2.5 UN peacekeeping missions
2.5.3 UN third generation 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.
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towards coercive political and military re-engineering of host countries by dominant states armed with a moral and ethical design to safeguard human rights. Big powers have attuned their peace support doctrines to the discourses of ethics, humanitarianism, justice and what they term the ‘will of the international community’ (Pugh Op.Cit.:48). In this case the international community is synonymous with the Western world that comprises the US and her Western allies.
Contemporary UN peace-building operations seek to preside over political and socio-economic transformation from one form of politico-economic system to the neo-liberal system that primarily serves the interests of the western powers. Al Qaq (2009) observed that UN peacekeeping operations are “a deeply political project in that they represent a particular minority vision of what the UN should be preoccupied with” especially in the aftermath of the rapid disintegration of organised Third World resistance through the Non-Aligned Movement at the UN. The twin disaster of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and weakening of the Non- Aligned Movement jointly exposed the weak and vulnerable Third World countries to increased manipulation by Western neo-liberal forces. This was done in the name of promoting democracy and market economies.
During the current period of “third-generation” peacekeeping missions, the Security Council is pre-occupied with “peace-building” activities that, in theory, include protecting civilians from violent conflict in pursuit of the human security agenda. This has been given impetus by a
“slowly building consensus that the UN has a responsibility to protect civilian populations” in situations where the respective governments would have failed or are deemed unwilling to protect own citizens (Frederking Op.Cit.:41-42). Western sponsored regimes can indeed invite their powerful backers as has been happening with French speaking countries in West Africa and they may even invite the UN to come to their rescue when they are not popularly elected by the majority population. This indeed raises a dilemma on how to handle such cases. Like the second era of peacekeeping evolution, the third generation is again characterized by the increasing scope of the mandates and a radical transformation of traditional peacekeeping principles to embrace interventionist characteristics that grossly undermine the principle of host state sovereignty. A distinction between the third generation of UN peacekeeping and second generation is a willingness to use coercive measures to attain the ambitious and increasingly intrusive UN mandates that violate host state sovereignty (Ibid: 45). A close scrutiny of these ambitious mandates reveals that they are meant to serve the self-interests of the big powers at the expense of the local population as demonstrated in the “humanitarian”
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Libyan mission that was launched under the umbrella of responsibility to protect doctrine and mandate, yet the true objective was regime change in that country.
In a situation where a Western sponsored puppet government appeals to the UN for protection through deployment of peacekeepers, its request of likely to be granted or a coalition of willing Western countries can be assembled to intervene to protect that regime as happened in Libya where a small minority appealed for outside intervention to protect them from Gaddafi received overwhelming support from NATO allies.
The 21st century has already seen a burgeoning of different forms of outside interferences and interventions by a range of state (and non-state) actors and for many different purposes, such as humanitarian intervention, responsibility to protect, rebuilding failed states, and development interventions (Leurdijk 1997). Indeed, intervention by ‘outsiders’ in the affairs of
‘insiders,’ has become a routine and disturbing structural characteristic of today’s global politics that undermines and violates the sovereignty of weak states by powerful states through the use of UN peacekeepers. As a result, there has been intense discussion about the ethical, legal and political dilemmas involved in humanitarian intervention, particularly when respect for state sovereignty conflicts with the protection of human rights (Holzgrefe and Keohane 2003).
Advocates for the doctrine of R2P include the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan who challenged: “If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to Rwanda, to Srebrenica – to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity” (Annan 2000:48). Annan’s famous quotation highlights the central ethical problem confronting the debate on humanitarian intervention namely “the challenge of reconciling two competing norms in international law:
sovereignty and human rights (Badescu 2011:19). The ethical challenge is that on the one hand, state sovereignty inhibits foreign intervention into the internal affairs of states, and on the other hand, there is growing concern that the international community should react to massive and systematic violations of human rights by any state (ibid). Fernando Teson (2006) further clarifies the ethical challenge of humanitarian intervention versus sovereignty when he states that: “… either we intervene to end massacres, and so we are liable to violate the prohibition of war and respect for sovereignty, or we do not intervene, which means we tolerate the violation of the prohibition of gross human rights abuses.” This is indeed an ethical dilemma associated with humanitarian interventions. Thus the continuing tension between these two sets
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of international norms rests at the heart of the humanitarian intervention debate which has taken the evolution of peacekeeping operations to new controversial heights. This tension further highlights the ethical dilemmas associated with humanitarian interventions that continue to trigger debate on this important subject. The adoption of the humanitarian agenda serves several purposes that in some cases promote Western neo-liberal value systems without addressing the root causes of conflict in the periphery.
