Shirin S's List: UN Army

• The envisioned U.N. Emergency Peace Service would be 15,000 to 18,000 strong and include not only military and police personnel but also engineers, relief workers and judicial experts.
• The process can take months, and it often includes time-consuming negotiations among U.N. member states and within the U.N. bureaucracy.
• The concept of a standing U.N. peacekeeping force has been around since the world body’s creation in 1945; however, due to member states’ concerns about preserving their sovereignty, it never materialized. Now a coalition of 37 civil society organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Refugees International, Rainbow/PUSH and a variety of Christian groups, believes that conditions are conducive to the formation of such a force.
• And two years ago, the world body adopted “the responsibility to prtect” principle, which provides a legal basis for humanitarian intervention by the U.N. in situations where a member state is unwilling or unable to stop genocide, massive killings and other human rights violations.
• Ban’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, spelled out the need for a rapid[-]response structure in a speech prior to his departure last year. The former secretary general compared his job of building support and raising funds for each U.N. peacekeeping mission to that of a fire chief who is forced to raise money, find volunteers and secure a fire truck for each new fire.
• 12 of the 14 countries polled supported the idea of a standing U.N. peacekeeping force, including 72% of Americans

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• Only the UN Security Council would be able to authorize its deployment, but as soon as they authorized it, the force would be ready to go. There would be no need to create the force out of thin air.

• Issues to be considered include how large the force would be, what military capabilities it would have (e.g. would it have air and sea power?), how it would be recruited, how it would be funded and where it might be based. To what extent it would add to or replace the existing methods of raising troops should also be considered; long term peacekeeping missions (for example, in Cyprus or Bosnia) might still be undertaken by detachments volunteered by individual states, while the UN Standing Army would be largely deployed to deal with short-term crises and could thus be relatively small.
• in many cases UN missions are very successful; when there are problems these are more to do with lengthy and difficult Security Council deliberations, inadequate mandates, etc. rather than how long it took to gather a force together.Once a standing army exists, it provides the UN with an easy way out in any crisis, so force may be more likely to be used, often inappropriately. A very rapid response time may also worsen problems - currently the time it takes to gather and insert a UN force may provide a period in which the warring groups feel compelled to negotiate before outside intervention becomes a reality.       
• UN has often acted too late, with too little force, and has thereby failed to avert humanitarian disasters in such places as Central Africa, Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Somalia. A UN standing army would be permanently available and able to react rapidly to contain crises before they turn into full-scale wars and humanitarian disasters.
• independent of the great powers and so more likely to be respected as a neutral peacemaker
• would inevitably make the UN more like a world government – and one which is not democratic and where a totalitarian state has veto power over key decision-making. This means a standing army may actually be counter-productive, impairing current perceptions of the UN’s selfless neutrality, undermining its moral authority and its ability to broker peace agreements.
• ree of accusations of meddling and self-interest that accompany the participation of troops from neighbouring states
• Differences in language, culture, etc. will seriously mar operational effectiveness, especially in combat situations
• n a truly multinational force there will always be a great many individual soldiers who could be suspected of taking sides in a particular conflict (e.g. Muslims or Orthodox Christians in the Balkan conflicts); are such soldiers to be pulled out from particular mission, thereby perhaps weakening the whole force?
• At present most UN operations are supplied by developing nations who hope to make a profit from the payments they receive for their services, but who are under-equipped and badly trained. A UN standing army would be better prepared in both respects and its soldiers would have greater motivation as they would have made a choice to enlist, rather than being conscripts.
• A single UN force would also have better command and control than in current situation, when different national forces and their commanders often fail to work effectively together in the field.
• might also end up being very poorly equipped, for if the advanced military powers start to see the UN as a potential rival or adversary, they will refuse to sell it their best arms and armour.
• A UN standing army would bring benefits to the world economy through avoiding the costs of refugee crises and other humanitarian disasters. These costs are both direct (through aid) and indirect (as developed nations often become the destination of illegal immigrants fleeing conflicts at home, e.g. Sri Lankans and Kurds).
• The cost of such an army would be very high, especially if it were to include purchase of air and sea transport to reach theatres of operation, added to the high costs of permanent establishment and training, and equipping the force for every possible type of terrain.
• War also disrupts trade and thus damages the global economy, while a greater confidence that war can be avoided in future will encourage more long-term investment and thus greater prosperity.
• A Rapid Reaction Force made up of fast-response units from member states with elite military capability, pledged in advance for UN operations, would build upon the best features of the current system
• An improved prediction capability through better intelligence and analysis, and central logistical planning at UN headquarters would allow forces to be assembled and mandates drafted before problems became full-blown crises.

