In the post-Cold War world, and to an unprecedented extent, forces operating under a UN mandate have become involved in a wide range of humanitarian tasks. These have taken the following main forms:
Such tasks were a key part of the UN's effort in several war situations, including in former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Rwanda. Peacekeeping forces have been deeply involved in such activities, sometimes as an almost complete substitution for traditional peacekeeping activities, such as manning cease-fire lines, since in these conflicts there was often little or no peace to keep. Other forces and agencies operating in association with the UN have also been involved in these various humanitarian tasks. For an international organisation such as the UN to attempt this in the midst of ongoing wars is historically unprecedented. The tasks are by nature extremely difficult, and also controversial.
This change in practice has not always been reflected in general statements about the purpose and character of peacekeeping.1 Within the UN, against a background of multiple and difficult commitments of peacekeeping forces, humanitarian issues have not loomed large in attempts to establish criteria that should be considered before new tasks are undertaken. A UN Security Council Presidential Statement on Peacekeeping, issued on 3 May 1994, listed six factors which must be taken into account when a new operation is under consideration. These are the existence of a threat to international peace and security, whether regional bodies are ready to assist, the existence of a cease-fire, a clear political goal which can be reflected in the mandate, a precise mandate and reasonable assurances about the safety of UN personnel.2 This list contained no reference to humanitarian operations in the midst of continuing hostilities, and indeed suggested a natural desire to return to something more like normal peacekeeping. Two days later, on 5 May 1994, the Clinton administration's long-planned Presidential Decision Directive 25, on 'multilateral peace operations', did suggest that one relevant consideration for the US when voting on a military operation proposal under UN auspices would be whether there was an 'urgent humanitarian disaster coupled with violence'. There would also have to be consideration of 'the political, economic and humanitarian consequences of inaction by the international community'.3
There have been some remarkable successes in using UN peacekeeping forces for humanitarian purposes in situations of war, civil war and breakdown of government. Many lives have been saved and refugee flows limited by some of these humanitarian actions. Sarajevo, where a population of well over 350,000 was at risk during the siege, is a case in point. Despite the many failures and interruptions, the maintenance of supplies - gas, water and electricity, as well as food and material brought in by land convoys and air - did effectively mitigate many of the extreme cruelties of siege warfare.
This achievement would have been impossible without UN peacekeeping forces. The figures for supplies brought in by the UNHCR airlift are impressive. The longest-running humanitarian air-lift in history, it lasted from 30 June 1992 to 5 January 1996. Although there were many periods when, due to Serb threats, it was not possible for aircraft to fly to Sarajevo at all, during the three-and-a-half years of the airlift there were 12,951 sorties delivering 160,677 tonnes, of which 144,827 were food and the rest non-food items (such as shelter materials and medical supplies).4 In other words, an average of about 125 tonnes a day was delivered. During many months of the war the airlift provided more than 85% of all assistance reaching Sarajevo. In addition, over 1,000 patients were medically evacuated by air, plus over 1,400 of their relatives.5 While the Sarajevo airlift was remarkable in the hostile circumstances, the overall tonnage delivered in three-and-a-half years was about the same as the average delivered each month in the Berlin airlift of 1948-49.6
The special problems attendant upon humanitarian efforts by peacekeeping
forces in situations of great violence have been well publicised. They
fall under the following headings:
Humanitarian action often involves compromises with belligerents, making impartiality difficult to maintain. Any action in the midst of an ongoing conflict requires consent of the parties on the ground.
Convoys cannot move, aircraft cannot fly and hospitals cannot operate if there is no such consent. Thus peacekeepers inevitably find themselves dealing closely with one belligerent or another.
Humanitarian action often favours one side more than the other, further straining the credibility of the peacekeepers' impartiality. Relief supplies are often, and for good reasons, provided more to one side than to another; so is the protection afforded by the establishment and maintenance of specially designated safety zones.
While the peacekeepers' impartiality is often considered essential during an ongoing conflict, it is particularly hard to maintain while conducting or authorising military actions that are seen as partial to one side - such as enforcing economic sanctions and 'no-fly zones', punishing infractions of cease-fire agreements, or pressing a recalcitrant party to accept a particular approach to a settlement.
Personnel carrying out humanitarian work in the midst of ongoing conflict usually have to be dispersed to many parts of a war zone, making them exceptionally vulnerable to reprisals and hostage-taking by belligerents. When the personnel involved are troops supplied for a peacekeeping operation, their vulnerability can inhibit powers from taking forceful military action even when this seems to be required.
