Somini Sengupta

SenguptaSeventy years after the founding of the United Nations, peacekeeping is bigger and costlier than ever — and confronting an identity crisis.
Not since the soul-searching that followed Rwanda and Srebrenica 20 years ago, when the United Nations was unable to prevent two successive genocides, has peacekeeping come under such scrutiny. The organization’s top leaders and donors are asking: What is peacekeeping accomplishing today, and how can it be made to work in some of the world’s worst war zones, where there is often no peace to keep?

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    As Conflicts Multiply, Peacekeeping Confronts an Identity Crisis

    by Somini Sengupta

    In Darfur, United Nations peacekeepers have covered up evidence of government-led attacks against civilians and, on occasion, even attacks on themselves.

    In Mali’s northern badlands, attacks on blue-helmeted peacekeepers have killed 42 of them in the last two years alone, making it hard for the peacekeepers there to resupply their bases.

    In the Golan Heights, United Nations soldiers have pulled out of most of their posts on the Syrian side of the territory, which has been overrun by an affiliate of Al Qaeda. And in the Central African Republic, peacekeepers have faced one sordid allegation of sexual abuse after another.

    Seventy years after the founding of the United Nations, peacekeeping is bigger and costlier than ever — and confronting an identity crisis.

    Not since the soul-searching that followed Rwanda and Srebrenica 20 years ago, when the United Nations was unable to prevent two successive genocides, has peacekeeping come under such scrutiny. The organization’s top leaders and donors are asking: What is peacekeeping accomplishing today, and how can it be made to work in some of the world’s worst war zones, where there is often no peace to keep?

    The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, proposed an array of changes to revamp peacekeeping operations in a report released last week, calling on world powers to do more to solve conflicts diplomatically and promising to make peacekeeping operations “faster, more responsive and more accountable to countries and people in conflict.”

    Mr. Ban has refrained from assigning blame. He has said conflicts are multiplying faster than the organization can address them and suggested that “divisions” among the world’s powerful countries have kept the United Nations system as a whole from bringing peace.

    “We do not have many opportunities to reform U.N. peace operations in such a comprehensive way,” he said Wednesday. “It is essential that we act urgently and collectively.”

    The Obama administration, which picks up more than a fourth of the $8.27 billion budget for peacekeeping, has devoted some political capital to improving its performance.

    It has spent the past several months pressing other countries to devote more of their troops to peacekeeping missions. With a wider and better pool of soldiers, United States officials contend, peacekeepers can deploy faster and perform better — and if they do not, the secretary general’s office can more easily replace them.

    “The U.N. has been forced to work with what it has,” one United States official said. “There’s a bit of a beggars-can’t-be-choosers mentality.”

    At a General Assembly debate this month, President Obama is scheduled to head what the official referred to as “a pledging conference for peacekeeping,” where leaders of at least 45 nations are expected to either promise to expand their already large presence in peacekeeping, like India, or add significant resources for the first time, like some European countries.

    Few expect a large expansion of American military personnel in United Nations peacekeeping. “We expect the number to increase — whether sharply or not will be determined,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the details of a diplomatic meeting.

    The United States contributes fewer than 80 soldiers and police officers, making it one of the lowest contributors of personnel.

    Most troops come from the developing world; the countries of South Asia, along with Ethiopia and Rwanda, are the top contributors. Tensions have grown between these troop contributors, which say they are being treated like cannon fodder in dangerous battlefields, and the permanent members of the Security Council, which tell them what to do.

    An independent panel appointed by Mr. Ban this year urged Security Council members to put more of their own boots on the ground and rebuked them for telling peacekeepers to use force, rather than devoting more resources to political solutions.

    Peacekeeping is a far cry from what it was 70 years ago when the United Nations sent a handful of mostly unarmed military observers to monitor cease-fire agreements. Today, there are nearly 124,000 soldiers and police officers deployed on 16 peacekeeping missions, including in countries torn by grisly ethnic conflicts, like the Central African Republic, and by terrorist groups, like Mali.

    In some places, the United Nations is keen to point out, the presence of peacekeepers has saved lives. Civilians fleeing rival armed groups have found shelter in United Nations bases in South Sudan, for instance. But in other places, peacekeepers have been notoriously ineffective or, at times, predatory.

    It usually takes them many months to deploy. They often lack the tools of modern armies, from walkie-talkies to armored personnel carriers. In Mali, that makes the peacekeepers extremely vulnerable to improvised explosive devices.

    They are also stymied by hostile governments: In Darfur, in western Sudan, United Nations officials say their peacekeepers are not only blocked from freely patrolling but attacked by Sudanese forces and their proxies as well.

    They are often faulted for not doing enough to protect civilians, as is their mandate. An internal United Nations review found that peacekeepers in Darfur had underreported instances of violence against civilians. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, United Nations troops have been accused for years of not responding fast enough to rapes and massacres.

    In Haiti, peacekeepers were accused of bringing cholera, which ended up killing at least 8,000 people in the country; the United Nations has not addressed whether it was responsible. More recently, peacekeepers in the Central African Republic have been accused of more than a dozen cases of sexual exploitation and abuse.

    The mood around peacekeeping today could not be further from what it was in 1988, when United Nations peacekeeping won the Nobel Peace Prize.

    As Mr. Ban acknowledged in his report released last week, “missions are struggling to cope with the spread and intensity of conflicts.”

    Fixing it will not be easy, and with Mr. Ban’s tenure ending next year, the tough decisions will have to be made by his successor, early in his or her tenure.

    “There are very few low-hanging fruit for Ban Ki-moon to pluck,” said Richard Gowan, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

    Mr. Ban urged the Security Council to consult with troop-contributing countries when drafting the mandates of their missions and warned that peacekeepers not be used for counterterrorism operations. Both of these recommendations could rankle Security Council members that may want to consider future United Nations missions in places like Libya and Syria.

    Mr. Ban also threatened to send home entire military contingents if their home countries did not hold troops accountable for a pattern of misconduct, including sexual abuse. That is likely to upset some troop contributors.

    The organization as a whole is under scrutiny for how it has handled the latest allegations of sexual abuse in the Central African Republic. Another review panel set up by Mr. Ban is expected to present its report later this year. At that time, the scrutiny on peacekeepers will flare up again.

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