Revisiting the Genocide Convention

The concept of genocide, as outlined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, is no longer useful and detracts attention and resources from other instances of systematic mass violence. In fact, the concept of genocide as we know it today, was not what Raphael Lemkin had originally conceived when he coined the term. Only four groups are protected under the convention: racial, ethnic, national, and religious groups. Other groups are excluded from protection including political groups. There are also no explicit prevention provisions within the Genocide Convention. The definition and conception of genocide as it currently exists allows us to pick and choose which acts of mass violence deserve the recognition that comes with labeling something a genocide.

There is a tendency to downplay instances of mass violence if they do not conform to the strict definition of genocide outlined in the convention. Taking away attention from mass atrocities because the victim pool is not homogenous or does not neatly fit into one of the four categories is cruel and dehumanizing. 

The Original Conception of Genocide

It would be neglectful to not begin this paper with a brief overview of Raphael Lemkin’s original conception of genocide. This is to honor his role in coining the term but to also demonstrate how different the current definition is from what he imagined and how that limits our understanding of genocide today. Lemkin coined the term genocide in 1942, but the bones of the concept were there as early as 1933. Lemkin’s report titled “Acts Constituting a General (Transnational) Danger Considered as Offences Against the Law of Nations” developed the precursor to genocide which he called “barbarity.” Barbarity was “acts of extermination directed against the ethnic, religious, or social collectivities whatever the motive (political, religious, etc.). Barbarity was unique in that the attacks were “carried out against an individual as a member of a collectivity” with the goal being to damage the collectivity. A second type of attack on a collectivity was known as “vandalism,” or cultural and artistic destruction. Lemkin saw individual cultures as contributing to a wider world culture that all humans were part of. His argument was that destroying a particular culture inflicted a loss on world culture. These two acts, barbarity and vandalism, violated the law of nations and therefore a multilateral convention criminalizing these acts was necessary. 

Lemkin coined the term ‘genocide’ in 1942, but it first appeared in print in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In Chapter 9, Lemkin defines genocide as “the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.” The word is 

intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.

Lemkin identifies two phases of genocide: destroying the “national pattern” of the oppressed group and then imposing the “national pattern” of the oppressor.

Lemkin’s definition highlighted different techniques of genocide in various areas. He identified eight techniques of genocide. The first was political, which included the destruction of local institutions of self-government and the imposition of the oppressing government. The second was social, which meant the overhauling of social structure through the forced deportation of intellectual leaders and the clergy. The third was cultural, which included prohibitions on speaking and printing in local languages, as well as strict control over cultural activities and artistic expression. The fourth was economic, which included lowering the standard of living, expelling groups from certain industries, seizing private property, and controlling the banking system. The fifth was biological, which was taking measures to prevent the group from reproducing like separating men and women, and also taking steps to actively reproduce the oppressing group. The sixth was physical, which Lemkin outlines in the following ways: “racial discrimination in feeding;” “endangering of health;” and “mass killing.” The seventh was religious, which included forcing people to renounce their religious affiliations and persecuting clergy. The last was moral, which meant creating an atmosphere of moral debasement by forcing oppressed groups to watch pornographic movies, to overconsume alcohol, and to gamble. In the end, the concept of genocide officially adopted in the convention only focuses on biological and physical techniques of genocide. 

It is important to note that Lemkin understood genocide as a process, not a singular event. Genocide was an attempt to destroy a nation, with ‘attempt’ meaning an “active social, political, or historical process set in motion intentionally” rather than a single act. Lemkin made sure to emphasize the role of the state in developing a genocidal policy over time through various laws, decrees, and administrative institutions that worked together to commit genocide. In this way, the apparatus of the state becomes a vehicle for genocide. 

Lemkin lobbied heavily for a UN convention outlawing genocide and in 1947, along with Vespasian Pella and Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, he created the first draft of such a convention, now known as the secretariat draft. I want to highlight two notable provisions in this draft that are not included in the final version. First, the protected groups are not just racial, religious, and national, but also linguistic, cultural, and political. Second, genocide can be biological, physical, and cultural. Cultural genocide included “forced and systematic exile of individuals representing the culture of a group;” “prohibition of the use of the national language even in private intercourse;” “systematic destruction of books printed in the national language or of religious works or prohibition of new publications;” and “systematic destruction of historical or religious monuments or their diversion to alien uses, destruction or dispersion of documents and objects of historical, artistic, or religious value and of objects used in religious worship.” Lemkin’s original conception of genocide was lost throughout the drafting process. Each draft after the secretariat draft looked less and less like his original vision and he was forced to decide what his priority was: definitions or prosecuting genocide. Ultimately, he chose to fight for the provisions that would establish an international criminal tribunal for genocide. In the end, the work Lemkin put into preserving his original conception of genocide would not produce tangible results until the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda were created in the early 1990s.  

Specific Problems with the Genocide Convention

1. The Exclusion of Political Groups

The exclusion of political groups is one of the critical flaws of the Genocide Convention. The primary justification for the exclusion of political groups from the Genocide Convention is that people choose their political affiliation, but people cannot choose their race or ethnicity. This argument hinges on the idea that genocide is the targeting of a specific group solely because of some innate characteristic, but that is rarely ever the case. It is important to note, however, that nationality, religion, even ethnicity are not innate characteristics. While you are born into a nationality or religion, it is a choice to remain part of a national or religious group and we know that ethnicity is not an entirely biological phenomenon, but also socially constructed and ever-changing. “Groups formed on the basis of ‘religion’ or ‘nationality’ are in reality no more stable or permanent than groups formed on the basis of political affiliation” and “ethnicity can be shaped by political and economic factors as much as ancestry and inherited culture.” Extensive research has been done into why political groups were excluded from the initial drafting of the Convention (states wanted to be able to suppress political opposition, among other things), but as Beth Van Schaack explains, the exclusion of political groups is fundamentally at odds with the international human rights apparatus. 

Discarding political groups from the Genocide Convention created an internally inconsistent human rights regime, because other major international agreements include the category. The prohibition of crimes against humanity prohibits persecutions on ‘political, racial, or religious grounds.’ Likewise, the provisions of the Refugee Convention protect individuals from persecution on account of ‘race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.’ 

To solidify this point further, political persecution is a valid reason to seek asylum, which shows that political affiliation and expression, while not innate, is something worth protecting. Additionally, before the Genocide Convention was adopted, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution affirming that genocide is a crime under international law “whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political, or any other grounds.” In sum, there is a history of political affiliation being a protected status under the international human rights regime that cannot be ignored. 

1. The Exclusion of Cultural Genocide

Culture is a fundamental part of identity, and its destruction not only harms that culture, but humanity as well. But the Genocide Convention does not reflect this. The first two drafts of the Genocide Convention explicitly stated that cultural destruction is a form of genocide. In the Secretariat Draft, the definition of genocide included provisions such as “forced and systematic exile of individuals representing the culture of a group;” “prohibition of the use of the national language even in private intercourse;” “systematic destruction of books printed in the national language or of religious works or prohibition of new publications;” and “systematic destruction of historical or religious monuments or their diversion to alien uses, destruction or dispersion of documents and objects of historical, artistic, or religious value and of objects used in religious worship.” The Ad hoc Committee Draft succinctly reiterated these provisions, defining cultural genocide as “any deliberate act committed with the intent to destroy the language, religion, or culture of a national, racial, or religious group on grounds of the national or racial origin or the religious beliefs of its members…” As mentioned in the previous section, fifteen years before the creation of the Genocide Convention, Lemkin explained how vandalism, defined as the “destruction of culture and works of art,” constituted an attack on a collectivity. “The contribution of any particular collectivity to world culture as a whole, forms the wealth of all humanity…Thus, the destruction of a work of art of any nation must be regarded as acts of vandalism directed against world culture.” The definition of cultural genocide in the first two drafts of the Genocide Convention is simply a generalization of the examples Lemkin used to describe the cultural genocide committed by the Nazis in France and Poland. 

Humanity clearly understands the importance of cultural preservation and appreciation. If we did not, UNESCO World Heritage sites would not exist, and museums would have nothing to exhibit. Culture gives life meaning and to destroy the culture of a particular group is to destroy the “social vitality” of that group, as identified by Claudia Card. She writes, “Social vitality is destroyed when the social relations—organizations, practices, institutions—of the members of a group are irreparably damaged or demolished.” Because culture gives groups social vitality, “When a group with its own cultural identity is destroyed, its survivors lose their cultural heritage and may even lose their intergenerational connections.” If people cannot participate in their culture because it was destroyed, life becomes devoid of meaning, leading to social death akin to physical death. “By limiting genocide to its physical and biological manifestations, a group can be kept physically and biologically intact even as its collective identity suffers in a fundamental and irremediable manner…the present understanding of genocide preserves the body of the group but allows its very soul to be destroyed.”

1. Forgets Prevention

The Genocide Convention as it currently exists fails to provide sufficient guidance on how states should prevent genocide, diminishing the utility of the convention as a legal instrument. For a crime like genocide, who implementation and methodology are constantly evolving, there simply needs to be more substantive explanation and guidelines for its prevention. Prevention is currently based on deterrence and the threat of punishment. But it is unclear how effective a deterrent punishment is. Preventing a genocide is a difficult task because the term tends to be retroactively applied via courts or independent fact-finding missions. The international community cannot prevent a genocide if it refuses to acknowledge one is happening and only do so after the violence has ended. Genocides can be prevented by understanding and mitigating the factors that are most likely to lead to genocide, a significant one being war. Prevention must be proactive and cannot be solely based on threat of punishment. 

Moving Forward

After highlighting a few problems with the concept of genocide, I want to offer a few alternatives. In terms of Genocide convention, changes are possible. Article XVI of the convention states “A request for the revision of the present Convention may be made at any time by any Contracting Party by means of a notification in writing addressed to the Secretary-General. The General Assembly shall decide upon the steps, if any, to be taken in respect of such request.” All it takes is one state to request that the Genocide Convention be revised, and the General Assembly can decide where to go from there. Given that this convention is 75 years old, it is worth reevaluating its provisions given that the world has changed tremendously since 1948. Revisions to the convention can mean including cultural genocide and expanding the protection status to include political groups. Revisions can also make the prevention aspect clearer. While convincing states to make changes might be difficult, proposing revisions does no harm and can even bring greater attention to the issues with the convention. 

One of the problems highlighted earlier in this paper is the exclusion of political groups from the Genocide Convention. Beth Van Schaack offers a new way of thinking of the protection of political groups from genocide and that is through the norms of jus cogens. Jus cogens is the idea that there are certain peremptory norms in international law, norms that cannot be violated no matter the circumstances. According to Article 50 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 

a treaty is void if, at the time of its conclusion, it conflicts with a peremptory norm of general international law. For the purposes of the present Convention, a peremptory norm of general international law is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character.

Examples of peremptory norms are the prohibitions on genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, human trafficking, slavery, apartheid, etc. Van Schaack makes the case for applying the norm of jus cogens to protect political groups from genocide. “When faced with mass killings evidencing the intent to eradicate political groups in whole or in part, domestic and international adjudicatory bodies should apply the jus cogens prohibition of genocide and invoke the Genocide Convention vis-à-vis signatories only insofar as it provides practical procedures for enforcement and ratification.” Enforcement and ratification can be found in Article IX which says the International Court of Justice has jurisdiction over disputes between states about the interpretation, fulfilment, and application of the Convention (although there are several reservations to this article). Article VIII says that any party can call upon “the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action…as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide” or any enumerated acts.  

Conclusion 

There is a tendency to call instances of mass violence ‘genocide’ to garner attention and action from the international community because imbedded in the word is a certain gravity that necessitates action. The obsession with genocide makes equally grave crimes like crimes against humanity and war crimes secondary and something to settle for. This directs attention away from mass violence that is not genocide, leading to inaction and indifference. 

There are changes that can be made to reduce our obsession with genocide. Contracting parties can propose revisions to the Genocide Convention; the norm of jus cogens can be the legal framework by which we view genocides and mass violence in order to include historically excluded groups from the convention; and we can think diligently about the language we use to describe instances of genocide and mass violence and use the more inclusive phrase of ‘crimes against humanity.’ 

