Concept, Implementation and Practice
With a Foreword by Jan Egeland
The Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping
Nomos
Benjamin de Carvalho | Ole Jacob Sending [eds.]
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1. Auflage 2012© Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 2012. Printed in Germany. Alle Rechte, auch die des Nachdrucks von Auszügen, der fotomechanischen Wiedergabe und der Übersetzung, vorbehalten. Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier.
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ISBN 978-3-8329-6531-0
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Contents
Preface 7
Foreword:Protecting the Vulnerable: Bullets or Blankets? 9Jan Egeland
Chapter 1:Introduction: A Concern with Protection 17Benjamin de Carvalho and Ole Jacob Sending
Chapter 2:Evolving Discourses of Protection 25Arthur Mühlen-Schulte
Chapter 3:Conceptual Unclarity and Competition: The Protection of Civilians and theResponsibility to Protect 47Jon Harald Sande Lie and Benjamin de Carvalho
Chapter 4:Unpacking the “Culture of Protection”: A Political Economy Analysis of UNProtection of Civilians 63Andreas Øien Stensland and Ole Jacob Sending
Chapter 5:Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping Mandates: An Overview 89Justin MacDermott with Måns Hanssen
Chapter 6:Emerging Lessons from MONUC 109Stian Kjeksrud and Jacob Aasland Ravndal
Chapter 7:PoC in Darfur: AMIS and UNAMID 127Linnéa Gelot
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Chapter 8:A Cacophony of Ideas and Practices: UNMIS and the Protection of Civiliansin Jonglei State, South Sudan 143Ingrid Marie Breidlid and Jon Harald Sande Lie
Chapter 9:The Elusive Concept of Protection of Civilians: MINURCAT 163John Karlsrud and Diana Felix da Costa
Chapter 10:Sexual and Gender-Based Violence and the Rule of Law in Liberia 181Niels Nagelhus Schia and Benjamin de Carvalho
Chapter 11:Conclusions 197Ole Jacob Sending and Benjamin de Carvalho
Contributors 203
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Conclusions
Ole Jacob Sending and Benjamin de Carvalho
Protection of civilians has indeed gained prominence in peace operations, as evidencedby the fact that the phrase “to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical vio-lence” has been included in almost every peacekeeping operations authorized by theUN Security Council since 1999. And, as shown in the empirical chapters of thiscollection, the inclusion of PoC in the mandates of peacekeeping operations has ge-nerated a range of challenges: confusion about the operational implications, coordi-nation problems, the lack of proper training, and the mismatch between mandates andresources. These problems are not confined to PoC: the same challenges have becomeapparent in other areas as well. A central finding from the voluminous literature onpeacebuilding is that the implementation of peacebuilding efforts gets distorted bycoordination problems between different agencies, by major powers’ meddling in UNagency priorities, and by lack of resources. Nonetheless, when it comes to protectionof civilians, the challenges and shortcomings in implementing effective practices aredistinct, and are much more than “merely” a problem of implementation. In concludingthis volume, we wish to reflect on how PoC differs from peacebuilding, and why therise to prominence of PoC can represent a significant change in the frame of referencefor future peace operations.
Let us begin with some structural features that can explain why PoC has become aprominent part of peacekeeping operations, and why it represents such a challenge forpeacekeepers, humanitarian actors, and others. We see the inclusion of PoC as a ra-tionale for and a task of peace operations as a reflection of broader changes interna-tional security where humanitarian values have come to serve as the fundamentalnormative underpinnings of and rationale for the use of force.
The Copenhagen School of security studies has argued that there is no core to theconcept of “security.” Rather, what is judged to be a matter of national or internationalsecurity is the result of successful efforts on the part of some actors to “securitize” aparticular issue. The logic is that getting a certain issue—be it climate change, naturalresources, or human rights—recognized by others as pertaining to security means thatextraordinary measures can and should be mobilized, and that regular political debatecan be muted.1
During the Cold War and the early 1990 s, PoC was not part of international securitydiscourse. Or rather, it was part of discussions of security as jus in bello, rather thanjus ad bellum: it concerned how to use force, not the reasons for doing do. The failureof the UN to act on the atrocities committed in Rwanda and in Srebrenica stained the
Chapter 11:
1 Barry Buzan, Jaap de Wilde and Ole Waever, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder,CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
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reputation and credibility of the UN in an era when rising hopes had been placed onthe organization to serve as the anchor for a new world order. A concerted effort onthe part of some states, together with a range of non-state actors, gradually managedto use the UN’s inaction in these instances in order to advance a concept of humansecurity and the related norm of “responsibility to protect” (R2P). Over time, theseefforts have helped “securitize” the individual human being, as defined in terms offundamental rights. In this way, the prominence of PoC in debates about internationalsecurity and peacekeeping operations can be seen a case of successful “securitization.”