According to Duffield (2001) the representational rhetoric about humanitarianism serves to promote moral values and the spread of a superior liberal ideology whilst avoiding addressing the societal structural injustices that constitute the root causes of conflict and instabilities in the system. This approach takes place despite having acknowledged that poverty and under- development are security challenges that lead to conflict if they continue unchecked. Use of humanitarian rhetoric also serves in some cases as an ethical smoke screen to camouflage real self-interests of the big powers sanctioning the humanitarian peacekeeping interventions (Mayall 2000:326) and (Gibbs 2000:41-55). Given the above, it can be concluded that
“rational, civilized, humanitarian” peacekeeping interventions appear to be part of a strategic packaging of Western sponsored moral initiatives in which “Western security culture, self- perception and self-interest are wrapped” (Pugh 2007:50).
The prevailing phenomenon where the Security Council increasingly invokes enforcement provisions of Chapter VII of the UN Charter mandating the use of force to achieve tasks such as the protection of the civilians under immediate danger of physical violence has witnessed a radical transformation of the idea of peacekeeping into an idea of peace enforcement, a more aggressive form of peacekeeping (Lang 2010:330). Peacekeepers are now able to use force to protect civilians to achieve their mandate and if necessary, to force aid through to the starving populations, to repulse attacks on civilians, to forcibly disarm troublemakers and to arrest war criminals (Farrell 1995). Additional tasks that peacekeepers engage in include the following broad undertakings: “…maintaining law and order; monitoring or verifying ceasefire or disengagement agreements; supervising the disarmament or demobilization of combatants; the protection of civilians and protecting humanitarian assistance” (Mullenbach 2005:529). These additional tasks have drastically changed the dynamics of UN peacekeeping in the post-Cold War era as the missions are expected to militarily engage human rights violators. In the process of implementing these additional tasks, peacekeeping activities have come into conflict with host state sovereignty as they intrude into spheres of domestic sovereignty once considered to be outside the jurisdiction of the UN activities (Doyle and Sambanis 2006).
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The magnitude and nature of interference differs from one mission to another however, as will be discussed and demonstrated in subsequent chapters, the meddling in internal politics of host countries has reached in some cases, proportions where the elimination of local leaders is sanctioned by UN peacekeepers as happened in Congo (Adebajo and Landsberg 2007). In Somalia, the elimination of the most powerful warlord General Farah Aideed was pursued overtly by US forces under the umbrella of UN mandates (Peterson 1992). In Rwanda, the assassination of the Rwandan President and his Burundian counterpart took place after UN peacekeepers had closed one of the runways of the airport thus channelling approaching aircraft to one lane (Black 2014). This decision was made without consulting Rwandan authorities in violation of host state sovereignty. The Bruguire Report (2006) highlights the degree of UN peacekeepers’ complicity in the preparation for the downfall of the Rwandan government. This will be addressed in detail in chapter five of this thesis.
The concept of state sovereignty has been viewed as a fundamental pillar of the international states system: “the basic norm” upon which the society of states is anchored, the “cardinal principle” of international law, the “cornerstone” of the UN Charter, and “the global covenant”
that must be abided with by all peace loving states (Ayoob 2002). It is therefore disheartening that the new multidimensional tasks being authorized by UN Security Council indeed violate state sovereignty as they seek to promote neo-liberal and neo-colonial agendas of the big powers in the name of protecting civilian populations yet in practice the outcomes of these missions are not primarily in the interests of the host population. The case studies in subsequent chapters will demonstrate the magnitude of UN peacekeepers’ violation of host state sovereignty as each mission is examined in greater detail.