To be reiterate once again, this is not an argument for genocide denial or even the concept as a whole. Rather, it is an argument against the concept of genocide as it currently exists. The concept of genocide can be strengthened by the inclusion of other groups, cultural genocide, and more prevention provisions. 

The Reports of the UN’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Disclaimer: The author is currently an intern for the United Nations within the Department of Peace Operations. This article was written by the author entirely in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed in this article are entirely the author's own and do not reflect the view of the Department of Peace Operations or the United Nations as a whole.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, 2022 it was one of the most  geopolitically destabilizing events since the end of the Cold War. Every major international  organization and national government has been challenged and forced to re-evaluate its role in an  increasingly dangerous world. NATO has begun to add traditionally neutral Sweden and Finland  to bolster their eastern flank, while the European Union has organized severe sanctions against  Russia and temporarily resettled millions of Ukrainian refugees. No organization has perhaps  faced as much criticism as the UN. The popular perception that the UN has been impotent in  Ukraine and gridlocked elsewhere because of great power conflict couldn’t be further from the  truth. Despite the looming threat of a Russian veto, the UN has been able to help Ukraine as well  as conducting business as usual elsewhere. While there is room for improvement, this success  should be greater recognized. 

In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, the criticism of the UN was harsh. Russia, a  permanent member of the Security Council charged with upholding the UN Charter, had  blatantly violated the Charter with the UN wholly unable to prevent it. One observer described it  as an “extraordinary failure of the UN Security Council to live up to its primary responsibility to  maintain international peace and security.” Another said that there is “no better example of the  United Nations’ failure to live up to its founding ideal.” A third argued that the UN “became a  forum of superpower rivalry.” 

This has been accompanied by predictions that the UN will become increasingly  dysfunctional and unresponsive to international needs and calls for the UN to either be seriously  reformed or replaced entirely. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has repeatedly called on the UN to  boot Russia from its permanent seat on the Security Council, and the UN general assembly has passed a resolution mandating they meet after a veto. This has been accompanied by more  outlandish proposals to disband the UN entirely and create a successor organization based  exclusively around democratic states. In the short term, there were grim predictions for UN  effectiveness. Seasoned UN observer Richard Gowan argued “the Security Council (is) facing a  period of increasing fragmentation and paralysis.”  

The UN, however, has been able to beat back these excessively pessimist predictions. In  Ukraine, the UN under Secretary-General António Guterres has been able to organize  humanitarian aid for Ukrainian civilians, mediate several key agreements that have helped  reduce the potential international impacts of the conflict, and galvanize international opinion against Russia in the UN General Assembly. Outside of Ukraine, Russia and the other great  powers have shown a remarkable ability to cooperate through the UN on other international  issues such as the Afghan crisis, despite massive disagreements over Ukraine. 

With regards to the Ukraine war, the UN and its various organs and agencies have proven  surprisingly able to reduce the conflict’s human suffering, despite the ever-present threat of a  Russian veto on their activities. While these efforts have so far been unable to end the conflict  entirely, they still show that the UN can provide value during a crisis. 

Guterres, has emerged as a key part of the shuttle diplomacy system that allows for  Russo-Ukrainian negotiations. For instance, he visited both Moscow and Kyiv in April in an  attempt to broker a ceasefire. While this effort failed, it positioned the Secretary-General so he  could negotiate two important agreements between the two states. First, he arranged for a UN-led  civilian evacuation mission from the besieged city of Mariupol. The UN and the Red Cross  would evacuate over 600 civilians on May 12th, only a few weeks after the Secretary-General's  visit. In July, the UN and the Turkish government would broker a deal that let several Russian and Ukrainian ports export wheat and other agricultural products to the rest of the world. While  the implementation of this deal has been at times shaky, the deal is critical. The war runs a  significant risk of sparking famine and high food prices in the Global South, due to a previous  inability to export grain from Russian and Ukrainian Black Sea ports. If this deal continues to  hold, the risk of mass famine and food instability will be minimized throughout the world. 

The UN has also been able to provide on the ground aid to those most affected by the  conflict, Ukrainian civilians. The UN’s various humanitarian aid services, including the World  Food Program (WFP) and World Health Organization (WHO) amongst others, have provided  basic services to over 11.5 million Ukrainians. The UN has provided over 250,000 children with  education, over 1.5 million with food, and over 8.5 million with medical care as of September  14th. This is despite the fact that the Russian government, which has frequently attacked  civilians over the course of the conflict, has significant influence on where and how the UN  operates as a result of the country’s permanent membership on the UNSC.  

Russia doesn’t, however, have veto power over the UN General Assembly. The General  Assembly, which doesn’t have the ability to make legally enforceable resolutions like the  Security Council, is still a key way to gauge international opinion. The general assembly acted  swiftly following Russia’s February invasion. The General Assembly took advantage of United  Nations General Assembly Resolution 377 (the “Uniting for Peace '' resolution), which lets the  general assembly begin an emergency session if the P5 fails to act on a matter of international  security. This was the first time that “Uniting for Peace '' was activated since 1997. The General  Assembly would pass General Assembly Resolution ES-11/1, which deplored Russia’s invasion  and demanded they withdraw their forces from Ukraine. The actual vote was a disaster for  Russia, with 141 states voting in support and only five opposed. This decisive vote left Russia isolated diplomatically, and empowered the US and EU to further support Ukraine and sanction  Russia safe in the knowledge that there would be little international backlash. While the UN has served a useful role within the Ukrainian conflict, its ability to manage  conflict outside of Ukraine is also notable. Despite the frequently espoused new era of great  power competition that has accompanied the Russian invasion, the UN has still been largely able  to maintain its prior ability to manage international security. 

Before the invasion, many international observers thought that Afghanistan would be the  UN’s most pressing issue of 2022. The Taliban victory has caused a massive humanitarian and  financial crisis throughout the country, the response to which has been constrained by an  American unwillingness to recognize and (implicitly) assist the new Taliban regime. After the  Russian Invasion of Ukraine, many observers worried that the UNSC would be unable to work  together on Afghanistan. These fears came to a head in March, only a few weeks after the  invasion, when the mandate for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan  (UNAMA) needed to be authorized. Despite concerns that the Russians might veto the extension,  the Russians abstained and UNAMA was re-authorized with an expanded humanitarian and  political mandate. 

The UN has also been able to continue its peace and security functions even when there is  a direct Russian interest. The Russian mercenary Wagner Group is currently highly active in  Mali, where they are supporting the military junta and frequently massacre civilians, The military regime, with the support of Russia, has begun to move away from its traditional security  partners and limit the ability of the local UN peacekeeping mission, MINUSMA, to protect  civilians and monitor human rights abuses. Given that MINUSMA is frequently in conflict with  the Russian-backed Malian military regime, a Russian veto of the operation would be in its interests. However, MINUSMA was reauthorized in June, with Russia and China abstaining.  While the resolution did little to improve MINUSMA capabilities, the fact that it passed at all  shows that the UN can still pass meaningful resolutions in a post-Ukraine world. 

After the invasion, the permanent member of the Security Council decided to pursue a  strategy of “compartmentalization.” While the P5 would trade sanctions and extraordinarily  harsh language over Ukraine, they agreed to try to avoid letting that “poison the well” with other  issues. UN observer Richard Gowan, who previously said “the Security Council (is) facing a  period of increasing fragmentation and paralysis,” now argues that compartmentalization appears  to have largely worked. This is because doing so remains in both the national interests of Russia,  America, and Europe. For American and Europe, it continues to let the UN continue an agenda  they broadly support. For Russia, it keeps diplomatic channels open, prevents further  international isolation, and lets them influence UN operations by threatening, but not using, the  veto. While the situation in Ukraine demonstrates the continued limited ability of the UN to  intervene in a conflict where a P5 state is a party to the conflict, its action outside of Ukraine  shows that it still has its uses. 

While the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the most destabilizing international event in decades, it isn’t unprecedented in the UN’s history. Nearly two decades prior, another permanent member of the Security Council launched an invasion of another state in brazen violation of the UN Charter. While the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine have several key differences, they sparked similar outcries and criticisms of the UN. In the decades since the war, however, the UN has been able to support peace in war torn countries, provide humanitarian assistance to millions, and foster economic development. It’s important to keep these successes in mind as we visualize the role of the UN in a post-invasion world order.

Does Peacekeeping Work?

When the average American thinks of UN peacekeeping operations, they tend to think of failures. Images of dead Americans being dragged through the streets in Somalia, Blue Helmets failing to prevent the Rwandan Genocide, and the failed safe zone in Srebrenica spring to mind. Younger generations might think about sexual abuse and exploitation scandals involving UN peacekeepers and a cholera outbreak caused by peacekeepers in Haiti. Empirically, a 2022 Gallup survey found that only 37% of Americans thought that the United Nations is doing a good job, compared to 58% of Americans at the turn of the millennium. In the American imagination, peacekeeping is an expensive failure.

The actual results could not be more different. UN peacekeeping is, in actuality, a highly effective institution that is capable of protecting civilians and building peace in post-conflict countries. This essay will try to debunk the common American perception of the success of UN peacekeeping, building on the existing scholarly literature. The essay will then conclude by examining how these different understandings of UN peacekeeping came to be, and why the misperceptions surrounding UN peacekeeping matter.

Let’s start at the beginning of a UN peacekeeping operation, its deployment. Despite popular perceptions of peacekeepers as cowardly or conflict-shy, the existing academic literature suggests that peacekeepers deploy to the most difficult combat zones, rather than the easiest. Hegre, Hultman, and Nygard 2019 find that UN peacekeepers tend to deploy to the most difficult conflicts with the highest casualty rates and weakest central governments. In these countries, such as the DRC, South Sudan, and the CAR, conflict is widespread and both governments and rebels frequently attack civilians. Within countries, peacekeepers will continue to put themselves at risk by deploying subnationally to the most dangerous parts of the country. Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis studied eight peacekeeping operations and found that peacekeepers deploy to areas, such as near international borders, where conflict is most frequent.

While getting peacekeepers to the right places is important, what matters more is what they do once they get there. After hundreds of thousands of civilians died under the UN’s watch in Rwanda and Bosnia, the UN developed a new doctrine known as the “Protection of Civilians” (POC). This task put direct protection of civilians, including the use of force to do so, at the center of modern UN peacekeeping operations. In doing so, it moved past a previous emphasis on neutrality and restraint that handicapped peacekeepers facing active atrocity situations. This new POC doctrine should on paper address many of the failures that occurred in the 1990s, where the Protection of Civilians was not part of the peacekeepers' toolkit. So, the question is: can peacekeepers protect civilians? 

The answer is yes. Many studies, such as the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, have taken advantage of new data sets on violence against civilians to study what impact peacekeepers have had on violence against civilians in the areas they deploy in. The vast majority of these studies have found that the presence of peacekeepers has a statistically significant negative effect on violence against civilians. Phayal (2019) examined the UN peacekeeping in Darfur and found that the deployment of peacekeepers “restrains belligerents from targeting civilians.” While several mechanisms have been established to explain this, the most common has to do with the cost-benefit analysis of potential perpetrators. Although attacking civilians runs little risk and thus incurs little potential cost, attacking civilians protected by armed peacekeepers backed by the international community has a higher cost and is, thus, less likely to occur. Using a variety of different cases and methodologies, this same conclusion is found by Melander (2009), Hegre, Hultman, and Nygard (2019), and Kathman and Wood (2016). 

In South Sudan, for example, as many as 200,000 civilians fleeing violence gathered in IDP camps around UN bases in late 2013, forming “Protection of Civilian sites.” UN peacekeepers have guarded those sites ever since, protecting those civilians from other larger ethnic groups in the region who had previously attacked them. At the same time, the UN has started to work to create the necessary conditions for civilians to return home and for the South Sudanese government to take over security provision.

