Peacekeeping Operations by Regional and International Organizations

Peacekeeping can be defined as external intervention using military personnel in a conflict between two or more groups usually to stop each side from using violence against the other. These conflicts can be between states or within states. Peacekeeping also includes police officers and civilians with expertise in various fields like conflict resolution, justice and economics.  This paper takes a look at how different international institutions go about peace keeping operations with the key one being the United Nations and how it has worked with regional organizations in line with the United Nations (UN) Charter captured under Chapter VIII. Such dual-arrangements are what is called hybrid peacekeeping. It is where international actors partner with local actors to develop their capacity of conflict prevention and resolution. This ensures more ownership and inclusivity especially at the national and regional level. However, there must be political will for hybrid peacekeeping to be successful although we will also highlight other challenges in general faced in deployment of troops for the purposes of bringing about peace.

Tardy (2014) asserts that the difference between hybrid operations and non-hybrid operations is the degree of integration among various actors.  It takes more than interactions, the decision making process can be a bit complex and different due to a plurality of actors. Some examples of hybrid operations include that of Kosovo (NATO Kosovo Force) which involved NATO, the European Union (EU) and the UN as well as the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) that gets support from the UN. Tardy further states that the support comes in terms of logistics, training and finance. Organizations can intervene at different stages of the conflict called sequential operations, several organizations can come in at the same time to deal with a given mandate called parallel operations and finally integrated operations whereby two institutions agree to share the command structure or one subordinates to the other as witnessed in Darfur between the UN and the African Union (AU).

Hybridization as it is called therefore helps to share the burden of peace operations, provides an opportunity for strategic partnership to challenging situations and offers flexibility where a host nation may be hostile to a given institution hence bringing in aspects of ownership as was the case with the Sudan peace process when former President Omar al-Bashir rejected deployment of troops by the UN while insisting that deployment by the AU was the only acceptable option.

Peace Keeping by the UN

According to Howard (2015), the UN Charter does not explicitly mention peacekeeping although Article 1 gives the UN the responsibility to “maintain international peace and security” with the how being covered in Chapter VI and VII on pacific settlement of disputes and actions to be taken respectively. The United Nations has the largest deployed force in the world.

There seems to be general consensus that since the end of the Cold War, interstate conflicts have significantly reduced but have been replaced by an increase in internal conflicts driven by things like ethnicity or religious affiliations.  This is evident in countries like Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia and Congo. Where such conflicts cannot be solved internally, there is a ‘third party’ intervention by the likes of United Nations or regional bodies. Yilmaz (2005) calls the UN the grand guardian of international peace hence a lot is expected of it but there are questions about effectiveness of operations. The key principles that guide UN-Peacekeeping are the consent of parties, impartiality and non-use of force.

Peacekeeping initiatives have saved lives and prevented escalation even in areas where regional military intervention would not be acceptable. The UN goes further to help in the peacebuilding processes by providing international assistance on rule of law, administration and economic development.  The UN peacekeeping operations have been successful in Bosnia and Herzegovina, East Timor and Liberia. However, there are challenges of capacity as the UN struggles to meet the growing demand for peacekeeping operations, major powers such as the United States and Britain are more focused on other military engagements mainly the war on terror hence limiting their contribution of personnel to the UN peacekeeping operations (Yilmaz, 2005).

Whereas global powers view contribution of personnel as an extra burden, developing countries have come in to fill the gap becoming the largest contributors of troops.  Funding has been another challenge as many states fail to meet their legal obligations as well as difficulties sometimes in getting local support to accomplish their mandate. Issues of language barrier are common since these troops come from different nations, challenges of accountability, power politics and disagreements in decision making including the one witnessed in South Sudan when Kenya withdrew her troops following the sacking of the Kenyan commander of the UN peacekeeping force are a big headache. Despite all these challenges, the financial and human cost of a war makes peacekeeping cheaper or worth it. At the same time, the UN has of recent opted for co-deployment which enables the organization to accomplish its principal responsibilities of maintaining peace and security across the globe without being directly responsible for costly and many times prolonged internal conflicts while on the other hand giving legitimacy to regional and sub-regional actors.

