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Peacekeeping on the Brink / Peacekeeping am Abgrund

Jahresbericht über UN-Friedensmissionen mit ernüchternder Bilanz - Keine Lichtblicke - "There is no peace to keep"

Im Folgenden dokumentieren wir einen Bericht der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Vereinten Nationen (DGVN) über eine Veranstaltung, auf der eine neue Studie über internationale UN-Missionen vorgelegt wurde. der "Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2009" wurde vom Center on International Cooperation (CIC) an der New York University unter der Hauptautorschaft von Bruce Jones herausgegeben. Eine Zusammenfassung der wesentlichen Ergebnisse dokumentieren wir im Anschluss an den Veranstaltungsbericht (englisch).



Veranstaltungsbericht - 04.05.2009

"No Peace to Keep" - Kritisches Jahr für die UN-Friedensmissionen

Auch wenn die Gesamtzahl größerer bewaffneter Konflikte weltweit in den letzten 10 Jahren zurückgegangen ist, war 2008 ein kritisches Jahr für die Friedensmissionen. So lautet die Kernbotschaft einer aktuellen Studie, in der Experten mehr als 50 internationale Friedenseinsätze anhand neuer Daten untersucht haben. Hauptautor Bruce Jones vom Center on International Cooperation (CIC) an der New York University stellte den ‚Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2009’ im Rahmen der DGVN-Mittagsgespräche Globale Politik am 22. April 2009 in Berlin vor. Moderiert wurde die Veranstaltung von Ekkehard Griep, stellvertretender Vorsitzender der DGVN.

Es gebe kaum UN-Friedenseinsätze ohne massive Probleme - ob in Haiti, Darfur oder in der Demokratischen Republik Kongo. Unzureichend ausgestattete Truppen werden immer häufiger in Kampfhandlungen verwickelt und an die Grenzen ihrer Belastbarkeit gebracht. Lichtblicke im Sinne von erfolgreichen Missionen gibt es für das Jahr 2008 im Grunde keine, resümiert Jones. Besonders problematisch seien Einsätze in Gebieten wie Darfur, in denen in absehbarer Zeit keine friedliche Lösung des Konflikts zu erwarten sei. „There is no peace to keep“, so Jones zur Situation in Sudan.

Wenn die Interessen der Machthabenden vor Ort und die der internationalen Organisationen übereinstimmten, könnten Friedensmissionen die politischen Prozesse unterstützen. Wenn dies nicht der Fall sei, seien sie ein teurer, schwerfälliger und meist erfolgloser Ersatz.

Vorgeschichte des Berichts

Bereits in den Vorjahren hatte der ‚Annual Review‘ davor gewarnt, dass Friedensmissionen Gefahr liefen, überstrapaziert zu werden. UN-Einsätze sind kein Ersatz für einen effektiven politischen Prozess – das war schon die zentrale Lektion des 2000 veröffentlichten wegweisenden „Brahimi-Berichts“. UN-Generalsekretär Kofi Annan hatte eine Expertenkommission beauftragt, die Rolle der UN in den Bereichen Frieden und Sicherheit zu untersuchen. Der Abschlussbericht, benannt nach dem Vorsitzenden der Kommission, dem ehemaligen algerischen Außenminister Lakhdar Brahimi, empfahl zahlreiche Verbesserungen im Bereich der UN-Operationen. Einige davon wurden anschließend von der Generalversammlung und dem Sicherheitsrat angenommen.

Zahlen

Die Vereinten Nationen sind der größte Entsender von militärischem Personal in globalen Friedensmissionen mit weltweit über 70.000 Personen, gefolgt von der NATO mit über 60.000 Personen. Weitere 30.000 Personen sind für die UN als zivile Friedenshelfer und Polizeikräfte im Einsatz. Die größten Friedensmissionen unter UN-Kommando waren im Jahr 2008 die Einsätze in Kongo (MONUC), Darfur (UNAMID), Libanon (UNIFIL) und Liberia (UNMIL). Hauptgeldgeber mit einem Anteil von ca. 25 % am Peacekeeping-Haushalt sind die USA. Die Mehrheit der Truppen unter UN-Kommando stammt aus Pakistan, Bangladesch und Indien und wird vornehmlich in Afrika eingesetzt.