While the literature shows that peacekeepers are able to successfully protect civilians in their areas of operations, there are a few key caveats to keep in mind. First, Payal and Prins 2020 found that, while peacekeepers are successful in preventing attacks by rebel groups, they are less able to protect civilians from government forces.5 Given the need for host state consent for most peacekeeping missions and the fact that most peacekeeping missions are mandated to support and improve the host government, this isn’t exactly surprising. We also have to consider the role of respective capabilities in protecting civilians. Di Salvatore (2018) found that peacekeepers were less capable of protecting civilians as power asymmetries grew. Conversely, however, Haass and Ansorg 2018 found that peacekeepers are better able to protect civilians when they are better equipped, funded, and trained. This makes logical sense, peacekeepers are more effective the better their advantage is over possible perpetrators, and vice-versa.

However, the Protection of Civilians is only a short-term objective. The long-run objective is to create a sustainable peace where peacekeepers are no longer needed. The evidence suggests that peacekeepers are able to accomplish this. Fortna (2008) analyzes the role that UN peacekeepers have in armed group decision-making during civil wars. She finds that the presence of peacekeepers alleviates mistrust and miscalculation and prevents escalations, thus leading to a higher success rate of peace implementation. Kathman and Benson (2019) provide empirical support for this idea. They found that the deployment of additional peacekeepers decreases the length of the conflict. Peacekeeping deployments can also prevent conflicts from spreading to other nearby countries. Beardsley (2011) empirically finds that “the risk of armed conflict onset increases by 71% on average when a neighboring state experiences a conflict without peacekeeping.”

An example of this can be seen in the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL). The mission was deployed in 1999 to replace a regional peacekeeping operation that had failed to contain the countries civil war. Following several high-profile failures including the kidnapping of peacekeepers and internal divisions, the mission was able to regain the trust of the public and create the necessary conditions for peace. They ensured the withdrawal of Liberian rebels across the border, disarmed local groups, and implemented national elections. The mission withdrew in 2005, and conflict in Sierra Leone has been minimal since. So we’ve seen that peacekeepers frequently accomplish their two primary objectives (protecting civilians and building peace). However, that’s not everything they can do. Reeder (2018) found that peacekeeping deployments are associated with better health outcomes, as quantified by vaccination rates. Reeder and Polizzi expand on this theme of service delivery in their 2021 article, where they found that peacekeeping deployment is associated with better education outcomes in their areas of deployment. In both cases, this is because peacekeepers help create a safer environment for other groups (such as government agencies and NGOs) to deliver services such as health and education. Finally, Bakaki and Bohmelt (2021) found that UN peacekeeping deployments increase the environmental quality in their areas of operation. The existing literature shows that UN peacekeeping is incredibly effective at a variety of different tasks across a variety of different countries, despite frequently deploying to the most dangerous combat zones. However, as mentioned earlier, this is not the perception that most Americans have of UN peacekeeping. There are several theories why this might be the case: the first has to do with media coverage. The failures of UN peacekeeping in the 1990s were highly publicized on major American news networks such as CNN. This is because often, such as in Bosnia and Somalia, they involved US forces. They also frequently deployed to geopolitical or human rights hotspots such as Rwanda. Times on the security council have changed since the 1990s, however. While peacekeepers still deploy to the most dangerous areas, they avoid the conflicts where great power competition is at its strongest (such as Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine). Instead, peacekeepers deploy to “under the radar” conflicts such as in the Central African Republic, Mali, and South Sudan. Peacekeeping’s success stories have received far less press coverage than its failures, and the end result is that peacekeeping is perceived as a failure by the media-consuming public.

Another potential cause of the gap in peacekeeping’s public perception has to do with the US’s perceived relationship with the UN and the idea of American exceptionalism. While the US government has always been a decently strong supporter of the UN, the US public has been less supportive. Part of this can be explained by the idea of American exceptionalism, the nationalist and widespread idea that American civilization is superior or exceptional to all others. In this context, the UN represents a threat: as an organization that could potentially overrule America’s sovereignty at home, such as the UN’s role in organizing climate change agreements, and decision-making abroad, such as the UN's refusal to authorize the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There’s a reason that the UN has emerged as a common actor in conspiracy theories, including those that deal with hot-button domestic topics such as gun confiscations. It’s no surprise then that nationalist Americans wouldn’t support UN peacekeeping because it can be construed as a threat.

This is unfortunate for two reasons. In the short term, some US politicians have decided they don’t need to support UN Peacekeeping. The Trump administration previously refused to pay its needed UN dues. Given that the US is the largest UN’s financial contributor, this had a significant negative effect on peacekeeping effectiveness. The Trump administration knew it could get away with unilaterally not paying its bills because the US public by and large doesn't care about peacekeeping. In fact, UN ambassador Nikki Hailey bragged that “Just 5 months into our time here, we've cut over half a billion $$$ from the UN peacekeeping budget & we’re only getting started.” The backlash was minimal and the US only started to fully pay its dues during the Biden administration. 

In the long term, US distrust of the UN has limited the US military's ability to contribute. The US has remained mostly withdrawn from UN peacekeeping since the 1990s. Despite its large and effective military, the US currently contributes only 31 peacekeepers out of nearly 80,000 total. As the US withdraws from Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has a large number of effective units that it could contribute to UN peacekeeping operations (recall that better funded and equipped militaries, such as the US, are better capable of protection).

However, the idea of deploying US forces at any scale is ludicrous in the current environment given the American public’s current hostility to peacekeeping operations. The only way to improve that public opinion, and potentially awaken a sleeping giant in the form of the US military, is to begin to counter the incorrect narratives about peacekeeping that have sadly become commonplace amongst the American public. 

References

Bakaki, Zorzeta, and Tobias Böhmelt. “Can UN Peacekeeping Promote Environmental Quality?” International Studies Quarterly 65, no. 4 (December 17, 2021): 881–890.

Beardsley, Kyle. “Peacekeeping and the Contagion of Armed Conflict.” The Journal of Politics 73, no. 4 (2011): 1051–1064.

Fortna, Virginia Page. Does Peacekeeping Work?: Shaping Belligerents’ Choices after Civil War. Book collections on Project MUSE. Princeton: University Press, 2008

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Where to go from Seoul? Reviewing the 2021 UN Peacekeeping Ministerial

The UN recently held its annual Peacekeeping Ministerial this last December, the first after the 2020 event was canceled due to the pandemic. This year, dozens of foreign and defense ministers met in a crucial forum for organizing international support for UN peacekeeping operations. This article will try to serve as a post-mortem “round-up” of the conference's activities, as well as to analyze the impact the ministerial might have on peacekeeping operations going forward.

UN peacekeeping is increasingly finding itself in a tough position. As Paul Williams of GWU explained in early March 2020, “the Council's three strategic goals for peacekeeping operations: implementing broad mandates, minimizing peacekeeper casualties and maximizing cost-effectiveness—cannot be achieved simultaneously.” Since his writing, the COVID-19 pandemic has only deepened the crisis. National governments are now even less willing to fund peacekeeping operations (PKOs) due to the need for domestic investment. Meanwhile, the pandemic and its economic impacts have intensified levels of conflict worldwide, while simultaneously having increased the number of challenges for peacekeepers on the ground. The UN Department of Peace Operations clearly needs additional support to respond to international conflict, and the Peacekeeping Ministerial offers just the opportunity to do so.

The UN Peacekeeping Ministerial has been held annually since 2014, with the exceptions of 2018 and 2020. While it was initially a meeting at the head of state level, in recent years it has shifted down to the level of foreign and/or defense ministers. The ministerial has emerged as a method for states to coordinate their support to UN peacekeeping operations, as well as to serve as a forum for discussion between member states on key thematic areas relating to peacekeeping. Crucially, the UN Peacekeeping Ministerial is the primary window for states to pledge new units and capabilities to PKOs. It is almost the equivalent of a draft-day or the first day of free agency in American sports: a hectic few days where an organization (in this case the Department of Peace Operations) attempts to significantly boost its capabilities by adding new assets and personnel.

South Korea was the host this year, and as such, they were partially responsible for setting the agenda. They identified two major themes: medical capacity building and technology. It is becoming increasingly clear that there is a medical gap in peacekeeping missions. Even in Mali’s mission, MINUSMA, there are issues with ensuring high levels of care and medical evacuation capabilities. This is despite the fact that Mali is considered one of the most dangerous missions for peacekeepers and thus the need for medical care is highest. Thus, one objective for the ministerial was to receive more pledges for medical units and medical capacity building. The other major theme was technology. Like with medical resources, the UN has identified the implementation of new technology as a key way to improve mission success. Because of this one of the hopes of the ministerial was to secure pledges in high-tech equipment like night vision goggles, C-IED technology, and tactical drones.

In addition to these major themes, there were four online preparatory conferences held by member states before the ministerial proper. The first on peacebuilding and sustaining peace focused on how integrating peacekeeping missions with other UN organizations such as country teams and special political missions. The second on partnerships for performance and accountability focused on how to properly monitor and evaluate peacekeeping missions. The third on capacity-building and training initiatives focused on how the UN could coordinate member states (particularly those with a highly developed military capacity) providing training and other technical supports to Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs) with less developed militaries. The final conference, on the protection of civilians and safety and security, focused on ways to reduce the risk of injury and death to both peacekeepers and civilians within mission areas, such as by increasing mission mobility via additional helicopters. 

With those common goals and themes set, representatives from nearly every UN member state arrived in Seoul to determine who would contribute what to help support the public good that UN peacekeeping provides. Now that the preliminary work has been explained and the dust has mostly settled, we can now examine the results of the ministerial by thematic area, 

The ministerial was able to make significant headways in the field of medical capacity. Several countries pledged hospitals and other medical units, most notably seven field hospitals from Egypt, Ghana, Italy, Kazakstan, Mongolia, Morocco, and Uganda. In addition, developed militaries, such as Canada, China, and the United States have offered other forms of medical support such as training, equipment, and off-site treatment. Key amongst these is a large number of first aid kits going to African TCCs in MINUSMA, who are currently suffering a disproportionately high casualty rate within a PKO with an already high casualty rate. These pledges represent a significant improvement in the UN's potential medical capacity, especially when combined with pledges of aeromedical evacuation capable helicopters.

This leads us to the second theme of the Ministerial, technology. The Koreans were the host and they made a splash ahead of the conference when they announced a pledge of 16 helicopters in a rare joint pledge with Kenya. South Korea will provide the actual helicopters and some technical personnel, while the bulk of the deployed personnel will hail from Kenya. When combined with pledges from Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, and Sri Lanka, the at least 25 newly pledged helicopters should increase UN helicopter levels in large-scale missions by 57%. In addition, Italy, Rwanda,  and Kazakhstan all pledged unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) units of various sizes. These aircraft pledges are vital: in the DPOs pre-ministerial pledging guide they specifically requested large quantities of UAV and helicopter units, and it appears that those requests have been fulfilled. In terms of other technology-related pledges, France and several other European countries pledged engineering equipment to other TCCs. The large number of aircraft pledged is probably the most important set of pledges coming out of the Ministerial, as their presence will provide much-needed boosts in the critical areas of medical evacuation, logistics, and rapid reaction to some of the UN's most challenging missions.

The ministerial was also notable for the large number of training pledges put in by the developed, Global North militaries. France pledged to train 10,000 African peacekeepers, the UK pledged a training center for trainers from Nepal as part of a “Training the Trainers” initiative, and Germany pledged six Mobile Training Teams. While these pledges are clearly beneficial, they highlight a continuation in current labor relations set up within UN peacekeeping. Developed countries such as the United States and Europe will provide large amounts of training, equipment, and on occasion highly specialized units such as helicopter squadrons. In contrast developing countries largely from Africa and South Asia contribute the bulk of the boots on the ground and suffer the bulk of the casualties. While there have been some shifts towards greater western participation, particularly with MINUSMA, it's clear that the ministerial represents a continuity not a change in that regard.

