UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS TELLS UNITED NATIONS

SEMINAR IN TOKYO THAT THOSE WHO WILL MAKE PEACE ARE THOSE WHO MADE WAR

In Day-Long Event, United Nations Public Information Chief Stresses

Challenge of Building Appreciation for Peacekeepers among Local Populations

(Received from a UN Information Officer.)

TOKYO, 5 June -- Even if a United Nations peacekeeping operation was aligned with the best possible mandate and the best trained troops, at the end of the day, those who were going to make peace were those who made war, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno told a United Nations Seminar in Tokyo today.

Addressing the day-long Seminar under the theme “60 Years of United Nations Peacekeeping:  Evolution and Challenges”, organized by the Department of Public Information, in cooperation with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and the United Nations Information Centre in Tokyo, Mr. Guéhenno acknowledged that, going forward, it remained to be seen how the United Nations would evolve to meet the challenges of a multi-polar world.  The risks were high, and current levels of deployment, at an unprecedented 110,000 uniformed and civilian personnel serving under the United Nations flag, were enormous.

The truth was, Mr. Guéhenno spoke frankly to the gathering of more than 100 diplomats, Japanese decision makers, journalists and civil society from around the world, that peacekeeping would not work without a critical mass of players prepared to abide by peace agreements so that a force was put in place to deter those on the margin prepared to hijack the peace accords.  And flowing from that basic principle, there had to be a clear mandate.

It was possible to “fudge” political concepts in declarations -– that was the art of diplomacy -– but when there were troops on the ground who had to know when to open fire and when not to, they needed clear direction, he said.  “So, when there is a fudge in the Security Council, there is a mess on the ground,” and that had been a hard lesson learned.  For peacekeeping, the Council must be united; if it was divided, if it could only be reconciled with ambiguity and confusion, “you will have a big failure on your hands”.

Not only was it necessary for the Council and the whole international community to be united, but also, the entire region, he said, adding that, “when you have all that, you still need more.  You need enough resources.”  It was fine to agree on an ambitious strategy, and fine to have a unified political vision, but, if those involved were not prepared to take a risk, to put on the table what it took to implement that vision, then the gap between ambition and reality would “come back to haunt you”.

Mr. Guéhenno also pointed to “material overstretch”, saying that peacekeeping was labour intensive.  The Congo, for example, was as big as Western Europe with an enormous population scattered over that huge expanse of land.  “Political overstretch” was a most important risk, and with 20 missions managed by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the political fuel so essential to success was not behind all of them.  But the more fundamental risk was forgetting the painful, fundamental lesson of the 1990s –- that peacekeeping was crucial for the people –- it was the last protection before hell.  If they did not have the peacekeepers, they had nothing.  That was true today in Haiti, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

In opening remarks, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Kiyo Akasaka said that, since its genesis, United Nations peacekeeping had been a work in progress –- and, “it has not been an easy ride”.  Over the years, it had evolved and adapted to meet the demands of different conflicts and changing global political landscapes, becoming an essential tool for conflict resolution.

Traditional “first-generation” peacekeeping gave way to “second-generation” multidimensional operations, and then to “third-generation” peacekeeping, involving peace enforcement, he said, noting the many successes like those in Namibia, Cambodia, Mozambique, as well as painful setbacks, like the ones in Somalia, Rwanda and Srebrenica in the Balkans.

The setbacks of the early and mid-1990s had led key Security Council members to limit the number and scope of new missions for several years.  Then, together with the Secretariat, Member States assessed the lessons learned.  In 2000, the so-called “Brahami Report” put forward several important recommendations to enhance the capacity and effectiveness of United Nations peace operations.  At the start of the new century, the United Nations was asked to perform even more complex tasks in different regions.

He stressed the crucial challenge for the Department of Public Information to build awareness of, and appreciation for, peacekeeping among the host and local populations where it deployed.  It was as great a challenge to build that public backing in the international community, on which the United Nations depended for personnel, logistical, financial and political support.

Japan was a key member of the United Nations, second in its financial contributions to the regular and peacekeeping budgets, he noted, adding that its substantive contribution to United Nations decision-making on various agenda items could not be overestimated.  As of 30 April, Japan had about 40 uniformed personnel in the field –- 31 troops in a support capacity with the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in the Golan Heights, and six military observers with the United Nations political mission in Nepal.

