![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
The United Nations Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS) is a civil society-led idea to establish a permanent service that would improve United Nations peace operations and operationalise the emerging norm, the ‘responsibility to protect’. The idea, however, has encountered multiple obstacles, especially in relation to its proposed capacity to use of force. This article argues that when the right conditions have been met, there may be cases where force could be applied by the proposed UNEPS. Support for a UNEPS might also be found if its deployments were conditional on UN Security Council authorisation and backed by the consent of the host country.
Acknowledgements
Parts of this article are based on sections of the author's book UN Emergency Peace Service and the Responsibility to Protect (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2015), 4–8, 43–4, 75–81, 83–6, 129. They are reproduced with the permission of Routledge.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Annie Herro is a lecturer at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney. She has been researching, teaching and writing about issues relating to peacekeeping and R2P for about seven years. Her work has featured in numerous publications including Global Change, Peace and Security and African Security Review. Her first book is called UN Emergency Peace Service and the Responsibility to Protect (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015).
Notes
1 UN General Assembly, ‘Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly: 60/1. 2005 World Summit Outcome', A/RES/60/1 of 24 October 2005, paras 138–9.
2 Kavitha Suthanthiraraj, ‘United Nations Peacekeeping Missions: Enhancing Capacity for Rapid and Effective Troop Deployment', Global Action To Prevent War, 2008, http://www.globalactionpw.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/troop-deployment-paper.pdf.
3 United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Department of Field Support, United Nations Peacekeeping Operations Principles and Guidelines (New York: United Nations, 2008), 63.
4 UN General Assembly, ‘Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations’, A/55/305 of 21 August 2000.
5 UN General Assembly, ‘Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Report of the Secretary-General', A/63/677 of 12 January 2009, para. 60.
6 Aidan Hehir, The Responsibility to Protect: Rhetoric, Reality and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 247.
7 UN General Assembly, ‘Implementing the Responsibility to Protect'.
8 Robert C. Johansen, ed., A United Nations Emergency Peace Service: To Prevent Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (New York: World Federalist Movement – Institute for Global Policy, 2006).
9 World Federalist Movement – Canada and Global Action to Prevent War, ‘Support for UNEPS at UN GA Interactive Dialogue on R2P’, https://www.worldfederalistscanada.org/0611%20UNEPS%20&%20R2P%20sign-on%20Ltr%20%20(1).pdf.
10 James Pattison, ‘Humanitarian Intervention and a Cosmopolitan UN Force', Journal of International Political Theory 4, no. 1 (2008): 126–45.
11 Jonathan Gilmore, ‘Protecting Strangers: Reflections on a Cosmopolitan Peacekeeping Capacity', in Perspectives on Peacekeeping and Atrocity Prevention: Expanding Stakeholders and Regional Arrangements, ed. Trudy Fraser (New York: Springer, forthcoming). A notable exception is the report by Suthanthiraraj and Quinn which identifies some of the challenges the UNEPS proposal faces vis-à-vis the use of force. The data used in their report overlaps to some degree with those used in this article. In their analysis, however, the subject of the use of force was more narrowly conceived than how it is dealt with in this article (for example they did not specifically address perceptions of the R2P doctrine and the affect they have on attitudes towards the UNEPS proposal) and consequently their conclusions on generating support for the UNEPS proposal were quite different to those in this study. Kavitha Suthanthiraraj and Mariah Quinn, Standing for Change in Peacekeeping Operations: Project for a United Nations Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS) (New York: Global Action to Prevent War, 2009).
12 Stephen Kinloch-Pichat, A UN ‘Legion': Between Utopia and Reality (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 203–18.
13 Adam Roberts, ‘Proposals for UN Standing Forces: A Critical History', in The United Nations Security Council and War: The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945, ed. Vaughan Lowe, Adam Roberts, Jennifer Welsh and Dominik Zaum (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 99–130.
14 H. Peter Langille, ‘Bridging the Commitment-Capacity Gap: A Review of Existing Arrangements and Options for Enhancing UN Rapid Deployment' (Center for UN Reform Education, 2002).
15 Justine Wang, ‘A Symposium on Genocide and Crimes against Humanity: The Challenge of Prevention and Enforcement’ (paper presented, Convened by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Simons Centre for Peace and Disarmament Studies, University of Santa Barbara, California, 5–6 December 2003).
16 William J. Durch, ‘Paying the Tab: Financial Crises', in The Evolution of UN peacekeeping, ed. William J. Durch (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 39–58, 50.
17 Summarised from Robert C. Johansen, ‘Expert Discussion of the United Nations Emergency Peace Service: Cuenca Report', in A United Nations Emergency Peace Service, ed. Robert C. Johansen, 43–74. It also incorporates other literature on UNEPS.
18 Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 20.
19 Interview by author, 7 May 2008, Jakarta, Indonesia.
20 Cited in Kinloch-Pichat, A UN ‘Legion', 225.
21 ASEAN Secretariat, ‘The ASEAN Charter' (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat, 2008).
22 Global Action to Prevent War, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and Centre for Strategic and International Studies, ‘Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection: Asia-Pacific Perspectives’, 11 June 2009, Convened by Global Action to Prevent War, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, http://www.globalactionpw.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/jakarta-full-reportv6.pdf.