A final key result from the ministerial was a large number of highly mobile pledges that should boost the mobility of UN PKOs. In the pledging guide, the DPO requested two quick reaction force (QRF) companies. These formations are motorized, airmobile, and capable of responding to attacks on civilians at a much quicker speed than conventional infantry battalions. Instead of receiving two QRF companies, the UN received QRFs from Bhutan, Indonesia, Mongolia, Nepal, Peru, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Tunisia (x2), Uganda, and Uruguay, but, in some cases, these pledges are smaller than a company. However, UN requests for reconnaissance units and SWAT teams went unanswered. Despite this, when these QRF units are combined with the newly pledged UAV and helicopter formations, UN peacekeeping formations have become significantly more mobile than they were before the Ministerial.

Now that the ministers have left and the conference is over, the work continues. Getting all of these newly pledged units ready for the rigors of a UN peacekeeping deployment and transporting the needed thousands of personnel and thousands of tons of equipment across the globe to get them there, is a colossal logistical and technical undertaking. Political issues may also complicate the new pledges. Kazakhstan was one of the larger contributors in the Ministerial, pledging helicopters, hospitals, and UAV units. However, they have been under fire from the UN after Kazakh military units illegally wore UN blue helmets while policing recent protests against the government. It’s unclear if this dispute will endanger the deployment of Kazakhstan’s pledges, but this incident highlights the types of problems that may occur between pledge and deployment.

In conclusion, the 2021 UN Peacekeeping Ministerial was a solid success. Against a backdrop of falling budgets and questions about peacekeeping's future, the UN was able to significantly improve its capabilities in the key areas of mobility, technology, and medical capabilities. Almost every critical need identified by the DPO ahead of time was filled, with some (such as QRF capability) excessively so. It is extremely probable that these new pledges help ensure that UN PKOs are even more capable of protecting civilians in conflict and building peace in their areas of operation.

An Analytics Revolution in UN Peacekeeping: Laying the Groundwork

UN Peacekeeping is often faced with difficult trade-offs. As Paul Williams of George Washington explains, “the [Security] Council's three strategic goals for peacekeeping operations—implementing broad mandates, minimizing peacekeeper casualties and maximizing cost-effectiveness—cannot be achieved simultaneously.” Given the current trend of falling Peacekeeping budgets, it’s clear that Peacekeepers will have to offset their more conservative allocation of resources. A possible way to accomplish all three goals could be using statistical analysis to identify and exploit undervalued assets, as well as maximizing the potential of existing assets. I argue that, by adopting such a perspective, peacekeepers can accomplish more with less.

Assets, in this case, can mean several different things. For example, it can refer to troop contingents in the military component, the types of peacebuilding projects undertaken by the civilian component, and the tactics used by both. Each of these assets has a different cost to acquire and use in mission, both in terms of financial and political capital. It will be cheaper and easier to acquire an infantry battalion from a large troop contributing country (TCC) like India than an infantry battalion from the United States. Each of these assets will also provide different levels of value to the mission. The new Peacekeeping strategy would be to identify the assets that contribute the most value compared to their cost.

This identification will come from statistical analysis. The advantage of statistical analysis over conventional value analysis is that, with statistical analysis, we can identify assets that are undervalued because conventional value analysis also sets the cost of an asset. In order to identify which assets are undervalued, we first must determine what factors create value to a PKO in certain classes of assets, with a special emphasis on the use of new technology. If we are to adopt the statistical approach to PKOs, this research must start immediately.

There are, however, two potential issues with this approach. First, the data we use to determine value may be unreliable or unavailable. Second, we must define what constitutes success for a PKO. Given the many objectives of the average PKO, this is significantly complicated for peacekeepers.  

Even with those two caveats in mind, embracing greater statistical analysis and other technologies in Peacekeeping would let Peacekeepers achieve their broad mandates in a safe manner, even with limited financial resources.  The UN has already started to embrace this thinking with a new “Digital Transformation” where new technology, such as drones, and statistical analysis combine to maximize the cost-effectiveness of peacekeepers in the field.

The next three sections will provide case studies that highlight this new type of thinking: force generation reform, increased airpower, and conflict prediction. Hopefully, by embracing some of these ideas, a technological revolution can lead UN Peacekeeping to cost-effectiveness and success.\

Case Study A: Force Generation Reform

While it’s easy to outline this new statistics-based methodology in broad strokes, it’s a bit harder to visualize the strategy in practice. This section aims to apply the methodology to a specific hypothetical case, in order to better illustrate the entire methodology.

In this hypothetical scenario, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations Force Generation Service is trying to acquire an additional infantry battalion. They have five choices, as shown in the table below. C represents the total cost in USD to use the infantry battalion for a year, as measured in both direct payments and the indirect effort needed to convince the TCC to loan the infantry battalion. V represents the expected decrease in civilian casualties in the battalion deployment area.

Country: C. V. C/V

A. $50 million. 60% reduction. 833,333.333

B. $40 million. 55% reduction. 727,272.727

C. $40 million. 45% reduction. 888,888.889

D. $30 million. 30% reduction. 1,000,000

E. $25 million. 20% reduction. 1,250,000

In his hypothetical scenario, the Force Generation Service should prioritize recruiting from country B, because the C/V (or the cost in USD for each percent expected decrease in civilian casualties) is the lowest. Importantly, this strategy ignores all other factors, such as whether B is a large or influential TCC, whether B has a long history in PKOs, or whether the Force Generation Service thinks that battalions from B are harder to acquire than from the other countries. We can also compare assets: as shown below. This is a change from the current system of unit evaluation. The current standard operating procedure for the “Assessment and Evaluation of Formed Police Unit Performance,” for example, relies on subjective responses by evaluators to preset questions on a scale of 1-4

Asset: C. V. C/V.

Infantry Battalion from B. $40 million. 55% reduction. 727,272.727

UAV Squadron from B. $20 million. 30% reduction. 66,666.667

In this scenario, it would be more efficient to bring in the UAV unit instead of the infantry battalion. Even if the UAV unit is smaller, it is more cost-efficient than the infantry battalion. 

Again, this brief thought exercise is intended to illustrate the statistical strategy in practice. Decisions in this model are made based on statistical value, instead of more subjective evaluations. It’s easy to accomplish this with hypothetical values, in the real world calculating C and V is much more difficult. But attempting to determine the specific values of  C and V of military units throughout the DPO’s PCRS system.

Case Study B: Increased Airpower

A consistent effect of underfunded PKOs is that there are never enough peacekeepers to adequately guard the number of people they are charged with protecting. As Williams again notes, even with a modest ratio of 1 peacekeeper for every 100 civilians, the big four UN PKOs would require 397,000 peacekeepers. In reality, they have 69,302 peacekeepers across the four missions. It’s unlikely the UN will be able to afford a larger number of peacekeepers, so the objective would be to allocate their existing peacekeepers in the most efficient way possible. A continued and increased reliance on airpower could maximize this efficiency, for two main reasons. They are increased rapid reaction capability and increased intelligence gathering capability.

Given that peacekeeping missions are understrength, they can’t be in every populated area of their areas of responsibility. This means that when attacks on civilians or other crises occur, particularly in rural areas, peacekeepers have to deploy to the affected areas quickly. Given the poor infrastructure in some of these areas, this is no easy task. One way to dramatically increase the effective deployment range of peacekeeping units is the use of utility transport helicopters. These let peacekeepers bypass physical and political barriers to rapid deployment (such as roadblocks) and reach crisis areas faster.

Right now there is a helicopter shortage in UN PKOs. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), for example, has only 25 helicopters for 18,106 peacekeepers. Increasing the ratio of helicopters to peacekeepers would be a cost-effective way to maximize the rapid reaction ability of peacekeepers in the field.

However, this advantage is primarily reactive instead of proactive. In order to anticipate attacks on civilians before they happen, and deploy forces to counter beforehand, real-time intelligence and data is needed. Drones offer a possible low-cost way to increase the intelligence gathering capability of UN PKOs.

Drones have several key advantages. First, like other aircraft, they are unconstrained by terrestrial impediments on patrolling, such as harsh terrain or the presence of hostile forces. Second, they are able to remain airborne for a longer period than other forms of airborne surveillance. Third, they are less expensive per flight hour than other forms of airborne surveillance.

The data from drones has proven capable of helping protect civilians. As Karlsrud and Rosen note, the photographic and infrared equipment on UAVs let peacekeepers “track movements of armed militias, assist patrols heading into hostile territory, and document atrocities.” This situational intelligence will help peacekeepers proactively deploy to the same areas hostile groups are moving into. Despite that benefit, UAVs have only widely available in one mission, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). 

By increasing their pool of aircraft, UN PKOs can compensate for their lack of personnel at a lower cost than increasing the number of peacekeepers deployed. The DPO has recognized the need for aircraft within their missions. Additional helicopters were deemed a substantial part of their critical mission gaps in a recent report.  Another way to increase that efficiency would be to increase the emphasis on conflict prediction, which will be discussed below.

Case Study C: Conflict Prediction

UN PKOs gather large amounts of data from their patrols, and if they embraced some of the recommendations of this article they would gather even more. But that data needs to be used effectively to optimize peacekeeping deployments. One of the best ways to do that would be to further invest in conflict prediction software.

Some existing models have proved successful. A machine learning model developed by Chris Perry, for example, was able to mostly accurately predicate which African countries would experience conflict using publically available data. There are some studies on how these types of conflict predicting algorithms can be applied to PKOs. Duursma and Karlsrud argue that machine learning can provide quantitative analysis in a field dominated by qualitative analysis. If these algorithms can accurately predict where conflict will spike in the mission area, extra peacekeepers and other conflict prevention measures can be deployed to that area. These algorithms, like the accurate calculations of C and V mentioned earlier, are not fully developed. Thus, an analytics revolution is not fully possible immediately.

Conclusion

By setting a broad and bold statistical research agenda, UN leadership can optimize peacekeeping missions. When combined with continuing to embrace new technologies like UAVs and helicopters, this should let PKOs accomplish their broad mandates and protect civilians even in the face of reduced fiscal ability.

Is the United Nations Still a Relevant International Body?

The United Nations (UN), created in 1945, had the goal of actively maintaining peace within the international community. In the wake of World War II, the world was ready for calm and there was widespread motivation to create peace as a joint community. However, the world of international politics today is even more complex, thus calling into question the relevance of the United Nations as a governing international body. There are many arguments that highlight the shortcomings of the United Nations, deeming it irrelevant. However, since the UN is a long-standing institution that has facilitated beneficial actions, it is essential to implement structural revisions to adapt institutions for the modern day. 

The Ineffectiveness of the United Nations Security Council:

One of the arguments at the forefront in support for eliminating the United Nations is that the most powerful organ of the UN, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), is not relevant to the modern world. The main evidence for this claim is that the UNSC only has five permanent member states: USA, Russia, Britain, China, France) and 10 non-permanent member states. This structure results in misuse of veto power, often blocking key decisions that are needed by nations with little to no representation. It also prevents developing countries from being represented, which is necessary in the present day. 

Over the years, it has become clear that the Security Council’s permanent members have little interest in internal reform. Since this is the case, it is in the best interest of the other UN member states to continue to push for reform. With powerful countries moving to unilateralism, populism, and nationalism at the expense of multilateralism and collective action, a united and forward-looking Security Council capable of effectively driving the wider United Nations to achieve its goals is essential. 

Global Health and the Role of the UN:

Critics of the UN believe that the failure of the World Health Organization (WHO), during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and in its prevention, is another sign that the UN is irrelevant. With the occurrence of future global health crises rising, instead of creating a global approach, the WHO should simply be reformed. This can be done by creating an international antivirus consortium, protecting biodiversity, and strengthening warning protocols within UN agencies. 

The main priority should be to reform the WHO to create an international antivirus consortium. This would guarantee access to a COVID-19 vaccine for all countries, as well as access to future vaccines for new viruses. The consortium would be funded the same way the UN and peacekeeping budgets are - using a scale of quotas under which every member country financially contributes according to its payment capacities. The responsibility of the consortium would be to ensure the equitable distribution of vaccines and personal protective equipment to every country.