Empfehlungen

Bruce Jones nennt folgende Aspekte zur Verbesserung der UN-Friedensmissionen:
  1. Alle Beteiligten müssten sich der strategischen Rolle der Missionen stärker bewusst werden. Die läge darin, in Bürgerkriegen Hilfe zu leisten, zur Stabilisierung und Deeskalation in internationalen Konflikten beizutragen, Hilfe bei humanitären Krisen zu leisten sowie die staatliche Autorität in ihren militärischen und politischen Funktionen zu stärken. Darauf müssten die Einsätze stärker ausgerichtet sein. Und das bedeute vor allem: Die UN-Truppen müssten wesentlich schneller in die Krisengebiete entsendet werden.
  2. Die UN-Friedensmissionen müssten sparsamer eingesetzt werden. Nicht immer sei der Einsatz von UN-Truppen die richtige Antwort auf Konflikte.
  3. Die Effektivität und Effizienz der Truppen in den Einsatzgebieten sollte verbessert werden.
  4. Es müsste in die Sicherheit und Ausstattung der Truppen investiert werden sowie eine verstärkte Kontrolle der Missionen vor Ort erfolgen.
Sicherheitsrat/DPKO

Im Bereich des Sicherheitsrats und der UN-Hauptabteilung Friedenssicherungseinsätze (DPKO), die über Entsendung und Aufstellung von Truppen entscheiden, empfiehlt Jones Verbesserungen auf der Kommunikationsebene. Institutionelle Reformen des DPKO müssten vorangebracht sowie Empfehlungen des Brahimi-Berichts weiter umgesetzt werden. Dazu gehöre z.B. der Ausbau des "UN Stand-by Arrangements System“ (UNSAS), in dessen Rahmen die UN-Mitgliedstaaten freiwillig erklären, welche militärischen und zivilen Mittel sie für UN-Missionen kurzfristig bereitstellen können.

Diskussionsrunde

Bruce Jones zufolge hält die Diskussion bei der UN über den Ausbau von Stand-by-Kapazitäten an. Er sprach die These des britischen Premierministers Gordon Brown an, der zufolge die Vereinten Nationen eine schnelle Eingreiftruppe aufbauen sollten. In diesem Zusammenhang sprach er auch über das Problem einer weitgehend fehlenden UN-Reserve im Bereich der Polizei. Optimistisch äußerte sich der Autor im Hinblick auf die Zusammenarbeit der UN-Friedensmissionen mit der neuen amerikanischen Regierung unter Barack Obama.

Peter Schumann, gerade aus dem Sudan zurückgekehrter deutscher UN-Bediensteter, beschrieb die Frustration, die innerhalb der Beteiligten der Friedensmissionen herrsche. Er betonte, dass militärische Interventionen nicht in der Lage seien, die eigentlichen Probleme in den Krisengebieten zu lösen. Andere politische und humanitäre Lösungsstrategien seien erforderlich, um die Konflikte an der Wurzel zu bekämpfen.

Peter Wittig, Leiter der VN-Abteilung im Auswärtigen Amt erkundigte sich, wo die Schuldigen für die erfolglosen Missionen in erster Linie zu suchen seien - bei den zu schnellen Entscheidungen des Sicherheitsrats, der zum Teil unrealistische Mandate vergibt, bei den schlecht geführten und schwach ausgestatteten Truppen, dem unterbesetzten DPKO oder „dem Westen“? Bruce Jones zufolge sind bei allen vier Akteuren zugleich Fehler zu suchen und Verbesserungen erforderlich.