Peacekeeping by the AU

The African Union is a continental body deriving its membership from African states. Under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter which states that “nothing in the present Charter precludes the existence of regional arrangements or agencies for dealing with such matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security as are appropriate for regional action provided that such arrangements or agencies and their activities are consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.”, the African Union is classified as a regional arrangement even if it is a continental body. Note that Article 4(h) of the AU Charter also gives the African Union the authority to intervene in a member state to prevent serious violations of human rights like war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

According to Williams (2006), the African Union has over the years stepped up its capacity to handle conflicts taking bold steps to implement structures for armed peace operations like the creation of the African Standby Force to be deployed in various conflicts. The Peace and Security Council was set up in 2004 to help guide the AU in matters peace and security. It is important to note that there are conflicts that the AU can go it alone but there are others that require co-deployment with the UN either at the beginning or later on. In including peacekeeping among its core tasks, the AU had in mind the need to act quickly especially where the international community may drag its feet, a good example being during the genocide in Rwanda. Individual AU members are also expected to chip in depending on the circumstance.

Peacekeeping operations need a lot of funds that many times the AU has not been able to raise among its member states. For instance, deployment in Burundi in 2003 required additional funding by the European Union before the operations eventually passed on to the UN. The same thing happened in 2004 in Sudan whereby financial support came from NATO and EU states. This lack of funding from African states brings into question the independence of the AU as Omorogbe (2011) puts it, the fact that the EU largely finances the AU budget, affects autonomy and decision making since peace operations have to be validated by the Europeans on top of other conditions. In addition, Williams (2006) again states that the AU struggled to raise in time the required troop levels for the operations in Burundi and Sudan. Apparently less than fifty percent of AU member states contribute personnel to UN peacekeeping operations with a majority of the contributions coming from only nine members. Among the highly contributing members, Avezov, Lijn and Smit (2017) found out that Burundi, Burkina Faso and Kenya deploy between nineteen and thirty-four percent of their active troops in peace operations.

Peace Keeping by Sub-Regional Organizations 

InterGovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is one of those sub-regional bodies recognized under UN Charter as regional solution to matters of peace and security. IGAD is now made up of eight Eastern African states that’s Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda although Eritrea once suspended its participation in the organization. The AU also depends on sub-regional organizations to take a lead role in containing conflicts within their areas of operation. Healy (2011) opines that IGAD played a key role in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 between North and South Sudan that ended up with the formation of the state of South Sudan as well as the Somali peace process that led to the establishment of a transitional government in 2004 with Kenya’s General Sumbeiwyo and Ambassador Bethwell Kiplagat as the chief negotiators respectively. Although IGAD has not had a troop deployment on its own, it does have a standby force and normally operates under the AU. The regional bloc has also in the past mandated Somalia and Djibouti to deploy troops in South Sudan to ensure implementation of the peace agreement. Nevertheless, lack of a powerful secretariat, suspicions and power play among member states has been its greatest challenge.

Meanwhile, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is another sub-regional organization that has been actively involved in peacekeeping operations within its area of jurisdiction with much success. It has a membership of fifteen West African States including the likes of Ghana, Ivory Coast and Nigeria which is considered a regional hegemon. Funmi Olonisakin states that ECOWAS moved from focusing only on matters economic integration to include peace building with initial deployment being in Liberia, the first regional organization to do so (Jaye, Garuba & Amadi, 2011).

Olonisakin further asserts that these interventions came as a result of civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone that had a spillover effect such as the influx of refugees and small arms proliferation. Military coups have also been witnessed in Guinea Bissau and Ivory Coast that needed deployment of peacekeepers.  However, the regional body has faced challenges of financial capacity which required help from the EU and the UN, inadequate technical capacity and failure to capitalize on ownership and knowledge of the region. Coleman (2011) argues that certain actors find difficulties in committing to longtime peace prospects due to the required military and financial resources giving an example of Nigeria which has skipped some ECOWAS deployments or threatened withdrawals prompting the UN to chip in.

Conclusion

There is no question that peacekeeping is an essential feature of a safe and secure world if the number of internal and external conflicts are anything to go by. The UN which is generally considered the custodian of world peace and security has played a great role although this is not explicitly defined within the organization’s charter. The same thing can be said of regional and sub-regional bodies that initially started as forums for regional integration only to realize that you cannot have trade across borders without peace. Some of them such as ECOWAS quickly adjusted to the new reality. One thing that cuts across these organizations is the issue of finance, personnel, technical capacity and the willingness of local actors something which has partly been addressed through co-deployment or hybridization of the peace process. Peace missions come with a lot of military and financial costs but the cost of war makes such undertakings justifiable. However, there are scholars who have called for a greater focus on conflict prevention something I am in agreement with. To their credit, several regional organizations and continental bodies like the AU have invested or even showed a willingness to do so in early warning systems and intervention mechanisms. At the same time, continued growth of democracy and good governance especially in continents like Africa that has been in great need of peacekeeping missions will go a long way in reducing internal conflicts as we have witnessed with external ones. Finally, whatever we do, let us try to promote peace in our own capacities for a better world because we are a global village and what ails one part somehow affects the rest.

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