Second, a new international strategy for the protection of biodiversity is key. Neither the antivirus consortium nor future vaccines will be enough without other preventive measures. The preservation of biodiversity is one of the best ways to do that. New viruses emerge because human activities disturb ecosystems and undermine their biodiversity. Creating a global emergency plan to identify, safeguard, and protect biodiversity and the ecosystems of endangered species would help countries that cannot afford other protective measures themselves.

Lastly, due to the increase in likelihood of future pandemics, the likelihood of pandemic-adjacent threats is also increasing. Therefore, the world needs new information-sharing procedures between specialized agencies to take quick and preventive action to detect, prevent, and mitigate potential new threats that could undermine international security, national economies, sanitary and health conditions, and food security. Early warning protocols on international emergencies including famines and pandemics can help alert all UN members to take appropriate early and preventive action, such information-sharing procedures should be proposed as resolutions at the UN Security Council and General Assembly.

The Modern Role of the Indo-Pacific and its Recognition:

Since World War II, the pillars of global governance are rapidly changing. Institutional infirmities are being highlighted and a normative shift is becoming increasingly relevant. These changes show why another very important reform would be safeguarding the Indo-Pacific. 

India’s pursuit of permanent membership on the UN Security Council is evidence of its global ambitions. Additionally, it is equally important for New Delhi that global institutions better reflect contemporary global realities – like the reality of the economic and strategic strengths of India. 

The security dynamics in the immediate aftermath of World War II focused on managing a divided Europe and safeguarding its peripheries from the Soviet bloc. However, in the modern international political sphere, the Indo-Pacific is driving the global economic and political agenda. Because of this reality, global institutional frameworks should reflect this power shift, especially when a weakening United Nations is leading to a proliferation of self-selected groups. The issue of UN reform is also linked with that of ensuring proper resourcing. Discussing reforms without making provisions for adequate resources will lead nowhere; the flip side is that channeling more resources in the absence of genuine reforms only perpetuates the status quo. While some countries have gradually deemphasized the United Nations in favor of new frameworks to address their most pressing challenges, others have been gaming the UN system to further their narrow interests. For example, the danger in having UN officials and agencies champion China’s Belt and Road Initiative is immense. 

The Bigger Picture:

Unlike in 1945, the international community faces three common enemies: climate change, infectious diseases, and nuclear weapons. The existence of these threats also highlights their commonality: only global, multilateral efforts can reduce their destructive potential. The United Nations can prioritize these threats by debating and drafting a resolution identifying them as the core global challenges. A permanent coordinating platform should be set up to integrate the UN response across agencies, funds, and related organizations, and to act quickly, comprehensively, and efficiently in various fields, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization. Establishing such communication channels will bolster cohesiveness, which is fundamental when dealing with ongoing, multidimensional threats in a fragmented UN system.

This coordinating platform could be created through the existing Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB). The platform’s goal would be to link threat mitigation to all policy fields in the UN system when planning, deciding, and assessing results. Ideally, the Security Council should be stripped of veto power when a matter relating to these existential threats is on the agenda; such a move, however, is unfortunately unrealistic. More realistically, prioritizing this debate would lead to greater focus on what matters most. On its seventy-fifth birthday, the United Nations needs to think big if it is to see its one hundred and fiftieth.

Looking to the Future:

The United Nations is still relevant, especially since the world has become interconnected and where current global problems, such as hunger and climate change have emerged, thus the UN’s collective efforts are essential to tackle these modern challenges. The UN has attempted to improve its structure, however, the lack of willingness by member states has impeded the UN’s progress. The reform agenda should be directed towards strengthening the UN’s outstanding thinking and could be a solution that would encourage \ member states to be involved in building such a network which could ultimately lead to better adherence to the UN’s structural reform agenda. Clearly, it is relatively complicated to determine the measures that can generate the will and it is not going to be easy to design a new UN once these measures are discovered either. However, if the member states notice that the only alternative without the UN is to address the growing number of complicated interconnected and wide scope challenges by themselves. They will be left with no choice but to accept the fact that it might be better to collectively repair the UN rather than be left alone to face the dramatic challenges of today's world.

Should the UN Deploy to Afghanistan?

In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Kabul and the Taliban’s takeover of the government, Afghanistan is facing several pressing crises. The delivery of vital humanitarian aid is in a state of logistical limbo, threatening the food security of millions. Furthermore, the human rights of women and members of the old government are under threat. In light of this crisis, several commentators have endorsed the idea of deploying a United Nations Peacekeeping Operation (or PKO) to the country. While noble, these efforts are misguided. Any PKO in Afghanistan would lack the ability to complete its objectives if the Taliban opposed them, and the resources required for such an operation would be better allocated elsewhere. 

The most prominent proposal for a PKO in Afghanistan comes from Georgetown professor Lise Howard, who laid out the case in an op-ed for the L.A. Times. In it, she proposes a PKO lead by China and Muslim nations with the objective of monitoring the situation and to“help the Taliban consolidate less radical control.” Another consistent source of advocacy has been from UMass Amherst professor Charli Carpenter, who argued in favor of a full-scale UN peace enforcement operation aimed at preventing a total Taliban takeover. 

Other proposals have supported the establishment of a PKO with the objective of preventing a possible civil war. Carpenter and Howard argue in Foreign Policy that “the Taliban have only a tenuous hold over the country” which has the potential to become a “multisided conflict that, unless checked, could metastasize and spread across borders, similar to the conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Libya.” In their view, a small (5,000 strong) mission from Muslim countries could prevent the outbreak of conflict. US Army Major Ryan van Wie of West Point proposed a new type of peace operation, aimed at boosting Taliban legitimacy and moderating its human rights problems. He has also developed several different options, each with its own capabilities and price tag. 

In response to these arguments, GWU professor Paul D. Williams outlined several potential flaws in any such operation. He notes that no UN forces would be able to arrive for at least 60 days, as well as an inability to find willing troop contributors. He also highlights how the Taliban’s consolidation of control over the Afghan government contrasts with the situations in which peacekeepers excel, such as when “there’s a viable peace process to help implement and a host government to support.” Adam Day of the United Nations University highlights how much of this discourse ignores both the reality on the ground and the opinion of the Afghan people 

In response to this critique, Carpenter argues that much of the opposition to a PKO in Afghanistan comes from a sense of fatalism, the idea that the inability to deploy to Afghanistan is set in stone, so there is no real sense in debating over it. While I wouldn’t describe this attitude as fatalism, I believe this perspective is valid. The UN will not and should not deploy to Afghanistan, even if there are some potential benefits to doing so. The political will and financial resources allocated to any such operation would be better utilized elsewhere. Before we address if such a deployment would be viable, we must address whether such a deployment is likely. Will the UN go? 

At this point in time, it is highly unlikely that the UN Security Council will authorize a deployment to Afghanistan. The UNSC hasn’t debated the proposal and none of its recent resolutions or statements on the crisis in Afghanistan have mentioned the possibility of deployment. 

At a time where smaller budgets have already led to cuts in UN Peacekeeping missions (such as the end of UNAMID in Sudan), the idea of paying for another large-scale operation seems unlikely to attract much interest on the Security Council. Neither is the idea of deploying to such a politically charged situation. UN peacekeepers have traditionally stayed out of countries (such as Libya and Syria) where there is discord between the Permanent Members. Afghanistan is one such case. While some Permanent Members, such as China, have displayed a willingness to recognize and work with the Taliban other Permanent Members, namely the USA, have displayed far less willingness. 

Even if the Security Council were to authorize a mission to Afghanistan like the ones proposed, a mission would take time to deploy. The UNs rapid reaction force is the Vanguard Brigade units of several member states. It would take 60 days from when the Secretary-General requests deployment to when the first forces would arrive in Afghanistan if the member states consent to deployment. The arrival of additional specialized forces-such as trained observers, helicopter units, and permanent command staff-would take even longer. The Secretary-General can’t begin the 60-day countdown until authorized to do by the Security Council and the long debate and process for such authorization have yet to be considered. 

This means that, should a PKO be deployed, it won’t be effective for several months. By that time the full-scale civil war that proponents hope the PKO could prevent may have already begun. UN Peacekeepers have never worked well as a rapid reaction crisis response force, even though efforts have been made to improve that capability. PKOs work best when they deploy to deadlocked conflict areas with a solid framework for peacebuilding. For example, missions in Namibia, Liberia, and East Timor were all able to bring peace but only after there was an outlined peace agreement. In contrast, there is no such peace agreement between the Taliban and any of its potential opponents (such as ISIS-K). Thus, we must examine the several potential obstacles to mission effectiveness.

Is the Mission Viable? 

Even if the UNSC were to authorize deployment, and even if such a force could deploy in time to make a difference, the entire operation hinges on Taliban consent. While UN PKOs are military units, they are not capable of sustained counterinsurgent or offensive military operations. This is because they are drawn from dozens of different countries, each with its own language, equipment, procedures, and wartime doctrines. It also lacks unity of command or the idea that military units should be subordinate to a single commander because UN Peacekeepers take orders from both their national capitals and the UN Force Commander. Peacekeepers have traditionally overcome this military deficiency by operating with the consent of the (major) parties to the conflict. While Peacekeepers can undertake offensive operations against spoilers (smaller combatants who hope to disrupt the peace process), such as in the DRC, they lack the ability to fight major parties like the Taliban. 

Even ignoring the Taliban, other armed groups in the region would present a significant problem for any UN PKO. ISIS-K, for example, is highly unlikely to cooperate with any form of foreign intervention force. As the Kabul airport bombing tragically showed, ISIS-K has the ability to inflict significant casualties on any such force. Any large number of casualties would imperil the viability of the operation, as troop-contributing countries have been unwilling to contribute troops after taking casualties. The only way the threat of ISIS-K and other spoilers could be minimized is through potential military and intelligence cooperation with the Taliban. 

That means the Taliban must consent to the mission, which they have shown no indication of doing. The Taliban have spent twenty years fighting against a foreign military presence in Afghanistan, it’s unlikely they would consent to another. It also means that the prospective mission would have relatively few ways to reform the Taliban’s human rights abuses

if the Taliban refuse to cooperate. Many of the levers that the UNSC can use to effect Taliban behavior on human rights (such as humanitarian aid, sanctions, and diplomatic recognition) can be effected without the presence of a PKO. Which raises the question: what specific problems in Afghanistan would a PKO address? 

Is the Mission Needed? 

Besides improving the Taliban’s respect for human rights, proponents have identified two other major purposes for a PKO. They are first to Prevent the outbreak of civil war and second to ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian aid. At this point in time, it appears that both of these objectives are being met without the presence of a PKO. The last remaining resistance to the Taliban was in the northwestern Panjshir Province, which fell to the Taliban in early September. While the threat of civil war is still looming over Afghanistan, no armed groups have taken advantage of the uncertainty and chaos to directly challenge the Taliban. 

Furthermore, the Taliban have pledged to uphold the safety of humanitarian aid providers on the ground and have requested even more humanitarian aid from the UN. The Taliban realize that they need humanitarian aid to prevent starvation (and thus opposition to their rule) among the Afghan people. Furthermore, they realize that they need Western recognition for their long-term survival, and harming aid workers would complicate that effort. 

Finally, we must consider not just the feasibility of success when considering an action, we must also consider the opportunity cost of undertaking such an action. Under Van Wie’s proposed options, the annual cost of a PKO in Afghanistan would be between $500 million and $2 billion, which would be between 8 to 31% of Peacekeeping’s current $6.47 billion budget. That is a substantial amount of resources either being raised by member states or taken from

other operations. Despite the large amount of money being allocated to peacekeeping, there are still several unmet budgetary requests in current peacekeeping operations. Many large-scale operations, such as the ones in South Sudan, Mali, the Central African Republic, and the DRC, lack the needed personnel to fully fulfill their mandate and lack a sufficient number of high-cost assets. As an April 2020 UN report notes, peacekeeping missions in Mali and the Central African Republic face “critical gaps” in their inventory of helicopters, UAVS, and medical units. These missions have already been established and have already proven capable of effecting meaningful change in their countries of operation. A 2019 Norwegian Institute of International Affairs report, for example, highlights how without the PKO in Mali “the security situation in Mali … would likely deteriorate significantly,” and could accomplish much more if additional capabilities are funded. It would be more prudent to allocate funds and assets to these existing missions instead of an unproven and possibly unnecessary mission in Afghanistan. 

