UN Peacekeeping Week 2016

Kirsten Oswald Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered UN Peacekeeping Week 2016.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard, and it is a privilege to have secured a debate on United Nations peacekeeping in a week when British troops have arrived in South Sudan as part of a UN peacekeeping mission.

[Mr Philip Hollobone in the Chair]

UN peacekeeping began in 1948, when the Security Council authorised the deployment of UN military observers to the middle east. The mission’s role was to monitor the armistice agreement between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Since then the UN has undertaken 69 peacekeeping operations, and at present there are 16 peacekeeping operations under way across the world, with troops deployed in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas and the middle east. In the years since 1948, hundreds of thousands of military personnel, along with tens of thousands of UN police and civilian support workers, from more than 120 countries, have taken part in UN peacekeeping operations.

The International Day of UN Peacekeepers was on 29 May, and last week was UN Peacekeeping Week. Those events were established to honour the memory of UN peacekeepers who have lost their lives in the cause of peace and to pay tribute to all those who have served, and who continue to serve, in UN peacekeeping operations for their high level of professionalism, dedication and courage.

I was at the Cenotaph on 25 May, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Steven Paterson) and other Members of this House, to attend the UN peacekeepers memorial ceremony and commemorate more than 3,400 peacekeepers from some 120 countries who have died from acts of violence, accidents or disease while serving under the UN flag. It was striking to see the variety of nations represented at the ceremony; it was a clear illustration of the global nature of peacekeeping and of the danger facing those who enter challenging situations to support peace and a better future.

The group at the Cenotaph commemorating the lives of those who had died was diverse in many ways, which reflects the profile of the peacekeepers themselves. Six women lead peacekeeping missions across the world. In Cyprus, Kristin Lund is the first woman to be a force commander. It was positive to hear about the recent proposals by the UN for Scotland to provide support for the training of female Syrian peacekeepers, which illustrates the importance of engaging as widely as possible in the name of peace.

Peacekeeping is truly a global concern. Many of the 193 member states of the UN have contributed personnel, equipment or funds in support of the common goal of peace. In March 2015, 128 nations were contributing troops, police or civilian support personnel to the UN. The 2015 leaders summit heard about the 125,000 peacekeepers who are deployed across the globe.

The principles that underpin the operation of UN peacekeeping require the deployment of UN peacekeepers to happen only with the consent of the main parties involved in a conflict. Those parties must commit to a political process, and that consent and commitment give the UN the freedom to act politically and physically to undertake a peacekeeping operation in a situation where there may be significant instability.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the brave members of the armed forces who get involved in the UN peacekeeping forces do so out of a commitment to world peace and stability, and that they are truly an inspiration to all of us?

[Kirsten Oswald]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He makes an important point that we must reflect on, namely that the people who go and serve in dangerous situations in pursuit of peace are very brave and deserve our admiration.

The idea that UN peacekeepers are impartial is also vital for them to continue to receive support from the parties involved in a conflict, which cannot be underestimated. A study by the RAND Corporation found that deploying peacekeepers reduces the risk of a country sliding back into all-out war by 50%. Of course, there can be genuine difficulty in maintaining impartiality when the peacekeepers are called upon to act in one direction or another. Often, UN peacekeeping missions have to perform a dual role, providing the agreed impartiality but also the robustness required to stand up for what is right for agreements, international law and human rights. That is highly challenging, but UN peacekeepers deal with such situations every day.

[Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise the early work done by Andrew Carnegie, who was born in my constituency, in funding the Peace Palace in The Hague, and does she think that establishing a link between The Hague and Carnegie’s home town of Dunfermline would encourage young people to take an interest in peacekeeping initiatives, which would be important, and in honouring peacekeepers worldwide?

[Kirsten Oswald]

I thank my hon. Friend. Anything that we can do to encourage young people to work in the pursuit of peace is absolutely admirable, and I echo his remarks entirely.

Fifteen years ago, the UN deployed 40,000 military and police personnel. Today, there are more than 125,000 personnel, including civilian staff and UN volunteers, and they put themselves in highly dangerous situations to help countries progress from conflict to stability. In fact, if UN peacekeepers are considered collectively, they represent the largest deployed military force in the world. It is striking, therefore, that UN peacekeeping accounts for less than 0.5% of the world’s military expenditure.