Brigadegeneral Hans-Werner Wiermann, stellvertretender Abteilungsleiter für Militärpolitik im Führungsstab der Streitkräfte, betonte die Notwendigkeit einer einzigen Autorität, die für die Koordination der verschiedenen zivilen und militärischen Akteure in den Einsatzgebieten zuständig ist.

Trotz der kritischen Entwicklung, die UN-Friedeneinsätze im vergangenen Jahr genommen haben, wurde über eine Abschaffung nicht diskutiert. Es gebe zurzeit keine Alternative für die Einsätze, um zum Frieden in der Welt beizutragen.

Silke Galla

Quelle: Newsletter der DGVN, 5. Juni 2009; www.dgvn.de


Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2009

Briefing Paper

Peacekeeping on the Brink

After several years of continuous expansion, reform and resiliency, in 2008 global peacekeeping was pushed to the brink.

This publication warned in 2006 that peacekeeping faced a risk of overstretch. In 2007 it highlighted the mounting pressures on peacekeeping organizations, while stressing that peace operations had shown surprising resilience. By 2008 peacekeeping was spread increasingly thin, in many respects the victim of its own success. Our thematic review that year was by Lakhdhar Brahimi and Salman Ahmed. It cautioned that we risked unlearning the central lesson of the Brahimi Report: that peacekeeping is not a substitute for an effective political process.

That lesson was on vivid display during the past year, as the collapse, failure or stasis of political processes in central Africa, Lebanon/Syria, Sudan, Chad and Haiti placed peacekeeping operations there under severe strain. Most dramatic was the surge of violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in late fall 2008 which saw MONUC - already overstretched and under-supported - approach collapse on the ground before last-minute political negotiations led to a tenuous cease fire. The dramatic shift in Rwanda’s position by arresting its alleged ally, General Laurent Nkunda, temporarily alleviated the unfolding crisis.

Overstretch was not limited to the UN. Globally, troop contributors were strained by the combined demands of UN, NATO, AU, EU and UN-authorized multi-national force operations.

The continued erosion of the political and governance situation in Afghanistan prompted new doubts about NATO’s operation there, amidst stymied statebuilding efforts and a deepening insurgency. European institutions were similarly affected by the combination of overstretch in troop levels and strained political processes. While the OSCE was forced to stop working in Georgia as a result of that country’s brief war with Russia in summer 2008, the EU launched a new observer operation there on uncertain political terrain. Meanwhile, the EU’s largest police and rule of law operation, in Kosovo, was frustrated throughout the year by tense political debate that surrounded the question of Kosovo’s legal status. The EU did manage to deploy a new mission to Chad, but not without widespread doubts about the viability of the mission in the absence of a strong political mandate and uncertainty about the realism of a planned UN follow-on mission.

And to conclude the year, the Bush administration used the last days of its tenure to push for a UN operation for Somalia. The US acted in full knowledge that a survey of potential troop contributors had revealed almost no willingness to deploy troops into the lawless vacuum of central Somalia. Other P5 members put the brakes on, and a reluctant Security Council compromised on a resolution authorizing a UN support package to the existing AU mission for Somalia. It expressed its intent to establish a peacekeeping operation six months later, which will add tremendously to the strain on the UN.

Bright spots were few. In Nepal, a medium-sized monitoring and political operation helped that country bring its bloody civil war to an end and served as a handmaiden to inclusive elections. Even there, exit strategies were in question: regional powers kept the mission on a short leash and implementation of commitments necessary to translate the ceasefire and elections into sustained stability lagged badly.

West Africa, once the site of several large peacekeeping operations also made progress toward greater stability. That was especially so of Sierra Leone, where the UN Integrated Office in Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL)—a peacebuilding mission that had replaced a full-scale military operation in 2006—was in turn replaced by a far smaller office, the UN Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL), and the Peacebuilding Commission continued its work to support the transition to stable development. Liberia entered its third year of post-war stability, albeit faced with daunting social and economic challenges. The peace process in Côte d’Ivoire made modest gains, but the situation remained tense due to difficulties associated with postponed elections.

