that they cannot do their job.
The Council should not set up representatives of the UN for failure. UN peacekeeping operations, which have taken on many forms and responsibilities since the very first mission in 1948, are among the most adaptive parts of the UN’s peace and security toolbox. Despite the diplomatic differences and difficulties that you face, it is incumbent on you to give UN peacekeeping operations the political support they need – to end wars and protect the vulnerable.