The New Mandate for UN Peacekeeping.

Although the United Nations' primary mission, since its founding after World War II, has been to prevent wars, the organization suffers from a dual and conflicting mandate: to act in the best interests of We, the Peoples of Earth, while respecting the absolute sovereignty of individual nations. The UN Security Council, with disproportionate and unbalanced power assumed by its permanent member states, has dominated UN actions. Peacekeeping operations, initiated in the UN Security Council, have tried to meet the needs in numerous crises but have had little continuity or oversight. The council hasn't shown an evenhandedness in choosing or refusing to commit to a situation, nor has it afforded open information exchange from affected parties or nations, nor has it ever been assured of a commitment from every nation for funding or troops and personnel to conduct a peacekeeping operation.

In the November 2000 New York Times, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed doubts that a Palestinian request for UN peacekeeping forces, to provide safety and security for the Palestinian people in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, will even be honored. According to Annan, there must first be agreement by Israel, but Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Barak has ruled out such a mission. The article further states that, while diplomats are divided, it's certain that the United States will support Israel and that Russia and China won't favor intervention, considering their own strife in Chechnya and Tibet.

After the 1994 Rwanda genocide, Kofi Annan himself was criticized for having failed to heed warnings of impending disaster and for withdrawing the UN peacekeeping troops at the very moment they were most needed. Moving to protect the peacekeepers seemed a humane priority at the time, inasmuch as they were without any means of enforcing peace or even a mandate for them to protect one segment of society from the other. What a tragedy it took to focus attention on the painfully flawed mandate itself.

As a result, Annon ordered "a comprehensive review of the whole question of peacekeeping operations in all their aspects," as well as "a clear set of specific, concrete and practical recommendations to assist the United Nations in conducting such activities better in the future." A panel of luminaries from around the world, with a wide range of experience in the fields of peacekeeping and peace-building, as well as development and humanitarian assistance, was assembled. The chair was Lakhdar Brahimi, the former foreign minister of Algeria, who, after a seven-month investigation examining tons of documents and testimony from hundreds of sources, analyzed the data and outlined an extensive set of recommendations in a seventy-four-page report.

On August 21, 2000, The Brahimi Report was submitted to both the General Assembly and the Security Council with an introduction by Kofi Annan, in which he asked for support from both entities in enacting the far-reaching agenda. According to Annan, "The expeditious implementation of the panel's recommendations ... is essential to make the United Nations truly credible as a force for peace."

The executive summary of the report begins with a historical perspective:

   The United Nations was founded, in the words of its Charter, in order "to
   save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." Meeting this
   challenge is the most important function of the Organization, and to a very
   significant degree it is the yardstick with which the Organization is
   judged by the peoples it exists to serve. Over the last decade, the United
   Nations has repeatedly failed to meet the challenge, and it can do no
   better today....

     It should have come as no surprise to anyone that some of the missions of
   the past decade would be particularly hard to accomplish: They tended to
   deploy where conflict had not resulted in victory for any side, where a
   military stalemate or international pressure or both had brought fighting
   to a halt, but at least some of the parties to the conflict were not
   seriously committed to ending the confrontation. United Nations operations
   thus did not deploy into post-conflict situations but tried to create them.

Pointing to failed missions by the UN, the report found:

   Where one party to a peace agreement clearly and incontrovertibly is
   violating its terms, continued equal treatment of all parties by the United
   Nations can in the best case result in ineffectiveness and in the worst may
   amount to complicity with evil. No failure did more to damage the standing
   and credibility of the United Nations peacekeeping in the 1990s than its
   reluctance to distinguish victim from aggressor.

Among the conclusions reached, the report calls for a "Robust doctrine and realistic mandates. The report's extensive analysis and recommendations for change are contained in seventy different sections detailing the need for preventative initiatives, sound peace-building strategy, promotion of international human rights instruments, high standards of performance with built-in accountability, rapid deployment of forces, and on-call expertise. These experts would be available to consult on all aspects of peacekeeping considerations, including logistics, international law, military and civilian police, human rights, refugees, basic resources, communications, democracy-building and electoral support, along with dozens of other important areas of expertise.

Perhaps the most important suggestion of all is that peacekeeping be treated as a core activity of the United Nations and that expanded operations and efforts be consolidated within a single branch directly under the UN secretary general. This branch would then be directly responsible for establishing strategy and policy rather than having them emanate piecemeal from various offices and entities. The Brahimi Report especially advocates the use of state-of-the-art information technology for use in intelligence gathering and for the widespread dissemination of information, especially among strategy and policy planners, and for improving field communications during peacekeeping operations.

The report also found it essential to maintain long-range historical and political analysis of complex regional situations so as to advise the peacekeeping office of potential problems and to expedite short-term crisis prevention--rather than wait until a crisis is full-blown. Only in this context will the creation of a coherent mission plan with an achievable exit target ever be possible. One interesting suggestion was the establishment of a Lessons Learned Department to provide feedback and constant review of ongoing operations to guard against repeating mistakes.