He recognized the constitutional limitations facing the Government of Japan with regard to military deployments and involvement overseas.  The United Nations, therefore, was even more grateful to the Japanese Government for hosting the Seminar and for its increasing interest in supporting United Nations peacekeeping, not only financially, but also on the ground, within the parameters of its Constitution, and the capacities and resources available to the Government.

Introductory remarks were also made this morning by Konrad Osterwalder, Rector, United Nations University, who cautioned that the United Nations must watch very carefully what it was doing and analyze the many factors of both successes and failures.  The University had conducted extensive research into peacekeeping and related issues, as part of its mission to promote innovative thinking with regard to the most pressing global problems of concern to the United Nations and its Member States.

The first of the day’s three panels, “Evolution of, and new challenges to, United Nations peacekeeping”, moderated by Under-Secretary-General Akasaka, considered the shifting nature of peacekeeping and today’s political realities in which it took place.  Panellists were Yasushi Akashi, former Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia; Taye-Brooke Zerihoun, Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Mission in Cyprus; Eric Tan, former Deputy Special Representative for Timor-Leste in the United Nations Integrated Mission (UNMIT) there; and Nancy Soderberg, former Representative of the United States to the United Nations, visiting scholar, University of North Florida.

Opening Statements

KIYO AKASAKA, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, said that an important objective of today’s discussion was to raise awareness among the Japanese public and the media about the evolution of, and new challenges to, United Nations peacekeeping and its many complexities and scope, and on the role and contribution of Japan in those global undertakings.

He said United Nations peacekeeping was a unique instrument, which, over the years, had become an indispensable tool for helping to stop wars and resolve conflicts, while allowing time for political dialogue between warring States or, increasingly, for national reconciliation following civil strife.

The United Nations developed the peacekeeping concept at a critical moment, when the world was recovering from the horrors of the Second World War, he said.  On 29 May 1948, the Security Council authorized the first-ever United Nations peacekeeping mission -– the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO).  It consisted of a small group of unarmed military observers tasked to assist the United Nations mediator in supervising the implementation of the Armistice Agreement between the warring parties in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since then, he noted, 62 other United Nations peacekeeping missions had been established worldwide, 17 of them in the past decade alone, and one million military personnel along with tens of thousands of United Nations police and other civilians from more than 120 countries had participated in those operations over the years.  Today, nearly 110,000 uniformed and civilian personnel were serving under the United Nations flag in 20 peace operations managed by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations.  With the establishment of United Nations missions in Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic in the second half of 2007, the authorized strength of the peacekeeping operations now stood at 130,000 -– an all-time high.

He said that, since its genesis, United Nations peacekeeping had been a work in progress, and it had not been an easy ride.  Over the years, it had evolved and adapted to meet the demands of different conflicts and changing global political landscapes, becoming an essential tool for conflict resolution.  Traditional “first-generation” peacekeeping gave way to “second-generation” multidimensional operations, and then to “third-generation” peacekeeping, involving peace enforcement.

There had been many peacekeeping successes, like those in Namibia, Cambodia, Mozambique, to name a few, as well as painful setbacks, like the ones in Somalia, Rwanda and Srebrenica in the Balkans, he recalled.  The setbacks of the early and mid-1990s had led key Security Council members to limit the number and scope of new missions for several years and, together with the Secretariat, Member States assessed the lessons learned.  In 2000, for example, the so-called “Brahimi Report” put forward several important recommendations to enhance the capacity and effectiveness of United Nations peace operations.

He said that, at the start of the new century, with a greater understanding of the limits and potential of United Nations peacekeeping, and with new pressing intra-State conflicts arising, the United Nations was asked to perform even more complex tasks in different regions, such as in Kosovo, the former Yugoslavia and East Timor.  Present-day challenges in nations like the Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Lebanon were immense.

Public information about peacekeeping was also crucial and a challenge for the Department of Public Information to build awareness of, and appreciation for, peacekeeping among the host and local populations where it deployed, he said.  It was as great a challenge to build that public support in the international community, on which the United Nations depended for personnel, logistical, financial and political support.

