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ABSTRACT
The article considers the state of UN peacekeeping through the prism of its long-running operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Focusing in particular on the challenges raised by use of force and the protection of civilians in conditions of ongoing armed conflict, it argues that UN field operations must be aligned much more closely than they have been over the past 15 years to political and diplomatic efforts aimed at securing viable political settlements to internal conflict. The issues raised by the history of the UN’s troubled mission in the DRC are deeply relevant to the wider discussion of the organisation’s role in the field of peace and security.
Acknowledgements
The author is most grateful for comments provided by Hannah Davies, David Ucko, Alan Doss and Emily Paddon Rhoads on an earlier draft of the article.
Notes
1 UN, ‘Secretary-General’s Statement on Appointment of High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations’, New York, 31 October 2014.
2 UN, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (‘Brahimi Panel Report’), S/2000/809, 21 August 2000.
3 UN, ‘Secretary-General’s Statement on Appointment of High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations’.
4 Throughout this article the term ‘Congo’ refers to the country today known as DRC.
5 The UN first deployed as the UN Organization Mission in the DRC (MONUC) in November 1999. MONUC was renamed MONUSCO in July 2010.
6 UN, ‘Summary Study of the Experience Derived from the Establishment and Operations of the Force (UNEF)’, Report of the Secretary-General, A/3943, 9 October 1958.
7 S/RES/2098, 28 March 2013.
8 Jason K. Stearns and Christoph Vogel, ‘The Landscape of Armed Groups in the Eastern Congo’, Congo Research Group, CIC, December 2015; <www.internal-displacement.org/database/country?iso3=COD>.
9 UN, Secretary-General’s Remarks at Security Council Debate on Trends in UN Peacekeeping, New York 11 June 2014.
10 UN, ‘Uniting Our Strengths for Peace – Politics, Partnership and People’, Report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO), 16 June 2015.
11 Over this period Russia has cast its veto ten times. By contrast, over the previous 20 years, it used the veto on only three occasions.
12 UN Security Council, 7138th Meeting, S/PV.7138 (Provisional Verbatim Record), 15 March 2014.
13 Sergey Lavrov, ‘Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s Address at the Security Council Open Debate on “Maintaining International Peace and Security”, February 23, 2015’, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, <http://archive.mid.ru//brp_4.nsf/0/0FF680732AC939BA43257DF60043AC8C>.
14 Keir Giles, Keir, Philip Hanson, Roderic Lyne, James Nixey, James Sherr, Andrew Wood, ‘The Russian Challenge’, Chatham House Report, June 2015, 1.
15 Richard Gowan, ‘Burundi Crisis Latest Victim of Russia–West Standoff at UN’, World Politics Review, 9 November 2015, <http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/17162/burundi-crisis-latest-victim-of-russia-west-standoff-at-u-n>. For an astute analysis of ‘Russia’s preferred tactics’ at the UN, see Richard Gowan, ‘Bursting the UN Bubble: How to Counter Russia in the Security Council’, ECFR, June 2015, 3.
16 Although the veto has been cast jointly by China and Russia on six occasions since 2007, it would be wrong to view them as locked in a permanent commonality of interest and outlook; something that is clear from, inter alia, China’s ambiguous response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
18 ‘Brahimi Panel Report’, paras 56–64.
19 UN General Assembly, ‘2005 World Summit Outcome Document’, A/RES/60/1, 24 October 2005, para. 139.
20 UN, Security Council Resolution 2149 (Central African Republic), S/RES/2149, 10 April 2014. A few days later, in a resolution marking the twentieth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, the Council unanimously reaffirmed the relevant paragraphs of the 2005 Outcome Document on the R2P. UN, Security Council Resolution 2150 (Prevention of Genocide), S/RES/2150 (2014), 16 April 2014.
21 Conor Cruise O’Brien, United Nations – Sacred Drama (New York: Simon & Schuster 1968), 18.
22 UN, ‘Uniting Our Strengths for Peace’, para. 289. For the persistence of the challenges facing the UN in the above-mentioned areas, see Marrack Goulding, ‘Practical Measures to Enhance the UN’s Effectiveness in the Field of Peace and Security’, report submitted to the Secretary-General of the UN, New York, 30 June 1997.
24 Adrian Johnson, ‘Back in Blue? A British Return to United Nations Peacekeeping’, RUSI Journal 160/1 (2015), 14-24.
25 ‘Declaration of Leaders’ Summit on Peacekeeping’, 28 September 2015, <https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/28/declaration-leaders-summit-peacekeeping>.
26 For an astute analysis of the Summit, see Richard Gowan, ‘Red China’s Blue Helmets’, <www.brookings.edu/blogs/order-from-chaos/posts/2015/09/30-un-peacekeeping-commitments-gowan>.
27 See ‘PM Narendra Modi’s Statement’, 29 September 2015, <http://www.thehindu.com/news/resources/statement-by-prime-minister-narendra-modi-at-the-un-summit-on-peace-operations/article7699430.ece>.