The Brahimi Report concludes by applauding a Security Council delegation that flew to Jakarta (Indonesia) and Dili (East Timor) in the wake of the East Timor crisis in 1999 (tactfully omitting the fact that the delegation was only ten years late), citing this effort as an example of action at its best--not just utterance of useless words. The report calls upon the leaders of the world assembled at the Millennium Summit (held this past September in New York City) "to commit to strengthen the capacity of the United Nations to fully accomplish the mission ... to help communities engulfed in strife to maintain or restore peace." Lastly, it encourages all nations to commit to

   build and to hold onto peace, to find reconciliation, to strengthen
   democracy, to secure human rights. We see, above all, a United Nations that
   has not only the will but also the ability to fulfill its great promise,
   and to justify the confidence and trust placed in it by the overwhelming
   majority of humankind.

Open sessions in the usually secretive UN Security Council have allowed Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) observers to witness international response to The Brahimi Report. At a meeting focused on exit strategy, almost every speaker insisted that a more important consideration was entrance strategy: the establishment of criteria for determining if and when goals are met that would allow for the withdrawal of peacekeepers. Many speakers cautioned that conflict would resume upon the departure of a peacekeeping force if its mission concluded before those goals could be met.

Some speakers insisted that no exit date should ever be set but, rather, exit conditions. Elections should be only one of many goals for a peaceful transition. Additional goals which have proven vital include the placement and functioning of governance systems, establishment of the rule of law, maintenance of social and physical infrastructure, operation of public utilities, and the creation and operation of a banking system and tax collection.

The term mission-creep was used to describe the expanded role peacekeepers have been drawn into during some operations. Most viewed this not so much a problem in itself but a result of short-sighted vision and an inadequate anticipation of certain inevitable long-range issues. Of particular concern were the UN's precarious funding, which can result in the premature termination of operations before a mission is complete. The new recommendations suggest additional staffing and the reassignment of UN personnel and an overall budget of about $150 million--considerably more than has ever been allocated in the past.

The need to establish robust rules of engagement was another concept discussed. General agreement was reached that a UN peacekeeping force must be capable of defending itself against those who renege on their commitments to a peace accord or otherwise seek to undermine the peacekeeping force by violence. Many speakers suggested the assignment of a massive, multifaceted peacekeeping force to act as a psychological deterrent against challenge.

The difficulties in delivering humanitarian supplies were described. Efforts by peacekeepers to distribute these supplies are often thwarted by regional warlords who seek to enhance their status with followers and to intimidate their enemies. This puts peacekeepers in jeopardy and impedes their objective.

In all the days of UN Security Council testimony in response to The Brahimi Report not one disapproving comment was heard and the recommendations already appear to have overwhelming support. The general theme was "Yes, Yes, Yes. Let's get on with it!"

It's reassuring to know that most of the nations, as well as the United States, will be supportive of these long-needed changes and will be willing to work toward implementing them. On August 23, 2000, Richard Boucher of the U.S. State Department said:

   The UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) needs more staff,
   strengthened planning capacity, streamlined logistical structure, more
   flexible financing and the ability to move resources into the field in real
   time....

     Our initial perception is the report accurately reflects our main
   concerns about UN peacekeeping operations. We intend to work closely with
   the UN Secretariat and other Member States in the coming months to review
   the report's recommendations and develop specific plans for implementation.

However, the United States has been accumulating a peacekeeping debt since the mid-1990s by paying approximately 25 percent rather than the assessed 30 percent. This doesn't bode well for plans to further increase UN peacekeeping spending. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrook points out that the United States is generous in its voluntary contributions to UN programs and UN agencies, estimating the U.S. contribution in the 2001 fiscal year to be over $2.5 billion. This is certainly commendable.

According to UN reporter Barbara Crossette in the November 23, 2000, New York Times, Holbrook is worried that, if no action is taken soon by the UN on the U.S. request for budget reforms and a reduction in U.S. payments, "the recently improving attitude in Washington, marked by the larger allocation of money, could quickly reverse," reducing again the money for the United Nations. What Holbrook failed to mentioned is that it took the threat of losing our seat on the Security Council because of unpaid bills to motivate the United States to loosen its purse strings in the first place.

The United States insists that other nations which have become richer since the UN assessments were originally allocated should pay a larger share. But at the UN, other nations see this as the world's richest country seeking to avoid paying assessments commensurate with its share of world economic output.

If a new mandate for UN peacekeeping is ever to be implemented, there are still many hurdles to cross. Perhaps most worrisome is the fact that adoption and implementation of any changes in the UN peacekeeping mandate will be fought tooth and nail by a few U.S. right-wing reactionaries who currently maintain a stranglehold on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Any efforts on their part to keep the United States from paying its fair share of UN dues would surely embarrass the nation internationally.

On the other hand, considering that there's always hope that we humans can be better than we have been, and that actually we are on a learning curve, the United States--the most powerful nation on Earth--might be persuaded to supply the bulk of the peacekeeping forces and supplies. If not instead of, at least in addition to, our relentless, wasteful, and mysterious preparations for war.

Beth K. Lamont is the American Humanist Association's NGO delegate to the United Nations and an executive board member of and a program director for the Humanist Society of Metropolitan New York, the Corliss Lamont Chapter. The full text of The Brahimi Report can be found on the Web at www.un.org/peace/reports/ peace_operations/.