“We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…” (Charter of the United Nations). To critically asses the role of the United Nations (UN) in mitigating conflict in the post Cold war era legitimately, we must judge it based on this underlying yet overwhelming principle that sets out the main purpose of this international organisation, to prevent war and conflict.
During the Cold War the hands of the Security Council to deal with conflicts were largely tied due to the ideological opposition between the USA and the Soviet Union. Any peace building mission during this period was connected to either’s sphere of influence and thus any conflict mitigation was virtually impossible. However with the end of the Cold War and the optimism that surrounded this, the UN could now in theory start to fulfil its aim to be the mitigating party.
This essay will argue that despite some presumed success in El Salvador and Mozambique ultimately the UN has in too many cases failed in conflict mitigation to be deemed as successful based on its own principle.
During the years following the end of the Cold War and the subsequent disintegration of the communist bloc, the UN had some success in its now more achievable role as pragmatic peacekeeper. An example of this renewed ability is the UN’s operations in Mozambique. Following a war of independence fought against the Portuguese by the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO) a left wing liberation army, Mozambique was left unstable economically and politically. The Leftist economic policies were failing to have an impact in increasing the living standards of the poor, who were growing restless at the inefficient government. As rebel groups began to grow Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (RENAMO) formed. This umbrella group “professed as its goals multiparty democracy, a free market economy, and freedom of religion” (Durch, 1997:279). This initiated a fully active civil war which left “death, destruction, and refugees by the hundreds of thousands.”(Parsons, 1995:149).
The UN’s ability to mitigate conflict in Mozambique can largely be seen as being helped by the realisation of warring parties that neither had the capability to suppress the other. This coupled with the end of the Cold War ending superpower sponsored violence left both the FRELIMO REMANO contingents “exhausted and tentative contacts began between them” (Parsons, 1995:148). UN involvement in Mozambique was through the Security Council Resolution 797 which set up the United Nations Operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ). The UN would take an active role in the “political, military, humanitarian and electoral”, (Durch, 1997: 281) aspects of the peace process to work towards free and fair elections.
After two years of potential peace elections were carried out and proclaimed to be fair by the UN. A large proportion of the UN’S seeming successful mitigation in this conflict was the “transformation of RENMAO from a Guerrilla army in to a political party” (Parsons,1995: 152). The United Nations in this example can be evaluated successfully also due to its ability to “build confidence in the peace process … despite mistrust”. (Durch, 1997:281) However, how much of this success can be directly attributed to the United Nations is another question. It is questionable whether or not peace would have been as successful had the underlying desire for peace not been present from both parties. The UN can however be seen as mitigating conflict and overseeing the process in a successful way when conditions for peace were established. Thus the UN did succeed in its defining mandate even though it may not have been the sole actor in this process.
Another arguable success mission for the UN is the operation in El Salvador. The UN managed to mitigate an agreement between the Salvadorian army fighting on behalf of the right wing government and the left wing resistance movement. This mitigation was to have a focus on human rights as part of the process; this would become a precursor of many more UN peacekeeping missions where human rights had often been abused.
This arguable success for the UN can be directly attributed once again to the end of superpower influence and funding. For during the cold war “as far as Washington was concerned, the rebellion in EL Salvador was linked directly to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and through them to Cuba and Moscow” (Parsons,1995: 154). This highlights the difficulties of the UN’s task prior to the fall of Communism with almost all conflicts dissolving down to the same ideological battle. This end of superpower sponsorship was critical in the renewed desire for peace. The warring parties who now without the backing of superpowers reached a “military stalemate” (Durch,1997:95) which once again renewed in the hearts of the people a desire for peace with all parties included, thus aiding the UN’s task mitigating with both sides. In march of 1994 free and fair elections were held following the signature of a peace agreement validated by the UN’s observation and thus the UN here can again seen to be serving and guiding the way to peace if not its sole initiator which was undoubtedly was the end of super power sponsorship changing the hearts and minds of warring parties.
Despite these examples of seeming success for the UN carrying out successful peacekeeping and building missions in the examples above, the UN has often been subject to great criticism for its failures and missing opportunities to mitigate conflict.Possibly the greatest criticism of the UN under this mandate is that of its intervention into Rwanda. This case saw the UN being unable to stop genocide in which one million peoples were murdered and four million displaced with over two million fleeing the country completely (Jones, 2001:1). A large part of the criticism directed at the UN was its inability to act earlier. Rwanda had been gripped in a civil war for four years previous to the genocide of 1994 but the death tolls were so low that the conflict failed to be given appropriate attention on the international stage. “The independent investigation conducted by the UN castigated the international community for inaction” (Jones, 2001:2).
