Peacekeeping Reports

Tens of thousands of people will remain without life-saving aid unless the UN mission in DR Congo steps up its presence in areas brutalized by the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). The horrific experiences of the communities in the Great Lakes directly affected by the LRA demand that the UN bear three harsh realities in mind:

1. The LRA is a regional problem, requiring a concerted regional and international response.

2. The problem is not going to go away: a failure to direct efforts and resources towards it now will only increase the scale of the human catastrophe to be addressed later.

3. Current efforts are ineffective at protecting civilians and can even inadvertently put civilians at greater risk: the protection of the civilians caught up in this crisis cannot be left to chance – or to the communities themselves.

That the US government, the World Bank, the UN, AU and EU have recently moved the issue of the LRA higher up their respective agendas is potentially good news for the many LRA-affected communities. Turning that potential into reality, however, is going to take considerably greater political will, coordination and far-sightedness than has so far characterised the international and regional response to the LRA.

Recommendations

Contact Group members should promote coordinated national and international action to address the threat the LRA poses to civilians across the region.

Make better use of existing resources: peacekeeping missions must review their strategies in response to the LRA threat and establish effective cross-mission coordination on protecting civilians; coordination with humanitarian actors on security must be improved to enable an expansion of assistance; national armies must be adequately supported and disciplined to offer increased protection to civilians; revive the role of an AU or UN Special Envoy to LRA-affected areas as part of enhanced non-military action to promote disarmament.

Increase resources commensurate with needs: more international and national protection actors must be deployed to the areas where the civilian population is most at risk; the delivery of humanitarian assistance should be significantly increased; the structural vulnerabilities of the affected areas should be addressed through a targeted road-building/road rehabilitation program, combined with a major expansion of communications infrastructure (mobile phone coverage); early warning systems linked to improved response capacity are needed, with regard for the risks they can pose to civilians.

Address the risks of any military action: civilian protection should be at the centre of international and regional action to address the threat of the LRA, under a shared strategy involving national armed forces and peacekeeping missions in the region that takes account of the capacities of each.

Contacts:

Anna Ridout, Press Officer, Oxfam, l: +44 (0)1865 473415, m: +44 (0)7766 443506, aridout@oxfam.org.uk

Louis Belanger, Oxfam Humanitarian Media Lead, t: +1 212 687 2678; m: +1 917 224 0834 louis.belanger@oxfaminternational.org, @louis_press

Revised and updated in 2010 by editors William Durch and Madeline England

This report provides an overview of recent trends in the use of police in UN peacekeeping missions, assesses chronic challenges, and lays out a series of proposals aimed at improving UN capacity to support post-conflict policing and the rule of law. It concludes that the UN's historically ad hoc approach-driven in large part by resource constraints, but also by a lack of vision that has only recently begun to be corrected-is no longer acceptable, if it ever was. It therefore recommends new approaches for more systematic planning, recruiting, and rapid deployment of larger numbers of quality UN police (UNPOL) and other rule of law personnel for integrated peace operations. These include a standing UN Rule of Law Capacity, a complementary ready reserve of police and other criminal justice personnel, and a Senior Reserve Roster of experienced, retired police officers, judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers. The study provides a description of these proposed reforms, including detailed cost estimates, and concludes that the implementation of such initiatives would dramatically improve the UN's ability to carry out its mandates to support post-conflict policing and rule of law.

This report is one of five FOPO studies on essential aspects of improving rule of law in post-conflict states. Other studies focus on improving border control and border security, fighting corruption in war-torn states, increasing accountability for non-military personnel in peace operations, and using UN Panels of Experts more effectively to combat spoilers and monitor targeted sanctions.

The original version of Enhancing United Nations Capacity was issued November 2007 with co-authors Joshua Smith, Victoria Holt, and William Durch.

Recent incidents of systematic rapes in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and continued mass dislocations of populations in Somalia and Sudan have again thrust the issue of international peace operations’ responsibility for providing civilian protection onto news headlines around the world. With 40 peace operations in 14 countries since 2000, Africa is at the forefront of grappling with the civilian protection issue. 

In this ACSS Research Paper, Paul Williams assesses the role civilian protection plays in peace operations, lessons learned from past civilian protection efforts, progress that has been made, and key obstacles that remain in effectively providing protection to civilians caught up in armed conflict.  Drawing on this experience, the paper puts forth ten priorities for improving civilian protection in ongoing and future peace operations – in Africa and beyond. 

ACSS's Research Papers present policy-relevant analysis on topics of pressing importance to Africa’s security.  

This new IPI report examines trends in how the Security Council has engaged with civil wars since 1989 and the gradual evolution of the Council’s civil-war response strategies, including where and when it chose to engage. The study reveals a comprehensive change in the way the Council has applied its mandate under the United Nations Charter to situations of internal conflict.

The report represents the most comprehensive analysis to date of the Security Council’s approaches to resolving civil wars during the past two decades. It is the first publication produced by IPI’s multiyear research project on Compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolutions in Civil Wars.

Future analysis by this project will seek to provide answers to two questions: To what extent do civil-war parties comply with demands issued by the Security Council? And what factor or combination of factors best explains the variance in the level of compliance — e.g., conflict settings, conflict management strategies, or political dynamics within the Security Council?

In the future, the project will produce a book combining rigorous quantitative analyses and detailed case studies on this very important topic.

IPI will also publish a searchable online database of all Security Council resolutions adopted in the context of civil wars between 1989 and 2006. The IPI Security Council Compliance Database will document the Security Council’s conflict-management efforts and the civil-war parties’ responses to each individual demand addressed to them during the first fifteen years after the Cold War, from 1989 to 2003.  

For more information about this ongoing research project, please go to http://www.ipinst.org/securitycouncilcompliance.