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UN Failing in the Horn? |
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Criticizing the UN sometimes feels like the equivalent of beating up a cripple. And I’ll freely admit that I have little knowledge of inside UN culture. And that I have some awareness of the challenges they face in regions like the Horn of Africa.
Nonetheless, an article like today’s BBC piece about the UN’s inability to carry out any of its missions in the Horn frustrates me. From an outsider perspective, it feels like UN missions in the post-Cold War period, especially in Africa, have suffered from a lack of precisely defined goals. They enter into missions without a clear framework, stumble, and then are forced to make an embarrassing exit. That’s what happened in Somalia in 1993-5, and that’s what’s happening in the Horn now. At the very least, they have a problem interfacing with the public and communicating to us exactly what they achieve - or try to achieve - in these situations.
Consider the multiple fronts on which UN missions in the Horn are in danger of failing:
1. The UN may pull 1,700 peacekeepers out of the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia when the mandate ends on Thursday, risking a return to war between the two nations.
2. Member nations are quarreling over whether the ICC should pursue its arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
3. The UNAMID force in Darfur only has a third of its intended force deployed, and voices accusing it of failure are growing increasingly outspoken.
4. Somalia, which the article doesn’t mention, continues to slip into starvation and utter collapse while the UN flirts with the idea of sending in peacekeepers.
All in all, it’s hard not to say that the UN is failing in the Horn. Is it a question of overreach, and should they set more modest goals? It’s hard to see what the point is of deploying 9,000 troops to stop a genocide, or 1,700 troops to prevent a war, when those numbers are clearly inadequate. I honor the men and women who serve in such difficult circumstances, but in the broader picture it seems their presence is largely symbolic. In Ethiopia/Eritrea, for example, they are only staving off problems, not solving them:
The forces of the two nations are now are separated by a few hundred metres and the UN force has helped maintain a fragile peace…But the UN has already withdrawn most of its peacekeepers after Eritrea cut off fuel and food to the UN mission last year. It was angered by Ethiopia’s refusal to comply with a binding ruling from international arbitrators on where the border should run. Ethiopian troops are stationed deep within the territory given to Eritrea, and Eritrea had demanded that the UN compel Ethiopia to withdraw.
However, there was no appetite at the UN for such direct intervention.
We desperately need international bodies to solve the world crises that no individual nation could (or should) solve. But it’s hard to think that the UN, in its present incarnation, could be the type of international body that we need to make a real and lasting difference in the world’s worst crisis zones.
If we are going to call a spade a spade, most of UN problems in the horn stem from the 5 permanent SC members choosing to push their own agendas at the expense of UN and international rule of law.
If we take the case of the Ethio Eritrean border, it does not suffer from lack of precisely defined goals in fact the opposite. The goals from day one was to identify the border by a third party that the two antagonists agreed ahead, the decision was final, binding and non negotiable. Clear, open and shut case.
Yet when the decision put Eritrea morally and legally on the right, rather than enforcing its own ruling the UN was shamelessly arm twisted by the 3 members of the SC to do nothing and even worse to falsify monitoring reports about how more than 2000 Eritrean soldiers were present in Somalia, that turned out to be false. This has put IN in the direct wrath of Eritrea, which rightly sees the UN as being manipulated, unfair and lacks credibility.
There are other major UN inconsistencies, like while Ethiopia is breaking UN sanctions and resolutions on the arming and invasion of Somalia, rather than penalizing it, UN is encouraging it.
e.g. The UN seems to be happy and keeping quite about the massive Ethiopian armaments purchase from North Korea, partial funded by the US but is breaking both US and UN sanctions, while whining and trying to block Zimbabwe’s armed shipment from China that is not breaking any UN rules.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/08/news/arms.php
China and Russia are not any better when it comes to Sudan and other countries.
The only solution I see is, UN should shield itself from the interest of individual SC members, and concentrate more in fairly upholding international rule of law, come what may. As it stands it is rightly being criticized for its next to nothing existence.
Now that the Eritrean-Ethiopian border has been legally demarcated, how long will the UN wait to condemn the Military occupation of Eritrea by the US’ “Ally,” Ethiopia?
Are any of the Security Council members’ interests more important than the interests of the International Community, whom it purportedly represents?
Stay tuned for the next episode of the “United Nations” realpolitik saga!
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