Global Policy Forum

By Lesley Abdela

World leaders gathering in New York this week may need to face up to the possibility that the UN will only survive if it ceases to engage in operational peace enforcement - a task for which it was never designed, and concentrates its resources on other UN activities it could manage better.

Peacekeeping missions are proving as damaging for the UN as they are for the countries where the missions operate. If stained-glass windows portraying peace missions were hacked into the walls of the cathedral-proportioned entrance lobby at the UN Plaza, New York, they would illuminate the floors with spectral outlines of the Ruwenzori mountains and the Great Lakes, the hills of Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Kosovo and the ruins of Srebrenica, not as a paean of honour but to the sound of a tolling bell. Panels would depict scenes of inconceivable cruelty, stories of UN missions past, part theatre of the absurd, part Dantean hell of severed limbs, ethnic cleansing, rape as an instrument of war.

The government and the Liberal Democrats yesterday jointly called for better standards in peacekeeping. But they and the world leaders gathering in New York this week may need to face up to the possibility that the UN will only survive if it ceases to engage in operational peace enforcement, a task for which it was never designed, and concentrates its resources on other UN activities it could manage better.

Sixty days spent in Kosovo last year, shortly after the NATO bombing ceased, was enough to turn me from a starry-eyed person hoping for a better world into a singularly disquieted one as far as the UN's capacity to manage, let alone wage, peace was concerned.

When I asked an experienced but disheartened UN peacekeeper in Kosovo why UN missions go so wrong, he said: "No clear sense of purpose; muddled and contradictory goals and objectives crafted by amateurs, implemented by incompetents and defended by bureaucrats whose sole purpose in life is to move up the food chain. Make no waves, admit no mistakes, accept no responsibility and demand no accountability. Appearance is everything; never mind the substance. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, is all too aware of the results of shambolic UN peace missions. In places like Rwanda and Bosnia, Annan has seen thousands die awaiting help and is determined that those mistakes never occur again.

Two weeks ago a report was published by the panel on United Nations peace operations, set up by Annan to make recommendations. The report begins: "Over the last decade, the United Nations has repeatedly failed to meet the challenge [of protecting people from war] and it can do no better today."

As the 159 heads of state and world leaders assemble in New York for the UN millennium summit, Annan is expected to use the occasion to put forward his vision for the future of the UN. The Annan vision will include a shiny new UN peace enforcement model.

The panel of eminent persons conclude in their report that it is time to treat peacekeeping as a "core activity" of the UN rather than a "temporary responsibility". Part of the report looks like a quantum leap towards a UN standing army. It says future peacekeepers must be able to defend themselves and their mandate. This means "bigger forces, better equipped and more costly, but able to be a credible deterrent". The new model army will, if Annan carries the day, group together battalions from several different member states, like a global NATO. Control will stay at the UN HQ.

The report omits to ask the key question: What are the core tasks of a peace mission and can an organisation conceived of as a talk-shop between nation states fulfil the tasks?

If they are to succeed, post- conflict peace missions in other Bosnias and Kosovos require high quality civil capabilities to administer municipalities and government; a sufficient number of trained police capable of law enforcement; civil capabilities to work in partnership with the local population to deliver rule of law, justice, and the short and long-term reconstruction process of the infrastructure. This includes developing democratic political parties, NGOs, free media and human rights over a long enough time frame to induce stability, economic growth and democracy.

But can any UN-directed peacekeeping/enforcement mission work? First there would need to be reform of international rule number one which is, senior staff shall be selected by buggin's turn.

This highly politicised and sacrosanct selection process, unaccountable and Byzantine in its machinations, is foisted on international organisations by member states. And it means the UN cannot select mission personnel on merit. World leaders must face up to the possibility that the UN may survive only if it withdraws from its operational role in peace enforcement, riddled as such undertakings will always be with rivalry and rug-trading led by self-seeking politicos from 188 countries.

There is an important role for the UN to play, not least on Churchill's principle of "jaw jaw is better than war war". A discussion forum of one nation, one vote, where representatives meet to prevent wars and conflicts is what the UN is best designed to do.

Before we send a UN standing army down the road singing "Marchons, marchons", we should re-examine how best to keep the peace and rebuild provinces and nations. It's time for world leaders to stop sending the UN on kamikaze peace missions.

©Lesley Abdela 2000