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• Many nations also have understandable qualms about a permanent, multinational military force, intervening all over the world. The Americans do not put their forces under UN commanders. It often falls to poorer countries, such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and Indonesia, to provide most of the troops for UN operations. But they worry that setting up a permanent force would mean that they would lose the ability to pick and choose which missions they take part in.
• In the 1990s UN forces failed to prevent the Rwandan genocide and the Srebrenica massacre. More recently, UN-mandated troops were involved in sex crimes in the Congo. Like many international bureaucracies, the UN is often not a pretty sight when viewed from close quarters.
• Alongside the well-publicised UN peacekeeping failures, there have been many quiet successes – Cambodia, Namibia, Sierra Leone and Nepal, to name a few. For the west’s over-stretched armies, international peacekeepers often look like a cheap and attractive option. Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, says that for every dollar the US spends on an equivalent military deployment, the UN spends 12 cents. The UN flag also brings a global legitimacy that a Nato or EU operation cannot muster.
• Yet the demand for UN peacekeeping forces keeps going up. There are currently 116,000 UN peacekeepers deployed around the world in 17 different operations – an eightfold increase since 1999. Only the US has more troops deployed around the world than the UN.
• But every time the Security Council votes to deploy peacekeepers, the UN has to appeal for troops and equipment from scratch. So it usually takes between three months and a year to deploy a UN force – far too slow, in an emergency such as Somalia.
• Such a force need not be a conventional army, with its own barracks and personnel. It would be better to get countries to give the UN first call on a certain number of their troops, for a specific period of time. National sovereignty could still be respected by allowing countries to opt out of missions, if they inflame national sensitivities.
• Creating a permanent UN capability would mean that the UN could intervene much more quickly. It would also make it more likely that forces assigned to the UN follow the same military doctrines.

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• In Bosnia, the world was slow to act as civil war broke out between Serbs, Muslims and Croats.  

   When Bosnia first asked for UN monitors on its borders with Serbia in 1992, the request was turned down, because there was no precedent for "pre-emptive" peacekeeping. 

   The result was that Serb military and supplies poured across the border, shelling civilians, and besieging towns like Sarajevo. 

   The United Nations Protection Force, Unprofor, was only deployed in 1993, when the International Court of Justice ruled that genocide was taking place. 

  • Source: BBC

• At the time of the first reports of genocide in May 1994, there was already a small UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda.  

   But it was ill-equipped to deal with the scale of the bloodshed, and most countries immediately withdrew their contingents. 

   Eventually the Security Council approved a force of 5,500, but most of the troops were not forthcoming. 

   The UN has since admitted that it failed to prevent the genocide, and ignored warnings of what was to come. 

  • Source: BBC

• The conflict in Sierra Leone dates from March 1991 when fighters of   the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) launched a war from the east   of the country near the border with Liberia to overthrow the government.   With the support of the Military Observer Group (ECOMOG) of the   Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Sierra Leone's   army tried at first to defend the government but, the following   year, the army itself overthrew the government.

   

  Despite the change of power, the RUF continued its attacks. In   February 1995, the United Nations Secretary-General appointed a   Special Envoy, Mr. Berhanu Dinka (Ethiopia).
• Fighting continued with the rebel alliance gaining control of   more than half the country.
• On 22 October 1999, the Security Council authorized the establishment   of UNAMSIL,

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• The United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM I) was set up to facilitate humanitarian aid to people trapped by civil war and famine.

• n 1973, a coup d'etat organized by the Hutu extremist General Juvenal Habyarimana, overthrew the existing government. This dictator encouraged discrimination between the Hutus and the Tutsis. In 1990, violent clashes broke out between Habyarimana's and RPF's armies. Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus also became the targets of attacks by Habyarimana's forces. Despite the signature of the Arusha Declaration of 1993, the conflict worsened after the suspicious death of Habyarimana in 1994. The massacre of Tutsis and moderate Hutus began. The Peacekeepers, who were assigned to the site to keep the peace (led by Canadian General Roméo Dallaire) found themselves powerless in the face of this all-out genocide taking place before their very eyes. Indeed, insufficient troops, coupled with a restricted mandate - they had initially been dispatched to oversee that the parties conformed to the Arusha Declaration - hampered the Peacekeepers; they could not intervene effectively despite the intense pressure applied to the UN by General Dallaire for more troops and equipment. In less than four months, the death toll reached one million, most of the victims being Tutsis and moderate Hutus. When the RPF took power, more than two million Hutus fled to border countries. They eventually returned under the supervision of the UN with the approval of the Rwanda Patriotic Front but then food shortages reached crisis levels with one third of the population suffering from malnutrition. There were also many orphans and increasing cases of AIDS.