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“What’s true is that a world organized by multilateral cooperation is a more just world order based upon sovereign equality of states, the rule of law, the practice of diplomacy, and not ‘might makes right’ in which a strong country can simply take territory from another country, as we saw for all of human history, up until the 20th century,” said Adam Lupel, IPI Vice President, during an event hosted by the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA).

He added, “This is important for small countries, though the strong countries also have an interest in this system, because we all have an interest in peace, and there is no doubt statistically that interstate war has been [on] a dramatic decline since the creation of the UN.”

Dr. Lupel spoke extensively on multilateralism during a conversation with Peter Yeo, President of the Better World Organization, on July 15, 2020, at an event moderated by Rachel Pittman, Executive Director of UNA-USA.

“I think today’s context of a pandemic is a real case in point,” Dr. Lupel pointed out. “This is a global phenomenon and even the strongest country in the world can’t handle it in isolation—it’s something that we need cooperation to handle.”

“Also, it’s only through multilateral cooperation that we can aspire to do the really big things—end poverty, feed the world, combat climate change, advance human rights—things that we’re looking to do on a global scale,” he said. “And this uncertainty has only been exacerbated by the pandemic and evident divisions in the multilateral system that has made a globally coordinated response so difficult.”

In response to a question about nationalism, Dr. Lupel said, “If nationalism means isolationism and go-it-alone, it is a problem from an international perspective because it won’t lead to a safer, more secure and more prosperous nation. It will actually lead to an impoverished and more insecure nation, because there are a host of problems that can only be addressed through both cooperation and the pursuit of national interests.”

Dr. Lupel noted that the multilateral system is not just about the UN Security Council but also relates to real technical cooperation—civil aviation, the Universal Postal Union, telecommunications—”all these things have multilateral mechanisms that ease the way for us to do things that are very common, but actually would be very difficult if we didn’t cooperate internationally,” he said.

He recalled that the conversation in the lead up to the UN’s 75th anniversary “is more future-oriented. It is about recognizing global transformations and the uncertainty regarding where the international system is heading.

“Many people are beginning to speak about this moment as one of two things for the international system. It is either a moment in which long-term trends are simply being accelerated: geopolitical division, inequality, rising nationalism. Or it is a fork in the road, where we can make real change, and change direction.”

Dr. Lupel said it is likely a bit of both, “but what is clear is that the decisions being made today will have profound consequences.”

He added, “So to the extent that ‘Multilateralism is under Fire,’ organizations like the UNA-USA and IPI have a great task ahead of them to work against those trends that threaten multilateral approaches and work to improve efforts at international cooperation.”

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Despite advancement in some areas, countries around the world are still not on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The transformation needed to achieve these goals depends on innovation and initiatives that build on existing capacities and fit the needs of local contexts, yet the 2030 Agenda remains largely unknown at the local level. Therefore, a key avenue for progress is to move the focus below the national level to the subnational level, including cities and communities.

Toward this end, together with partners including the UN Trust Fund for Human Security and the Government of The Gambia, the International Peace Institute hosted a forum in Banjul on “Localizing the 2030 Agenda: Building on What Works” in October 2019. This forum provided a platform for learning and sharing among a diverse group of stakeholders, including government officials from both the national and municipal levels, UN resident coordinators, and civil society representatives.

Drawing on the discussions at the forum, this report highlights the path some West African countries have taken toward developing locally-led strategies for implementing the 2030 Agenda. It focuses in particular on four key factors for these strategies: ownership across all levels of society; decentralization; coordination, integration, and alignment; and mobilization of resources to support implementation at the local level.

For more information related to IPI’s work during the 2020 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, see here.

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The extent to which consideration of human rights is integrated into the generation, operational configuration, and evaluation of uniformed personnel of United Nations peacekeeping missions was the subject of a June 25th virtual event co-sponsored by IPI and the Permanent Mission of Finland to the UN. The event served to launch the policy paper Integrating Human Rights into the Operational Readiness of UN Peacekeepers co-authored by Namie Di Razza, Senior Fellow and Head of Protection of Civilians at the IPI, and Jake Sherman, Senior Director of Programs and Director of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations.

The paper offers a definition of “human rights readiness” for peacekeepers, which is intended to complement the UN’s “operational readiness” policy framework. It analyzes the extent to which human rights are integrated into training and force generation for uniformed peacekeepers, and concludes with concrete recommendations for how the UN and troop- and police-contributing countries can strengthen human rights readiness.

Jukka Salovaara, Permanent Representative of Finland to the UN, said that human rights training was compulsory for all Finnish police recruits in keeping with Finnish foreign policy’s overall emphasis on human rights. “Finland’s goals in international human rights policy are the eradication of discrimination and increased openness and inclusion, and we are really mainstreaming this in all our foreign policy. And it is crucial to us that the men and women we deploy in the field respect the principles of human rights. This is critical for upholding the credibility of UN peacekeeping and the shared value of UN operations.”

Ilze Brands Kehris, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said, “We have in the last few years worked with various internal and external partners to mainstream UN peacekeeping under a broad framework of human rights readiness.” She said the goal was to “reinforce the centrality of human rights” and to ensure that personnel from the UN and countries that contribute police and troops to UN operations had human rights training. “Political willingness and respect for human rights is a key condition and prerequisite for peace and security at the national, regional, and international levels, including in the work at the UN.”

Luis Carrilho, Police Adviser, UN Department of Peace Operations, declared, “Every United Nations police officer, like every police officer around the world, is a human rights officer. And the police is one of the most visible faces of the state, so the action of the police is key for the balance between freedom and security for all.” He said that all mandated tasks should incorporate “democratic policing,” which he described as policing in which the human rights of everyone are “protected, promoted and respected.” The best way to guarantee that, he said, was through comprehensive and early training. “It goes without saying that effective training, with human rights aspects, mainstreaming human rights throughout, lies at the core of these efforts.” He also said it was critical that this training should be conducted prior to deployment.

Also arguing for thorough-going pre-deployment training was Mark Pedersen, Director, Integrated Training Service, UN Department of Peace Operations. “Human rights is not a peacekeeping-only skill, it should be the foundational knowledge for all soldiers and police personnel,” he said. “The first time a soldier… meets a human rights issue should not be on a peacekeeping operation. As long as we continue to deal with a situation where that first encounter is in a peacekeeping situation, we’ll be struggling uphill to inculcate human rights among peacekeeping personnel.”

Francesca Marotta, Chief, Methodology, Education and Training Section, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that in force generation, knowledge of human rights was a key determinant in both selecting and deploying UN personnel. “An effort has been made to flesh out modalities leading to uniformed personnel best equipped to advance human rights aspects of mandates.” She said the UN screening policy had two main goals—“to preempt the deployment of personnel involved in violations” and “to enable selection of personnel and units that are best equipped to effectively implement their mandates.” She said there were still “gaps in training where specialized human rights resources may be limited. We know from our work with troop/police-contributing countries that national trainers who are typically police officers may not have the effective background to deliver human rights training” and that “resorting to external partners may also have its limits.” Instead, she said, OHCHR had developed a pre-deployment training approach jointly teaching both policing and human rights expertise. “We have partnered with standard police capacity to develop training of human rights that provides a different understanding of human rights.” The first such course was conducted in Jordan for African peace trainers, she said, but a second had to be postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maj. Gen. Hugh Van Roosen, Deputy Military Adviser, UN Department of Peace Operations, said that a major focus of his office’s work was educating peacekeepers about human rights. “For the military, if we are going to require individuals to be stewards of human rights, as part of the protection of civilians strategy and our other tasks and mandates, we have to have a clear understanding of what those human rights are,” he explained. He said that explicit language about concepts of human rights tasks, principles, and standards was now included in infantry manuals and training materials. “Within the UN structure, there is a long-overdue integration of these concepts and practices in a way that’s meaningful to basic soldiers. If a basic soldier said simply ‘human rights,’ without any definition of what we are talking about, that would not be clearly understood. We have to focus on clear tasks and standards, and I’m delighted to report that the integrated effort we’ve been making is beginning to pay off.”

Sari Rautio, Director, Security Policy, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, stressed the importance of exchanging lessons learned. “An important finding of our training is that international cooperation offers the opportunity to share best practices, develop and compare modules, share trainers and students, create and harmonize standards.” She added, “We take to heart the recommendation that we should make greater use of human rights officers and human rights NGOs and human rights commissions in the training. We already do this, but there is always space to improve.” Finland put particular emphasis on the need for women in peacekeeping and has achieved gender parity in two of its annual UN missions over three years, she said. “Finland thinks the inclusion of women in peace operations is a prerequisite for sustainable peace, democracy, and human rights. By the same token, the participation of women in peacekeeping widens the skills available, access to communities, and ways UN missions can be enhanced.”

Mohammad Koba, Deputy Permanent Representative of Indonesia to the UN, said that in selecting persons for peacekeeping missions, “we check their human rights records to make sure we have the most qualified and well-prepared personnel. We develop human rights-specific training, incorporating lessons learned.” He stressed that meeting human rights objectives was a mission-wide responsibility. “The civilian human rights component has the main responsibility. However, all personnel in the mission—both civilian and uniformed—have an important role to play. The delivery of human rights mandates on the ground is not easy, and now the challenge has become even greater with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Christoph Heusgen, Permanent Representative of Germany to the UN, said that how peacekeeping and special political missions can contribute more effectively to the promotion and protection of human rights would be a focus of the current German presidency of the UN Security Council. “It’s important that peacekeepers have a clear understanding of what human rights is,” he said.