Conclusion 

While the arguments in favor of deploying a UN PKO to Afghanistan have some validity, it would be unwise to deploy to such a mission. UN PKOs are largely effective at certain tasks, such as protecting civilians in active combat zones and implementing peace agreements. The current environment in Afghanistan, however, is not one where UN PKOs thrive. There is no large-scale active conflict to protect civilians in, or a peace agreement to help implement. Furthermore, The UN lacks the rapid reaction ability to prevent the outbreak of a new war, and it lacks either the Taliban consent or military power needed to improve the Taliban’s human rights situation.

It’s unclear if a PKO is even needed to prevent the outbreak of civil war or ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid. As it stands, without a PKO, a civil war has failed to materialize and humanitarian aid deliveries have continued undisrupted. Thus, any mission to Afghanistan would be costly, risky, and with limited upside. In the age of COVID and great power rivalry, the budget for peacekeeping is currently shrinking. Thus, the substantial resources needed for a potential Afghan mission would be better served by further funding other existing PKOs.

UNAMID: A Retrospective

The United Nations/African Union Hybrid Mission in Darfur (UNAMID, for short) is coming to its conclusion, marking the first major UN peacekeeping mission to finish its tasks since the United Nations Missionin Liberia in early 2018. While the mission’s mandate ended with the new year, its actual drawdown will continuethrough the spring into early summer.

UNAMID was a bold, innovative, and controversial mission. This essay will be divided into three separate parts. First, I will examine the creation of UNAMID, then I will examine UNAMID’s effectiveness during its dozen years of service, and I will conclude by examining the present security environment in Darfur.

The Creation

UN Peacekeeping was in a strange position in the mid to late 2000s. The organization was still confronted by the endemic failures that had led to the mass killing of civilians in Rwanda and in Bosnia. Major policy papers, such as the 2000 Brahimi report, had outlined a more aggressive and more robust peacekeeping strategy that the architects of UN Peacekeeping were just starting to fully implement. The UN deployed a whole host of complex peacekeeping missions in 2004, sending forces into Haiti, Timor-Leste, Burundi, and Côte d’Ivoire, adding onto missions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

While the UN was sending troops all over the world, they didn’t deploy to Darfur. The western region of Sudan fell into brutal violence in 2003, when mobile Arab cattle herders known as Janjaweed began raiding the villages of Black Sudanese populations, frequently massacring, looting, and enslaving the population. The Janjaweed had the support of the Sudanese government, who wanted to wipe out Black Sudanese rebel groups in the region.

By 2004, the situation in Darfur had become one of the worst human rights crises in the world. A variety ofhuman rights organizations, civil associations, and celebrities formed the

“Save Darfur” campaign and began lobbying western governments. The United States and European Union both described the crisis as a genocide, and the UN Security Council recommended charges to the ICC. While the Security Council believed UN Peacekeepers were stretched too thin at the time, African Union peacekeepers would deploy in 2004. As part of the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS), thousands of African soldiers would deploy to the region. After several international observers questioned their ability to protect civilians and their willingness to confront the Sudanese government, the UN took over the mission in 2007, “re-hatting” the existing troops from AU green to UN blue, and deploying additional UN forces.

 This marked a new innovation in UN Peacekeeping operations. Prior to UNAMID, cooperation betweenthe UN and other regional bodies was still being developed. While UN Peacekeepers had worked alongside ECOWAS forces in West Africa, and NATO forces in the Balkans, UNAMID marked a new frontier in both inter-institutional cooperation as well as a new model for cooperation going forward. The UN would provide the peacekeeping expertise and the AU would provide committed troop contributors. Furthermore, there was also a key political divide that greatly increased effectiveness: the UN would engage with western partners, with whom they had a strong rapport and the AU would engage with the Sudanase government, who the AU had experience working with.

UNAMID also was a major innovator in Protection of Civilian mandates. While all missions created in the new millennium had a Protection of Civilians mandate, UNAMID was one of the few that was primarily focused on protecting civilians. Authorized under Chapter VII of the UN charter, rather than the traditional Chapter VI,UNAMID was deployed into a situation where there was, at best, limited peace to keep. It was also faced with a deeply uncooperative government in Khartoum. UNAMID was the one of the first UN Peacekeeping missions that deployed ready to, if needed, violently engage with its host state and its paramilitary provies in order to protect civilians.

UNAMID During Operations

UNAMID’s deployment was slow. Two years in, it had only deployed 79 percent of its authorized military personnel and 71 percent of the police contingent. Part of this was caused by many countries being unwilling to deploy peacekeepers to a dangerous environment, while part of this delay was caused by the uncooperative nature of the Sudanese government. In addition, UNAMID deployed five years into a brutal conflict. It’s estimated that about 300,000 civilians had died by late 2008, mostly from starvation and disease. UNAMID was authorized too late, and once authorized, the recruitment of additional forces took too long. This consistent late reaction has been a hallmark of UN peacekeeping missions, and unfortunately UNAMID was no exception. Once deployed, UNAMID was a mixed bag. While successful with the resources that it had, it lacked the resources it needed to adequately implement its mission.

Let’s start with the good. UNAMID was mostly able to protect civilians within its area of operations. UNAMID police forces were able to create a secure environment inside of the dozens of internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout the region, and UN troops deterred combatants from attacking certain civilian population centers near UN bases. Furthermore, UN troops engaged in proactive protection of civilian patrols. The most notable of these were the “firewood patrols” which protected displaced women as they gathered firewood outside of the camps, a previously highly dangerous activity. UNAMID was able to protect humanitarian aid shipments, which helped alleviate someof the deep food and medicine shortages in the region.

Through negotiation and mediation, UNAMID was able to lay down the framework for a long term peace.

But UNAMID had its flaws. The mission was never strong enough to fully accomplish its mission. Darfur is a region with the size of California and the population of Michigan. While UNAMID’s 20,000 soldiers and police officers made it one of the largest peacekeeping missions in the world, it was not large enough to fully protect a region of that size. In 2010, UNAMID would admit that it could only adequately protect half of the region's population, mostly those concentrated in IDP camps and urban areas. UNAMID was plagued with major transportation issues. Protecting civilians is a mostly reactive task, quickly deploying troops to areas where civilians are in imminent danger. To accomplish that rapidreaction capability over such large, sparsely populated areas, a peacekeeping mission requires transport helicopters. UNAMID was never able to scrounge up the helicopters it needed in order to complete its mission, with the ones it were able to requisition beingeither unsuited to the task, insufficient in number, or too short-term to make a difference.

Furthermore, the Sudanese government proved to be a nuisance at best, and a menace at worst. An agreement between the UN and the Sudanese government which allowed UNAMID to deploy with Sudanese consent stipulated that the mission must have a predominantly ‘African character.’ Khartoum would take great advantage of this provision, frequently vetoing the deployment of non-African contingents, leaving UNAMID undermanned and underequipped. As a 2014 Foreign Policy report had succinctly put it, UNAMID had ”been bullied by government security forces and rebels, stymied by American and Western neglect, and left without the weapons necessary to fight in a region where more peacekeepers have been killed than in any other U.N. mission in the world.”

UNAMID was a mixed bag. While it was successful in some respects, it failed in others. It’s failureshighlighted a continuing gap in almost all UN Peacekeeping missions between what is asked of them and the means they are provided with in order to actually accomplish that task.

The End of UNAMID

Several dramatic changes in both the Sudanese and UN situations in the late 2010s would lead to UNAMID’s eventual withdrawal. First, Omar al-Bashir, the President of Sudan since 1989, was overthrown in a 2019 military coup following months of extensive street protests.

Al-Bashir was was the one who funded the Janjaweed, and would the next year be extradited to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face genocide charges. The new government in

Khartoum would be a hodge-podge transitional government of civilians activists and military strongmen, but theyproved to be a much better group of peacemakers than al-Bashir's regime.

The Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), the main opposition rebel group, would reach a peace agreement with the Sudanese government in 2020. The SRF would integrate with the Sudanese Armed Forces and they would get seats in government.

At the same time the UN was faced with a financial problem. Demands for budget cuts to peacekeeping,initially by the Trump administration and then later as a result of COVID, made eliminating one of the UN’s largest and most expensive missions a needed cost saving measure in the eyes of the Security Council. UNAMID began to hand over control of key military installations and protection of civilian missions to the newly integrated Sudanese Armed Forces in late 2020.

There are still reasons to be concerned. Violence is still common in the region, and the situation in Sudan as a whole is deeply unstable and unpredictable. Most of the military leaders who control half of Sudan's new government, and who are now charged with protecting the people of Darfur, were the same military officers who commited war crimes in the region while serving al-Bashir. But even with that in mind, it looks like Darfur has its greatest opening for peace since the war started in 2003.

While UNAMID’s withdrawl constitutes a severe reduction in the UNs presence in Sudan, it does not mark a total withdrawl. A special political mission, the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) will replace UNAMID as a successor mission, with a focus on peacebuilding and engagement with the Sudanese government. It won’t have any troops, and will lack the Protection of Civilians mandate that was present in UNAMID. This transition is emblematic of Secretary-General Guterres’ peacekeeping strategy throughout his term. He has consistently favored smaller, cheaper, and more agilepolitical missions rather than larger, more capable, more expensive multidimensional peace operations.

UNAMID was a strange mission. A UN/AU hybrid, created as a result of a primarily western human rightscampaign rarely seen in peacekeeping history, it was able to accomplish some of its goals with limited support from New York. While it was not a full success, UNAMID taught UN peacekeeping as a whole vital lessons in inter-organizational cooperation, troop deployment, and Protection of Civilian missions that will hopefully be taken to heart going forward.

UN Peacekeeping and the Biden Administration

President-Elect Joe Biden will become the 46th President of the United States on January 20th, 2021. When he takes office, a host of pressing issues such as the pandemic, the recession, and the deep political divisions in this country will quickly occupy his time. While a relatively minor issue for the US president, the US plays a key role in the world of UN peacekeeping. Despite its political transition having more in common with the deeply unstable states that UN peacekeepers operate in, the US is responsible for 27.89% of peacekeeping funding (by far the largest contributor) and as a P5 member it has significant influence in where, when, and how peacekeepers operate. Peacekeeping is not a major part of Joe Biden's platform, or part of the American foreign policy discourse at all. In fact, it appears that he has not mentioned peacekeeping in any of his campaign speeches or campaign policy documents. Thus, in order to determine what the relationship between UN peacekeeping and the Biden Administration will look like, we must look at his relationship with UN peacekeeping as a senator and vice president, the Trump Administration's relationship with UN peacekeeping, and the immediate challenges UN peacekeeping will face going into Biden's term of office.  

Joe Biden and UN Peacekeeping

While UN peacekeeping first started in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it was only after the end of the Cold War that the US became a strong and active participant in the UN peacekeeping system. As a prominent member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during that time period, then-Senator Biden established himself as a strong proponent of the increasing US role in UN peacekeeping operations. Most notable, he sponsored S.J. RES. 112, a 1993 piece of legislation that would have allowed the President to put US military units under UN command. While that specific resolution did not pass, US troops became frequent participants in UN peacekeeping missions during the same time period, serving in Somalia, Haiti, and the former Yugoslavia, often under a parallel command structure (where the US and UN forces frequently coordinate and share the same objectives, but have different commanders). At the time US foreign policy makers thought UN peacekeeping was an effective mechanism for collective security that the US should be a strong participant in. For example, then Senator David Boren (D-OK) said "while Americans want something done, they do not want to do it alone." These feelings would sour a few months after the resolution was introduced, when 19 Americans were killed in Mogadishu.

Almost overnight, American public opinion turned against the UN and UN peacekeeping. The American public did not want to risk the lives of American troops for purely humanitarian reasons. The US pulled out of Somalia, stopped deployments to Haiti, and has never been a major troop contributing country since. Some congressional Republicans, led by North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, wanted to go even farther, and tried to cut US funding towards the UN entirely. Biden got Helms to stand down and forged a compromise that ensured the US would pay its bills, in exchange for increased UN accountability.  