Nonetheless, we think that the emergence of PoC as central to international securitydiscourse is better understood not as securitization, but as the “humanitarization ofsecurity.” Why? Because the dominant anchor for discussions of security in the con-temporary era starts and ends with the rights-endowed individual, whose sanctity mustbe protected and upheld. The accent in international security discourse turns not somuch on “peace” or “territory,” but on the protection of rights-endowed individuals.
We should recall that peace operations were originally conceived as serving as abuffer between warring parties. The reference point was peace understood as absenceof inter-state war in delimited territories. In the 1990 s, this conception of peace ope-rations was expanded considerably also in policy circles, to include peace- and state-building—often referred to as multidimensional peace operations. Here, the referencepoint was peace as transformation of society to root out the causes of (typically) civilwar. Since the late 1990 s, however, both of these broader conceptions of peace havebeen if not replaced then at least supplemented by a conception of peace operations ashaving to do primarily with the protection of rights-endowed individuals. Protectionof civilians has emerged as the key justification for peace operations that sits on topof and gives moral significance to peace in the other two senses described above (inter-state war, and peacebuilding). Here, the rights-endowed individual with basic needsemerges as the meta-frame within which the use of the UN’s various policy tools,ranging from the use of force to political mediation and to humanitarian assistance, isdiscussed and decided. As made clear in a recent documentary on PoC produced byUNITAR, where past and present UN top managers in the field make statements, UNpeace operations are now described in terms of the protection of civilians. Prior to the1990 s, PoC was not a security concern in its own right, but something to be taken intoaccount in seeking to achieve security through the use of force (jus in bello). Todaythe rights-endowed individual is the criterion against which the use of force is ulti-mately judged. Take the case of Libya. The justification given for S/RES/1973(2011)authorizing the use of “all necessary means” in Libya was exclusively that of the pro-tection of civilians—not territorial integrity, not “international peace and security.”
In this context, the challenges of implementing PoC in and through UN peace ope-rations go beyond the lack of conceptual clarity, resources, training, and coordination.These challenges have to do with security being shifted from one episteme to another:from one dominated by territorial integrity and the absence of inter-national war, toone dominated by the rights-endowed individual. This is an ideal-typical formulationof course, and as such an exaggeration: today more civilians are killed, in relative terms,than in the past, yet only in rare cases does the UN Security Council authorize the use
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of force to stop these killings. We are not arguing that there is necessarily “progress”entailed by the “humanitarization” of security. But we do argue that in order to un-derstand how and why PoC has become central to the international security discourse,and to UN-mandated peace operations, much clarity can be gained by seeing it as aninstantiation of humanitarization of security, rather than vice versa. Moreover, viewingPoC as an expression of the humanitarization of security can help us understand thepolitical and normative structures that underpin ongoing debates about the content,limits, and tools of UN peace operations.
Two trends stand out in current interpretations and debates about PoC in UN peaceoperations. First, there is the accentuation of individual rights as a central register fordebates about international security. It may be argued that the inclusion of provisionsto protect civilians in UN peace operations and, not least, the reference to the principleof protection in S/RES/1973(2011) on Libya, represent the temporary culmination ofa process whereby the security, needs, and rights of individuals are seen as being ascentral to international security debates as are territorial integrity, defense of borders,and the supervision and implementation of peace. In short, the individual has steppedonstage to give meaning and direction to the contents of what “peace” is and shouldbe. Second, and relatedly, norms of sovereignty and non-intervention have changedconsiderably. Today, the norm of non-intervention is stronger than in the past as regardsinterventions aimed at collecting debts or seizing territory, so common throughouthistory. Non-intervention, and state sovereignty, have become differentiated, so thatinterventions for certain purposes (like PoC) have become more legitimate, and othersless so.