Dr. Di Razza, co-author of the policy paper, observed that although human rights was a part of the core pre-deployment training prepared by the UN and administered by member states to their personnel, “the delivery of these trainings can vary in quality.” And while the human rights screening had improved from the days when it relied on self-certification, she said, there still was a need for a greater role by the Secretariat to do its own assessment of the human rights readiness of personnel. Commenting on another of the paper’s findings, she said, “quite interestingly, as the UN focused on the human rights records and compliance of non-UN partners, it seems that more processes were developed for external actors than for UN personnel themselves.”

The other co-author of the paper and moderator of the discussion, Jake Sherman, remarked, “Human rights activities are not just for the human rights component of a mission, and the speakers today have emphasized that this is really an obligation for all peacekeepers and that the intent of this initiative is to try to proactively integrate human rights into police and military operations. There is a solid policy basis that already exists within the organization to do that. This is ultimately a partnership between the UN and member states, and if the UN is going to be able to hold up its end of the partnership, it needs capacities to be able to do so across the whole range of offices and departments.”

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While most United Nations peace operations are expected to protect civilians from any source of physical violence, they also need to maintain the consent of the host-state to function. How the missions work with, despite, or even against the host state to implement their protection mandates while supporting the host state is the subject of a new IPI policy paper With or Against the State? Reconciling the Protection of Civilians and Host-State Support for UN Peacekeeping. The paper was launched at a June 10th virtual event, cosponsored by IPI and the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the UN.

“The UN is an organization of states, and support to host states represents a cornerstone of UN peacekeeping approaches,” explained Dr. Namie Di Razza, IPI Senior Fellow and Head of Protection of Civilians, who moderated the conversation. “Supporting host states is critical to ensure national ownership of protection strategies, and the sustainability of protection activities undertaken by UN peacekeepers,” but “at the same time,” she said, “where state actors, such as national security forces, are themselves responsible for violence against civilians, peacekeepers are expected to confront government actors.”

The author of the report, Dr. Patryk I. Labuda, Non-resident Fellow at IPI and Hauser Post-Doctoral Global Fellow at New York University School of Law, outlined the potential conflict between people-oriented peacekeeping and state-centric support. “On the one hand,” he said, “the rise of POC is a priority, and on the other, there is the rise of host-state support, and by that, I mean more and more mandates that require peacekeeping to support host-states. This report is an attempt to see to what extent these two parallel phenomena are compatible, or in some cases incompatible.”

Dr. Labuda reported that in his research, when he would ask peacekeepers why they were operating in a country, “they reflexively, effortlessly invoke POC, it rolls off the tongue naturally, ‘We’re here to protect civilians.’ But when you ask whether POC is something that should be done together with the host-state, in support of the host-state, reactions vary significantly. Some think that the host-state is the end game—everything the mission does, including POC, is a means to an end, empowering the host-state because it will have to take over the mission. At the other end of the spectrum, they view the state with suspicion, caution, and even mistrust.”

Among the examples of events causing friction that he highlighted were the implementation of the human rights due diligence policy, instances when support of government actors is seen as a risk to civilians, and self-censorship in missions, as in “when do peacekeeping personnel tone down or suppress criticism of the host government’s human rights record to be able to maintain cooperation?” He singled out what he called the “most controversial question: When can peacekeepers use force against state actors? The problem is that peacekeepers are dependent on host-state support, and by using force against the state, they are imperiling, weakening that host-state consent.”

Ugo Solinas, member of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Integrated Operational Team, UN Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations (DPPA/DPO), said it was essential that missions be “pragmatic” about maintaining host-state consent, which is “dynamic and ebbing and flowing in response to political interests and actors on the ground.” He expressed concern over what he viewed as an overreliance on the use of force. “These dilemmas and these problems cannot be resolved through the use of force alone… but increasingly the success, effectiveness or failure of peacekeeping operations is seen through the lens of willingness to use force. Recent years show that while force may be part of the equation, it is certainly not the solution, and certainly not when force is applied in the absence of the broader political understanding of the objective that the mission is trying to achieve in partnership with a broader set of actors who have a stake in the success of the mission.”

He said he was encouraged by evidence that an alternative approach—engagement—was “becoming the default setting instead of go/no go.” He cited engagement on human rights, justice, and child protection, where important progress has been made. “Through engagement with leadership at all levels, from the highest levels to provincial levels to communities, engagement has proven more effective, including at the height of tension in the 2016-18 period when MONUSCO (UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) was facing pushback from the authorities. Engagement helped to de-escalate tension and ensure an open line of communication that enabled the mission to create a protective environment.” He declared, “Going forward, we should be looking to strengthen those aspects.”

Aditi Gorur, Senior Fellow and Director of the Protecting Civilians in Conflict Program, Stimson Center, said a mission’s effectiveness often depended upon the kind of host-state consent it had, which she categorized in three ways— “strong,” “weak” and “compromised.” She said that “often consent may be strong at the start of the mission and can deteriorate over time,” due to developments that governments can see as threatening their sovereignty like elections. In light of this, she advised to “Take advantage of a window of strong consent at the beginning” of peacekeeping missions’ deployment.

As a general rule, she said, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure… Once we reach a crisis point of consent, options become much more limited.” She said that problems in navigating consent arose often through “simple misunderstandings.” One way to head off those misunderstandings, she suggested, was for the Security Council before deployment to “sign a compact with the government for a shared political vision, with a detailed role for the government and for the mission so that expectations can be aligned.” She said governments had the “ultimate trump card of expelling missions,” and it was consequently important for missions to be developing relationships with many stakeholders beyond the head of state “so that it’s not just one individual who will be deciding whether a mission stays or leaves.” Describing the “worst-case scenario,” she said, “We want to prevent situations where missions are unintentionally bolstering autocratic states.”

Ammar Mohammed Mahmoud, Counselor, Permanent Mission of the Republic of Sudan to the UN, commented that “analyzing the element of consent on paper, the UN Security Council authorized peacekeeping missions to always give the primary responsibility of POC to national governments. But once the peacekeeping mission starts to operate, it is recommended that it engage in dialogue with the authorities, government and local communities. Whatever is the strength of the peacekeeping mission remains secondary to that of the government. That dialogue should have two objectives: implementation of the strategy of POC and building the capacity of law enforcement bodies to be equipped with international standards and best practices.”

Lizbeth Cullity, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), raised the range of challenges the mission was facing, including farmer-herder tensions, ethnic divides, class disputes, and a situation where many of the armed groups are Muslim and the central government is Christian. She said MINUSCA had focused on “investing in people who can develop watchdog groups, who can understand how local governance is operating, what local budgets look like and how they can contribute to their society.” She described how MINUSCA had developed a “complex monitoring mechanism” to track closely communities, security concerns, and political perspectives at a local level. “My favorite recommendation of the report is capacity building for a people-centered and holistic approach. I could not agree more, and that comes after 20 years of peacekeeping in Haiti and Sierra Leone and Mali, that if we focus only on the states, we will never ever reach our goal.”

In brief remarks, Karel J.G. Van Oosterom, the Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the UN, praised the IPI report. “I think the report is spot-on that stabilization missions are really something completely different with a new environment, new threats, new challenges, but also with a new role for the host governments. And indeed, is it with or against the government? I think for all of us, it would be our preference to work very closely with government—it’s very difficult to work against—but sometimes there is a friction between the two, and on that, I think your report was very enlightening.”

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Contemporary UN peace operations are expected to implement ambitious protection of civilians (POC) mandates while supporting host states through conflict prevention, peacemaking, and peacebuilding strategies. Reconciling these people-oriented POC mandates and the state-centric logic of UN-mandated interventions ranks among the greatest challenges facing peace operations today.

This report explores how peace operations implement POC mandates when working with, despite, or against the host state. It analyzes the opportunities, challenges, and risks that arise when peacekeepers work with host states and identifies best practices for leveraging UN support to national authorities. The paper concludes that peacekeeping personnel in each mission need to decide how to make the most of the UN’s strengths, mitigate risks to civilians, and maintain the support of government partners for mutually desirable POC goals.

The paper offers seven recommendations for managing POC and host-state support going forward:

• Persuade through dialogue: Peace operations should work to keep open channels of communication and better prepare personnel for interacting with state officials.
• Leverage leadership: The UN should better prepare prospective mission leaders for the complex POC challenges they will face.
• Make capacity building people-centered and holistic: The UN should partner with a wider group of actors to establish a protective environment while reconceptualizing mandates to restore and extend state authority around people-centered development initiatives.
• Induce best practices: Missions should leverage capacity building and other forms of support to promote national ownership and foster best practices for POC.
• Coordinate pressure tactics: Peace operations should make use of the full spectrum of bargaining tools at their disposal, including pressure tactics and compulsion.
• Deliver coherent, mission-specific messaging on the use of force: The UN should improve training, political guidance, and legal advice on the use of force, including against state agents.
• Reconceptualizing engagement with states on POC as a “whole-of-mission” task: The UN Secretariat should articulate a vision and mission-specific guidelines for partnerships with host governments on POC.

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“When a mission fails to protect civilians, that calls into question the credibility of the entire peacekeeping undertaking and the credibility of the United Nations,” said Valentine Rugwabiza, Permanent Representative of Rwanda to the UN. “We’ve seen that. This is what is at stake.”

Geraldine Byrne Nason, the Permanent Representative of Ireland to the UN, agreed, saying “those of us with experience with conflict or who are peacekeepers know that when protection fails, consequences are absolutely devastating.”

The two ambassadors were speaking about the centrality of Protection of Civilians to effective peacekeeping at a May 29th IPI virtual policy forum on Pledging to Protect Civilians in Peacekeeping Operations: Lessons from the Implementation of the Kigali Principles. The forum took place on the International Day of Peacekeepers, during the UN’s annual Protection of Civilians (POC) Week.