23 Alex Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), 16, 8–9.
24 Interview by Kavitha Suthanthiraraj, 30 June 2010, New York.
25 Interview by author, 8 May 2008, Jakarta, Indonesia.
26 Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect, 88.
27 Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 4th edition (New York: Knopf, 1948).
28 Interview by author, 11 July 2007, Canberra, Australia.
29 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Relations (Reading, MA: Addison-Webley, 1979).
30 Hans J. Morgenthau, The Decline of Domestic Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 59.
31 Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 10.
32 Interview by Kavitha Suthanthiraraj, 25 June 2010, New York.
33 Noam Chomsky, ‘Statement by Professor Noam Chomsky to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect’ (United Nations, 2009), http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/interactive/protect/noam.pdf.
34 Kathy Lally and Will Englund, ‘Putin Defends Ukraine Stance, Cites Lawlessness', Washington Post, 4 March 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/putin-reserves-the-right-to-use-force-in-ukraine/2014/03/04/92d4ca70-a389-11e3-a5fa-55f0c77bf39c_story.html.
35 Interview by author, 30 April 2008, Jakarta, Indonesia.
36 Interview by author, 7 May 2008, Jakarta, Indonesia.
37 Stephen M. Schwebel, Justice in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 313.
38 D.W. Bowett, United Nations Forces: A Legal Study (New York: Praeger, 1964), 326.
39 Interview by author, 16 June 2009, Singapore.
40 Brian E. Urquhart, ‘United Nations Peace Forces and the Changing United Nations', International Organization 17, no. 2 (1963): 351.
41 Alan J. Kuperman, ‘A Model Humanitarian Intervention? Reassessing NATO's Libya Campaign', International Security 38, no. 1 (2013): 105–36.
42 Alan J. Kuperman, ‘Humanitarian Hazard: Revisiting Doctrines of Intervention', Harvard International Review 26, no. 1 (2004): 64–9, 66.
43 Alex Bellamy, Global Politics and the Responsibility to Protect: From Words to Deeds (London: Routledge, 2011), 71–80.
44 Johansen, ‘Cuenca Report', 54.
45 Interview by author, 8 May 2008, Jakarta, Indonesia.
46 Jess Gifkins, ‘The UN Security Council Divided: Syria in Crisis', Global Responsibility to Protect 4, no. 3 (2012): 377–93, 391.
47 Interview by author, 8 May 2008, Jakarta, Indonesia.
48 Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 259.
49 BBC News, ‘World: Europe Mixed Asian Reaction to NATO Strikes', BBC News, 25 March 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/303671.stm.
50 Richard H. Curtiss, ‘Kosovo Tragedy Contains Hard Lessons', The Daily Star, 30 May 1999, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/1999/Apr-30/108392-kosovo-tragedy-contains-hard-lessons.ashx#axzz2zQ1YG0Ek.
51 Gregg Carlstrom, ‘US Condemns UNESCO Over Palestine Vote’, Al Jazeera, 1 November 2011, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/10/2011103172551498181.html.
52 Kinloch-Pichat, A UN ‘Legion', 209–10.
53 Thomas G Weiss, What's Wrong With the United Nations and How to Fix it (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2013), 196–7.
54 Stephen P. Kinloch, ‘Utopian or Pragmatic? A UN Permanent Military Volunteer Force', International Peacekeeping 3, no. 4 (1996): 166–90, 177.
55 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001), 37.
56 Robert C. Johansen, ‘Proposal for a United Nations Emergency Peace Service to Prevent Genocide and Crimes against Humanity', in A United Nations Emergency Peace Service, ed. Robert C. Johansen, 23–42, 29.
57 Kuperman, ‘A Model Humanitarian Intervention?'.
58 James Pattison, ‘The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention in Libya', Ethics & International Affairs 25, no. 3 (2011): 271–7.
59 Interview by Kavitha Suthanthiraraj, 30 September 2008, unknown location.
60 ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect, xiii, UN General Assembly.
61 Interview by author, 9 May 2008, Jakarta, Indonesia.
62 Alex Bellamy, ‘We Can't Dodge the Hard Part Stabilising Libya’, The Australian, 21 March 2011, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/we-cant-dodge-the-hard-part-stabilising-libya/story-e6frg6zo-1226025034896.
63 UN General Assembly, ‘Implementing the Responsibility to Protect', para. 42.
64 Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne, ‘East Timor and the New Humanitarian Interventionism', International Affairs 77, no. 4 (2001): 805–27, 818–20, 25.
65 UN General Assembly, ‘Implementing the Responsibility to Protect'. For a full discussion of the intersection between Pillar Two and UNEPS see Chapter 3 of Annie Herro, UN Emergency Peace Service and the Responsibility to Protect (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2015).
66 Hugh Breakey, ‘The Responsibility to Protect and the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict: Overlap and Contrast', in Norms of Protection: Responsibility to Protect, Protection of Civilians and Their Interaction, ed. Angus Francis, Vesselin Popovski and Charles Sampford (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2012), 62–81, 77. Although there is considerable overlap between Pillar Two and Pillar Three missions.