Somalia, ironically, was the site of a significant innovation, where a UN-authorized multinational maritime force was deployed to combat piracy off Somalia’s territorial (but totally ungoverned) waters.

The contrast between 2008 and previous years highlights a simple reality: that when the interests of the relevant regional and international powers align, peacekeeping can serve as a critical facilitator of political progress; when they do not, it is an expensive, unwieldy and usually unsuccessful substitute.

The Path Ahaed

Peacekeeping’s troubles in major theaters of operation during 2008 made it abundantly clear that despite their previous successes, contemporary peace operations have proven largely ill-equipped to address a changed peacekeeping environment. That environment is characterized by the negative impacts of tenacious political and violent spoilers, compounded by strained international resources in a dire global financial situation. Tense international relations further exacerbated political crises in the Broader Horn of Africa and the Broader Middle East, the two central foci of global peace operations. 2008’s crises brought back memories of an earlier round of peacekeeping failures in the mid-1990s. Of course, political/peacekeeping failures in Angola, Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda were accompanied by vast, dramatic death tolls. 2008’s failures were less severe in human terms – though the cumulative death toll in the DRC reaches into the millions when non-battle deaths are counted in, and battle deaths in Somalia are rapidly mounting. Nevertheless, the echoes of the mid-1990s, and the subsequent collapse of UN peacekeeping, were being heard in the Council chambers. The silver lining is that the gravity of the situation appears to have generated focused attention. As the year drew to a close, the Secretariat, permanent and elected members of the Security Council and C-34 members began intensive reviews of UN peacekeeping. All were preoccupied by the multiple realities of overstretch: in terms of troops; in terms of costs; in terms of unmanageable missions; and in terms of the impact on DPKO and the newly formed Department for Field Support, already straining to support several newly authorized missions. These initiatives will complement a renewed concern at the UN, and also within the EU, about the ability of peacekeeping providers to deploy suitable civilians rapidly to oversee the political aspects of missions or contribute to key statebuilding functions. The year ahead looks likely to see sustained attention to the civilian question, as well as to the perennial challenge of linking peacekeeping and broader peacebuilding strategies into a coherent whole. That the UN and its member states are undertaking initiatives aimed at identifying the reason for peacekeeping’s failures and developing a more strategic attitude to mandating missions and a more systemic approach to raising, deploying and renewing peacekeeping forces, is a step in the right direction. Much will hinge on their outcomes. But in the best of all possible scenarios, global peace operations enter 2009 under incredibly difficult circumstances: with western forces tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan; African and South Asian forces overstretched in AU and UN operations; the legacy of bad starts haunting operations in Sudan and Somalia; and tensions at the UN between the Security Council, troop contributors and financial donors. Additionally, the future of the UN missions in Sudan remained uncertain as the prosecutors of the International Criminal Court pursued President al-Bashir. That being said, in 2009 member states will confront a strategic choice between retrenchment, on the one hand, and on the other, a new level of strategic engagement to boost the performance of peace operations. The arguments for retrenchment will be strong, especially in the context of the financial crisis; but the costs would be high if a scale-back in global peace operations led to a rise in violence and destabilization. In either case, the pathway forward must be driven by a shared strategic assessment of the challenges ahead.

Contours of Peacekeeping in 2008

Throughout 2008 the managerial and logistical maintenance of record high deployment levels of UN and non-UN peacekeeping personnel comprised a significant dimension of the current crisis. The consequence was a substantial slowing of deployments.

After experiencing significant growth for several years at an annual rate of 15–20 percent, during 2008 the global peacekeeping footprint expanded by only 8.7 percent, with roughly 13,000 military personnel added to the roster.