Adopted five years ago at the High-Level International Conference on POC in Kigali, Rwanda, the Kigali Principles are a non-binding set of 18 pledges for more effective and thorough implementation of POC in UN peacekeeping. The principles focus on the training of troops, their performance, and their readiness to identify and address threats, including through the use of force to protect civilians, the provision of adequate resources and capabilities, and the establishment of accountability and oversight mechanisms.

“The Kigali Principles are crystal clear that peacekeepers must be prepared for the tasks set for them,” said Ambassador Byrne Nason. “There are extraordinary challenges with far too many instances where we have seen that the deliberate targeting of vulnerable people and communities is still happening. And let’s be frank, without the proper resources, peacekeeping missions will never be able to fulfill the roles that we set.” She lauded the Kigali Principles for providing a good framework but added, “that framework is of little use if it’s not fully implemented.”

Ms. Rugwabiza said one of the key purposes of implementing the principles was “instilling in our peacekeepers the confidence to act in appropriate and effective ways to protect civilians. We found that most of the time when action towards POC has not been taken, it’s really by lack of will or hesitation, with peacekeepers wondering if they actually have the authority to use force, and the Kigali Principles will help clarify that. We all have an intricate complementary role to play in peacekeeping. When any of us fall short of responsibility, the consequences are tragic.” She reported that the Kigali Principles had become part of Rwanda’s routine “training regimen.”

She sounded the same existential warning as Ambassador Byrne Nason did about the need to provide support for the principles. “The principles demand for mandates to be accurately matched with resources on the ground,” she said. “The principles necessitated impartiality because impartiality means deference to objectives of the mandate rooted in the principles of the UN Charter: place POC at the heart and center of our efforts.”

Bintou Keita, Assistant-Secretary-General, UN Department of Peace Operations and Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, commented, “POC is at the heart of what we do now in the context of peacekeeping. The trust and confidence of the population lies within the fact that no matter what happens, there will be no breakdown in the communication, authority, and the ability to act.” She said the Kigali Principles stress active collaboration and the need for accountability. “When we look at the principles, it’s about partnership, not just about talking and saying the nice thing, it’s also about walking the talk and making sure we have a strong partnership because it’s only with that that we’ll have success. It’s a combination of the policy and the handbook which articulate elements of a strong accountability framework. When I look at key elements to highlight, everyone agrees it makes a difference to have strong political will and partnership. It’s not just about the uniformed people, it’s about the whole of mission encompassing endeavor for peacekeepers and POC.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Raoul Bazatoha, Defense and Military Adviser, Permanent Mission of Rwanda to the UN, focused on the principles’ emphasis on training. “In Rwanda, we only had pre-deployment training, but later we had to develop post-deployment training to collect valuable information to inform our training cycle.” Now, he said, Rwanda has established a peace academy training officers in International Humanitarian Law, armed conflict, and other training related to peace operations. He said that Rwandan contingents had carried out activities like outreach programs, quick impact projects, and built a relationship based on trusting the host population and including constructing school classrooms and markets safe for women, and supply of potable water to internally displaced people and local residents.

“Accountability is a central aspect of good governance in Rwanda,” he added, “and it applies to the armed forces as well as peacekeeping personnel, holding our highest standard of conduct, with a national investigative officer in each unit deployed. The Rwanda defense service also deploys lawyers that provide training on crime prevention and conduct investigations when crimes are committed.”

Eshete Tilahun, Minister Counselor and Political Coordinator, Permanent Mission of Ethiopia to the UN, said, “We all know that the POC mandates are getting more complex as peacekeepers are becoming subject to violent attacks.” Aware that “civilians continue to bear the brunt of consequences of conflict… we have made a lot of progress in training because we found ways of building the capacity of uniformed personnel, all under POC framing.” He noted, though, that as more and more is expected from peacekeepers, “less and less resources” are being provided. Mr. Tilahun shared some of Ethiopia’s practices in implementing the Kigali Principles, such as mandatory POC training for peacekeepers and building the capacity and capabilities of uniformed personnel.

Carlos Amorin, Permanent Representative of Uruguay to the UN, noted that the current moment is a particularly difficult one for peacekeepers. “The challenges that peacekeepers face are greater than ever. They are not only having to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic but also support and protect people in the countries they are based in.” Mr. Amorin noted that Uruguay’s endorsement of the Kigali Principles is just one example of their country’s commitment to POC. As one of the earliest signatories to the principles, Mr. Amorin said that their peacekeepers “must complete many training courses prior to deployment” and that Uruguay “deploy[s] without caveats, with the appropriate means to protect civilians and prepare to perform the tasks at hand.” He also said that Uruguay “places a great deal of importance to accountability in POC, both at our national and multilateral level.”

Alison Giffen, Director, Peacekeeping, Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) emphasized the importance of supporting POC so that the mandate is “matched with the resources” needed to do the job. “For more than two decades, civilians have looked to UN peacekeepers for protection, and, I want to remind folks, whether or not the peacekeeper is in uniform or whether or not the words protection of civilians were in a mandate.”

Pointing out that promoting and protecting human rights was “a key purpose and guiding principle of the UN,” she concluded, “There’s no reason to doubt that implementing the Kigali Principles and investing in more protection is worthwhile.”

Sofiane Mimouni, Permanent Representative of Algeria to the UN, listed the various challenges that civilians face on the ground and voiced the urgent need to strengthen POC. In particular, he stressed the need for the UN to be “strengthening cooperation and coordination with regional organizations such as the African Union” asking panelists about the “potential synergies to strengthen the culture of protection amongst peacekeepers and peacekeeping stakeholders.”

Dr. Namie Di Razza, IPI Senior Fellow and Head of IPI’s Protection of Civilians Program, moderated the discussion.

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How COVID-19 and measures to curb its spread have amplified the vulnerabilities of civilians caught in conflict and raised new challenges for protection actors like humanitarian workers, peacekeepers, and human rights defenders was the subject of a May 28th IPI virtual policy forum. Co-hosting the event with IPI were the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Permanent Missions of the United Kingdom, Estonia, Niger, and Canada to the UN.

“The health crisis is quickly becoming a protection crisis,” declared Natacha Emerson of OCHA. “Collective and urgent action is needed to strengthen the protection of civilians so that we can tackle the pandemic and safeguard humanity. For people already struggling to cope with conflict, displacement, and hunger, COVID-19 adds another layer of insecurity, and in conflict settings the virus can easily grab hold and overwhelm crippled health care systems with deadly consequences.”

IPI Senior Fellow Dr. Namie Di Razza, who heads IPI’s Protection of Civilians (POC) program, introduced the discussion with the observation that COVID-19 “has had major disruptive effects, but it has not stopped atrocities, violence and abuse. On the contrary, the pandemic has raised new protection concerns for humanitarian workers, peacekeepers, and human rights defenders.”

Ilze Brands Kehris, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that human rights violations were rapidly rising in conflict situations in the world, with parties to the conflicts exploiting the circumstances of the pandemic to their advantage, further endangering the most vulnerable people. “So it is in this time of global crisis that universal values and norms, as guaranteed in international law, need more urgent attention than ever, and it also directly engages the responsibilities of states and other duty bearers to uphold their obligations under the law.”

She said that people infected with COVID-19 or suspected of being infected were being stigmatized, attacked and denied medical assistance, and even media representatives who report on the virus were being targeted. “Efforts to fight impunity are significantly impacted [and] governments are focused on the health response, so investigations and trials are de facto put on hold,’’ she said. As a consequence, there could be a premature release of grave human rights violators under the pretext of decongesting prisons for public health reasons. “The UN system must do better in better protecting people in pulling together different mandates and operational activities into one coherent whole under one and the same understanding of protection, putting human rights at the center.”

Laetitia Courtois, Head of Delegation to the UN, International Committee of the Red Cross, said that her organization was used to dealing with epidemics, but never with a pandemic of this “scope and impact.“ She broke down ICRC’s major protection concerns, and outlined four “asks” that would serve to mitigate and alleviate the repercussions of COVID-19:

• Insist that member states and parties to the conflict respect International Humanitarian Law (IHL);
• Prevent COVID-19 restrictions from hampering the movement of humanitarian staff and essential services;
• Protect medical equipment and medical personnel at all times; and
• Ensure that ICRC and other impartial organizations are allowed to continue working with non-state armed groups, and keep counterterrorism measures from impeding them from engaging with the groups, even those designated as “terrorist.”

Heather Barr, Acting Co-Director, Women’s Rights Division, Human Rights Watch, said the COVID-19 crisis had become “a global crisis for women.” She said there had been “huge spikes” in gender-based violence; waves of restrictions, staff shortages and shutdowns at clinics that provide sexual reproductive services; loss of income and jobs for health care workers, 70 percent of whom are women; and widespread closures of schools for girls, which adversely affects rates of child marriage, pregnancy, and sexual violence.

She pointed to water and sanitation as an example of how COVID-19, gender, and preexisting crises “come together in a really harmful way. We all know that washing your hands is important, but often they can’t safely access toilets, latrines, and water points because of concerns about sexual violence, poorly designed camps, lack of freedom of movement for women and girls, and that’s really a crisis in this situation.” She added that long term recovery planning must be gender responsive and “has to think about what impact there’s been on women and how we repair that.”

