2.5 UN peacekeeping missions
2.5.2 UN second generation peacekeeping
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sovereignty in order to create a liberal political order. In war-ravaged societies hosting UN peace-building missions, “political entrepreneurs” have taken advantage of the situation to impose neoliberal processes, such as privatization of the economy, in order to promote their
“narrow patrimonial interests” (Sorensen 2002). It follows therefore that liberalism views the evolution of traditional peacekeeping missions to peace enforcement as “a positive development in the international system” as it entrenches capitalist practices in host countries on the periphery (Ibid.).
The former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali a staunch advocate for human rights and a strong proponent of the promotion and safeguarding of human security argued that innocent civilians were more threatened by lack of basic human needs, weak economies, disease, environmental degradation, and political instability than by invading foreign armies.
He further observed that states were often not a source of protection but a source of harm to their populations in situations of internal tension and conflict (Boutros-Ghali 1992). What is of great significance to this study is that Boutros-Ghali advocated for UN intervention in conflict countries primarily to bolster human security, arguing that it was not interference in domestic affairs of member states. In doing so he acknowledged that contemporary peacekeeping missions could not always adhere to traditional norms and principles of observing host state consent, impartiality and use of force only in self-defence that aimed at respecting host state sovereignty. He also identified “peace-building” as a legitimate UNSC undertaking whose activities were meant to identify and support national structures that helped in strengthening and solidifying national peace and harmony hence contributing to the avoidance of a relapse into national conflict among the belligerents (Ibid.). An examination of peace-building activities reveals that they are very intrusive in domestic affairs of targeted states. The ultimate goal of these peace-building activities is to successfully manipulate the power and political dynamics in those countries so that institutions created through peace-building are in sync with neo-liberal norms and values advocated by the western powers, to serve western interests and not those of the local populations.
Anne Orford (2003) examined Australian led peace-building operations in East Timor and concluded that such UN sponsored interventions constructed an international order in which some powerful states manipulate and control the local political system by taking advantage of discourses of failed states. Peace-building missions allow elites from the UN and other international organizations to step in and govern political communities, developments which led Bain (2003) to point out to the similarities of these UN led peace making interventions as
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evidence of a “neo-trusteeship” emerging in the evolving international order. The evolving international order has also been influential in the evolving trends of peacekeeping operations in that peacekeepers under this generation were mandated to carry out new tasks such as elections monitoring through electoral assistance and evaluations, human rights monitoring in host countries, resettlement and management of refugees, re-training of civilian police as part of security sector reforms, protection and distribution of humanitarian relief efforts, and disarmament and demobilization of armed forces as well as integrating some of them in the newly established security system (Boutros-Ghali 1992). These missions were overly ambitious considering the resource base constrains that characterized UN peacekeeping missions. Thus the transitional period from the Cold War to the post-Cold War witnessed many experiments aimed at enhancing the role of the UN in its endeavours to maintain international peace and security, taking advantage of the unprecedented cooperation among the permanent members of the Security Council. The transformation and evolution of peacekeeping during this era was made possible by the fundamental geo-political changes in world politics brought about by the end of the Cold War that ushered in a new phase of veto wielding powers’
cooperation within the Security Council (Sanderson 1998). This development gave the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO) an opportunity to experiment with intrusive types of UN peacekeeping that were not common during the Cold War period.
According to Frederking (2007:44) most common peace-building tasks include the following:
internal security activities to maintain law and order; disarming and reintegrating former combatants; assisting in the management and return of refugees and displaced populations;
democratization, electoral assistance and institutions building; security sector reforms through reforming the military, police, and judiciary; economic development along neo-liberal value systems; promotion of human rights; conflict management and dispute resolution training; de- mining; and continued humanitarian assistance. Buoyed by the successes of this generation, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the UN peacekeepers for their “decisive contribution toward the initiation of actual peace negotiations.” The general view was that, “further development of the principles and practices would allow the UN to serve as an effective instrument to reduce violent conflict within the international system” (Berdal, 1993:3). Not surprisingly, the enthusiasm was short lived as the peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda during the early 1990s went terribly wrong leading to a significant lull in UN peacekeeping activities as the organization carried out extensive introspections regarding peacekeeping operations.
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The deployment of second generation peacekeeping missions, in ongoing civil war situations increasingly complicated and violated the norms of host state consent and sovereignty. At times peacekeepers were viewed with suspicion as some rebel groups felt peacekeeping troops were deployed to protect the government at their expense. In situations where multiple warring parties existed, it became extremely difficult to obtain consent from each protagonist group thereby creating dangerous and unpredictable operating environments not conducive for classical and traditional peacekeeping settings. Mandates for this generation of peacekeeping missions often included enforcement of ceasefires as opposed to monitoring ceasefire agreements. This made the missions more likely to be involved in unethical coercive operations in violation of peacekeeping norms of consent, neutrality, and use of force only in self-defence.
The emerging norm of human security was given greater priority and importance over state sovereignty. As a result, it challenged the norm of the inviolability of state sovereignty, resulting in increasingly complex peacekeeping missions that undermined host state sovereignty (Hampson and Malone 2002). Based on this development, second-generation peacekeeping operations were routinely mandated to carryout tasks such as maintaining internal security, ensuring the delivery of humanitarian aid, protecting civilian populations, helping repatriate refugees, and monitoring human rights abuses; tasks that increased the probability of peacekeeping troops violating the traditional principles of impartiality and the use of force only in self-defence particularly in situations where there were no ceasefire agreements to monitor (Frederking Op.Cit.:44). Missions mandated to maintain internal security, a traditional preserve of the host state, had to violate the norm of use of force in self- defence when the combatants fired on each other in a bid to stop the fighting. Missions mandated to protect human rights violated the norm of neutrality/impartiality when one side started killing innocent civilians (Ibid). Based on the facts above, it is evident that second generation peacekeeping designed to promote human security often trumped traditional peacekeeping norms, a practice that was further enhanced during the third generation of UN peacekeeping operations.