A Paradox of Peace

BY BILLIE MANDELBAUM

In 1988, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces. The committee hailed the forces for making “a decisive contribution towards the initiation of actual peace negotiations.”

However, 26 years later, peacekeeping forces face an increased amount of scrutiny from the international community amidst a number of recent scandals, from allegations of corruption to sexual assault. In a June 2014 speech before the UN Security Council, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon alluded to such issues, saying, “We face huge peacekeeping challenges.” But, Ban also pointed to the importance of peacekeeping operations calling them the “flagship UN activity.” While peacekeeping continues to fill a vital role within the UN’s structure of international cooperation, recent scandals, and most importantly peacekeepers’ failure to intervene in attacks on civilians, point to a broken system in need of reform and greater resources.

The recent challenges facing peacekeepers are due in part to the changing nature of peacekeeping missions. From the 1948 inception of peacekeeping until the end of the Cold War, peacekeepers were largely deployed to regions in which they acted as non-armed military observers, enforcing treaties and cease-fire agreements between countries. However, after 1988, the UN began to call for more peacekeeping missions and started to send forces to intervene in complex intrastate affairs. Over the past 20 years, missions have been sent to mediate conflicts in civil war-torn areas including Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, and most recently the Central African Republic. As Ban said in that same June speech, peacekeepers are now deployed where “there is no peace to keep.” For this reason, the international community is becoming more reliant on peacekeepers to protect civilian populations.

Yet, a recent report from the UN General Assembly found that peacekeepers are failing on that front. The report found that “there is a persistent pattern of peacekeeping operations not intervening with force when civilians are under attack.” According to the report, between 2010 and 2013 only 20 percent of the 507 incidents involving attacks on civilians prompted peacekeepers to intervene. What is preventing peacekeepers from fulfilling their duty to protect civilian populations?

The report pointed to a variety of factors for peacekeeping failures including a lack of resources and miscommunication between those on the ground and UN leadership. However, such failures may have more so to do with longstanding schisms within the United Nations.

For example, political disjunction surfaced during recent UN budget negotiations surrounding peacekeeping. Troop-contributing nations— primarily underdeveloped countries such as Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan—demanded the annual budget be increased so that peacekeepers could receive higher monthly reimbursement checks. At one point the budget talks came to an impasse before an $8.6 billion annual budget was approved. Those resistant to the pay increase were wealthy nations, who contribute the funds necessary to furnish peacekeeping missions. These countries were reluctant to spend more money considering past peacekeeping ineffectiveness. As a UN official told the New York Times in July, a divide arises between the “side that says, ‘you bleed more’” and the “side that says, ‘you pay more.’”

Due to this division, troop-contributing countries often complain that their troops are being deployed, with limited resources and training, to enforce mandates that they, as poor and therefore less influential countries, had little involvement in creating. Though sending peacekeepers into war-torn regions may be a diplomatically practical solution, deploying ill-equipped peacekeepers makes it nearly impossible for the UN’s troops in blue berets to fulfill their duty in protecting innocent civilians.

In his May commencement address at West Point, President Obama correctly pointed to the need to provide better support for UN peacekeepers. “Now we need to make sure that those nations who provide peacekeepers have the training and equipment to actually keep the peace, so that we can prevent the type of killing we’ve seen in Congo and Sudan,” he said.

The UN and its peacekeeping operations aren’t going to disappear anytime soon—nor should they. With civil strife escalating in Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, and Central Africa, it’s likely that peacekeeping missions will be deployed with greater frequency. However, in order to avoid more failed interventions, the United Nations and its most powerful (and wealthy) members need to delegate the necessary resources to support such peacekeeping missions.