Global Policy Forum

By Matthew Tostevin

The United Nations mission in Congo needs a tougher mandate across the board to allow it to keep the peace and help end the world's deadliest ongoing conflict, a top U.N. official has said. A robust French-led force is due to start deploying to the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo this week after getting the go-ahead from the U.N. Security Council to end horrific militia killings and cannibalism in the stricken Ituri region.

But troops from the MONUC mission elsewhere in Africa's third biggest country have a mandate which lets them do little but defend themselves. Uruguayan soldiers in Ituri were powerless to stop savage killings -- including those of two U.N. observers. "The mandate of MONUC is in my view not truly a peacekeeping mandate, it was a mandate of sort of guard units," said Behrooz Sadry, the deputy head of the mission based in Kinshasa. "We must go to a peacekeeping mandate...then the rules of engagement are robust enough. It is not merely a matter of being able to shoot back if you're shot up," he told Reuters on Saturday.

Aid agencies believe at least three million people have died, most as a result of hunger and disease, since rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda began their war in 1998. A peace deal has been signed and various belligerent factions are moving haltingly towards a power-sharing government designed to guide Congo to its first elections since independence from Belgium in 1960. But atrocities like those in Ituri, where more than 400 died in the past month, have highlighted how far Congo is from peace.

U.N. officials believe the despatch of the French-led force might not only end the violence in Ituri, but also send a message to the rest of Congo that the world is not prepared to abandon it. "The interest of the international community is there. I am not so sure that they have realised yet what is the way to the solution... There remains a fear of...raising expectations," said Sadry.

The United Nations force in Congo is still not up to the strength allowed by its mandate for 8,700 troops. Sadry said that even more would be needed if the stop-and-start political wranglings took another turn for the worse. Contributing countries also would have to be asked if they would accept a tougher peacekeeping mandate for their troops. "I personally believe most of them are willing to do so," Sadry said.

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