To be fair, it's not entirely a symptom of the UN. Unit order and discipline begin at home, and if the contributing nations (and their combatant force COs and NCOs) haven't instilled a healthy respect for the civil population, the troops are not likely to develop it all on their own.
I am inclined to agree up to a point. But where we differ is that if the UN is going to accept troops from a member nation than it is only reasonable that the UN set the mandate for standards and the conduct of all member nations troops while wearing the blue helmet. For example, the UN has strict protocol governing the rules of engagement between hostile forces and does enforce those rules. I do not think it unreasonable that UN also enforce rules of conduct between the civilian refugee population and the Blue Helmet troops. The sysmetic failure of the UN leadership to effectively address the issue of the exploitation of women and children by UN Blue Helmeted troops reaches back over a 10 year span ranging from Bosnia to West Africa. From the Weekly Standard we learn this:
LAST MONTH A CLASSIFIED UNITED Nations report prompted Secretary General Kofi Annan to admit that U.N. peacekeepers and staff have sexually abused or exploited war refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The worst of the 150 or so allegations of misconduct--some of them captured on videotape--include pedophilia, rape, and prostitution. While a U.N. investigation into the scandal continues, the organization has just suspended two more peacekeepers in neighboring Burundi over similar charges. The revelations come three years after another U.N. report found "widespread" evidence of sexual abuse of West African refugees.
"The issue with the U.N. is that peacekeeping operations unfortunately seem to be doing the same thing that other militaries do," Gita Sahgal of Amnesty International told the Christian Science Monitor. "Even the guardians have to be guarded." That's not far off the mark. Various U.N. reports and interviews with humanitarian groups suggest that international peacekeeping missions are creating a predatory sexual culture among vulnerable refugees--from relief workers who demand sexual favors in exchange for food to U.N. troops who rape women at gunpoint.
Allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct by U.N. staff stretch back at least a decade, to operations in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. A 2001 report, released by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Save the Children, found that sexual violence against refugees in West Africa was endemic (though some of its findings were denied by a subsequent U.N. team). A year later a coalition of religious organizations sent a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell urging the United States to send more human rights monitors into Congo. The U.N. then introduced a "code of conduct" to help prevent future abuses, including prohibitions against sexual activity between staff and children and the exchange of money or food for sex.
It now appears, however, that little has changed on the ground. The U.N. Mission in Congo (MONUC) employs about 10,800 peacekeepers from 50 countries, in addition to many civilian staff. Yet there is no independent oversight of U.N. operations in its refugee camps. For that matter, none of the international agencies in the country has U.N. authority to protect the civil rights of internal refugees. Almost a year after the MONUC office in Kindu sent a memo in August 2003 to its headquarters in Kinshasa, detailing suspicions of sexual exploitation, the London Independent discovered action still hadn't been taken.
I have long made it clear that my attitude to sexual exploitation and abuse is one of zero tolerance, without exception, and I am determined to implement this policy in the most transparent manner," - Kofi Annan
But the reality between Mr. Annan’s words and deeds lays bare the bold-faced hypocrisy of the Secretary-General of the UN. It was just a little over two months ago when the news broke that Kofi Annan cleared Ruud Lubberg, UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees from charges of sexual harassment despite an internal inquiry that backed the victim.
A Secretary-General who would not penalize a UN High Commissioner for Refugees for sexual harassment despite an internal report backing the victim has little motivation or inclination to enforce the UN policies that are already on the books for the conduct of the UN Blue Helmet troops. I would call that a systematic failure of command by the United Nations.
2 comments:
Kate, I agree that UN peacekeeping apparatus is not structured with appropriate accountability and responsibility. I don't think the UN has much of a choice, though. The UN simply doesn't have any way of exerting adequate command and control over peacekeeping units, and depends on the C4ISR assets of its contributors. It has no way of penalizing a peacekeeping unit nor any method of enforcing good conduct among the constituent troops. All that is up to the officers and NCOs of that unit. The effective scope of UN penalties is telling the unit or contributing country to pack their bags and go home.
Since not too many countries pony up regularly for these kinds of missions, and the UN maintains no troops of its own, the UN is stuck with what it gets -- or it has to fold the peacekeeping mission entirely. And we all know how likely that is. The bureaucrats would rather have an ill-suited force at their disposal, or one that is actively making the situation worse, than no force at all. No force at all means the UN's incompetence and impotence is unmasked.
I'm not defending the UN so much as saying that the onus is on the contributing country to maintain good order and discipline within its deployed armed forces. And, I believe that is where responsibility should lie. The last thing we want is UN political officers stationed with troops, training or leading them. The best military coalitions are regional ones with shared doctrine, equipment, and C4ISR structures, like NATO. The UN doesn't even have the moral wherewithal to prevent obvious human-rights abusers from assuming leadership positions on its own Human Rights Commission... and I'm comfortable with them being largely ineffectual in a military sense. They shouldn't even be in that business.
In the UN, whether it is mourned or not, I believe the time has come where we must look clearly at the UN and recognize it for what it is; a failed institution. Time for new alliances among nations.
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