Caitlin Brady, Director of Programme Development and Quality for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Save the Children, gave a stark account of the effects of epidemics on children, based on past experience. “Border closures and impacts on trade will increase economic hardship everywhere, of course, creating a range of risks, one of them hunger, malnutrition, and associated diseases, and vulnerability to sexual exploitation and abuse, as we saw in the West African Ebola response. We’ll see very weak health facilities, which are already directly targeted by armed groups or are collateral damage when explosive weapons are used in populated areas. Having to respond not just to existing illness and childbirth, but also to COVID-19 will increase excessive maternal and infant mortality.” She forecast that children would be subject to recruitment by armed groups and harsh labor like working in mines.

It was imperative, she said, that school feeding programs be maintained even if the schools themselves were closed. “Yes, the pandemic is a public health emergency, but it’s exacerbating existing protection crises and patterns of marginalization. It’s important that while countries try to respond to the epidemic, they continue with commitments to address child protection and other humanitarian needs.”

Koffi Wogomebu, Senior Protection Adviser, UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), said that steps to curb the virus like limitations on the ability to travel into the field were inadvertently impeding the peacekeeping mission’s POC work. “I just want to say that COVID-19 itself did not constitute a physical violence against civilians falling under our POC mandate, but it is seriously having direct and indirect consequences on the protection of civilians. Measures taken to protect public health such as scaling back activity to prevent the spread of the disease are certainly posing a serious risk to the protection of civilians.”

He said too that the 14 armed groups in the Central African Republic, despite the UN Secretary-General’s call for a global ceasefire, were exploiting the lockdown situation to advance their own aims. “We believe that they take advantage of the fact that we are no longer moving a lot to within their territory, and in doing so, they are committing some serious human rights violations.” In addition, he said, there was an “anti-MINUSCA sentiment” arising out of the misperception that it was the responsibility of the UN mission to slow the spread of the virus and produce a remedy. “This has a put another pressure on the mission,” he said.

James Roscoe, Acting Deputy Representative of the United Kingdom to the UN, said that the UK, working with other countries, had made four pledges in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. He listed them as supporting an effective health response led by the World Health Organization (WHO); reinforcing resilience in the most vulnerable countries; pursuing treatments and vaccines; and helping to “shore up” the global economy. As for POC and the COVID-19 crisis, he said, the United Kingdom would work to expedite access and needed equipment and to guarantee “unfettered humanitarian access.”

In concluding remarks, Gert Auväärt, Deputy Permanent Representative of Estonia to the UN, lamented that some conflict parties have “sought to take advantage of the situation, and regrettably it has provided a pretext to adopt repressive measures for purposes unrelated to the pandemic.” The main message, he said, was that “we need more protection, not less.”

Mohammad Koba, Deputy Permanent Representative of Indonesia to the UN, observed that “what is more important now with the spread of coronavirus already and international cooperation is to support those who are most vulnerable to the virus, particularly in armed conflict.” Furthermore, he reiterated that Indonesia “fully support[s] the call for the immediate global ceasefire. It is an extremely important call for all parties to the conflict, to focus on the handling the impact of COVID-19, provide respite for civilians, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and offer space for continued diplomacy.”

Abdou Abarry, Permanent Representative of Niger, remarked that “one of the unfortunate unintended consequences of COVID-19 is the worldwide alarming increase of gender-based violence and violence against our children,” which exacerbated existing inequalities “particularly in African countries where women constitute the majority of the work force.” He said that direct and indiscriminate attacks on schools had deprived over one half million African children of education. “An attack on education is an attack on the future,” he declared. Looking ahead, he said that when a safe and effective vaccine would be developed, “let it be the people’s vaccine, available to all. This would be a cornerstone of the POC agenda.”

Richard Arbeiter, Deputy Permanent Representative of Canada to the UN, commended participants for ensuring that the just concluded POC week “was not a casualty of COVID-19 as well.” He praised the POC community’s work, saying that “the POC community is very sophisticated and it has evolved over twenty years. I am amazed by how quickly all parts of this community has been able to identify and analyze the situations locally and what that means globally for all of us. [Panelists] had ground-truth reality recommendations, both to acknowledge what is working, where the gaps and inequalities have been exacerbated as well. It’s really quite something to stand back from it and see how quickly and ably we are able to figure out what needs to change in order for those that are most vulnerable to receive the support that they need.”

Dr. Di Razza moderated the discussion.

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In 2017, the UN launched a system-wide effort to support the implementation of the sustaining peace agenda in Burkina Faso. Since then, a rapidly deteriorating security situation and an imminent humanitarian crisis have forced the UN, the Burkinabe government, and their partners to recalibrate their efforts. This ongoing recalibration, together with the changes resulting from the UN development system reforms, makes this an opportune moment to assess the state of efforts to sustain peace in Burkina Faso.

This paper examines the implementation of the UN’s peacebuilding and sustaining peace framework in Burkina Faso, looking at what has been done and what is still needed. It focuses on the four issue areas highlighted in the secretary-general’s 2018 report on peacebuilding and sustaining peace: operational and policy coherence; leadership at the UN country level; partnerships with local and regional actors; and international support.

Burkina Faso provides lessons for how the UN’s sustaining peace efforts can respond to growing needs without a change in mandate. Continued support for the UN resident coordinator in Burkina Faso is necessary to ensure that these efforts are part of a holistic approach to the crisis, together with local, national, and regional partners. Such support could underpin Burkina Faso’s status as a buffer against spreading insecurity in the Sahel and make the country a model for the implementation of the sustaining peace agenda in conflict-prone settings without UN missions.

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“The coronavirus pandemic has taught everyone a valuable lesson in globalization: what happens anywhere affects everywhere, and no country is safe until all countries are safe,” said Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey and Co-Chair of the Friends of Mediation Groups in the United Nations, Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). “We must keep multilateralism alive,” he declared.

Mr. Çavuşoğlu was addressing a May 19th virtual event, cosponsored by IPI and the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, titled “How the Coronavirus Pandemic Affects Conflict Dynamics and Mediation: New Challenges to Peace and Security.” Underlining the impact of the pandemic on efforts towards peaceful resolution of conflicts and the importance of collective global action, he said that countries must make international organizations “relevant and credible” in the fight against the virus and its effects. “We must address the plight of vulnerable groups, and we must ensure the uninterrupted flow of humanitarian aid.”

He warned that terrorist and extremist groups would seek to exploit the current disorder for their own malign purposes. “The enemies of a rules-based order will look for an opportunity to take unilateral steps,” he said. “This is not the time to further weaken the existing mechanisms. Multilateralism should not be another casualty of COVID-19. And it is not strong rhetoric but rather effective cooperative action that will save the day.”

IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen, the event’s moderator, observed that the coronavirus crisis presented obstacles to traditional tools for the maintenance of peace and security including UN peacekeeping, mediation, and peacebuilding.

He signaled “the potential for increased instability as the pandemic disrupts humanitarian aid or exacerbates inequality and political division.”

Pekka Haavisto, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland and Co-Chair of the Friends of Mediation Groups in the UN and OSCE, said that the current crisis underlined the need for supporting multilateralism and in particular the UN and the World Health Organization (WHO). He argued that while the pandemic posed serious threats to peace processes and transitions to peace now underway, it alternatively could provide “a positive opening for peace processes” and pointed to the example of the conflicted Indonesian province of Aceh, which achieved peace in the aftermath of being devastated by a tsunami in 2004.

The international community ought to be alert to “swiftly supporting” such positive openings, he said, but he also cautioned that some countries were exploiting the situation by locking down their societies with “too harsh conditions on the restrictions” that ended up jeopardizing human rights and challenging democratic values.

Marginalized groups were particularly vulnerable and subject to added stress, and he singled out girls and women as potential targets of such abusive actions. “We know from many peace processes how crucial women and girls are to such processes,” he added. He said that though digital technology was being manipulated by purveyors of disinformation, it also represented a key “peacebuilding tool” and served the purpose of contacting and organizing young people in the service of peacemaking.

Ignazio Cassis, Federal Councillor, Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland, and Co-Chair of the Friends of Mediation Group in the OSCE, said Switzerland had adopted border control and security measures to combat the virus that, while innovative, were “exceptional to a democracy like ours” and were already being regularized by the parliament which was restoring the necessary checks and balances. “But for Switzerland, one essential element that has not changed with the crisis is that more than ever, we stand ready to support dialogue efforts and peace negotiations and to mediate where we are invited to do so.”

Describing the depth of Switzerland’s involvement, he said that while digital technology was valuable in enabling remote contact with parties in conflict, “peace will always require the physical presence and trust of very real women and men.” He characterized the country’s commitment as “all hands on deck, and that is the call for us all.” To Switzerland, he said, “mediation is about trust, patience, and preparing the grounds for future negotiations.”

Rosemary DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General, UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, said that the pandemic had “hit conflict settings particularly hard.” Alluding to some of the negative consequences that Secretary-General António Guterres had alerted the Security Council to, she listed an erosion of trust in public institutions over their failure to deal promptly with the crisis, economic fallout that could lead to civil unrest, the postponement of elections, and violent actors exploiting the situation. “And all this at a time when mediation efforts are needed now more than ever.”

She reported that while there had been widespread positive initial responses to the Secretary-General’s March 23rd call for a global ceasefire, “unfortunately they have not translated to concrete change on the ground. Regrettably, the guns are yet to be silenced.” She noted that fighting had continued in places like Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen. In addition, “extremists have urged followers to take advantage of COVID-19 including by spreading disinformation.” She said that the UN “must continue to apply pressure on conflict parties and those outside supporting them politically or with weapons to stop.”