Japan was a key member of the United Nations, second in its financial contributions to the regular and peacekeeping budgets, he noted, adding that its substantive contribution to United Nations decision-making on various issues on the agenda could not be overestimated.  As of 30 April, Japan had about 40 uniformed personnel in the field -– 31 troops, in a support capacity, with the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in the Golan Heights, and six military observers with the United Nations peace mission in Nepal.

He recognized the constitutional limitations facing the Government of Japan with regard to military deployments and involvement overseas.  He, therefore, was even more grateful to the Japanese Government for hosting the Seminar and for its increasing interest in supporting United Nations peacekeeping, not only financially, but also on the ground, within the parameters of its Constitution, and the capacities and resources available to the Government.

KONRAD OSTERWALDER, Rector, United Nations University, noting that, today, more than 110,000 men and women from nearly 120 countries were deployed around the globe, with Asia the most active contributor of all the continents, said that, although the United Nations did not always succeed in fulfilling its highest goals, without its peacekeeping contributions -– “many things would have been much worse”.

He said that a big and complicated organization like the United Nations must watch very carefully what it was doing, and it had to analyze the many factors of both success and failure.  The United Nations University had been able to make several contributions in that regard.  It conducted extensive research into peacekeeping and related issues, as part of its mission to promote innovative thinking with regard to the most pressing global problems of concern to the United Nations and its Member States.

He provided details of some of the outcomes of that research, adding that, this year, the University and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan had begun holding an annual “Tokyo Peacebuilders Symposium”, with the aim of sharing peacebuilding experiences and knowledge from Asia and the world.  The University was also a co-founder of the newly-created United Nations Peacebuilding Community of Practice, along with the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office in New York, the first workshop of which would be held at the University in Tokyo in July.

JEAN-MARIE GUÉHENNO, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, explained that peacekeeping had begun as an ad hoc response to shore up the truce after the 1948 war between Israel and its Arab neighbours, after which, a series of United Nations missions were authorized.  Each was largely an inter-positional deployment of military observers and monitors.  With war halted, but full peace not yet attainable, those missions helped keep the lid on conflict, reminding the parties of their commitments, serving as the eyes and ears of the Security Council and rebuilding confidence after tensions or even hostilities flared again.

He said that traditional peacekeeping evolved to meet the needs of the cold war, freezing and containing conflicts, while multidimensional peacekeeping responded to internal conflicts spawned by the end of the cold war.  With the end of the cold war, the Security Council was able to achieve renewed consensus, and opportunities arose to resolve many of the proxy conflicts that had metastasized into brutal civil wars.  Modern peacekeeping arose to meet that new moment.  That had been characterized by the insertion of a United Nations operation into countries to serve as a guarantor, facilitator and implementer of complex peace processes.

In the early 1990s, when Cambodia’s factions were pushed by their benefactors to sign the peace accords, the peace operation served as the guarantee, ensuring just enough compliance among the distrustful parties to create the space for the return of refugees, elections and a new constitution -- the beginnings, at least, of political and economic reconstruction, he recalled.  Similarly, in Mozambique, the mission there helped the parties implement their peace agreement and close a 15-year-old conflict by implementing a mandate, which had included disarmament and elections.

He said that those successes in the mid- and late 1990s, however, had led to overreach and then to catastrophic overstretch, when peacekeepers were deployed absent any peace agreement in Somalia and in the Balkans, and in Rwanda, without sufficient resources or international support.  Those operations taught some hard lessons about the minimum conditions for a successful peacekeeping operation, famously articulated in the Brahimi report.  United Nations peacekeeping needed to be put on a more permanent footing and its professional basis expanded.

Going forward, it remained to be seen how United Nations peacekeeping would evolve to meet the challenges of a multi-polar world, he said.  Clearly, the risks were high.  The current level of deployment was enormous, but the United Nations had been honest in reflecting on what had gone wrong in the 1990s; it had conducted a solid analysis on the conditions needed for peacekeeping to be successful.  Above all, “you can’t just throw troops at the problem if there is not a solid political foundation”.  Force could support a political process, but it could not substitute for it.

In a post-conflict situation, there was no established order, so any notion of a force required, at least, a peace, he said.  That might sound glib because in today’s world, there were shades of gray, but the truth was that, without a critical mass of players prepared to abide by peace agreements so that a force was there to deter those on the margin prepared to hijack, or take hostage, those agreements, peacekeeping would not work.