Not for the first time, I find myself asking the House to consider priorities in military expenditure. Many countries, including the UK, are enthusiastic about spending eye-watering sums on the most offensive of weapons. They are sometimes much more reluctant to provide proper training, kit and conditions for their troops, and in the case of UN peacekeepers they are much less keen to provide resources to foster and sustain peace than they are to provide the capacity for war.

The UK Government’s commitment in deploying 70 British military personnel to Somalia, in addition to the personnel who were sent to South Sudan yesterday, is very welcome, particularly because it represents a doubling of the commitment of British personnel to UN peacekeeping forces. I note that the Minister for Armed Forces has said that she believes this represents a turning point in UK involvement in global peacekeeping operations; I hope so.

It is interesting to examine the detail behind how countries co-operate to facilitate UN peacekeeping operations. The cost of peacekeeping is allocated using a complicated formula, and I commend the USA, Japan, and China in particular for their willingness to provide funds. In the case of personnel, however, the pattern is very different. The 10 biggest budget contributors are estimated to supply just 6% of peacekeeping troops. Although China features in both top ten lists and has committed to significant increases in the funding that it provides to the UN, there is a clear pattern of African and Asian countries providing the UN with the vast majority of troops. In fact, peacekeeping can be relatively lucrative for some countries, with the UN paying more than $1,300 per soldier per month. For instance, Rwanda contributes more than 6,000 troops to the UN but contributes just $16,500 in funds every year. The scope for nations to provide the support they can for the maintenance of peace in the way they can best manage is therefore important.

Looking at the bigger picture, however, the UN peacekeeping budget of about £8 billion annually, which protects more than 125 million people globally, is less than the annual budget of Transport for London. Moreover, because the peacekeeping personnel put their lives on the line to try to bring stability to some of the world’s most vulnerable populations, the scope and complexity of the tasks they undertake have increased significantly. The risks that they face have also increased. The blue helmets of UN peacekeepers are increasingly being targeted directly. Last year saw 129 fatalities of peacekeepers, who came from 46 countries.

When UN peacekeepers first began operations, the Security Council often froze into inaction as the cold war began to bite. Initially, peacekeeping operations often involved supporting the maintenance of ceasefires and stabilising situations on the ground, so that there was the opportunity to resolve conflict peacefully by political means. Consequently, peacekeepers tended to be unarmed observers with a remit to monitor and report what was happening.

Some of that early activity continues to this day. The deployment of peacekeepers to India and Pakistan continues, and their deployment to Cyprus is long-standing. However, as global issues changed, the UN continued to develop its approach to peacekeeping. The Congo operation, launched in 1960, was the first large-scale mission, with nearly 20,000 military personnel deployed. Sadly, that operation demonstrated all too well the risks involved in trying to bring stability to war-torn regions. In total, 250 UN personnel died, including the UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld.

In 1999 the UN returned to the Congo, which by that time was the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, in a country the size of western Europe that has just 300 miles of modern road, the challenge and cost of long-term deployment are immense. The DRC is one country that illustrates the need for a twin-track approach of both peace and development if countries are to be stabilised.

In 1988, UN peacekeepers were awarded the Nobel peace prize. At that time, the Nobel prize committee stated that

“the Peacekeeping Forces through their efforts have made important contributions towards the realization of one of the fundamental tenets of the United Nations. Thus, the world organization has come to play a more central part in world affairs and has been invested with increasing trust”.

With the end of the cold war, the strategic context for peacekeeping changed dramatically and the focus of peacekeeping missions shifted as the nature of conflicts changed. There was also more of a focus on laying the foundations for sustainable peace. The range of tasks carried out by peacekeepers broadened significantly, with peacekeepers helping to build sustainable institutions of governance and carrying out human rights monitoring and the reintegration of former combatants.

Of course, the military personnel who were deployed remained, and still remain, the key focus of peacekeeping operations, but a wide array of other functions were coming to the fore, as the breadth of the task that was now required became apparent. There is now a need for those with skills in humanitarian work, economics, law and mine clearance to name but a few.

In tandem with the increased scope of peacekeeping operations, the number of operations continued to increase after the end of the cold war. Sometimes the peacekeepers faced action in locations where the guns had not yet fallen silent. It was not possible to keep the peace in the former Yugoslavia, or in Somalia and Rwanda, because peace did not exist in those places at those times. It is no wonder that there was no success in areas where warring factions continued to do battle.

