As of October 2003, approximately 52,000 people were employed
in 25 peacekeeping and peacemaking missions around the world.
More than 42,000 of them were military personnel provided
under special agreements by member States. The balance was
comprised of civilian personnel, both international and
local.
Since the end of the Cold War there has been a dramatic
increase in the number of peacekeeping missions. The very
nature of peacekeeping has also evolved from mainly keeping
warring factions apart from each other to what is now called
"peacemaking" - playing an active role in the
complex process of nation-rebuilding. Depending on their
mandate, multidimensional peacekeeping operations (also
referred to as peace operations) may be required to:
- Assist in implementing a comprehensive peace agreement;
- Monitor a ceasefire or cessation of hostilities to allow
space for political negotiations and a peaceful settlement
of disputes;
- Provide a secure environment encouraging a return to
normal civilian life;
- Prevent the outbreak or spillover of conflict across
borders;
- Lead states or territories through a transition to stable
government based on democratic principles, good governance
and economic development; and
- Administer a territory for a transitional period, thereby
carrying out all the functions that are normally the responsibility
of a government.
While military personnel remain vital to most operations,
civilians have taken on a growing number of responsibilities,
which can include:
- Helping former opponents implement complex peace agreements
by liaising with a range of political and civil society
actors;
- Supporting the delivery of humanitarian assistance;
- Assisting with the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration
(DDR) of former combatants;
- Supervising and conducting elections;
- Strengthening the rule of law, including assistance
with judicial reform and training of civilian police;
- Promoting respect for human rights and investigating
alleged violations;
- Assisting with post-conflict recovery and rehabilitation;
and
- Setting up a transitional administration of a territory
as it moves towards independence.
UN personnel can be broken down into three broad groups:
- military personnel send under special legal agreement
by member states;
- civilian police - also known as CIVPOL - also made up
of personnel sent by individual member states, and;
- UN agencies personnel - such as UNHCR & UNICEF -
and NGOs, private sector firms and individuals acting
as contractors for the UN system.
Military, civilian and CIVPOL personnel often operate under
very difficult conditions, coordinating and executing these
missions with little oversight from the outside world. They
are generally in a position of power over the affected people
they serve, controlling access to food, health, information
and other basic necessities.
There are broadly two types of human rights violations
that can occur as a result of this position of power. The
first one is when peacekeeping forces, CIVPOL and civilian
personnel fail to protect affected people - the people under
their care - from abuses by third parties. A glaring and
extreme example of this is the 1994 Rwandan genocide when
UN forces failed to intervene, resulting in the slaughter
of almost a million men, women and children.
In less extreme cases, failure to report violations, and
generally closing an eye on various types of abuses have
contributed to an atmosphere of lack of impunity that is
detrimental to those people under the care of UN personnel
in humanitarian situations.
The second type of violation occurs when peacekeepers,
CIVPOL or civilian personnel are actually perpetrating the
violation themselves. Their position of influence over affected
people has resulted over time in instances of isolated acts
of misconduct as well as instances of broader, systemic
abuses that have been documented by a number of NGOs in
the field.
Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch,
Amnesty International, and Save the Children have studied
allegations of misconduct in the Balkans, West-Africa and
East Timor. One of the more publicized cases involved a
report by two consultants from UNHCR and Save the Children
that uncovered information comprising allegations of sexual
abuse by aid workers employed among others by UNHCR and
the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL).
Unfortunately, as is the case in most conflict situations,
the victims of these types of misconduct tend to be women
and children. Two researchers conducting an investigation
on behalf of the United Nations Development Fund for Women
(UNIFEM) concluded that "perhaps the most disturbing
of everything we saw and learned was the association, in
the vast majority of peacekeeping environments, between
the arrival of peacekeeping personnel and increased prostitution,
sexual exploitation and HIV/AIDS infection." The UNIFEM
team listed a number of instances of sexual exploitation
of women by persons employed by United Nations peacekeeping
missions.
Other allegations of grave violations involved the purchase
of trafficked women and girls by members of CIVPOL in the
former Yugoslavia. Human Rights Watch looked into the United
Nations' response to these allegations. "Rather than
request that UN headquarters waive the immunity from criminal
prosecution enjoyed by IPTF (CIVPOL) monitors in Bosnia
and Herzegovina, UNMIBH has merely repatriated police monitors
accused of involvement in trafficking, acting under the
legal fiction that countries will prosecute or reprimand
their own nationals."
Eighteen monitors who purchased trafficked women, visited
brothels or faced trafficking-related charges have returned
home, either voluntarily or through disciplinary repatriation
for sexual misconduct, but as of November 2002, Human Rights
Watch has not confirmed a single case in which an IPTF officer
accused of activities related to trafficking had faced criminal
investigation or prosecution.
This highlights one of the key problems with regard to
the prosecution of personnel engaged in peacekeeping missions,
i.e. the immunities they enjoy pursuant to their international
legal status. According to the Status-of-Forces-Agreement
that lists the rights and obligations of the troop-contributing
State vis-à-vis the United Nations and the host country,
peacekeeping troops are exempt from any legal prosecution
except by their own State. Therefore the most the United
Nations tends to do in the form of a disciplinary measure
against a suspected perpetrator is to send that person back
home.
Françoise Hampton, a member of the United Nations
Sub-Commission on the Protection and Promotion of Human
Rights, recently raised concerns relating to the impunity
of United Nations peacekeepers and CIVPOL members. She described
a number of instances where no action was taken against
peacekeepers and CIVPOL members of the United Nations Mission
in Kosovo (UNMIK) who had allegedly violated human rights.
In a later report to the Sub-Commission she added that
"… if these missions are designed to stabilize
the area and build institutions, then it is all the more
important for the UN and the international community to
set an example for the local people. The perception of the
local population is vital to the ability of the mission
to institute long lasting and democratic change. If the
local population believes there is impunity or a lack of
accountability, whether real or perceived, this undermines
the mission's ability to instill a sense of the rule of
law."
These incidents and others have led the international NGO
community and a number of UN agencies such as UNHCR to take
these charges very seriously and work on the issue of improving
humanitarian accountability. A number of initiatives have
been put into place, including HAP, Sphere, People in Aid,
and ALNAP, leading to the establishment of a variety of
much needed codes of conduct and best practices.
While these organizations have achieved many changes, especially
in the wake of the UNHCR-Save The Children report on sexual
exploitation in West Africa, they all share in common the
fact that they are self-regulated. At present there are
no independent NGOs solely dedicated to monitoring that
the many measures and codes of conducts developed by the
UN and the NGO community are actually being implemented
on the ground with the intended results.
