Until the United Nations intervened in 2003, some 250,000 people lost their lives and as many as one million people were displaced or made refugees as a result of fourteen years of conflict in the small, West African country of Liberia. UN Dispatch recently contacted Jordan Ryan, an American citizen who is one of the top administrators of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). From his office in Monrovia, Mr. Ryan discusses the history of the conflict, reconstruction efforts, and how UN peacekeepers are contributing to the political and physical rehabilitation of a broken country.
Earlier this week, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced that his office will open an investigation into suspected war crimes in the Central African Republic, where a civil war peaked in 2002 and 2003. The war was marked by terrible sexual violence, and according to the Prosecutor this is the first ICC investigation in which the number of rape victims exceeds the number of murders.
With the new investigation in CAR, says The Economist, the International Criminal Court is hitting its stride:
"This is the fourth formal investigation launched by the court since it was set up in The Hague five years ago. Many, including some of its original backers, have complained about the slowness of its procedures. But it has passed some notable milestones. It has issued international arrest warrants against its first two suspects in Sudan and five rebel leaders in Uganda. Its first trial--of Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese rebel leader--is due later this year. Many a highly placed thug, it is hoped, is beginning to sleep less easily at night."
The International Atomic Energy Agency released a new report detailing Iranian non-compliance with Security Council demands that it suspend its uranium enrichment program. American officials are not pleased. From the Washington Post:
Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns called the IAEA report "disturbing, because it shows that Iran is effectively thumbing its nose at the U.N. and the entire international community. If Iran does not agree to sit down and negotiate, which we would prefer they do, then I'm quite sure there will be united and strong international pressure for a third resolution." "The purpose would be to demonstrate to Iran that it is isolated and will pay an increasingly heavy cost for this outrageous behavior," Burns said.In today's press conference, President Bush responded to the report by expressing his desire to pursue a tougher set of sanctions against Iran in the Security Council. Given the low expectations for a planned meeting next week between Iranian negotiator Ali Larjani and Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, we may soon see new action at the Security Council to step up the pressure on Iran.
When the United Nations is responsible for birthing a new country, as it was in East Timor over the past eight years, one can be forgiven for being a touch confused by the alphabet soup of UN missions involved.
Please bear with me: Following an East Timor referendum on independence from Indonesia in 1999, UNAMET was replaced by UNTAET, which in turn became subsumed into UNMISET and later transitioned into UNOTIL, that is, until 2006 when UNMIT -- the United Nations Mission in East Timor -- took over. For those less versed in UN-ease, let me explain.
In June 2006, the United Nations Foundation and the Vodafone Group Foundation formed a partnership to help fund the development of digital health data systems in Africa so local health care workers can access national health databases. This includes an initiative, admimnistered through the NGO DataDyne, to fund mobile computing devices for health care workers and data officers in Burkina Faso, Kenya, and Zambia.
In the post below, Dr. Joel Selanikio writes in from a clinic in Zambia to explain why cell phones and PDAs have become a critical tool in the development of national health data systems in the developing world.
As Jessica notes below, fourteen new members have just been voted to the new Human Rights Council. The real story here is what country did not win a seat. Belarus, a repressive dictatorship in Eastern Europe, was blocked from gaining a seat on the council on Thursday when it could not muster the requisite number of votes in the General Assembly. Given Belarus' appalling human rights record that should not come as a surprise. Still, there was a chance that Belarus could have snuck in the council because Eastern Europe was guaranteed two slots on the 47 member panel, and only Belarus and Slovenia originally entered the race.
For a while, it looked as if Belarus was a shoo-in. The United States and other western countries, however, persuaded Bosnia to run and then worked behind the scenes to lobby members of the General Assembly to vote for Bosnia over Belarus. A coalition of NGO's like Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Institute, and the Democracy Coalition Project also lobbied hard to deny Belarus a seat on the Council.
According to the New York Times, the new United States Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad called the outcome "heartening." This is significant statement because just over one year ago, the United States refused to vote to create the new Council (which replaced the discredited Human Rights Commission) and eschewed running for a seat. At the time, the United States worried that there were not enough safeguards preventing a country with dismal human rights record from gaining membership. However, the vote against Belarus goes to show that when member states are sufficiently determined to keep an abusive state off of the council, the rules on voting and membership are, in fact, adequate.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the largest and most expensive peacekeeping operation in the world. As of March, there were 18,336 total uniformed personnel, including 16,594 troops, 713 military observers, and 1,029 police, costing over $1 billion per year. But the price of peace is still less than the cost of years of war in Congo, which claimed more lives than any other conflict since World War Two.
From 1998 to 2003 nearly 4 million people are thought to have perished in a civil war stoked by Congo's neighbors. Today, that fighting has largely, but not completely, subsided. And while it is too early to call the DRC a UN Peacekeeping success story, it is clear that the United Nations Mission in the Congo (called by its French acronym, MONUC) is responsible for overseeing Congo's significant strides toward peace and democracy in recent years.
Colum Lynch reports that the African Union force in Darfur may be on the verge of collapse:
The African Union's first major peacekeeping mission — once considered the last line of defense for Darfur's civilians — has been crippled by funding and equipment shortages, government harassment and an upsurge in armed attacks by rebel forces that last month left seven African troops dead. The setbacks have sapped morale among peacekeepers, many of whom have not been paid for months. It has also compelled the force -- which numbered 7,000 troops at its peak -- to scale back its patrols and has diminished its capacity to protect civilians, aid workers and its own peacekeepers. In one example, Gambian troops last month failed to aid a Ghanaian peacekeeper who was gunned down in a carjacking incident within 300 yards of the mission's Darfur headquarters, U.N. officials said.When the fighting reached its peak in Darfur in spring 2004, the government of Sudan allowed a small number of African Union peacekeepers in to Darfur. Ostensibly, their job was to monitor a nominal cease-fire brokered between the government and rebels--not provide civilian protection. Still, considering the small number of troops, sparse resources at their disposal, and restrictive mandate, the African Union Mission in Sudan conducted itself admirably. In 2005, I interviewed Brian Steidle, a former US marine who served with the AU force. He recalled one incident in which the African Union deterred a government and janjaweed attack on a town of 45,000 by positioning merely 35 soldiers in the town.
Ten years ago, I would have sounded crazy should I have predicted that Liberia would become a functioning democracy by 2007, and that Charles Taylor, the Liberian warlord turned president, would be in jail awaiting prosecution for war crimes. And rightly so -- in 1997, Liberia was a singularly dismal place on earth. Taylor had just been elected president after leading a bloody insurgency characterized by the recruitment of child soldiers, wide-spread rape and mutilation. Taylor's popular support, however, was less from admiration than fear. Prior to the election, throngs on the street chanted, "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, I'm going to vote for him!" Better to vote him president than have him lose the election and turn his wrath against the people.