She acknowledged that the crisis had stilled the conventional practice of diplomacy but asserted that UN envoys and missions around the world were exerting themselves to “reignite the political processes to engage in contact with conflict parties and other stakeholders,” often through the use of digital technology. “Now, the path ahead is not easy, but nobody said it would be. To succeed, the international community will have to come together decisively to make sure the early gains, now fading, lead to lasting peace.”

In a question and answer session, the speakers fielded questions on establishing a set of best practices for handling future pandemics, ensuring that the needs of refugees and internally displaced persons were met in pandemic responses, shifting mediation to an online platform, encouraging greater women’s participation in mediation efforts, and trying to prevent the COVID-19 crisis from derailing intra-Afghan talks among warring parties in the current peace negotiations in Afghanistan. The questioners were Priyal Singh, Researcher, Institute for Security Studies (ISS), South Africa; Waleed Al-Hariri, Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, Yemen; Prisca Manyala, President, National Student Association, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Pravina Makan-Lakha, Femwise-Africa, and Aisha Khurram, student, Kabul University and former Afghan Youth Representative to the UN.

Burak Akçapar, Director-General for Foreign Policy, Analysis, and Coordination, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey, made welcoming remarks on behalf of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, and IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen moderated the discussion.

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The effectiveness of UN peace operations depends on the “operational readiness” of their personnel, which refers to the knowledge, expertise, training, equipment, and mindset needed to carry out mandated tasks. While the need to improve the operational readiness of peacekeepers has been increasingly recognized over the past few years, the concept of “human rights readiness”—the extent to which consideration of human rights is integrated into the generation, operational configuration, and evaluation of uniformed personnel—has received less attention.

This policy paper analyzes opportunities and gaps in human rights readiness and explores ways to improve the human rights readiness of peacekeepers. A comprehensive human rights readiness framework would include mechanisms to integrate human rights considerations into the operational configuration and modus operandi of uniformed personnel before, during, and after their deployment. This paper starts the process of developing this framework by focusing on the steps required to prepare and deploy uniformed personnel.

The paper concludes with concrete recommendations for how troop- and police-contributing countries can prioritize human rights in the force generation process and strengthen human rights training for uniformed peacekeepers. These actions would prepare units to uphold human rights standards and better integrate human rights considerations into their work while ensuring that they deliver on this commitment. Ultimately, improved human rights readiness is a key determinant of the performance of UN peacekeepers, as well as of the UN’s credibility and reputation.

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The Honorable Kevin Rudd AC, 26th Prime Minister of Australia, President of the Asia Society Policy Institute, and Chair of IPI’s Board of Directors and H.E. Mr. Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, President of the 74th Session of the UN General Assembly

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In an IPI virtual event on April 24th, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, the President of the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, said that while the COVID-19 pandemic was the most “urgent” challenge the 193-nation body had ever faced, it could be best addressed through the global “interconnectedness” represented by the UN.

“What is playing out, as I see it, is really the pooling of resources and ideas, the recognition that multilateralism is the way out,” he said. “We do not have a national solution for COVID-19. What is playing out now is really proof that we get the point of interconnectedness.” Despite the enormity of the challenge, he asserted, “I think that multilateralism is strengthening, not fraying during the pandemic.”

Mr. Muhammad-Bande made his remarks in an address during a virtual event co-sponsored by IPI, the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly, and the Asia Society Policy Institute, and in conversation with Kevin Rudd, Chair of IPI’s Board of Directors and President of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Mr. Rudd introduced the discussion noting that “pandemics are the very essence of the reason why we have a multilateral system of global governments, and we know the reason for that is because epidemics and pandemics have no respect for international borders.” A former Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Rudd added, “This has tested not just our institutions of national government around the world, but it has truly tested our system of global governance.” He observed that the creation of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1948 and the International Health Regulations in 2005 had been “anchored” in the UN Charter.

Mr. Muhammad-Bande said that “combating COVID-19 is a collective responsibility,” and he urged everyone to follow the guidelines laid down by the WHO. “We must adhere to social distancing, wash our hands and look out for one another. That is how we show solidarity and uphold multilateralism.” He also implored all parties to observe the global ceasefire called for by Secretary-General António Guterres.

Africa has had valuable experience combatting epidemics and pandemics but presents a particular problem because of its fragile health systems and many countries’ dependence upon commodities at a time when world prices are collapsing, said Mr. Muhammad-Bande, who also serves as Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the UN. Nevertheless, he argued, the continent had demonstrated great resilience through multilateral institutions like the African Union and various subregional bodies. “The real hope is that Africa understands, like the rest of the world, that this is not an African problem, this is truly a global problem which means we’re able to learn from others as we’re able to teach others.”

He hailed the urgent global effort underway to find a vaccine for the novel coronavirus but warned that the international community would have to be vigilant in assuring universal access to it. “We must remind others that vaccines when developed are not for some countries alone, but they are for all of us. They must be affordable and available to all. This is important.” Mr. Rudd agreed, stating, “Vaccines should be seen as a global public good rather than a piece of singular national property. What we do not want to see is this becoming an issue of national rivalry.”

On taking office as President of the General Assembly last September, Mr. Muhammad-Bande dedicated his term to UN reform, and he said that the onset of the COVID-19 crisis had changed but not diminished the emphasis he would place on that ambition now. “Our immediate focus should be to get over the situation as it is, and we have to reserve our energy to focus on the immediate danger. Now, reform in relation to the UN relates to our ability to continue to be legitimate. Without legitimacy, nothing else will work, and all organs of the UN system enhance that legitimacy but not just to be legitimate, they must also deliver because there must be delivery for the legitimacy to continue.”

He cited as an example the World Health Organization. “We have to have a body that is nimble enough, legitimate enough, and resourced enough to do not just the work of now but to continue to scan the horizon to have protocols that work in all regions of the world and are connected,” he said. “It is important that we resource whatever body that looks after our health, and this is central to multilateralism.”

The UN should build on its recent accomplishments, he said, and suggested the two major ones were the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) five years ago. “The achievements of 2015 in terms of the Paris accords and the SDGs are really monumental achievements in multilateralism. I think we should focus on these two, give it 20 years, and I bet we’ll have a much different world. There would be less conflict, less hate, and there would be more respect for the rule of law. There would be more certainty of healthier lives for coming generations.”

Among the listeners who submitted questions were Kenyan and South African students from the King’s College African Leadership Centre in London, an Indian student from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, and a director of the Technology Center for Youth at Risk in Guatemala.

Addressing the audience in general, Mr. Muhammad-Bande acknowledged that the UN needed to communicate its mission better so that people better understand how it is relevant to their lives. “I want you as a listener to have more faith in the system, just to give it the oxygen it needs to move on. And this oxygen also includes, of course, constructive criticism, without which we simply cannot make progress.”

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The growing number of UN personnel deployed to missions in violent, volatile, and complex settings has pushed the UN to take all means necessary to improve the safety and security of its staff and of civilians under its protection. The UN’s Peacekeeping-Intelligence Policy, which was first developed in 2017 and later revised in 2019, has been a central part of these efforts.

This paper outlines the difficulties of creating and implementing this policy. It addresses the origin and evolution of UN peacekeeping-intelligence as a concept and explains the need for this policy. It then discusses how peacekeeping-intelligence was and is being developed, including the challenge of creating guidelines and trainings that are both general enough to apply across the UN and flexible enough to adapt to different missions. Finally, it analyzes challenges the UN has faced in implementing this policy, from difficulties with coordination and data management to the lack of a sufficient gender lens. The paper recommends a number of actions for UN headquarters, peace operations, and member states in order to address these challenges:

1. Optimize tasking and information sharing within missions by focusing on senior leaders’ information needs;
2. Harmonize the content of peacekeeping-intelligence handbooks with standard operating procedures while ensuring they are flexible enough to account for differences among and between missions;
3. Refine criteria for recruiting civilian and uniformed personnel with intelligence expertise and better assign personnel once they are deployed;
4. Improve retention of peacekeeping-intelligence personnel and encourage member states to agree to longer-term deployments;
5. Tailor peacekeeping-intelligence training to the needs of missions while clarifying a standard set of UN norms;
6. Apply a gender lens to UN peacekeeping-intelligence;
7. Improve coordination between headquarters and field sites within missions by adapting the tempo and timing of tasking and creating integrated information-sharing cells; and
8. Establish common sharing platforms within missions.

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Adela Raz, Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the UN and IPI Vice President Adam Lupel

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Afghan women have been at the forefront of bringing peace and development to Afghanistan over the past two decades, but despite this, peace talks and political processes have with few exceptions excluded them.

The Taliban and the United States reached a deal in February arranging for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and setting the stage for talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Though women’s rights were not mentioned in the text of the Taliban-US agreement and no female civil society representatives from Afghanistan participated in the talks leading up to it, Afghan women are determined that the upcoming intra-Afghan negotiations protect and enhance the equal rights assured them under the Afghan constitution, including their role in the peace process itself.

On Thursday, March 12th, IPI, together with the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the United Nations, hosted an online, live-streamed discussion with four prominent Afghan women leaders in Kabul on the subject of Women’s Inclusion in the Afghan Peace Talks.

Participating in the discussion from Kabul were Hasina Safi, Minister for Information and Culture; Nadima Sahar, Head of the Technical Vocational Education and Training Authority; Onaba Payab, Adviser to Rula Ghani, the First Lady of Afghanistan; and Aisha Khurram, Afghanistan’s Youth Representative to the UN.

Adela Raz, Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the UN, opened the discussion from IPI’s office in New York by stressing the progress that women have made in Afghanistan.

“Women empowerment in Afghanistan is real, it’s genuine, it truly has happened, and I always say that it’s an investment by the international community that really paid off in terms of where we started 19 years ago and where we are now,” she said. “Nineteen years may seem too long ago to worry about, but for a lot of us, it is not too long because we still remember the dark days of the Taliban.”