28 UN, Security Council Resolution 1270 (Sierra Leone), S/RES/1270, 22 October 1999.
29 UN Security Council, 7288th Meeting, S/PV.7288 (Provisional Verbatim Record), 27 October 2014.
30 UN, ‘DPKO–DFS Concept Note on Robust Peacekeeping’, DPKO–DFS, 2009.
31 Thierry Tardy, ‘A Critique of Robust Peacekeeping in Contemporary Operations’, International Peacekeeping 18/2 (2011), 152-167.
32 For authoritative background to the protracted emergency in the DRC set in motion by the cataclysm of Rwanda genocide in 1994, the subsequent refugee crisis in eastern Congo and the two Congo Wars, see Jason K. Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters (New York: Public Affairs 2011); Gérard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwanda Genocide and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (Oxford: Oxford UP 2009).
33 UN, Security Council Resolution 1279 (DRC), S/RES/1279, 30 November 1999.
34 Prunier, Africa’s World War, 225. See also Larmer, Miles, Ann Laudati and John Clark, ‘Neither War nor Peace in the DRC: Profiting and Coping amid Violence and Disorder’, Review of African Political Economy 40/135 (2013), 1-12.
35 ‘Secretary-General Hails Pretoria Agreement’, <www.un.org/press/en/2002/sc7479.doc.htm>.
36 UN, ‘Special Report on Bisiye Mine’, MONUC Kinshasa (Natural Resources and HR Unit), 25 April 2008.
37 For a trenchant analysis of the dynamics at work resulting in a ‘militarization of politics’ and a metastasis of armed groups in the DRC following the formal peace accord and the power-sharing deal on which the transition process was predicated, see Jason K. Stearns, Judith Verweijen, Maria Eriksson Baaz, The National Army and Armed Groups in the Eastern Congo (London: Rift Valley Institute 2013), 20–39. For the historical context and roots of the crisis in eastern Congo, see also René Lemarchand, ‘Reflections on the Recent Historiography of Eastern Congo’, Journal of African History 54/3 (2013), 417-437.
38 UN, Second Special Report of the Secretary-General on MONUC, S/2003/566, 27 May 2003. On 9 May, the head of UN peacekeeping ‘informed the Security Council … that, unless it takes decisive action, the possibility of the situation spinning further out of control, with thousands of civilians massacred, could not be excluded’.
39 UN, Letter from Secretary-General to President of the Security Council (DRC), S/2003/574, 15 May 2003.
40 UN, Security Council Resolution 1484 (DRC), S/RES/1484, 30 May 2003.
41 UN, Fourteenth Report of the Secretary-General on MONUC, S/2003/1098, 17 November 2003.
42 UN, ‘Operation Artemis: The Lessons of the IEMF’, Peacekeeping Best Practices Unit (Military Division), DPKO, October 2004, 14.
43 UN, ‘Note on Meeting with DPA and DPKO on the DRC’, DPKO, 9 June 2003. Mats Berdal, ‘United Nations Peacekeeping and the Responsibility to Protect’, in Ramesh Thakur and William Maley, Theorising the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2015), 236–42.
44 Jan-Gunnar Isberg and Lotta Tillberg, By All Necessary Means: Brigadier General Jan-Gunnar Isberg’s Experience from Service in the Congo, 2003–2005 (Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College 2012), 22.
45 UN, Security Council Resolution 1856 (DRC), S/RES/1856, 22 December 2008, para. 6.
46 UN, Security Council Resolution 1493 (DRC) S/RES/1493, 28 July 2003, para. 26.
47 UN, ‘DRC: Report of Visit from 6–15 March 2006’, DPKO, 20 March 2006
48 John Holmes, The Politics of Humanity (London: Head of Zeus 2013), 138, 144–45.
49 Jean Arnault, ‘A Background to the Report of HIPPO’, CIC, 6 August 2015.
50 ‘Peace Security and Cooperation Framework for the DRC and the Region (PSCF)’, 24 February 2013, <http://www.globalr2p.org/resources/430>.
51 Christoph Vogel, ‘Islands of Stability or Swamps of Insecurity?’, Africa Policy Brief No. 9, 2014, 1–2. That figure has since increased. See footnote 8.
52 UN, Security Council Resolution 2098 (DRC), S/RES/2098, 28 March 2013, para. 12 (b). The idea for the FIB came initially from the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), which at first conceived of it an offensive non-UN force to deal with armed groups in eastern DRC.
53 BBC, ‘DRC claims defeat of M23 rebels’, 5 November 2013, <www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24815241>. The decisiveness of M23’s defeat soon came into question as significant numbers of M23 combatants, including its commander, Sultani Makenga, crossed into Uganda shortly after the supposed rout. UN, Report of the Secretary-General on MONUSCO, S/2013/757, 17 December 2013, paras 40, 20.
54 Social Science Research Council, ‘FDLR: Past, Present, and Policies’, DRC Affinity Group, March 2014, <http://www.ssrc.org/publications/view/fdlr-past-present-and-policies/>.
