“Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander”. In suggesting this, Yehuda Bauer, Holocaust historian, rested his case wherein the ‘bystander’ was brought centre-stage and held accountable alongside the perpetrator for crimes against humanity. The ‘bystander’ implies the collective conscience of the world which must work as the weapon of the powerless. So, while the United Nations through Chapter VI of its Charter is committed to the peaceful settlement of disputes, Chapter VII of the same Charter prescribes the use of armed force with the authorisation of the Security Council in cases of aggression and breaches of peace threatening international security. Chapter VII further exhorts member-states to make available such military or police forces as may be required to establish peace. In fact Chapter VIII goes further and prescribes robust ‘regional arrangement’ in enforcing peace upon authorisation by the Security Council.
Hits and misses
Thus, one would be led to an erroneous belief that the UN has everything in place — in its strongly worded Charter and over 1,00,000 peacekeepers on the ground — to eliminate wars and exploitation from the world. UN political diplomacy and peace operations have established peace in many theatres in seven decades of peacekeeping such as in Cambodia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Angola, Timor Leste, Liberia and Kosovo, to name a few notably successful UN engagements.
Yet, there have been glaring instances, such as in Rwanda (1994) and Bosnia (1995) where the UN was accused of being a bystander, unwilling or unable to protect non-combatants and vulnerable sections, especially women and children. That in subsequent missions, notably Sierra Leone (UNSMIL), Timor Leste (UNMIT), Darfur (UNAMID), South Sudan ((UNMISS) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), the UN brought the protection of civilians centrestage, thus restoring substantially, if not wholly, its commitment to its core values, is a tribute to its willingness to use institutional memory in improving peacekeeping to give primacy to protection of civilians.
Today the world is again on the brink of a much bigger war in Europe and West Asia precisely because, over the last three years, the UN has frittered away the dividends of its ‘enforceable peacekeeping’ between 2006 and 2020. It has been reduced to a ‘Bystander’ status again in the ongoing conflict in West Asia and the war in Ukraine.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas-led massacre of non-combatants in Israel, followed by an even larger offensive of Israel on hapless civilians in Gaza, the UN response in both theatres has failed to call out the perpetrator in no uncertain terms and take decisive action in protecting civilian lives. This has happened despite it having a 1,00,000-strong UN military and police forces at its disposal, as battle ready infantry battalions and as ‘standing capacity” at its logistics hub in Brindisi, Italy, that could have been deployed in robust numbers to contain a further loss of life and destruction of cities. There is little point in having such strong forces and yet be a bystander as both conflicts have widened, with the world continuing to witness unprecedented destruction. Even though 1,00,000 UN uniformed forces are deployed in many missions in Africa and elsewhere, it would have done no grave damage to the current missions were over half of them re-deployed in Ukraine, Gaza and West Bank, right between the warring forces, just as they continue to be in Cyprus between the Turks and Greeks or were deployed in Timor Leste, between Indonesian forces and the Timor Leste freedom fighters, the FRETLIN.
A lost chance to act with decision
Extraordinary situations demand extraordinary interventions. The fact that contributing member-countries have committed these forces to not just maintain but also to enforce peace implies their consent to protect civilians regardless of the ‘theatre’. Otherwise, these well-armed and well provisioned troops are just biding their time till their rotation and pocketing the green bucks as a tribute. Blue helmets must act as blue helmets, impartially and decisively, as in Kosovo (UNMIK 1999-2008) and Timor Leste (UNTAET, UNMIT 1999-2008), with legitimacy to use reasonable force. It needed just over 6,000 UN uniformed personnel (typically, two infantry brigades) in Kosovo and 3,000 UN police personnel (including the lightly-armed formed police units) and an infantry brigade from Australia, under operational command of UN Mission (UNMIT) in Timor Leste to restore peace and bring back the rule of law and an elected government.
A deployment of similar numbers in a similar-sized geographical area of Israel-Gaza-West Bank would have contained the colossal loss of lives that has followed and is making this theatre a killing field with mounting civilian casualties.
There is a need for UNSC reform
This also brings us to the subject of much-needed reform in the functioning of the Security Council. The veto power of the P5, the Permanent Security Council members, instead of being a rock of stability for the UN peace operations to stand on, has more often than not acted as a mill-stone around their neck. The world has repeatedly witnessed the negative power of veto precisely at a time when ‘enforcing peace’ has become an urgent necessity in the face of threats to civilian lives. Nearly a million Tutsi civilians were killed in the now infamous Rwanda genocide of 1994-95 even as the French continued to support the Rwandan Army, the main perpetrators of the genocide, and UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) was a bystander.
The case for reform of the Security Council to obviate such genocides in future by swift deployment and having a decisive role for the blue helmets rests on a two-pronged approach. The first is for the expansion of Permanent membership of the Security Council to include India (by virtue of it being the most vibrant voice of the global South) and South Africa (for long overdue representation from Africa). The second is to bell the veto cat.
In an expanded Council of P7, rather than each member having veto power, contentious issues such as the use of force in West Asia to stop an expansionist Israel or in Ukraine to thwart the expansionist designs of Russia — which in the current scenario will be vetoed by the U.S. and Russia, respectively — should have a division of votes of a P7 to decide on UN intervention. Once such a division of votes is in favour of peace operations to thwart hostilities, the deployment of UN standing troops or shifting troops between ‘missions’ should be enabled under Chapters VII and VIII of the UN Charter, with full executive powers to the UN military and police commanders on the ground.
Ultimately, if the UN cannot stand on its own feet and enforce peace despite having standing uniformed forces of the size of a sovereign nation, then UN-led peace operations must close and the plush halls of the UN be used only for exalted deliberations by another international non-governmental organisation or a think-tank.
Hermanprit Singh is a retired Indian Police Service officer with experience in United Nations peace operations as Acting Police Commissioner and Principal Officer in Timor Leste and in the Office of Operations at the UN headquarters