She asserted that a key principle that women are fighting for now is “inclusivity, and that inclusivity for us means the inclusion of women and also the voice of youth and different ethnic groups.” She said that women are also demanding that the teams of negotiators and facilitators of the talks reflect this inclusivity.

Though those memories of the restrictive Taliban practices are still fresh, she said women will not be revisiting them in the negotiations but rather exercising their hard won present authority and making sure none of it is relinquished. “We’re always able to compromise the past to enable us to coexist with a group of people that we have known for their having committed a lot of crime, but it’s too hard for us to compromise the future.”

Onaba Payab said that women had emerged as leaders in all walks of life in Afghanistan, with 25 percent of the seats in the parliament occupied by women and 5,000 businesses owned by women. Some 15,000 women from 34 provinces had been consulted on what would be acceptable to them in a peace agreement, she said. “We have protective legal frameworks for women’s public and private institutions and a long term plan designed to empower women in rural as well as urban areas.” She described the attitude of women in advance of the intra-Afghan talks as “we know that peace is achievable, and we are moving towards it guided by the principles of inclusivity, dignity and sustainability.”

Hasina Safi said that Afghan women had achieved much on their own at home and would insist on their ideas being treated seriously in the talks, but an element that was crucial now was the active support of Afghanistan’s friends abroad. “We have all the strategies and policies and know what is needed to implement them, and what we need from the international community is for them to back us up. Afghanistan is not the Afghanistan of 1995 where a woman could not introduce herself in front of a foreigner. Today, that woman speaks up, and she analyses, and she reasons, and she fights for her role for her existence for her very meaningful participation in the process, and protecting that is one of the requirements we would like the international community to recognize.”

Nadima Sahar illustrated the new confidence of Afghan women by noting that while she had had to struggle to ensure her right to an education, “now we have kids like my 8-year-old girl who aspires to be the first female president of Afghanistan.”

She argued that the stakes are much higher for women than for men. “For a man, this entire process boils down to growing a beard or shaving a beard. For us women, there is a lot more at stake, our right to an education, our right to live basically, our right to everything is at stake.” For that reason, she said, women had to be present at the negotiating table. “If there is a compromise that needs to be made for their future, they must have a say in what is that decision and what price they have to pay.”

Another asset that women bring to the talks, she said, is their impartiality and bent for seeking non-violent solutions. “Whenever men encounter a peace process, their discussions revolve around military action and power-sharing arrangements and territorial gains, but women’s involvement in the peace process would make sure that issues such as political and legal reforms, social and economic recovery and transitional justice are priorities.”

Elaborating on that point, Aisha Khurram argued that any agreement reached that did not include the active participation of women would be neither durable nor sustainable. “And women should not be included just in the formal negotiation, but they also must be part of the design and implementation of whatever agreement emerges.”

Two thirds of the Afghan population is under the age of 25, and Ms. Khurram said that young women consider themselves “active partners” in forging a peace for Afghanistan’s future rather than “passive beneficiaries” of the process. Similarly, she said, “the new generation of Afghan men really believe in women’s rights, and they really stand for their sisters’ rights.”

Stressing that this is a “pivotal moment” for young women in Afghanistan, she concluded, “Right now the future of Afghanistan is going to be decided so it’s more important for us than just the elites who are sitting there at the negotiating table and talking about our future. We expect more, and we deserve to be heard, and we deserve to be included.”

IPI Program Administrator Masooma Rahmaty reported on a tweet chat about women’s inclusion that she had conducted, some of it in Farsi, with 40 respondents from Kabul and the diaspora.

IPI Vice President Adam Lupel moderated the discussion.

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On March 10th, IPI Vice President Adam Lupel took part in a panel discussion held by the UN Group of Friends of Women in Afghanistan, led by Afghanistan and the United Kingdom, titled: “A Critical Moment for Afghan Women: The Intra-Afghan Peace Process.” The event was co-sponsored by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

The event included extraordinary remarks from Afghan women, including Ambassador Adela Raz of Afghanistan; Nargis Nehan, Former Minister of Mines, Petroleum and Industries of Afghanistan; and Dr. Orzala Nemat, Director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. The First Lady of Afghanistan, Rula Ghani, delivered a video message from Kabul.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a longtime champion of women’s rights in Afghanistan, was the keynote speaker. An equal champion on the panel was United Kingdom Ambassador to the UN Karen Pierce, who was the UK Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan June 2010-June 2011.

The discussion focused on protecting and enhancing the equal rights of women granted under the Afghan constitution, including their central role in peace negotiations and ensuring that any prospective outcomes in the peace process recognize, protect, and promote the role of women in all spheres of life.

The event was moderated by Ambassador Melanne Verveer, Director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. Over 40 UN ambassadors were in attendance.

In his remarks, Dr. Lupel said, “Women’s substantive involvement in peace processes increases their potential for success and durability, because if women meaningfully participate, peace processes are less likely to be simply a negotiation about power among men with guns, and more likely to include broader issues about how to build a sustainable peaceful society.

“So going forward the question becomes how to ensure women play a central role in the Intra-Afghan peace process and how can the international community help?” he said.

Drawing on the expertise of IPI’s Women, Peace and Security program, Dr. Lupel recommended an “ecosystem” approach. This means supporting not just women’s access to the negotiating table, but also including them in the design of the whole peace process and the environment surrounding it. He offered these two points:

1) Focus on what works: There has been a tremendous amount of progress on women’s inclusion in Afghanistan over the last twenty years. As is evident on this panel and the Afghan diplomatic corps this has produced a wealth of human capital and already active networks that will provide important resources in the coming period. I think we all know this, but suffice it to say we don’t have to start from scratch.

2) Be creative and persistent. This will be a long, complicated process with many ups and downs. And a creative, persistent approach to ensuring that women’s voices are heard will be necessary.

Dr. Lupel closed his remarks by quoting a tweet from a representative of Afghan youth in Kabul, Aisha Khurram, the Afghan Youth Rep to the UN.

She writes, “Afghan youth and women’s priorities are the priorities of all Afghans. These priorities must be included in the peace process not because they will benefit women, but because they will benefit everyone.”

Related Content

Full remarks from IPI Vice President Adam Lupel

Full event video from the UN

Press Release: A Critical Moment for Afghan Women: The Intra-Afghan Peace Process, the UN Group of Friends of Women in Afghanistan

 

 

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“It has become a common refrain in recent months that 2020 is a critical year for Somalia, that 2020 is to be the year of delivery, the year of achievement, and we absolutely subscribe to that analysis,” said James Swan, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Somalia and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM). “I should stress that it is not one driven by international partners, it is fundamentally the position of the Somali government that 2020 requires that we address a critical set of priorities together.”

Illustrative of just how epochal this year could be for Somalia, he said, is the planning underway for direct elections by the end of the year which would be the first universal suffrage elections there in 50 years. What has filled the political void in Somalia in the decades since the last such election in 1969 were dictatorships, civil war, and relentless terror attacks.

Speaking at a February 25th IPI discussion of Somalia’s recent progress and immediate future, Mr. Swan said that the priorities of how to restore representative government to the country significantly had been established by the Somalis themselves through a set of roadmaps developed in 2018 and 2019 to produce a “mutual accountability framework” in which the country’s international partners committed themselves to support progress in four key areas. He listed those areas as inclusive politics, security and justice, economic reforms, and social development.

On inclusive politics, Mr. Swan explained that the elections that will take place by the end of the year are being organized on a hybrid model that blends the traditional clan-based affiliations of candidates with a new direct vote procedure replacing the traditional process of selection by elders. There also is a stated commitment to 30 percent representation by women in the parliament though that language didn’t make it into the formal electoral code. Even so, Mr. Swan said,  Somalis on their own had already reached 24 percent representation in some comparable political bodies. To gain the necessary popular backing for the new electoral approach, the pace of change was deliberately gradual, he explained. “The end goal is a system that moves beyond the sub clan system, but for now it was too great a leap.”

On security and justice, he acknowledged that the militant Islamist group al-Shabab retains the ability to conduct “shocking terrorist attacks” in Mogadishu and elsewhere in the country but said that the Somali government had faced the security sector gaps identified in a key 2017 report “honestly and squarely and made substantive reforms.” One result of that he cited was that Somali forces joined by troops from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) had succeeded in retaking captured towns.

As progress on the economy, Mr. Swan pointed to the government’s having opened the door for clearance of $5 billion of long standing national debt. “Two years ago, this would have been ridiculed as unlikely, but this is an outstanding achievement for the government and federal member states in collaborating to move a dossier forward,” he said. On social development, he said the government had adopted and disseminated a development plan that is in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and which “is the basis around which donor partners have agreed to align their support going forward.”

Somalia continues to be in “dire” need of humanitarian assistance and support, he observed, noting that over the past year there had been 30 humanitarian crises, including both droughts and floods. “Last year, $1 billion was needed, and 2020 will likely be the same.”

Mr. Swan described the achievements in the four areas as “substantial progress” but said that turning this into “durable” progress still required broader political consensus in the country. “Consensus is needed not just between the government and the member states, but also with other parties of opposition and civil society,” he said. “These are the priorities of the Somali government. We as international partners being supported by the UN are seeking to advance these priorities in any way we can, but there is only so much that can be done at the technical level in the absence of urgently needed political consensus.”