With PoC now so thoroughly institutionalized as a core principle for debates aboutinternational security, we may ask: what were UN peace operations all about, beforethey were mandated to protect civilians? Prior to 1999, when PoC was first introducedin Security Council mandates, UN peace operations focused on monitoring ceasefires,and stabilizing and re-building countries emerging from conflict. Peace operations inthe 1990s—many of which were so-called “multidimensional” ones mandated to en-gage in de facto peace- and statebuilding—did not include the mandate to protect ci-vilians. Does that mean that these peace operations ignored the plight of civilians—that they were merely passive observers, while the focus was exclusively on buildingpeace, without regard for the protection of civilians? Or did these early peace opera-tions do much of what we now refer to as PoC efforts, but call it something else?
When PoC emerged on the UN agenda as a matter of international security it wasvery much as a defensive strategy: the UN had lost credibility after the dramatic failuresin Bosnia and Rwanda. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was at the helm of theDPKO when the atrocities in Bosnia and Rwanda took place, was instrumental inplacing the protection of civilians at the heart of UN peace operations, arguing that theprotection of civilians could no longer “be neglected, or made secondary because itcomplicates political negotiations or interests. It is fundamental to the central mandate
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of the Organization.”2 Moreover, the fact that the character of conflict has been chan-ging, with civilians increasingly targeted by belligerent groups, has made the PoCagenda more pressing. Jus in bello is systematically violated, and that propels PoC intobeing about jus ad bellum.
The extent to which the PoC has replaced peace as the reference for peace operationsis expressed in DPKO’s “Operational Concept” for PoC agreed upon by the SpecialCommittee on Peace Operations (C-34) in March 2010. This concept identifiesthree “tiers” of action to protect civilians: support to the political process, protectionfrom physical violence, and establishing a protective environment. Taken together,these actions make up a strategy for peace operations that all but replaces previouslystrategies aimed at building a sustainable peace. That is: the focus on “support to thepolitical process,” and “establishing a protective environment” indicates that PoC hassubsumed absence of war and the presence of liberal democracy as the central objectiveand normative underpinning for peace operations: they are justified and directly pri-marily in terms of the protection of civilians.
It is, we submit, precisely because PoC is inherently linked to this new rationale forpeace operations that the challenges involved in operationalizing it must be explainedalso—perhaps primarily—with reference to the tensions that emerge with pre-existingobjectives. Core protection activities, especially as regards physical protection, movemilitary and humanitarian actors into closer cooperation, to which the latter have re-mained deeply skeptical. The Joint Protection Teams (JPTs) discussed by Kjeksrudand Aasland Ravndal in Chapter 6, for example, involve humanitarian actors advisingthe military on what to do to protect civilians, which is of course a prime concernamong humanitarian actors. Moreover, while humanitarian actors have a well-devel-oped, informal “referral system” to relay information that they have received by virtueof having access—which demands that they do not relay such information—efforts tomobilize others to act on such information, with the use of force, raises new dilemmasfor humanitarian actors. Relaying information about civilians under threat is in keepingwith humanitarian principles, but violating the terms for access granted by belligerentgroups may jeopardize the humanitarian presence and ability to help civilians in thefirst place.3 Depending on the relative weight accorded to building a peace or to pro-tecting civilians, the nature of a peacekeeping operation changes quite significantly:If it is primarily about PoC, such operations become effective policing tools, aimingto stop and prevent attacks on civilians. If the concern is with societal and politicaltransformation and statebuilding, the operations are a means to the end of protectingcivilians. By contrast, if building peace is the paramount objective, then peacekeepingoperations become much more explicitly political in the sense of negotiating with,partnering with, local governments about how to make society hold together, whichinvariably involves making trade-offs and compromising on certain standards. This
2 S/1999/957 [Kofi Annan] (1999) Report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council on theProtection of Civilians in Armed Conflict. Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4ae9acc5 d.html.
3 Damin Lily, “Peacekeeping and the Protection of Civilians: An Issue for Humanitarians?” Huma-nitarian Exchange Magazine 48 (2010).