Flowing from that basic principle, he said, there had to be a clear mandate.  It was possible to “fudge” political concepts in declarations -- that was the art of diplomacy, to be able to “walk around problems” -- but when there were troops on the ground who had to know when to open fire and when not to, they needed clear direction, without which, “it is a mess”.  “So, when there is a fudge in the Security Council, there is a mess on the ground,” he said, adding that that was a hard lesson learned.  That meant the Security Council had to be united; if it was divided, if it could only be reconciled with ambiguity and confusion, “you will have a big failure on your hands”.

So, in the face of conflict, if was necessary for the Council to be united -- the international community -- and more importantly, the region, he said, adding, “when you have all that, you still need more.  You need enough resources.”  It was fine to be agreed on an ambitious strategy, and fine to have a unified political vision, but if those involved were not prepared to take a risk, to put on the table what it took to implement that vision, then the gap between ambition and reality would “come back to haunt you”.

Some hard lessons had indeed been learned in the 1990s, but in 1999 and 2000, the phoenix started to grow again, and it had not stopped since, he said.  Maybe that was due in part because the lessons had been learned.  In 1999, it was time to reunite the international community after the debacle of Kosovo and the war launched there without Security Council authorization.  The United Nations provided a convenient framework through which to bring together the divided Council.  It was the clear universality of the United Nations that gave it legitimacy without equivalent.

Emphasis returned to United Nations peacekeeping, he said.  There was no broader pool of military resources than the United Nations.  There was also awareness that peacekeeping was cost effective, as big as the expenditure sounded.  Repeated studies showed that when it came to managing conflicts and creating a basis for development -- because without security, there could be no development ‑- peacekeeping was a fairly cost-effective instrument.  That did not mean that it always succeeded, but as an instrument, it was one of the cheapest the international community had in its toolbox.

On that basis, he noted, many new missions had been deployed in the past eight years, and several had made some real progress.  Such progress would not have been achieved without the support of Member States and the considerable strengthening of the peacekeeping instrument in the United Nations.  Peacekeeping was more professional; it had a “24-7” capacity, standard operative procedures, and a doctrine laying out a systematic approach to peacekeeping, which meant it did not have to invent the wheel every time a mission was deployed.  The operations also worked with partners.  In emergency situations, there were complementary deployments, such as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Indeed, “we would not have gone over the hump” without the deployment of others.  The Europeans helped in terms of deterrence, especially during the critical election period.

He said United Nations peacekeeping was also working with partners to transform peacekeeping into a multidimensional instrument.  Troops and police could provide some security, but if they operated in a vacuum with no rule of law or tribunals, or decent correction facilities, it was empty, without credible security sector reform, so that when the United Nations peacekeepers left, a State had no basic security instruments in place.  It had also been recognized that as long as the State had no budgetary capacity or basic governance instruments, peacekeeping would be “more like an aspirin that lowered the temperature than real fundamental medication”.

Peacekeeping and peacebuilding were two facets of the same coin, and they had to come together, he stressed.  United Nations peacekeeping had worked with partners within the United Nations system and it was still working to find the right balance so that the logic of development and peacekeeping could be reconciled.  In that, there was built-in tension.  Peacekeeping was also working with partners beyond the United Nations system, such as the World Bank in Haiti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia, and with major donors like Japan and the European Union, and others.

It was not time at 60 to relax, however, especially at the present period of very high risks.  Those risks were managerial and included sexual exploitation and abuse, which had put an ugly stain on peacekeeping.  The enormous effort to eliminate that required a transformation in the mindset of troop contributors in both the developed and developing world.  The situation had to be addressed “all together, from the same boat”.

He also pointed to “material overstretch”, not in the provision of battalions, but in force multipliers and enablers.  Peacekeeping was labour intensive, and there was simply not enough labour.  The Congo, for example, was as big as Western Europe with an enormous population scattered over that huge expanse of land.  Peacekeepers needed to be very mobile.  Likewise in Darfur, which covered some 450,000 kilometres.  Those missions must be mobile and able to reorient quickly.

“Political overstretch” was the least mentioned, but the most important, he said.  With 20 missions managed by DPKO, such as what existed today, there was not enough attention to them all by the “Powers of influence”.  That meant that the political fuel so essential to progress was not behind all 20 missions.  The last and more fundamental risk was forgetting the painful, fundamental lesson of the 1990s -- that peacekeeping was crucial for the people -- it was the last protection before hell.  If they did not have the peacekeepers, they had nothing.  Today, in Haiti, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, it was vital that the people had the peacekeepers.