This modest growth was led primarily by a 20 percent jump in personnel deployed in NATO’s Afghanistan mission, ISAF, up to 50,700 troops in 2008 from 41,100 in late 2007. At the end of 2008 ISAF was as large as the next three biggest peace operations combined. NATO commands two-fifths of global peacekeepers and the United States contributions in Afghanistan and Kosovo under NATO make it the largest contributor to peace operations in 2008.

The United Nations remains the largest institutional provider of peacekeepers, accounting for about 50 percent of global deployments—with nearly 80,000 military personnel, 12,000 police and thousands of civilian staff in the field. The UN’s forces grew at a rate of about 7 percent in 2008. The deployment of air assets to peace operations continued to pose a problem in 2008. Most notably for the EU in Chad and the UN in Darfur, difficulties in procuring force enablers such as attack helicopters underscored paltry land-to-forces ratios and had a significant impact on the performance of these operations.

Patterns of Deployment

Ninety-five percent of troops continue to be deployed in three large clusters of missions: those of the UN and the AU in Africa, alongside smaller AU and EU deployments; those of NATO and the UN in the broader Middle East, drawing primarily on US and European troops; and those of NATO and the UN and EU in Europe.

Africa remained home to 40 percent of global peace operation deployments. The UN remained the largest military deployer on the continent, accounting for approximately 87 percent of all deployments there in 2008. When compared to other organizations, the UN provided more than ten times the number of peacekeepers in Africa. Large-scale UN deployments in DRC, Sudan, Darfur, Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire made up the bulk of these troops. Peacekeepers in Africa emanated primarily from two regions: Africa itself (40 percent) and South and Central Asia (42 percent). In 2008 the EU deployed a short-term bridging and humanitarian security operation, the EU Force in the Republic of Chad and the Central African Republic (EUFOR TCHAD/RCA), whose mandate was set to expire in March 2009, after which the operation would theoretically be replaced by 5,000 UN troops.

Within Africa, the Broader Horn represents a major locus of activity, accounting for 40 percent of deployments on the continent, including operations launched by the AU, EU and UN. When—or if—proposed deployment levels are reached, including those for the UN-AU Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) as well as an estimated 20,000 troops for Somalia, over 60,000 peacekeepers will be operating in the region.

Operations in the Broader Middle East accounted for 41 percent of global military deployments during 2008. The 65,000 peacekeepers deployed across the region were largely drawn from Europe and the United States and operated mostly under NATO’s command in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. European contingents continued to compose 62 percent of the expanded UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the largest contribution of Western military personnel under UN command.

Europe was host to 14 percent of peace operations deployments during 2008. While the majority of the forces there operated under NATO command in the Kosovo Force (KFOR), both the EU and UN maintained missions in the region.

Rounding out the final 5 percent of global deployments in 2008 were regional peacekeeping responses involving troop deployments from nearby states acting through the UN, regional organizations, or multinational forces. Two examples exemplified this pattern of deployment: Haiti, where roughly 60 percent of troops for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) were drawn from nearby Latin American countries; and Timor-Leste, where the UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) operated alongside the Australian-led International Security Forces (ISF). Similarly, the International Monitoring Team (IMT)—sent to oversee the cease-fire on the Philippine island of Mindanao—was largely drawn from regional actors Malaysia and Brunei.

Police deployments have nearly doubled over the past three years. In 2008 UN deployments grew at a rate of over 33 percent, from 9,000 to 12,000 personnel. The surge in police deployments was also reflected in non-UN missions, particularly the large number of EU police authorized for Kosovo.

Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2009

The New York University Center on International Cooperation’s (CIC) Annual Review of Global Peace Operations is the most comprehensive report of its kind, examining more than fifty United Nations (UN) and non-UN peace operations. It aims to inform policy-makers, media outlets, academics and peacekeepers as the international community debates the prominent role of peace operations in conflict management. The report draws on data previously unavailable outside of the UN and other non-UN peacekeeping platforms. CIC prepared the Annual Review with the support of the Peacekeeping Best Practices Section of the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the African Union Peace and Security Department.



Quelle: www.cic.nyu.edu


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