Abstract
More than 60 peace operations have deployed in Africa since 2000, including multiple African-led or hybrid African Union/United Nations initiatives. The frequency of these deployments underscores the ongoing importance of these operations in the playbook of regional and multilateral bodies to prevent conflict, protect civilians, and enforce ceasefires and peace agreements. The study presents a critical review of the concept of the mechanism of United Nations operations, as one of the emergent post-Cold War peacekeeping trends. The operation has had it positive effects in some aspects and has also recorded failures in some areas and this failures are not unrelated to the various challenges that the operations of the United nations have faced in Darfur in the curse of carrying out its mandate .The paper concludes that lessons should be learned from the experiences with the Darfur operation, for future operations, while giving recommendations for further effectiveness of the peacekeeping operations.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1Background of Study The United Nations Security Council authorizes peace operations by an affirmative vote of nine of the fifteen members without a veto from the five permanent members: the United States, China, France, Russia, the UK. The Security Council has authorized more than sixty peace operations in the years since the Cold War. The United Nationsdeploys peacekeeping forces to prevent or contain fighting; stabilize post-conflict zones; help implement peace accords; and assist democratic transitions. To achieve those goals, the United Nations outlines the following peace-building activities: •Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of ex-combatants; •Landmine removal and associated activities; •Rule-of-law related activities; •Human rights protection and promotion; •Electoral assistance; •Support for the restoration of state authority; and •Promotion of social and economic recovery and development. The United Nations generally follows three principles for deploying peacekeepers: •Main parties to the conflict must consent; •Peacekeepers should remain impartial but not neutral; and •Peacekeepers cannot use force except in self-defense and defense of the mandate. However, United Nations peacekeepers are increasingly deployed to war zones when not all the main parties have consented, such as in Mali and Eastern DRC. There is also mounting international pressure for peacekeepers to play a more robust role in protecting civilians. Despite the principle of impartiality, United Nation peacekeepers have been tasked with offensive operations against designated enemy combatants, as in Mali and the DRC. “Contemporary mandates have often blurred the lines separating peacekeeping, stabilization, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, atrocity prevention, and state-building,” Determining the effectiveness of United Nations mission demands investigating the structure and how are peace operations staffed and funded? Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan send the most troops to United Nations peacekeeping missions, while the United States, Japan, and France are the top funders. The top troop contributors to African Union Missions in Somalia (AMISOM) are Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia, and Kenya, and funding comes largely from the United Nations and the European Union. The disconnect between those nations that send troops and those that fund missions is often a source of conflict. Wealthy nations spend the most on peacekeeping, yet they send relatively few troops; meanwhile, countries that either sends troops or whose citizens are directly affected by peacekeeping missions often have less say in how they are designed and mandated. A 2014 internal review of peacekeeping practices related to civilian protection exposed some of these tensions. Researchers found that peacekeepers failed to protect civilians on several occasions. Countries that fund the annual UN peacekeeping budget of nearly $8 billion were angered by the findings, while troop Contributing Countries (TCCs) demanded raises to the reimbursement rates their soldiers receive for serving in UN missions, rates which had not increased in more than a decade. (The UN reimburses countries that contribute troops a little more than $1,000 per soldier per month, and African Union Missions in Somalia(AMISOM) troops now earn roughly the same allowances as United Nations peacekeepers.Both India and Brazil have cited their countries’ personnel contributions to UN peacekeeping in their bids to become permanent members of the Security Council, and several African governments have complained about having little say in the design and mandating of UN operations on the continent. “They would like to escape the tutelage of the UN in future crises,” says says Richard Gowan, an expert on multilateral security institutions at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Leaders in Africa and within the UN have called for African forces to play a larger role in securing peace and stability on the continent, but budget constraints persist. While the UN has a regular peacekeeping budget, the AU must continually seek out donors, such as the UN, the EU, and the United States, to fund its missions. Only 2.3 percent of the AU’s budget comes from AU member states.“Countries with more developed military capabilities—countries from the OECD—need to come back into peacekeeping in a way they haven’t been in recent years” —Bruce Jones, Brookings Institution “When the African Union deploys a mission, it always needs to find external assistance,” says GWU’s Williams. As a result, the African Union cannot quickly deploy or sustain troops in the field. “The lack of indigenous sources of finance also undermines the African Union's credibility as a leading player in peace and security issues on the continent and reduces its ability to exercise ownership of particular initiatives,” he says. Peace operations in Africa are increasingly collaborations between the UN and AU. For example, in Somalia, AMISOM member states provide troops while the UN provides funding, training, logistics, and planning support. UNAMID, a UN-AU hybrid mission in Darfur, absorbed and expanded a mission initially led solely by the AU. The research intends to investigate UN Peacekeeping in Sudan critically. 1.2Statement of Problem The UN has played a vital role in mediating peace agreements and assisting in their implementation, helping to reduce the level of conflict in several regions especially in Africa. However, some of those accords failed to take hold then, such as in Angola in 1993 and Rwanda in 1994. Additionally, the current situations in Cote D’ Ivoire, Darfur- Sudan, DRC and Somalia unfortunately have not changed too positively. This has resulted in severe IDPs and refugee problems further compounding the security situation in and around such conflict areas. It is estimated that roughly half of all countries that emerge from war lapse back into violence within 5 years due to some challenges. This drives home the point that, to prevent conflict, peace agreements must be implemented in a sustained manner. Most of these conflicts are known to be contagious and thus have spill-over effects to other nations while new ones are also unfolding, such as in CAR, Chad and Guinea. All these complex crises cry out for UN intervention. Meanwhile, there was already the problem of the World Body having taken on too many missions in recent times; for example, within 1988 to 1994 alone, the number of bluehelmeted troops had increased from 9,570 to 73,393 and an exponential soaring in the peace operations budget from $230 million to $3.6 billion.9 It is in view of the foregoing that this study seeks to address the challenges of PKOs in Africa after the end of the Cold War with particular emphasis on Somalia. Moreover, until very recently, it is well known that there has been a systematic neglect of Africa security matters by the trio of France, UK and USA since after the Cold War.This makes it necessary for Africans to properly understand the ongoing global reforms to ensure lasting solution to their conflicts. Kofi Annan the former UNSG reiterated this position by advising member states of the UN to seek alternative remedies of handling conflicts in their various regions Mr Tony Blair former British PM, also declared same position while commenting on the situation in Zimbabwe for African leaders to act. Since conflicts are intrinsically bound to occur, Africans must begin to address issues that will enable them manage conflicts in the continent effectively in concert with the UN.