When the UN did react with a peacekeeping operation (UNAMIR) troops on the ground were only sent in small numbers and were poorly equipped to protect civilians from warring parties seemingly unready to sign a peace agreement due to the extremist nature of the forces.
As genocide broke out a change in mandate was needed to authorise the use of force under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter to deal with the new crisis situation. However when ten Belgian peacekeepers were killed, rather than strengthening the UN mandate as required, the UN buckled. “The net result was that on 21 April the bulk of UNAMIR’s troops withdrew”, (Jones 2001:121) this left only 470 UN troops to protect thousands of civilians from attacks, resulting in mass genocide and the complete failure of the UN mission.
Here the failure of the UN can be linked with a general critique of the organization that it has no standing army but has to rely on member states allocations. During the Rwandan conflict the UN was already committed to sending troops to Bosnia and Somalia leaving the force stretched and unable to act quickly as the case in Rwanda merited. The case in Rwanda can therefore be judged as a great failure for the newly reinvigorated post Cold War UN.
Another example of where the UN can be seen as failing to mitigate conflict is in the Case of Somalia. Stricken by famine and civil war with an apparent state of anarchy, the initial UN deployment was initially largely for humanitarian needs through the observation of much needed aid handouts. “However these humanitarian agencies were being overwhelmed”. (Parsons,1995: 198) Thus the Security Council strengthened the mandate under Chapter Seven to impose an arms embargo in order to hopefully force a ceasefire. This strengthening force through the creation of, United Nations Operation is Somalia (UNOSOM), ultimately failed to reach any political agreement resulting in “as many as three thousand people a day dying of starvation” (Parsons, 1995:200).
A United Sates led task force took over from UNOSOM’s failure and created UNITAF. This force however only had a limited mandate “to open the supply routes to get food moving for a UN peacekeeping force to move in”, (Durch, 1997:320). This force was deemed to have success in fulfilling its limited mandate but has been criticised for not being willing to “contribute forces to die for the UN Charter”, (Durch, 1997:321) by extending the mandate to allow a better equipped outfit to exercise greater force.
UNOSOM II took over from UNITAF with the aim at increasing disarmament, however received no willing hand in the search for peace as was the case in Mozambique and El Salvador. UNOSOM II regularly came under attack which heaped pressure on the UN for a speedy resolution with the increased death tolls of seemingly ill equipped UN forces. UN troops withdrew from Somalia having failed to mitigate conflict over a two year period.
“UNSOMO II was a quasi-enforcement operation assigned to an organisation with no experience at doing law enforcement, let alone urban guerrilla warfare. (Durch, 1997: 350) Much of this critique can be once again drawn from traditional criticisms of the organisation in general. UN troops in Somalia were greatly outnumbered and ill equipped. This was not helped by the reluctance of the USA to supply a greater mandate for its own task force. Once again we can critique the post Cold War UN for failing to deliver not only what it expects from itself in its own charter and save generations from the scourge of war but also what the international community expected of a post Cold war UN with a “hugely expanded field of operability for peacekeeping”,(Salmon, 2008:189) and thus an expected expanded successin conflict mitigation.
The examples of Somalia and Rwanda however are not alone at displaying UN failings in mitigating conflict in the post Cold War; these examples merely highlight and set the trend for many other failed peacekeeping missions. The Srebrenica massacre of 1995 where integral flaws from the UN’s policy resulted once again resulted in genocide with over seven thousand Muslims being murdered despite being in a UN safe zone. (Mockaitis, 1999:113) This was embarrassing for the UNPROFOR mission who once again failed to mitigate conflict or provide basic civilian protection.
The Post Cold War United Nations has had huge expectations to fill, not least set down by its own Charter and its subsequent rebirth in the light of the end of the Cold War. However as we have seen the UN has been unable to mitigate conflicts in much of the world and in many more worrying cases has also been seemingly unable to protect innocent civilians from being subject to violence, in cases such as Bosnia and Rwanda the UN can be seen as wasting opportunities to protect civilians from genocide. The ultimate success of the UN is ultimately down to the ability of its individual members to work together and collaborate as a peacekeeping mitigating force. In the post Cold War environment this cooperation should have led to the UN becoming a champion of conflict mitigation however despite the “ideological barrier that for decades gave rise to distrust and unity” (Ghali,1995:41) collapsing, the UN ultimately failed at mitigating conflict in the post Cold War era.