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tension is inherent in how peacebuilding and protection are intimately related but stilldistinct. As Alan Doss, SRSG for MONUC, reflected on this tension in 2009:
How do you protect people, but at the same time, disarm and dismantle foreign and local armedgroups? How do you do it in a place such as the Kivus, help end a crisis, but at the same time,do it in a way that protects people? You know, ending the crisis is essentially a political task,protecting civilians in some ways a humanitarian task. … So these are complex issues, andsometimes, as I say, there are contradictory elements in our mandate, which puts a huge pressureon a mission, and frankly is leading us sometimes into rather uncharted waters.4
These contradictory elements that MONUC faced in both protection of civilians (“ahumanitarian task”) while at the same time doing peacebuilding (“a political task”)stem, we submit, from the different continual reproduction, by the actors themselves,of a particular relationship with their object of reference as either being outside thepolitical (humanitarian) sphere, or as above the political (peacebuilding) sphere. Forhumanitarian actors, this means reading out the historical and socio-political causes ofhumanitarian crises. For peacebuilders it often means subordinating knowledge of lo-cal context to more universal standards, and privileging international over local sourcesof legitimacy.
The empirical chapters in this book have offered detailed empirical descriptions ofthe difficulties in implementing the mandate to protect civilians. These difficulties aremore than a question of resources, training, and coordination. There are difficult trade-offs that have to be made between PoC, on the one hand, and other parts of a mandate,on the other. The humanitarization of peace operations now taking place captures howand why PoC presents peacekeepers, civilians and military alike, with such challenges.Even though the toolbox of peace operations has been expanded and re-tooled, frombeing about territory to being about building a liberal peace, it is neither resourced nortrained to protect civilians. Indeed, the inclusion of PoC in the mandate of peace ope-rations suggests that they have become ambitious to a point where the limits of thepower of peacekeepers become evident. The protection of civilians against violenceand violation of their human rights spans the entire range spectrum of what a stateshould do. The threats and insecurities that face civilians come not only from warringgroups, but from criminal activity more generally. PoC also extends to violations ofhuman rights, the protection of which requires effective and legitimate state institutionscapable of defining and upholding the role of law.
The question is thus in part whether it is ever possible for peacekeepers, or anyexternal actors, to succeed in protecting civilians in these terms. What has becomeknown as the Brahimi Report, lauded across the spectrum of those in the know aboutpeace operations, cautioned against making PoC part of the mandate of peace opera-tions. It noted that the Council’s authorizing of peacekeepers to protect civilians wasa “positive development” “consistent with "the perception and the expectation of pro-tection created by [an operation’s] very presence." However, the report went on tocaution that the
4 Alan Doss, Remarks at Seminar at International Peace Institute (2009), Available at http://www.ipacademy.org/images/pdfs/transcript_alandoss.pdf.
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… Panel is concerned about the credibility and achievability of a blanket mandate in this area.There are hundreds of thousands of civilians in current United Nations mission areas who areexposed to potential risk of violence, and United Nations forces currently deployed could notprotect more than a small fraction of them even if directed to do so. Promising to extend suchprotection establishes a very high threshold of expectation. The potentially large mismatch bet-ween desired objective and resources available to meet it raises the prospect of continuing disap-pointment with United Nations follow-through in this area. If an operation is given a mandate toprotect civilians, therefore, it also must be given the specific resources needed to carry out thatmandate.5
As the empirical chapters in this book have shown, it is questionable whether present-day peace operations are or can be resourced and trained to meet such a high threshold.While UN peace operations are not facing a legitimacy crisis, a continued mismatchbetween stated objectives and actual effectiveness may undermine the trust of peace-keepers in the long run.
All organizations engage in what organizational theorists call organized hypocrisy:the mismatch between deeds and words. International organizations are no excepti-ons.6 Facing contradictory demands from the surroundings—for example, demandsfor the protection of civilians, caveats of troop-contributing countries on what they cando, and calls for the reduction of costs—the Security Council formulates ambitiousobjectives, even though the UN Secretariat is not given adequate resources to achievethem. Whether such “hypocrisy” on the part of the UN—caused by conflicting de-mands from member states—will damage the legitimacy of peace operations over timeis difficult to assess. Much will depend on the extent to which there is a well-informedpublic debate about what peace operations do and should do, and whether there ispopular demand for larger, more robust and longer-serving missions (i.e. statebuil-ding). As yet there has been little indication of any concerted pressure on the SecurityCouncil, on troop or police contributors, or on financial contributors to expand andextend peace operations so as to close this gap between objectives and resources.
5 UN, Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations, A/55/305 – S/2000/809 (New York: UN, 2000),62–63.
6 Michael Lipson, “Peacekeeping: Organized Hypocrisy?” European Journal of International Re-lations 13 (2005), 5–34; Catherine Weaver, Hypocrisy Trap: The World Bank and the Poverty ofReform (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
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