Today, however, the international community was less united than in 1990, he said, adding that profound divisions existed and might be developing.  So a gap was opening between an ever more ambitious peacekeeping agenda and an increasingly divided international community.  That was very dangerous.  There was a real risk that peacekeeping would not become what it should be, namely, the help that shored up the consolidation of peace when conflict ended.  Several missions reflected that optimism, but there was a less optimistic interpretation.  Hybrid peacekeeping was two organizations for the price of one and reflected the desire of the international community, of Member States, to hide, and if they could do so behind two organizations, even better.  That meant there were two ways to keep a distance between the responsibility of Member States and accountability.

There was always a risk that the United Nations would become the special investment vehicle for the international community, that the risky investments were carried by the United Nations, he said.  That meant that if it worked, fine, and if it did not, that “was not us, it was the UN”.  But the United Nation was the Member States; the flesh and blood of the United Nations was the Member States.  If one let division develop between the precious instrument of peacekeeping and Member States, then that instrument would be destroyed.  So many fragile States needed that outside help.

Next, the Seminar screened a film produced by the Department of Public Information, entitled “In the Cause Peace”.

Panel I

Introducing the first panel, entitled “Evolution of, and new challenges to, United Nations peacekeeping”, Under-Secretary-General AKASAKA said that, faced with the rising demand for increasingly complex peace operations, the United Nations in recent years had been “overstretched and challenged as never before”.  The panel aimed to take a closer look at the evolution of peacekeeping and today’s political realities in which it took place.

Making the first presentation was YASUSHI AKASHI, former Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia.  He had also served as Under-Secretary-General for Public Information, for Disarmament Affairs, Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.  As Mr. Guéhenno rightly pointed out, there had been ebbs and flows in United Nations peacekeeping operations.  In his eight years as Under-Secretary-General of Peacekeeping Operations, however, there had been far more successes than failure, and much was owed to Mr. Guéhenno’s wisdom and sure hand as administrative head of the Peacekeeping Operations Department.

Mr. Akashi saw United Nations peace operations as falling into four generations.  First, there were traditional operations, or “Chapter VI and a half” (United Nations Charter), where the United Nations function was more stationary than dynamic.  As examples, he cited post-cold war peace operations in Namibia, Cambodia and Mozambique.  Second-generation peacekeeping, or complex multidimensional operations, included police and civilian components, often peacebuilding tasks, with multiple mandates.  The third-generation operations were “a nightmare”, an attempt by the United Nations in the height of great expectations in the post-cold war period to undertake some enforcement action under Chapter VII.  But, as Mr. Guéhenno had pointed out, there had been major setbacks, such as in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia.  The United Nations had showed its impotence in Rwanda, although there had been no enforcement action.

He said that the fourth generation had followed the much-needed corrections flowing from the Brahimi Report and based on true United Nations capabilities.  The essential feature of that generation of peacekeeping was robustness and it was based on what he would call “Chapter 6.9”, which was an attempt to cover the use of force to achieve a mission’s purpose.  Now, however, the missions were better equipped and trained than in the 1990s.  Some cardinal principles to keep in mind were that no two peace operations and no two conflicts were alike.  Also, the use of force had to be “absolutely the last resort”.  Force was always a blunt instrument, and in the case of United Nations force, there had to be zero tolerance for any civilian casualties.

Finally, he said that peacekeeping operations could not and should not exist in isolation from overall peace strategies to consolidate peace through peacebuilding.  With the exception of third-generation peacekeeping, first-, second- and fourth-generation were all necessary and useful.  Some were even deployed simultaneously today in various parts of the world.

TAYE-BROOKE ZERIHOUN, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Mission in Cyprus, and former Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in the Sudan, said that, on balance, the United Nations experience with the Sudan had been a very helpful engagement.  An interdepartmental task force had brought together efforts in support of peace and developed a forward-looking strategy, which was unprecedented.  An advance mission in the Sudan, ahead of the signing of the peace agreement, was on the ground with the senior leadership.  It worked with the country team and partners to plan the deployment of the final stage of the United Nations operation there.