The missions, and the situations surrounding the conflicts, underscored the necessity for clear parameters and robust support for peacekeeping forces. Peacekeepers were dispatched to areas as diverse as Angola, Bosnia and Haiti in the ’90s, and Cyprus has seen continued deployment, with 64 soldiers from 1 Scots recently receiving medals at a ceremony in Nicosia for service as UN peacekeepers on the island.

UN peacekeepers have acted as administrators in Kosovo—in the former Yugoslavia—and in East Timor, as it progressed towards independence from Indonesia. In East Timor, the responsibility to protect human rights came to the fore, which is particularly important when there is a vast disparity in the size of the power of adjoining nations. One of the roles of UN peacekeepers can be to underpin the process by which a new country joins the international community. This new country, East Timor, was for hundreds of years part of the Portuguese empire. After world war two Portugal reasserted control, but the Dutch were unable to do the same in all their former colonies and an independent Indonesia emerged. As Portugal abandoned its former colonies in 1974, Indonesia incorporated East Timor. An Indonesian invasion then started a brutal occupation in East Timor and, after many years of the world looking away, international pressure, including from this House, led to Indonesia agreeing to hold a referendum, in which the Timorese overwhelmingly backed independence. The Indonesian military and local militia began an orgy of destruction, which ended only after UN peacekeepers, led by Australian troops, arrived to supervise the Indonesian withdrawal.

The international community faces many peacekeeping challenges, including in East Timor, and there is rightly increasing scrutiny of the work of peacekeepers and of the problems and concerns that arise when they are deployed. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon tasked a high-level independent panel on UN peace operations with making a comprehensive assessment of the state of peace operations and the emerging needs of the future. He said:

“The world is changing and UN peace operations must change with it if they are to remain an indispensable and effective tool in promoting international peace and security.”

He imposed a zero tolerance policy following allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers in host countries. I strongly urge the UN to ensure that it deals properly and robustly with such allegations, for instance against peacekeeping troops in the Central African Republic. To do otherwise not only damages victims who are already in the most vulnerable of situations but devalues the work and reputation of UN peacekeeping.

It is vital that the UN learns lessons and uses that learning to develop further capability in planning, increasing participation and working towards positive and sustainable outcomes. The most vulnerable people in the world rely on the good work of peacekeepers to improve their future, and we must work with others to ensure that that key aim remains at the centre of the work. The British troops setting off to undertake peacekeeping duties in South Sudan will join 12,000 UN troops from more than 50 nations, and they will undoubtedly face challenges as the fractured country looks to the future, with the need to strengthen infrastructure being apparent.

With such missions, UN peacekeeping finds itself stretched like never before and increasingly called upon to deploy to remote, uncertain operating environments. In the increasingly complicated global framework, the work of the UN and its peacekeepers has never been more important, and peacekeeping missions will continue to be needed to deal with a multitude of challenges and increasingly to focus on capacity building for sustainable societies.

The benefits are more than the obvious ones. The World Bank assesses that UN peacekeeping missions have a positive effect on GDP, with growth rates nearly 2.5% higher in post-conflict countries where peacekeepers are present. Although the numbers of UN peacekeepers have recently fallen slightly, they represent a significant increase on the numbers deployed 20 or so years ago. However, that by no means indicates that the challenges faced by the UN are diminishing.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Kirsten Oswald]

To continue where I left off, although the number of military peacekeepers may be decreasing slightly, the demand for field missions will remain high and peacekeeping will continue to be one of the UN’s most complex, specialised and demanding operational tasks. Moreover, the political complexity that peacekeeping operations face and the scope of their mandates, including on the civilian side, remain very broad. There are strong indications that certain specialised capabilities, including policing, will be in especially high demand over the coming years.

UN peacekeeping missions operate in the most dangerous and difficult environments in the world, dealing with the conflicts, and their aftermaths, that others cannot or will not address. We can achieve what others cannot, but the success of our contributions is never guaranteed. In future, multidimensional peacekeeping will face many demands, including with regard to the political process, protecting civilians, assisting in disarmament, the demobilisation and reintegration of former combatants, supporting the organisation of elections, promoting human rights and restoring the rule of law.

Peacekeeping has always been highly dynamic and has evolved in the face of new challenges. UN peacekeeping is a unique global partnership, with its strength being in the broad spread of contributing countries that participate and provide precious resources. I wish the peacekeepers well with their important task. The people they protect depend on them, and those who rely on their bravery and hard work also wish them well.