Karen Pierce, the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom, the “penholder” country on the Security Council that leads the work of the Council on Somalia and AMISOM, hailed the progress the country had made but expressed a similar concern about the critical importance of building up consensus. “We would say that the central factor in whether these things will be a success is the critical ability of the federal government and states’ governments to work together in power sharing, resource sharing, and working together towards a stronger and more secure Somalia,” she asserted.

Jake Sherman, director of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations, noted that UNSOM was one of the first missions to have an explicit mandate to account for climate change and asked how that affected its actions.

“Because of the humanitarian impact including displacement and conflict, it is an element that we need to take into consideration in our activities,” Mr. Swan said. “It’s still being considered through a humanitarian lens, but it will increasingly have an impact on security concerns. Frankly the cycles appear to be accelerating and deepening, and it’s going to be difficult to sustain the same level of humanitarian focus year after year. It can’t just be about an annual response to a humanitarian crisis, but a long term focus on the development, humanitarian, security nexus.”

Mr. Sherman moderated the discussion.

Since the signing of the Revitalized Agreement to Resolve the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) in September 2018, South Sudan has seen a sustained reduction in political violence. However, progress on Chapter I of the agreement, which calls for the establishment of a Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity, has largely stalled, and the agreement does not address the structural drivers of localized insecurity.

In this context, the International Peace Institute (IPI), the Stimson Center, and Security Council Report organized a workshop on January 30, 2020, to discuss the mandate and political strategy of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). This workshop offered a platform for member states, UN actors, and outside experts to share their assessment of the situation in the country. The discussion was intended to help the Security Council make informed decisions with respect to the strategic orientation, prioritization, and sequencing of the mission’s mandate and actions on the ground. The workshop focused on the current political and security dynamics in South Sudan, including developments in the formation of a transitional government, the status of the peace process, and the root drivers of conflict. Participants also examined how to adapt UNMISS’s current mandate to strengthen the mission and help the UN achieve its objectives over the coming year.

Workshop participants agreed that UNMISS’s mandate remains relevant to the current political and security environment. At the same time, they highlighted opportunities to ensure that the mandate’s language provides the mission with the flexibility to support the R-ARCSS, or respond to its reversal, and to adjust its approach to the protection of civilians.

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“Policing is about interaction, and if you are looking for lasting sustainable peace, then interaction, engagement, conversation, dialogue are very important. It is policing that enables this political process,” said Boniface Rutikanga, a former United Nations peacekeeper and now police adviser to the Permanent Mission of Rwanda to the UN.

Mr. Rutikanga was speaking to a February 13th IPI policy forum, cosponsored by the Permanent Mission of Italy to the UN, launching the IPI policy paper Protection through Policing: The Protective Role of UN Police in Peace Operations by Charles T. Hunt. The paper examines the role of UN Police (UNPOL) in the protection of civilians (POC) and identifies UNPOL’s contributions and comparative advantages, as well as the challenges it faces.

Dr. Hunt explained that while police have contributed to protection of civilians since the emergence of the POC mandate, they had more recently been thrust into the frontlines of some of protection efforts in places like Darfur, Congo, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic, often in densely populated environments. Despite the fact that police provide “unique capabilities and expertise,” and that it is “arguably ingrained in this idea that police’s inherent function is to serve and protect,” missions have “generally undervalued or overlooked some of these protective roles of police, often relying more on militarized approaches to protection,” he said. UNPOL often appear as an afterthought, and tend to remain in the shadow of military components.

Listing some of the comparative advantages that UNPOL officers have over their military or civilian counterparts, Dr. Hunt said they were more skilled at tackling threats when violence does not involve the sustained use of military weaponry, better placed to play a deterrent role, and well positioned to partner with a range of others to protect civilians and establish trust with national law enforcement agencies and the local populations, giving them some ownership over a sustainable protective environment.

Among the challenges he cited were a “lack of clarity in the scope of the mandate,” especially in contexts where UNPOL can use all necessary means to protect civilians but does not have an executive mandate, and poor coordination where the line between criminal and military threats becomes “blurry.” He also mentioned the risks of technical approaches to capacity-building which can perpetuate, rather than transform, politicized security sectors, and instances where the UN mission gets “trapped” in partnerships with the host governments that end up “exposing and imperiling” civilians.

Dr. Hunt said that despite the “significant” contributions that police made to protecting civilians, there are still perennial issues of capabilities, capacity and tools, including the “insufficient quantity, quality, and flexibility of UNPOL assets and resources.” He added, “POC is still not really in the bloodstream of police on the ground at all levels. Police can do a lot more to leverage their comparative advantages, strengthen their contribution, and help UNPOL meet the growing recommendations for their role.” Dr. Hunt recommended that UNPOL have a clearer voice in decision-making processes, and adequate monitoring and evaluation systems to inform planning and gauge their impact, among other recommendations proposed in his paper.

Namie Di Razza, Senior Fellow at IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations and head of IPI’s POC Program, noted that one of the program’s objectives was to “clarify the roles and responsibilities of the different actors involved in the implementation of POC and for a better use of tailored approaches, including armed and unarmed strategies.” Adding that police should be “fully integrated” in protection strategies, she observed that “in times of peace, the police are the main actor handling public security and public order, and their core function is often defined by the mantra ‘to serve and protect.’” She commended Dr. Hunt’s paper for highlighting ways to “strengthen people-centered and community-oriented approaches in peacekeeping and alternative options to heavy military presences for future peace operations models.”

Shaowen Yang, Deputy Police Adviser, Police Division, UN Department of Peace Operations, noted that there are nearly 8,700 UNPOL personnel in nine peacekeeping operations and seven special political missions (SPMs) contributing support to member states in realizing “effective, efficient, representative, responsive, and accountable police service” that serve the population.

He pointed out that in most countries, police are regarded as a “service” rather than a “force,” and that “policing must be entrusted to civil servants” obligated to respect and protect civilian lives, and operating within a legal framework based on the rule of law.” In his remarks, he highlighted the vision of UNPOL, seeking to build a police that is “modern, agile, flexible, transparent, accountable… people-centered, right-based.” UNPOL therefore acts as a promoter of international human rights norms in the host country, and pursues its mandate in compliance with the Human Rights Due Diligence Policy (HRDDP).

Rania Dagash, Head of the Policy and Best Practices Service, Division of Policy, Evaluation and Training, UN Department of Peace Operations, emphasized that since the first POC UN Security Council Resolution twenty years ago, there has been considerable growth for police in POC. “We highlight not just the criticality of the police component in POC but emphasize the community orientation of policing, the patrolling of our vulnerable communities… It is undervalued, it is under tapped, and often overlooked.” Echoing the words of Mr. Rutikanga, she said, “Police contribute to dialogue and engagement, which is fundamentally a political role” as they help promote and advocate protection priorities with national and local stakeholders.

As examples of their effectiveness, Ms. Dagash said that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali, UN police had prevented turmoil between host state police and civilians in election contexts, in South Sudan UN police had prevented outbreaks of violence among the 200,000 internally displaced people there, and in Gao in Northern Mali, UNPOL had played a major role in enabling cooperation between the local population and local leaders. “UNPOL created networks for information sharing that allowed the local population and national authority to make decisions together,” she said. She also warned against substituting uniformed soldiers with police. “Police and military are suited for different functions. Police should not be seen as a cheaper or easier tool for military function.”

In remarks preceding the discussion, Stefano Stefanile, Deputy Permanent Representative of Italy to the UN, stressed the central importance of UNPOL to peace operations. “UN policing is an instrumental factor that establishes the link between peacekeeping and peacebuilding,” he said. “UN policing is at the core of the spirit and philosophy of the A4P (Action for Peacekeeping) reform proposed by the Secretary-General. UNPOL serves to restore mutual trust among communities to favor reconciliation.”

Ms. Di Razza moderated the discussion.

Since first deployed in 1960, United Nations police (UNPOL) have consistently been present in UN missions and have become increasingly important to achieving mission objectives. Since 1999, these objectives have often included the protection of civilians (POC), especially in places like the Central African Republic, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, and South Sudan. But despite its rise in prominence, the protective role of UNPOL is generally undervalued and regularly overlooked, and missions have tended to overly rely on militarized approaches to POC.

This report examines the roles and responsibilities of UNPOL regarding POC. It outlines UNPOL’s contributions to POC and perceived comparative advantages, using examples of their role as compeller, deterrent, partner, and enabler. It also identifies and draws lessons from challenges to police protection efforts, including ambiguous mandates, policies, and guidance; poor coordination; problematic partnerships; and deficits in capabilities, capacities, and tools.

Drawing on these lessons from past and current deployments, the report proposes recommendations for how member states, the Security Council, the UN Secretariat, and field missions can improve UNPOL’s efforts to protect civilians going forward. These recommendations include:

• Clarifying the role of UN police in POC through mandates, policies, guidance, and training to align the expectations of UN peace operations, the Secretariat, and member states for what UNPOL are expected to do;
• Involving all UN police in POC and giving them a voice in decision making and planning to infuse whole-of-mission POC efforts with policing perspectives and empower UNPOL to act more readily;
• Enhancing partnerships between UN police, host states, and other mission components to enable more responsive, better coordinated, and more comprehensive approaches to POC; and
• Providing more appropriate and more flexible capabilities, capacities, and tools to address critical capabilities gaps and adapt existing resources to better meet UNPOL’s latent potential for POC.

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“Diplomacy is about the alignment of interests, and politics is the pursuit of interests, often in contradiction to other parties’ interests,” said Alan Doss, the veteran leader of multiple United Nations peacekeeping missions. “I found that missions were taking the diplomacy route, but those in power were on political pursuits.”