Indeed, he said, the North-South agreement was among the most complex insofar as African agreements were concerned.  It was comprehensive in that it addressed power-sharing, security and several other aspects.  It was also inclusive.  There was also broad support for the international agreement.  There was concern about the degree of commitment of the countries in the region.  In the end, an agreement was as good as its implementation arrangements.  There was an open debate about that, as others claimed the reverse was true.

There were tremendous challenges to deploying in the Sudan, including the vastness of the country and the division between the North and South, not just culturally, but also politically, he said.  “And then, of course, there was Darfur.”  There was the comprehensive peace agreement, for which the United Nations Mission in the Sudan was deployed, but Darfur had its own set of problems, for which there was now a hybrid mission.  There was another arrangement along the Sudan-Chad border.  So there was quite a mix of different troops and forces, in what was essentially a multidisciplinary peacekeeping mission with a very wide mandate.

The assumption, which was wrong, was that those kinds of missions were deployed in failed States, he continued.  Thus, those mandates were resisted because they were stigmatizing.  However, there was cooperation with the Mission in those aspects where the people perceived a shared interest, particularly on security matters.  But, they selected aspects of the mandate, as was the case with the Mission in Ethiopia-Eritrea.

ERIC TAN, former Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Timor-Leste in the United Nations Integrated Mission there (UNMIT), reviewed his opportunities to “serve for peace”, the first having presented itself in 2002, when Timor-Leste was entering an era of renewed independence and the United Nations was looking for another Asian Force Commander.  Among the lessons learned was the need for all missions to be able to adjust and respond appropriately to the ever-changing security landscape.  When seeking nimbleness and flexibility, it was important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each “Force Element” in the peacekeeping force; not all contingents were given as wide a range of operational roles and flexibilities as others, and there would be constraints.

Also crucial, he said, was to build trust among the different contingents and instil in all that everyone could contribute and that each person was hand-picked.  His final point from his experience with the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET) was the importance of information.  Many silos had formed in the aftermath of the Dili 2002 riots, and it was a challenge to get an updated and holistic view of the security environment.  Thus, information cells of police, armed peacekeepers and United Nations military officers set up a Joint Information Centre.  By the time he had joined UNMIT, the Joint Mission Analysis Centre, or JMAC, had become a standard feature in peacekeeping missions.

Lessons learned as Deputy Special Representative for UNMIT included the need to change ahead of the challenges, ensure open and frequent communication within the mission, and keep Headquarters constantly informed, as “they are always ready to help”, he said.  Security sector reform was a key prerequisite to a stable Timor-Leste, but that process required the host country ownership.  The mission and Timorese leaders believed in the merits of that principle, but if a Timorese-led security sector reform included some of the individuals responsible for the “current state of affairs”, then one wondered how successful any reform would be.  The Mission had chosen instead to very closely manage the impact of that participation.  He urged that the interlocutors remained vigilant for signs of “regression into the old ways”.

NANCY SODERBERG, former Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, and visiting scholar at the University of North Florida, said the United Nations should congratulate itself on its 60 years of peacekeeping accomplishments, as it had done an extraordinary job of changing with the times.  Today, however, peacekeeping was at risk, and it was up to the international community to help.  Far too often, the Peacekeeping Department did its job, but the Security Council and the international community did not do theirs.  If the international community was going to “keep putting missions on the UN’s back -- it has a responsibility to give them the support they need to do the job right”.

She commended the Japanese Government for convening the conference, hoping it would be possible to take away a plan of action to provide the United Nations with the support it needed.  The Organization needed a much stronger international support system, where capable countries partnered with United Nations troops that needed training, doctrine, equipping and sustaining.  Japan could play an important role in bringing such a network to fruition.  The test ahead was not to look for the United Nations to deploy in areas as a “band-aid solution”; that risked disaster.  When the Security Council authorized deployment where there was no peace to keep, the United Nations failed.  However, when there was a peace to keep and the mission was well trained, equipped and sustained, United Nations peacekeeping worked.

The international community had not done its fair share in building up African capabilities to keep and maintain the peace, she asserted.  Of 19 peace operations worldwide, 8 were in Africa, with more on the horizon, such as in Somalia.  “But, far too many of us are opting out”.  Of the more than 100,000 peacekeepers out there, the United States hardly supported those operations -- providing only 316 personnel.  The Chinese were only slightly better at 1,861.  There was an “intervention gap” in Africa, but that was largely driven by a “capability gap”.  The United Nations was a coalition of the willing.  Enforcement operations were also unevenly undertaken.