55 UN, Report of the Secretary-General on MONUSCO, S/2014/450, 30 June 2014, para. 86.
56 UN, Report of the Secretary-General on the Strategic Review of MONUSCO, S/2014/957 (‘Strategic Review’), 30 December 2014, para. 16.
57 See UN, Report of the Secretary-General on the Implementation of the Peace, Cooperation and Securiry Framework for DRC, S/2015/172, 10 March 2015; idem, Report of the Secretary-General on MONUSCO S/2015/486, 26 June 2015. UN, Final report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, S/2015/19, 12 January 2015.
58 Alan Doss, ‘In the Footsteps of Dr Bunche’, Journal of Strategic Studies 37/5 (2014), 730. See also Hannah Cooper, ‘More Harm than Good? UN’s Islands of Stability in DRC’, Oxfam, 8 May 2014.
59 UN, Security Council Resolution 2098, para. 8.
60 Kagame’s determination to track down and ‘silence Rwandese dissidents abroad is one factor that has contributed to the deterioration of relations between South Africa and Rwanda. Interview with UN official, February 2015. See also Geoffrey York and Judi Rever, ‘Rwanda’s Hunted’, Globe and Mail, 2 May 2014.
61 International Crisis Group, ‘Congo: Ending the Status Quo’, Africa Briefing No. 107, 17 December 2014, 13.
62 ‘Strategic Review’, para. 30.
63 Ibid., para. 51.
64 International Crisis Group, ‘Congo’, 7. See also UN, ‘Opinions Divided over Protection of Civilians as Fourth Committee Concludes General Debate on Peacekeeping Matters’, 5 November 2015, <www.un.org/press/en/2015/gaspd597.doc.htm>.
65 Alan Doss, private communication, 12 September 2013.
66 UN, ‘Evaluation of the Implementation and Results of Protection of Civilians Mandates in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations’, Report of UN Office of Internal Oversight, A/68/787, 7 March 2014, para. 5.
67 For a sophisticated study of these mechanisms in the DRC, see Emily Paddon Rhoads, Taking Side in Peacekeeping (Oxford: Oxford UP 2016); for similar dynamics in South Sudan, see Michael Arensen, ‘Lessons Learned from South Sudan Protection of Civilian Sites 2013–2016’, IOM Report, 2016.
68 Following a visit to the DRC on the eve of elections in 2006, the head of DPKO concluded, ‘The UN military operations also produce negative consequences. UN Agency and NGO personnel have reported new waves of IDPs fleeing armed groups under UN pressure, which are inflicting reprisals on the civilian population.’ UN, ‘DRC’.
69 Jean-Marie Guéhenno, The Fog of Peace (Washington: Brookings Institution Press 2015), 159.
70 This became especially clear during a series of anti-FDLR campaigns – Unmoja Wetu, Kimia II and Amani Leo – conducted by the FADRC with MONUC operational support between 2009 and 2012. See UN Human Rights Council, 14th Session, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Philip Alston’, Addendum: Mission to the DRC, A/HRC/14/24/Add.3, 1 June 2010; Human Rights Watch, ‘Eastern DR Congo: Surge in Army Atrocities’, 2 November 2009.
71 Guéhenno, The Fog of Peace, 160.
72 Stearns et al., The National Army and Armed Groups, 61.
73 International Crisis Group. ‘Congo’, 6.
74 Holmes, Politics of Humanity, 139.
75 UN, ‘UNAMSIL – Meeting of COS’, 18 August 2000, DPKO.
76 UN, ‘Uniting Our Strengths for Peace’, x.
77 UN, Security Council Resolution 1313 (Sierra Leone), S/RES/1313, 4 August 2000, para. 3 (b).
78 UN, ‘Evaluation of the Implementation and Results’, para. 35.
79 Alan James, ‘The Congo Controversies’, International Peacekeeping 1/1 (1994), 46.
80 David Ucko, ‘Lessons from Britain’s Success Story in Sierra Leone’, Journal of Strategic Studies 39 (2016), 29-61.
81 James Cockayne, ‘The Futility of Force? Strategic Lessons for Dealing with Unconventional Armed Groups from the UN’s War on Haiti’s Gangs’, Journal of Strategic Studies 37/5 (2014), 736–69.
82 Arnault, ‘A Background to the Report’, 4.
83 UN Secretary-General, ‘Introduction to the Annual Report, June 1959–June 1960’, A/4390/Add.1, 1960, 4.
84 For an incisive essay on the role of Pérez de Cuéllar in ‘probing on-going conflicts to see whether his skills and the particular advantages of the UN could be applied’, see Alvaro de Soto, ‘A Key United Nations Moment and its Lessons’, UN Chronicle 52/1–2 (2015), <https://unchronicle.un.org/issues/2015>.
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Mats Berdal
Mats Berdal is Professor of Security and Development in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Email: [email protected]