México: Participación en misiones de paz de las Naciones Unidas

Peacekeeping Operations: Evolving the mechanism in 21st Century
Anant Mishra
| Date:09 Feb , 2015
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Anant Mishra
Anant Mishra is a former youth representative United Nations. His expertise lies in crisis management, middle east issues and economy.

Peacekeeping is a major tool in resolving conflicts and making the situation favourable for peace. Peacekeeping forces have been playing a very important role in a region and their role is constantly evolving and growing along with the needs and demands of current situations. It is a response mechanism of international communities to resolve a global crisis. The objectives of peacekeeping operations are to avoid further conflict, stabilizing the situation, and restoring sustainable peace. With change in time and values along with situations, crisis has changed; to deal with these new situations peacekeeping missions too need a new mechanism for operation.

Peacekeeping missions have now been diversified, as they comprise of large number of components including military, civilian police, political, civil affairs, and rule of law, human rights, humanitarian, reconstruction, public information and gender.

Peacekeeping missions have grown since their establishment in 1948 and their mandate has grown to make their mission more effective. They began their operation as an observer, equipped with monitoring, reporting and confidence building mechanisms. With the varying conflicts, peace enforcement teams and diversified peacekeeping operations came into force. As individual sovereignty and human rights being more important, the UN charter supports both the importance of human rights and simultaneously the importance of state sovereignty. Hence the role of peacekeeping operations in the coming years is an important question which needs to be addressed.

A framework has to be developed to resolve the barriers in peacekeeping operations; important decisions such as expansion of current mandate, developing timely response mechanisms to deal with emergency situations, and executing jurisdiction of peacekeeping operatives, are important to discuss. Issues such as recruitment and financial assistance of peacekeeping operations are important as it can open doors to manipulation and political influence. Further the responsibility to protect (R2P) is an important issue that needs to be factored-in, in the wake of recent conflicts. Hence it is imperative that we achieve what we have aspired for long, to make the rule of law standard rather than optional during an international crisis.

History

United Nations began its peacekeeping mission in 1948, when the first contingent of peacekeeping observers was sent to monitor the armistice deal between Israel and then Arab world. This contingent came to be known as the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO). It is operational today with numerous member nations volunteering their troops along with logistic support to foster peace in a conflict environment and to maintain ceasefire in the region. The United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) launched in 1949 is yet another example. It is tasked primarily to oversee the ceasefire between the two nations. However, India does not recognise the validity of this Group.

Earlier the missions were limited to being observer in nature and peacekeepers were unarmed. The first armed mission involved United Nations Special Emergency Force (UNSEF) which carried their operations in 1950, Egypt. The Suez Canal was nationalised by the Egyptian President Nasser, which resulted in an armed response from France, Britain and Israel. The matter was deliberately discussed in the General Assembly and the Uniting for Peace Resolution i.e. the Resolution 377 (V), 1950 was passed. as, ironically, the matter was vetoed in the Security Council.

…it is not necessary that all peacekeeping missions involve combat, United Nations Peacekeepers are also involved in large non combat missions.

A major peacekeeping operation was launched by United Nation’s operation in Congo (UNOC) in the then Congo from 1960 to 1964. The mission was very important to maintain ceasefire in the region plus the large amount of peacekeeping soldiers in hand, which were at that time at its peak. The mission was to assist the newly established Congolese government and to maintain peace and security in the region. However the governments “working model” and “operating mechanism” were openly challenged by Belgium.

Since the end of the cold war, an evolution in peacekeeping has occurred. However a large number of peacekeeping missions still operate on “traditional” model. These operations include ceasefire observatory missions and patrolling buffer zones by peacekeeping soldiers who may or may not be armed and are widely known as blue helmets or blue berets because of their blue headgear. Although it is not necessary that all peacekeeping missions involve combat, United Nations Peacekeepers are also involved in large non combat missions.

It will not be wrong to say that Peacekeeping missions have now been diversified, as they comprise of large number of components including military, civilian police, political, civil affairs, and rule of law, human rights, humanitarian, reconstruction, public information and gender. The mandate has been broaden and more duties and responsibilities are assigned to them. This has been done so, to make demands with current situations as they are not only involved in intrastate affairs but also in civil wars and internal conflicts. Their mandate comprises of upholding and protecting human rights, facilitating the political process, stabilizing governments, disarmament and re-integration of ex- combatants, and if requested provide assistance during elections. Some operations do not require combat but they also work along international development organizations as a multidimensional peacekeeping organization.

From 1988, the UN peacekeeping operations have been increased substantially. The number of Peacekeepers rose from 11,000 to 75,000 during the conflicts of 1988 to 1994, with 20 new bases of operations within nations such as El Salvador and Namibia. The deployment of United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) in 1989, is one of the major success in peacekeeping operations.

The UN Operation in Somalia and the “Operation Desert Storm” in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait were the two important examples that showed the importance of UN peacekeeping in the region.

The Peacekeeping Doctrine:

Peacekeeping is of enormous importance in the globalised world and its importance increase more when we talk about its meaning and definition. However the important principles of UN peacekeeping are:

Consent of the parties
Impartiality, and
The use of force, only if required.