Biden was tapped for the vice presidency because of his extensive foreign policy experience, and because of that he played a key role in guiding the relationship between the Obama Administration and UN peacekeeping. Most notably, he hosted a major summit on UN peacekeeping in September 2014, alongside the Secretary-General and representatives from dozens of major contributing countries. In his opening address he highlighted his personal support for peacekeeping, stating that “men and women sometimes from halfway around the world risk their lives to protect peace on the fault lines of conflict is one of the great achievements of this international system.” 

UN Peacekeeping and the Past Two Presidential Administrations

While the Obama Administration never contributed significant numbers of troops to UN operations, it did play a key role in peacekeeping in three major ways. First, it remained the leading funder of UN peace operations, contributing several billion dollars to UN missions over the course of the Administration. In addition, it used its extensive military experience and military budget to increase the professional capability of  UN troop contributing countries such as  Ghana, Ethiopia, and Rwanda, as well as training for UN forces in the field. Finally, it provided substantial logistical support in the form of air transportation and aerial refueling, especially for UN missions in the Sahel region. In the Security Council, the Obama Administration was a relatively strong supporter of UN peacekeeping, advocating for frequent deployments of UN peacekeepers and strongly supporting ongoing missions.

This would largely change during the Trump Administration once it took over in 2017. Republicans traditionally take the UN, with its multilateral systems, with significantly more distrust than Democrats. President Trump, with his frequent rambling about “globalists'' severely disliked the UN, even by Republican standards. Being openly mocked while giving a 2018 speech to the general assembly certainly did not help matters. While the author is unsure if Trump even knows what UN peacekeeping is, his Administration was extremely detrimental to its smooth functioning. The Trump Administration, led by then-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, significantly cut US funding for peace operations. It also left the UN Human Rights Council and  limited US global leadership on the human rights issues peacekeepers work every day to protect. The administration also stopped paying its bills, accumulating a whopping $900 million dollars in arrears, or overdue payments, for UN peacekeeping missions. This has signficant hampered the UN’s already stretched-thin peacekeeping capacity, impacting mission quality. 

Peacekeeping Over the Next Four Years

The pandemic has been the largest disruption of global order since the Second World War. Since they operate in areas most frequently affected by crisis and chaos, peacekeepers are experiencing significant changes in their duties and resources because of the pandemic. In the short term, UN peacekeepers are preparing for COVID outbreaks in their areas of operations, drawing on extensive experience operating alongside Ebola outbreaks in Liberia in 2014 and the DRC in 2019. In addition, major troop contributors are under domestic pressure to limit their troop deployments because of the pandemic. A major report on the matter identified three major long term issues for UN peacekeeping. First, the coronavirus and global recession is likely to decrease state capacity and increase conflict worldwide, necessitating more UN deployments. Second, UN member states will be under financial pressure to cut their UN funding, again due to the recession. Finally, the coronavirus has increased disagreement and conflict on the Security Council, which decreases the efficacy of new and existing UN peacekeeping missions.

Joe Biden will take office in a time when the UN peacekeeping system is under extreme stress due to the pandemic and the recession. As mentioned earlier, we have no clear picture of how President Biden will approach UN peacekeeping. He has given no public statements, speeches, or policy documents on the matter. With that in mind, we can predict how he will act towards UN peacekeeping through his previous interactions with the institution.

That history, written in detail above, suggests that he will be a supporter of UN peace operations. While he can’t solve the many issues that are about to hit the UN, he can help resolve some of them. Most notably, the funding issue. The Obama administration always paid their UN bills, and tried to increase US funding for the UN. The significant arrears accumulated during the Trump terms will finally be paid. In addition, a prospective Biden Administration will most likely be significantly better at managing the Security Council than the Trump Administration was, being less prone to causing major diplomatic rows by, for example, calling the coronavirus the “China Virus” or assassinating an important Iranian official.

In addition, we can determine part of the Bidens administration's attitude towards UN peacekeeping by analyzing his pick for UN ambassador, career diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield. The UN ambassador is the primary link between the US and UN peacekeeping, so their attitudes and ideas are particularly relevant. For example Samantha Power, Obama’s UN ambassador, was a strong proponent of robust and aggressive peacekeeping operations, influenced by her experiences as a war correspondent. Thomas-Greenfield was  Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the Obama years, in which capacity she was responsible for overseeing the logistical, training, and support missions (mentioned earlier) that were the Obama administration's main commitment to UN peacekeeping. She was extremely successful in that capacity, and is well regarded as extremely knowledgeable and competent in peacekeeping affairs. She was also present in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, generally regarded as UN peacekeepings greatest failure. While it is unclear how that event affected her worldview, frequently witnesses to such tragedies tend to lobby for more robust and capable peacekeeping operations to prevent them from occurring again.

People who want the US to take a more active role in UN peacekeeping will most likely be disappointed. While Biden has a long and strong history with peacekeeping, his administration will represent a continuity, rather than a change, from the Obama Administration. Since the “Black Hawk Down” incident, US presidents have supported peacekeeping operations financially, logistically, and on the Security Council, but never as a troop contributing country. Presidential Decision Directive 25, an executive order signed by President Bill Clinton in the aftermath of the Somalia debacle, put a lid on US troop participation in UN missions and has never seriously been re-examined or challenged. For it to be overturned and for US troops to become a key player in UN operations again, there would have to be a significant shift in public opinion towards UN peacekeeping as an institution, one that is unlikely to occur over the course of Biden’s term. Despite that, the election of Joe Biden should be viewed as excellent news by those in the peacekeeping field. The American support that has been so clearly lacking over the last four years will be restored, in a time where it is desperately needed the most.

The UN Needs a Full-Time Military Bureaucracy

The UN, as of August 2020, had 71,786 men and women as a part of their armed forces, deployed in 14 separate peacekeeping missions. In terms of the number of troops actively deployed to combat zones worldwide since the end of the cold war, from any given country, only the United States during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could top that total . 

Because of this it is extremely startling that, since its inception, the UN’s army has been Frankenstein's monster of differing parts. Every infantry battalion, helicopter squadron and field hospital is loaned to the UN’s command from a Troop Contributing Country (TCC).  The various staff officers that command the forces, as well as staff mission headquarters and the UN bureaucracy in Turtle Bay, are all on loan from their home militaries for a one to two year  period. This system, while it has been the UNs since the beginning, puts it at an unnecessary disadvantage. To improve the efficacy of UN peacekeeping, the UN must create its own staff  officer corps, and furthermore, a fully independent military of its own.  

Military contingents to the UN, particularly in eras like the 1990s where UN peacekeeping needs were high, have been entirely unsatisfactory in quality. Tales of units arriving without ammunition, food, or guns are frequent. Bangladeshi units in Rwanda, for example, arrived without any rations or ammunition. Even in intense, internationally encompassing conflicts such as in the Bosnian War (1992-1995), units often take orders from their respective capitals and national political leaders instead of their UN force commander, with disastrous results. 

The failure of UN peacekeepers in Bosnia, and the failure to prevent the massacre of 8,000 civilians in Srebrenica specifically, highlights what happens when the current system fails. UN forces were charged with defending a “safe area” of tens of thousands of civilians deep within Serb-controlled Bosnia. When the Serbs assaulted the safe area in July 1995, the ad-hoc UN/NATO command and control fell apart. The Dutch defenders were unable to coordinate support from nearby Norwegian and Pakistani units, or air support from NATO. They then surrendered, leading to the massacre of thousands in the safe areas. 

While the nucleus of a UN military was in the UN charter and was planned by its founders, a standing UN army was never founded, instead relying on ad-hoc troop contributions from member states. While a standing UN army would improve matters far more than a simple staff officer corps would, the idea of a standing army is currently unfeasible due to a lack of member state support. An appropriate compromise, that provides valuable expertise while tempering member state concerns, would be the creation of a staff officer corps. 

Staff officers are the brain of any UN military mission. Staff officers serve as the  commanding officer of the mission, are responsible for gathering needed intelligence, planning  major operations, and ensuring logistical concerns are all met. Back at the UN’s headquarters in  New York, staff officers are charged with planning new operations, ensuring these missions actually receive the needed  troops from member states, and in general serve as the Pentagon for an army in the middle of 14 separate military operations.  

The UN, as of May 2019, has approximately 3,500 staff officers serving the roles listed above. Unfortunately, none of these officers are permanent UN staff. They are  loaned by member states, for periods of either one year of field service or two years at  headquarters, before being recalled back to their own national armies. Creating a permanent UN  staff, in place of the current loan system, would maintain institutional knowledge, allow the UN  to develop critical skills, and ensure that best talent stays in the UN.  

UN-led peace operations are highly complex, multidimensional missions. They frequently  involve providing quick and deeply needed humanitarian aid, disarming combatant groups,  improving human rights conditions, organizing elections, strengthening rule of law, etc.. Importantly, most of these tasks are outside the conventional spectrum of military operations. Most military officers do not receive significant training on peace operations during their initial training, instead focusing on conventional and unconventional warfare. 

While peace operations is a part of most officers' training, and there are many transferable skills, staff officers often have their clock expire and are sent back to their national armies, just as they learn the nuances of how to carry out their tasks.  This is further complicated at the higher ranks. High-ranking officers, such as Colonels and  Generals, may have significant military training and leadership experience, but are often thrust into significant UN roles with little experience with peace operations.

For example, the four force commanders of the UN’s four largest operations (MINUSMA in Mali, MONUSCO in the DRC,  MINUSCA in the CAR, and UNAMID in Sudan) have only spent three or so years of their decades-long military career in UN peacekeeping. UN capabilities would therefore expand if its military leadership had decades of  experience with peacekeeping specifically, instead of military matters in general.  

In addition, there is a general skill gap growing in the ranks of current staff officers. A  recent UN report noted that there are a lack of officers with needed skill sets in civil-military coordination, military planning, and specialized skills like bomb disarmament, drone use, and map analysis. In addition, that same report found that the UN needed more  french speaking female officers, as well as reiterating the need for high quality leadership. The  best way to plug these persisting skill gaps comes in the form of a permanent UN staff officer  corps. The UN can establish much needed training schools and officer training programs with the  knowledge that they can spend six months training an officer in a skill like GIS (Geographic Information System, a way to analyze geographic information) analysis, and not have  them leave the organization six months after that. In addition, the UN could select applicants who possess the needed skill set instead of relying on member states to hopefully contribute officers with the needed skill set.

Lastly, the UN can actually gain access to some of the talented officers that it currently can't recruit. While in some militaries, UN service is viewed as a highly coveted assignment that  develops valuable intercultural skills and experience in conflict zones (particularly European and  African militaries), in other militaries it is viewed as a career dead end. This is particularly true  for the US military, who has rarely contributed military forces to UN missions since the 1990s.  This is particularly worrisome, since the US military currently possesses the largest, best trained, 

and most experienced staff officer corps in the world. It allocates $18,459,000 to officer education, currently maintains an officer corps 80,000 strong, and has extensive experience from Iraq and Afghanistan.  By establishing a staff officer corps of its  own, the UN could effectively poach military officers from armies that traditionally would never  send these officers to the UN, promising them better benefits and chances for career  advancement.  

Because of all of these reasons, the UN needs a full time military bureaucracy. It can still  rely on its member states as sources of new staff officers, which every country produces through  officer training programs and military colleges. But once they are in the UN system, they are  permanently loaned to the UN, with its own rank and  promotion system, instead of only a few year long temporary loan.  

Critics have two main concerns about any form of UN-led military. First, many  ideological conservatives worldwide have concerns about a non-state entity having a military. It’s a pillar of modern sovereignty theory that only the state, through its armed forces and police, can make use of legitimate violence. An army that is fully loyal to an international organization, instead of only loaned to it, is a violation of those norms. Having only the staff officers be loyal to the UN, instead of the entire force as a whole, is a strong compromise. In this new world order, only the brains of the UN’s army would be fully loyal to the UN, the metaphorical arms, body, and legs of the being would still be loyal to the various UN member states.  