To address the gap, nations with capable forces should build up a capability in Africa that might prevent future genocides, she proposed, adding, however, that the programmes to date were wholly inadequate.  Both the United States and the Group of 8 (G-8) industrialized countries had endorsed the goal of training and equipping 75,000 African peacekeeping troops by 2010.  But the initiative was not sufficiently funded or supported.  What good was a battalion that had been trained, but then disbanded or lacked ongoing training?  On the United States’ side, the Defense Department had recently made peacekeeping a priority -- in fact, a core mission of its purpose.  Yet, with its own forces bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, significant new support would not be forthcoming in the short term.

Meanwhile, she continued, the African Union needs are vast and it still had many unresolved issues, including where to find the resources and the political will to establish a standby force.  To address some of those needs, the United Nations should establish a worldwide support group of peacekeepers to coordinate peacekeepers’ needs and ensure that those were met.

It was also important to recognize that, in the wake of the crises in the 1990s in the Balkans and Rwanda, the world also recognized that responsibility to protect those at risk when the Government could not, or would not, do so.  That fact was sadly evident in Darfur, where the world had failed to protect the population at risk.  The Sudanese had refused to permit a more forceful peacekeeping presence than the one provided by the African Union -- precisely because it was not yet ready to stop the killing.  The United Nations Security Council “caved” in to the Sudan’s insistence on a “predominantly” African force, which the Sudanese had turned into an exclusively African force.

None of that was the fault of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, she said, adding that it was time the Security Council stood up to those hindering peacekeeping.  There were some useful lessons in Darfur.  First, the Council must no longer let countries dictate the terms of the peacekeeping missions when civilians were at risk.  Second, Africa’s forces must be trained, equipped, deployed and sustained.  Third, the members must put a higher priority on deploying the mission’s critical infrastructure so the force could function once it was on the ground.  Fourth, everyone must be conscious of the risk of deploying peacekeepers into areas where there was no peace to keep.

Responding to some of the remarks made this morning, Mr. GUÉHENNO said that the notion that the United Nations could become some sort of new colonial Power was overreaching.  As for the stigma of being considered a failed State, that pointed to the need to think through the United Nations posture.  On building capacities, that involved a whole set of difficult questions.  In terms of the more philosophical, political question of what could be expected from troop contributors, there was a need to get contingents on board, but the question must be answered of how to convince them to take risks for a country that was not their own.  Other issues, such as training and the limits of peacekeeping were also touched on.

He said, “the fact is that even if we align everything with the best mandate, the best trained troops, at the end of the day, those who are going to make peace are those who made war.  And that should be recognized.”  What would make the difference between success and failure needed constant examination.  In peacekeeping, if there was a 60 per cent success rate; “that’s wonderful”.  Peacekeeping was like cancer -- if it helped cure a significant proportion, that was a significant achievement.  Peacekeeping was investing in circumstances beyond your control; it was about what a third party to a conflict could do.  In recent years, a kind of hubris had built about that.  That was a nice state of mind, but it was a dangerous one.

Sometimes being too transparent, such as on the Peacekeeping Department’s website, could create problems, he replied to a question, adding that that could create operational issues if the mission was “still alive”.

On the responsibility to protect, he said that real progress was the recognition that the States were the primary keepers, and the international community supplied a subsidiary response.  That made it much more acceptable than if trying to sidestep the State right away.

He said there was a valid discussion in the Security Council and beyond on what the United Nations and the Security Council did with a State that had been afflicted by conflict.  An ambitious vision said that a peacekeeping mission would transform a State.  That transformational vision of a peace operation was unsettling, frightening even, to many around the world because it was seen by some that a small number of countries, through the United Nations, was essentially pushing its political agenda.

A recognition was emerging that doing so had its limits, while those who had pushed for the pre-eminence of the sovereignty of the State were beginning to accept that State legitimacy depended in large part on the services the State provided to its people and that to ignore that meant planting the seeds of future trouble, he said, adding that a possible discussion within the Council on that could lead to a more consensual approach to the issue, which would be very important for the Sudan.

* *** *

For information media • not an official record