These principles are designed in a manner that restricts the movement of peacekeeping soldiers on the ground and they are confined to a mere observer status that too, if the host nation agrees. This is a classical model of peacekeeping, which still exists however the so called doctrine of peacekeeping as evolved, making it capable enough to handle any situation.

In 1992, the then United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali published a report “Agenda for Peace”, explaining the necessary changes in peacekeeping along with situations beyond cold war. The report stated importance of more profound understanding of situations and actions taken by peacekeeping forces in complex situations. The report focussed on 3 P’s, Peacemaking, Peacekeeping, and Peace building. Peacemaking primarily involved diplomatic talks in an effort to negotiate peace with the hostile parties. Peacekeeping comprised of necessary steps involving deployment of UN peacekeeping forces and their rules of engagement in the region. Peace building was designed to deal with post conflict situations and improving the situation in the region. It focuses on social and economic development and rehabilitation. These were the three important points that would make an appropriate mandate to the mission on ground. The United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSC) and the “Operation Desert Storm” in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait were the two important examples that showed the importance of UN peacekeeping in the region.

Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

In September 2000, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty took on the challenge to build a conceptual bridge between matters of intervention and state sovereignty. The twelve-member independent commission sought to conceive an alternative framework that would articulate dilemmas of interventions and forge some sort of consensus on when and how to intervene. This committee was an extensive, worldwide consultation of scholars, policy makers, and civic leaders that fuelled the development of the final report, The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which was published in December 2001. R2P was universally endorsed at the 2005 World Summit and then reaffirmed in 2006 by the UN. The Commission steered clear of the paths that had paralyzed the debate on humanitarian intervention in the 1990s. The commission reframed its terms in an ingenious way. Rather than revisiting the right to intervene, it explained sovereignty as the states responsibility to protect its vulnerable population. If the state fails to fulfil this duty then it becomes the responsibility of the international community.

…most of the UN members, stating that if genocide occurs, they must act to stop it. Despite of this set standard the international community failed to act in order to stop the genocide of Tutsis.

Some lessons to be learnt

The Rwandan genocide was the biggest genocide to take place in the 1990’s with an estimated 800,000 deaths. It till this date haunts the international community. The internal conflict was ethnic in nature with the majority Hutus killing the minority community of Tutsis. Rwanda, after World War I came under the mandate of Belgium. The colonial rulers favoured the minority Tutsis community which laid the foundations for the ethnic tensions to strike Rwanda. A revolution by the Hutus had occurred in 1959 which caused Tutsis to flee the country making them even a smaller minority than before. These tensions and ethnic violence continued even after Rwanda received independence from Belgium in 1962. On April 6 1994, a plane carrying the president of Rwanda and Burundi crashed and this marked the start of the massacre which was to come. A Hutu president had been killed, this allowed Hutu extremist militant groups to engage in violence and target the Tutsis.

Genocide is a term defined by the United Nations (UN) convention in 1949 after the end of the Second World War. This convention was ratified by most of the UN members, stating that if genocide occurs, they must act to stop it. Despite of this set standard the international community failed to act in order to stop the genocide of Tutsis. The UN had a presence there in the form of a few commanders and peacekeepers but they were ineffective to say the least. There was not enough done by the UN or any other “western” or “developed” county either. The reasons for this lack of action being firstly that the nature of the conflict was of civil war and foreign states should not interfere in such matters as it would be breaching the sovereignty of a nation. Another reason being that there was not enough awareness on the genocide which was ongoing and hence people did not know about it. Lastly the other countries did not intervene because they did not really care what was going on in this part of the world.

Unfortunately the disaster which took place in Rwanda was not the only failure of the UN and the international community but other genocides have also been ignored. The process of ethnic cleansing which has taken place in Iraq, Sudan, Cambodia, and Bosnia went unnoticed and no action was taken in order to stop it. In 1993 when fighting had resumed, the UN sent a traditional peacekeeping mission United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) in order to help reconcile the parties involved. However when fighting resumed in 1994 this force was called back. It is important to understand why the United Nations decided to pull troops out instead of bringing more in. As mentioned earlier, states and organizations do not want to get involved in autonomy issues. It was seen as a civil war between two legitimate groups that were trying to fight for their autonomy. The second reason the UN did not get itself involved was due to issues surrounding its involvement in local politics.

…the fundamental question of whether UN peacekeeping missions should relate only to traditional peacekeeping, or if they should be deployed in peace enforcement roles or to secure humanitarian aid in on-going conflict zones, continue to be contentious.

The United Nations believes itself to be a neutral organization and will go to great lengths to continue maintaining this neutrality; otherwise it might lose some of its legitimacy. The final reason why they usually do not involve themselves very much in conflicts is because the countries do not want to lose their men. As it was seen in Rwanda, when several soldiers were slaughtered by the government troops, Belgium and Bangladesh decided to pull out their troops. United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) started with over 2,500 military personnel, and when fighting broke out in 1994, UNAMIR was directed to mediate a cease-fire, and to evacuate all but 270 UN personnel. The role of these personnel was not to protect civilians but simply to maintain the cease fire. However this time what started was not the civil war but the ethnic cleansing of the Tutsis.