In addition, critics contend that an international staff would be unwieldy at best due to the massive cultural and institutional differences in each separate officer's background and  training. However, these issues can be overcome with strong intercultural training and by officers simply  gaining more experience in the international work environment. These are best developed with a permanent corps. The ability for multicultural staff to work well provided they have common training and methods has been highlighted in recent years by the success of recent NATO and EU  joint military commands, such as IFOR in Afghanistan.  

In 2020’s conflict-ridden international stage, UN peacekeeping has become more necessary than ever before. The number of conflicts, UN missions, and UN peacekeepers rises every year.  Furthermore, UN peacekeepers are more and more willing to engage in violent action as part of  these operations, significantly upping the stakes and reiterating the need for a strong officer  corps. 

Creating a permanent officer corps for the UN would go a long way towards improving  the capability of UN peacekeeping missions, while at the same time meeting the concerns of  member states who are afraid of a “UN army” becoming a serious power in world military  affairs. The secretariat and the security council should seriously consider implementing this  policy if they want to improve the efficacy of peacekeeping operations at limited political and fiscal cost. 

An Appeal to Geneva: Racial Politics and Discrimination at the Founding of the United Nations

Human rights often pose a paradox - foundational human truths, such as freedom from oppression and discrimination are arguably some of the most contested rights in the world, spanning all continents, all countries, all races, all religions, and all peoples. Human rights were formally institutionalized by the United Nations in 1948. The UN definition of human rights inaugurated norms of such basic rights and the prioritization of them within a Western context and notions of world order post-WWII. With human rights established for the first time, it is important to be critical of the time frame and historical significance of political and societal culture of the West - most notably in the United States with racial segregation. With the US playing a critical role in the creation of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), by-products of politics and racism - the UN Declaration of Human Rights at its founding is inherently racists and discriminatory. How the UN defined, wrote and prioritized the UDHR and subsequent application of the declaration, fail to acknowledge the oppression and human rights abuses in the United States. The United States is insincere in regards to the role the US played in the creation and policies of the United Nations UDHR. The United Nations was created at a time when basic human rights were being denied to many citizens of African, Asian, South American and Indigenous descent in the United States. Forced segregation, Jim Crow laws, mob lynching and institutionalized racism, classism and sexism were experienced across the country. With a particular look at racism and the creation of the United Nations, a sense of injustice, inequality and Western ideology are at the core of the founding of the institution that represents the world. With the United States being the most influential leader in the creation of the United Nations, it is important to scrutinize the role the U.S. had in the creation of the institutional flaws of the UN.

The United States has one of the most complex and paradoxical histories of a democracy; built on the enslavement of Brown and Black bodies. Institutional racism will be defined and used within the context of the U.S. “...as the policies, programs, and practices of public and private institutions that result in greater rates of poverty, dispossession, criminalization, illness, and ultimately mortality of African Americans. Most importantly, it is the outcome that matters, not the intentions of the individuals involved.” This definition comes from African and Black Diaspora scholar, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. The fight for racial equality has been present in the US since the founding. Similarities between Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech, “What is the fourth of July to a slave?” have similar tones to W.E.B. Dubois’ Introduction to Appeal to the World: A Statement of Denial of the Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress (The Appeal). While a key difference from 1852 to 1947 was that slavery was unconstitutional in 1947, the rough 100 years, however, did little to change the oppression and institutionalized racism of Brown and Black bodies in the United States. However, with the creation of the United Nations as an international institution, a mode of redress was able to be amplified beyond the borders of the so-called Land of the Free. An Appeal to the World began the foundational movement for future Black power and race-related rights to be addressed, recognized and contemporary ideologies to be contested through the use of international institutions such as the UN on an international level. The elevated attention and body of nations allowed for racial oppression in the U.S. to be heard on a much larger platform than previously in human history.

The Appeal

The Appeal was not the first document presented to the United Nations on the racial oppression and discrimination in the United States. On June 6, 1946, the National Negro Congresses (NNC) petitioned the United Nations’ Secretary General’s Office with A Petition to the United Nations on Behalf of the 13 Million oppressed Negro Citizens of the United States of America (the Petition). This 15-page petition outlines the “economic, social, political, and physical machine of oppression” experienced by Black bodies in the U.S. The Petition was distributed and gained positive responses around the world from Bolivia to the West Indies along with support from American groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). While the NNC was known for communist ideologies, the U.S. Government and primarily the FBI tried to discredit the Petition as communist propaganda and ‘un-American’. The UN required evidence to be gathered as proof that the rights of African Americans were being violated. Because of the organizational structure of the NNC, collection of evidence was almost impossible for the organization and the Petition was dropped. The NAACP leaders Walter White and W.E. Burghardt Du Bois’ inspiration came from the Petition and began to craft their own appeal. The chair of the Human Rights Commission was Eleanor Roosevelt, who was also on the Board of Directors of the NAACP, Du Bois and White believed they had a fighting chance at the idea and believed Roosevelt would support their work (Anderson 2003, 93).

The Appeal to the World: A Statement of Denial of the Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress was written by W.E. Burghardt Du Bois; Earl B. Dickerson, Milton R. Konvitz; William R. Ming, Jr; Leslie S. Perry; Rayford W. Logan and presented to the United Nations

On October 23, 1947. Where the Petition was ideologically driven, it failed in being able to provide the appropriate structure that was required by the UN. The Appeal was able to fulfill the instructional bureaucracy, provide in-depth analysis and evidence, all while creating a compelling argument. The Appeal sought to change the way in which rights were conceptually understood and realized in the racial context of America. A movement and discourse to change from civil rights to human rights. The discourse was all within the freedom and equality struggle not just in the U.S. but racial equality around the world. Scholar Carol Anderson emphasizes that this was a critical move because equality from the perspective of white America and institutionalized racism understood equality as a slow progression to ‘equalness’ rather than the literal definition of equal. Through the conceptual shift to human rights, Du Bois then contends that the greatest threat to the US is within its own racist ideology. Du Bois gives a powerful introduction stating that, “When will nations learn that their enemies are quite as often within their own country as without? It is not Russia that threatens the United States so much as Mississippi; not Stalin and Molotov, but Bilbo and Rankin; internal injustice done to one’s brothers is far more dangerous than the aggression of strangers from abroad.” While history agrees with Du Bois in the importance of dealing with domestic issues, it is important to acknowledge that while simplistic, slavery, the Civil War, lynching, police brutality and racism at this time had killed more Americans than the Cold War ever did and ever would (including any proxy wars). The Appeal is a 94-page document and history of the grievances of Black and African-Americans organized chronologically; providing examples of oppression and discrimination. Organized by chapters from the USA's founding to pre-World War I; Black Legal status since WWI, present Black legal status from WWI to WWII; Patterns of Discrimination in Fundamental Human Rights; and concluding with the efforts made by the UN for Human Rights and rights of Minorities. The Appeal provides basic statistics, facts, and evidence, most of which was in the NNC’s Petition but dramatically expanded upon. The international component not only points of the hypocrisy of Western nations in DuBois stating that,

To disarm the hidebound minds of men is the only path to peace; and as long as Great Britain and the United States profess democracy with one hand and deny it to millions with the other, they convince none of their sincerity, least of all themselves… Most people of the world are more or less colored in skin; their presence at the meetings of the United Nations as participants, and as visitors, renders them always liable to insult and to discrimination; because they may be mistaken for Americans of Negro descent...

A critical aspect of The Appeal was the lack of state sponsorship, and the US had zero intention of sponsoring the document. While the African-American Black populations was larger than the population of some member states in the UN, the Petition was nonetheless dismissed as a domestic grievance and inapplicable.

The symbolism behind both the NNC’s Petition and the NAACP’s Appeal was one of the first instances of requesting redress beyond and acknowledgment of oppression within your own state to an international audience. The Petition and The Appeal at the time were politically disruptive towards American Foreign policy because of the danger of UN jurisdiction over “domestic affairs” and Cold War politics. The Soviet Union used America’s failings in racial equality in political attacks against the U.S. and democracy. On June 22, 1946, India filed a complaint with the UN with the South African Apartheid Government over racial discrimination laws that violated treaties. The Union of South African government claimed the mater outside the jurisdiction of the UN and that no internationally recognized human rights existed at the time.The matters of jurisdiction, defined and recognized rights became ever more a political discussion. Scholar Mary Dudziak emphasized the idea that if Apartheid human rights violations were enforceable by the UN, subsequently Jim Crow laws could be next and vice-versa. The U.S. had no interest in allowing for that to happen and neither did other nation-states’ such as Union of South Africa that had human rights violations occurring in their country and used what power they had to influence the UN to think and act in the interest of the US.

The Impact of the Appeal

The Appeal set into motion key Cold War ideological debates as well as provided a new international platform for the oppression of African-Americans and Blacks’ voices to be heard. One key and important response that The Appeal had was that of Eleanor Roosevelt’s refusal to be present and disdain to have The Appeal be presented to the United Nations. Roosevelt herself, who was a known critic of racial discrimination, refused to acknowledge The Appeal in fear of what The Appeal would do to America’s fight against communism. Her concern was sound in that the Soviet Union proposed that the NAACP’s charges be investigated. “On December 4, 1947, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights rejected the proposal, and the United Nations took no action on the petition”. The image of the US as a racial opressor, however, remained a significant battle for US foreign policy during the Cold War. As scholar Mary Dudziak points out in her book, Cold War Civil Rights, “If the [US] could not eradicate the conditions that gave rise to foreign criticism [racism in the US], it could at least place them ‘in context’... Rehabilitating the moral character of American democracy would become an important focus of Cold War diplomacy”. And so the United States, rather than foundational challenging and changing the racialized country created justifications and defenses for post-WWII segregated America.

The Appeal to the World not only significantly pointed out the flaws in American democracy, but the document also inspired documents of the like to be continuously presented to the UN. The petition, We Charge Genocide was presented to the UN in 1951 in Paris. We Charge Genocide created a linkage between police brutality and the inhumane targeting, profiling, and killing of a group of people based on notions of race specifically in the United States. The petition argued that police brutality crimes should be punishable by the UN Genocide Convention. The Appeal, and the subsequent We Charge Genocide created a notion for future Black Power leaders such as Malcolm X who in his famous speech, The Ballot or the Bullet in 1964 directly calls out the UN and highlights the need to define the oppression and the Civil Rights movement as a human rights issue, which appeared as well in the Appeal to the World.

Conclusion

“To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world”. - Frederick Douglass

To apply to modern times, to not acknowledge and scrutinize the motives, power politics and manipulation by the United States’ interest into the foundation of the creation of the first human rights laws is a server injustice not only the people whose human rights were violated but to also concede defeat to the belief that human rights only apply to certain people. While An Appeal to the World did not address, restore or equalize the rights of African-Americans and Black people in America, it did foster the scholarship and language in regards to how racial rights and therefore human rights are discussed in the context of the US. However the question remains, does the United Nations, or any international organization, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) serve in modern notions as a platform for human rights denials to be heard and addressed in the United States? Answering this question requires a realistic analysis of these institutions - particularly looking at the UN and ICC, two institutions based on the protection and defense of human rights. The hope of redress through the United Nations in 1947 was also centered on the hope of international support from South American states and in recently decolonized states in Africa. With the development of power and politics within the last 50 years - the hope of redress through the United Nations, in particular, is less likely.  In regards to the ICC, the United States while signed the Rome Statute, that instituted the ICC, never ratified it and thus ICC does not have jurisdiction unless the United States consents to involve the ICC. Institutions such as the UN and ICC are forces of good and do valuable international work. While the creation of the United Nations was groundbreaking, it is critical to be mindful of the process that still needs to happen. The concepts and arguments created in The Appeal and in the formation go beyond the domestic sphere through international institutions and politics. Progress has been made, in that the UN now has a committee on The Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the United States is recognized as an obvious violator of racial equality. Racial inequality still exists in the world and in the United State. With movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, the fight for true equality continues.