Mr. Doss, now the President of the Kofi Annan Foundation, was speaking at a February 10th Speaker Series discussion of his new book A Peacekeeper in Africa: Learning from UN Interventions in Other People’s Wars. The book is a project of IPI published by Lynne Rienner Press.

Mr. Doss’s narrative focuses on the four African countries where he was in the leadership of UN peacekeeping operations—Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It provides a firsthand account of those missions and how they illustrated both the frustrating limitations of peacekeeping operations but also their important contributions to supplanting conflict with peace.

Mr. Doss said he was impelled to write the book by four considerations. The first was his desire to share his experience in UN peacekeeping to show “how these things happen, how we bring together people from all over the world who have no direct interest in the country, not even necessarily neighbors, but they intervene in other people’s wars.”

Secondly, he said, he wanted to “humanize peacekeeping. We tend to forget what peacekeepers face every day in the field, and much of the commentary is very negative because of the failures of peacekeeping. Every day, I saw people going out and doing a decent good job often at great risk to themselves and often in terrible conditions to try and make a difference.”

The third was to correct misperceptions of the continent where he worked for decades. “Much of what is written about Africa is wrong, ahistorical, and does not contextualize conflicts in centuries of history and cultural circumstances.” The fourth was the deteriorating world situation and the danger it posed to peacekeeping. “The international environment has not improved, in fact, it is becoming more difficult, and these unique instruments of intervention that the UN has developed, not only in recent years, but over decades, are becoming marginalized. We should be very careful not to allow peace operations, including peacekeeping, to fall into disrepair.”

Mr. Doss’s comment on balancing diplomacy and politics came in answer to a question from Jake Sherman, head of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations. Mr. Sherman asked Mr. Doss how he managed to work with people he himself called “violent psychopaths” and governments he identified as “abusive, repressive, and unresponsive.” Mr. Doss responded, “You do have to deal with people who are not exactly examples of human compassion, but they’re there, and you have to deal with them. But I found that those people are often great communicators. They have mastered the simple message.”

He said there is an inevitable tension between host governments and the UN, and the clashing perspectives get exacerbated with time, often to the UN’s detriment. “Governments that allow peacekeeping missions into their countries don’t exactly expect them to come in and criticize their violations of human rights. It’s one thing to criticize a militia, but another to challenge the national government.” As a result, he said, “over time missions lose influence. Sovereignty reasserts itself as governments become more confident, they exercise more control, and they are less likely to cooperate.”

Reflecting on recurrent institutional problems he had experienced over his four decades of working for the UN, Mr. Doss observed, “Peace agreements do not create peace. It’s what comes after.” At that point, he said, there becomes an accretion of overlapping mandates that can end up nullifying the original purpose. “If you get missions where one task after another is tacked on, it can undermine the effectiveness of the delivery of mandates. We keep adding things and adding things, without necessarily considering what the capabilities are on the ground.”  He recommended that “every now and then, it’s important to take a look at mandates and ask what aspects of it are realistic.”

He confessed to having become “overwhelmed” by creating and reworking strategies over the years. “We became a strategy factory,” he said. “We should move away from strategy and instead look at the key elements of a mandate and say, ‘What can we do?’ and I think we will often find contradictions between what we are asked to do and what we can do. We were strategizing; we were not actually doing.”

Asked his views about how the UN had handled reports of sexual exploitation, he said, “Quite frankly, we’ve had a mixed record, and sadly that tends to outweigh anything else we do, often in the headlines. But it’s a sad fact, and we have to be responsible, and I really do believe that the number one job of the SRSGs (Special Representatives of the Secretary-General) is to deal with that because otherwise you’re crippled in all kinds of ways.” He added that the UN can discipline its civilians more effectively than its uniformed staff because the Secretary-General has direct authority over them. “I’m afraid that troop-contributing countries have not always helped us on this issue.” Zero tolerance was the only remedy, he said, because “if you don’t try for zero tolerance, you’ll get much worse. We have to keep after it because if we don’t, inexorably we will slide back.”

In closing remarks, Dee-Maxwell Saah Kemayeh, Sr., the Permanent Representative of Liberia to the UN, cited the success of the UN in his country where the UNMIL peacekeeping mission left in 2018 after 15 years of helping restore peace to a country that had been racked by two devastating civil wars between 1989 and 2003. “Liberia is a country where the UN had a very successful stint,” he said. “Nonetheless, we must not stagnate in the way we keep the peace.”

The discussion was moderated by Mr. Sherman.

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Sanctions can end up hindering humanitarian assistance and the provision of life-saving medical care in armed conflict, and forestalling that outcome was the subject of a January 28th policy forum at IPI, co-hosted with the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations.

The discussion centered on a new IPI report, Making Sanctions Smarter: Safeguarding Humanitarian Action, by former IPI Senior Policy Analyst Alice Debarre, which explored how sanctions regimes can negatively impact humanitarian aid, using case studies from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia. The report also offered concrete recommendations for how to safeguard humanitarian action.

According to the report, among the unintended consequences of sanctions regimes are that:

• Humanitarian organizations are put on sanctions lists;
• Resources needed to apply for exemptions from sanctions regimes create a drain on the effective delivery of aid;
• Banks sometimes restrict or refuse to provide service to humanitarian actors to reduce risk;
• Importing basic goods like concrete are restricted;
• New inhibiting restrictions are put into clauses in donor agreements; and
• Humanitarian actors can be fined or prosecuted.

These obstacles can have a chilling effect, where humanitarian actors err on the side of caution and do less than legally required to avoid the possibility of violating sanctions.

“We need to ensure that sanctions are not an impediment to humanitarian action,” said Jürgen Schulz, Deputy Permanent Representative of Germany to the UN. “It is important to prevent and in any event minimize the potential negative effect on humanitarian action to make sure that impartial medical and humanitarian action is preserved, and that humanitarian and medical personnel are not prosecuted for activities conducted in accordance with International Humanitarian Law.”

To do so, Mr. Schulz said, exemptions for humanitarian action in sanctions regimes play “an important role” in guaranteeing that humanitarian action is safeguarded. “We need to use [exemptions] more often and more effectively than we do today,” he argued. “We believe only when sanctions and counterterrorism experts engage in meaningful dialogue with humanitarian actors [can] we achieve real, lasting solutions.”

Sue Eckert, Adjunct Senior Fellow, Energy, Economics, & Security Program, Center for a New American Security, noted that this was not a new issue, but that there was an increasing body of evidence on the scope of these challenges. Ms. Eckert commented on how de-risking by financial institutions undermines humanitarian aid, and cited a 2017 report that said two thirds of United States nonprofit organizations faced financial access problems.

Financial access “literally can mean life and death,” explained Ms. Eckert. “If the fuel runs out, they’re not able to get more fuel, the generator shuts down, a hospital doesn’t operate, people don’t get food.” Furthermore, she said, when financial institutions cut off support to nonprofits, these organizations often resort to using cash, which is “extremely risky” for individuals and organizations that must trace their funds. But, she added, with the threat of billions of dollars of fees for violations, it’s natural that financial institutions are going to look at these responsibilities warily.

Chris Harland, Deputy Permanent Observer of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to the UN in New York, recommended ways for sanctions measures to be revised as they come up for renewal at the Security Council. He suggested monitoring impact and considering exemptions for UN actors and partners. He also recommended reviewing the obligations of International Humanitarian Law in the sanctions process to make sure that “impartial humanitarian action must be possible even in situations where sanctions regimes are in place,” adding that, “Undertaking our protection activities, ensuring food delivery, clean water, and medicine to those in the greatest need must still be possible.” He noted the contradiction that while “certain sanctions measures outside counterterrorism frameworks are often designed to bring about a better humanitarian situation for individuals in each context, unfortunately, however, we have paradoxically seen sanctions systems which also negatively impact principled humanitarian action.”

Complying with sanctions regimes has meant going through “lengthy, costly, at times unclear administration processes,” according to Julien Piacibello, Humanitarian Affairs Officer, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “We have an obligation to ensure that the grants and the aid go to the people who need it and do not serve any other purpose than responding to need,” he said.

Of the 60 nonprofits interviewed by ODI for a 2018 study on the impact of de-risking in Syria, Mr. Piacibello noted, “Only six of them said that they had not modified programming in order to prioritize less contentious areas and projects. So in practice this means that all the others have admitted to changing the priorities of their programming to limit the risk of diversion, but in a way that does not necessarily prioritize the most urgent, the most acute needs.”

Mr. Piacibello suggested that the UN Security Council provide clarity on how the sanctions regimes should apply to the humanitarian sector and humanitarian activities, including by having implementation guidelines so that states have clear guidelines. “State implementation is what will ultimately make a difference. You need to have Security Council action, but you need to have states following suit. States can adopt exceptions; they can also make sure that principled humanitarian action is not criminalized and that unintentional cases of aid diversion do not give way to crippling penalties. They may provide for the possibility of licenses, but also make the obtention of licenses accessible and swift, and work with other states to ensure the mutual recognition of specific licenses—that will go a long way, I think, in facilitating humanitarian action.”

Justifying humanitarian action requires a reasonable share of risk, Mr. Piacibello noted, but as Ms. Eckert stated, “These are people’s lives that we’re talking about—this has a real impact.”

In his closing remarks as moderator and presentor of the findings of the report on behalf of its author, Ms. Debarre, IPI Vice President Adam Lupel said there is ample evidence that there are incredible challenges that no single actor can grapple with on their own, making this a multi-stakeholder issue requiring dialogue and commitment. “There really is a shared interest in the effective implementation of sanctions regimes while at the same time enabling and facilitating and supporting humanitarian action, and I think that’s something that there is a real collective interest in and a view to improve in the future.”