The lessons from Rwanda and in particular Srebrenica once again called into the question the traditional peace-keeping principles, what they meant and how they should be practiced. The Brahimi report took into account all these factors and was submitted to the Secretary General by the UN High-Level Panel on Peacekeeping in the lead up to the UN Millennium Summit in 2000. Among other things, the report entailed suggestions for much more rapid force deployment, increased use of fact finding missions to enable short-term conflict prevention, heavier use of UN police in post-conflict environments and a number of organizational changes. Commenting on the previous decade, the report stated:

“Where one party to a peace agreement clearly and incontrovertibly is violating its terms, continued equal treatment of all parties by the United Nations can in the best case result in ineffectiveness and in the worst may amount to complicity with evil. No failure did more to damage the standing and credibility of United Nations peacekeeping in the 1990s than its reluctance to distinguish victim from aggressor”.

The report recommended that peacekeeping forces to be better equipped and prepared to act as an effective deterrent. It also suggested that the peacekeeping forces are to uphold human rights and take action in order to protect civilians. This would have been difficult to carry out previously due to the adherence to the principle of impartiality. The report affirms two of the classical principles of peacekeeping but amends the third principle to read: non-use of force except in self defence or in defence of the mandate.

Events such as the Syrian civil war, and the recent Russian intervention in the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine, have made the international community question the role of peacekeeping in the coming future with such changes in global politics.

This clarification has enabled peacekeepers to use force to carry out their mandates and use force against a specific party in violation of a relevant UN resolution, without the risk of comprising their impartiality. It has helped commanders on the ground to act more confidently and decisively. It can also be seen to resolve some of the contradictions found in the UNITAF and UNOSOM II mandates in relation to the classical peacekeeping principles. However, the fundamental question of whether UN peacekeeping missions should relate only to traditional peacekeeping, or if they should be deployed in peace enforcement roles or to secure humanitarian aid in on-going conflict zones, continue to be contentious.

It is important that peacekeeping operations, whose mandates have a direct impact on both the lives of UN troops and the people they try to serve in field, remain above opportunism and political considerations. Peacekeeping forces constantly deploy into some of the world’s most hostile environments in defence of the UN Charter and a common humanity; telling us that this humanity transcends national borders, and that we are all responsible for protecting that humanity, wherever the need arises.

Conclusion

Today a detailed research and debate is underway, on the issue of peacekeeping and how to improve it. Peacekeeping has continued to play an extremely important role in global affairs and crisis situations. The lessons in Bosnia and Rwanda gathered great international support for the entire concept, developing the idea of Responsibility to Protect. The Brahimi report in 2000 and the New Horizon Process have been important steps in identifying the shortcomings and faults, and then working on them. Events such as the Syrian civil war, and the recent Russian intervention in the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine, have made the international community question the role of peacekeeping in the coming future with such changes in global politics.

Mexico's first UN peacekeepers to be deployed to Haiti, Western Sahara
By Andrew V. Pestano Follow @AVPLive9 Contact the Author | March 15, 2015 at 10:35 AM
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Mexico's personnel will be deployed to assist, plan and participate in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. File Photo by UPI/MONUSCO/Sylvain Liechti
MEXICO CITY, March 15 (UPI) -- Mexico is set to incorporate its first military personnel into United Nations peacekeeping operations in Haiti and Western Sahara.
Mexico's Secretariat of Foreign Affairs announced the personnel will join as staff in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti and as observers in the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara. No specific date for deployment has been announced.

"These types of missions approved by the Security Council of the U.N. contribute to the goal of working for the maintenance of international peace and security," the secretariat said in a statement. "With this determination, Mexico reiterates its commitment as a global actor responsible to the international community and in accordance with the principles and values ​​of the United Nations."

Four Mexican officers will be deployed; two from the army and two from the navy.

México detalla plan para misiones internacionales a largo plazo
07 de abril del 2015

Ejército Mexicano. Foto: EspecialMéxico, 7 de abril.- México planea establecer un batallón de infantería, el cual se desplegará en operaciones internacionales de mantenimiento de paz. Dicho grupo será conformado por un esfuerzo intersecretarial y será conocido como Grupo de Trabajo-Operaciones de Mantenimiento de la Paz (GT-OMP), según se anunció el pasado 5 de abril.

Los integrantes del GT-OMP serán los secretarios de la Defensa Nacional, de Marina y de Relaciones Exteriores y su principal objetivo será coordinar y fortalecer la participación de México en la estabilidad global. La integración de este equipo se dan después de las declaraciones hechas por el Presidente de la República, Enrique Peña Nieto, en septiembre de 2014, en las cuales se anunció que México mandaría tropas a los “cascos azules” para contribuir en la misiones internacionales de mantenimiento de paz.

Angel Silva Juárez

@usul16

Estado Mayor