It can be very difficult to recruit and maintain troops with the necessary training and discipline to carry out peacekeeping/humanitarian tasks in a war zone, and generally to mobilise political, diplomatic and financial support in a long war if major powers do not see that their interests are directly affected.
The heavy demands of running peacekeeping/humanitarian missions in a large number of conflicts simultaneously has exposed certain limits to the UN's capacity to manage operations, and (even more dramatically) the political and resource limits within which the UN has to operate. Many states have been unwilling to provide all the forces, material and finance required for such operations. Consequently there has been pressure to handle more problems on a regional basis.
These problems proved exceptionally debilitating in both Somalia and Bosnia. The sense that humanitarian issues were among the factors that made it harder to stick to tried-and-tested notions of peacekeeping was evident in UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's January 1995 report, Supplement to an agenda for peace. In the passage below he seemed to hold the humanitarian cart responsible for running over the peacekeeping horse:
There are three aspects of recent mandates that, in particular, have led peacekeeping operations to forfeit the consent of the parties, to behave in a way that was perceived to be partial and/or to use force other than in self-defence. These have been the tasks of protecting humanitarian operations during continuing warfare, protecting civilian populations in designated safe areas and pressing the parties to achieve national reconciliation at a pace faster than they were ready to accept. The cases of Somalia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are instructive in this respect.7
Boutros-Ghali went on to indicate that 'additional mandates that required the use of force ... could not be combined with existing mandates requiring the consent of the parties, impartiality and the non-use of force. It was also not possible for them to be executed without much stronger military capabilities than had been made available'.8 This is a classic reflection of the view, drawn largely from Somalia, that it was disastrous for UN forces to cease to be impartial and to use too much force. This is not the only possible interpretation of the causes of failure in Somalia but it prevailed, leading many in the UN and elsewhere to be extremely cautious in Bosnia.
Events in Bosnia in 1992-95 suggested that the relationship between humanitarian and peacekeeping roles, while extraordinarily complex, can have positive aspects. Despite all the disappointments, the presence of UN peacekeeping forces, whose mission was largely to support humanitarian action, may have reduced at least slightly the incidence of extreme atrocities, helped prevent a process of creeping unilateral interventions in the war and may even have prepared the way for a peace settlement by demonstrating the readiness of the international community to assist and monitor such an outcome.
In the months leading up to the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina agreed at Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995, the relationship between humanitarian action and a peace settlement was especially complex and paradoxical. The Security Council repeatedly asserted that there was such a connection: 'the provision of humanitarian assistance in Bosnia and Herzegovina is an important element in the Council's effort to restore international peace and security in the area'.9
This may in the end have been true but with a qualification. It was
not so much the attempt to provide humanitarian assistance itself but
rather the Serb rejection of that attempt in the first half of 1995
which created the conditions for the serious effort of August-November
1995 to restore peace and security in the area. A more robust policy
of decisive enforcement action only became possible in Bosnia after
the humanitarian aid programme had practically stopped in mid 1995 due
to Bosnian Serb actions. Once UNPROFOR no longer had personnel widely
spread out and hence vulnerable to Serb retaliation, it was more able
to act, and once the Bosnian Serbs had shown contempt for humanitarian
efforts, for the 'safe areas' and for the Security Council, there was
more reason to act. Thus the Western powers, and the UNPROFOR
commanders, became less cautious about authorising a major use of
force by NATO, as they eventually did in Operation Deliberate Force in
August 1995. In short, a humanitarian involvement, especially in the
'safe areas', had a 'ratchet' effect, leading eventually to a major
NATO military campaign.
Adam Roberts is Montague Burton Professor of International
Relations at Oxford University.
This extract is taken from Humanitarian action in war:
Aid, protection and impartiality in a policy vacuum, Adelphi
Paper 305. December 1996. ISBN 0-19-828093-9. Published by Oxford
University Press, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. The extract is
published by permission of Oxford University Press. It may be
reproduced for personal use. For any other use, please obtain prior
permission from the publisher or a licence for restricted copying from
the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P
9HE, UK.
1. For an analysis which does not dwell on the possible conflicts between humanitarianism, human rights and peacekeeping, see the UN Joint Inspection Unit report by Francesco Mezzalama, Investigation of the Relationship Between Humanitarian Assistance and Peace-Keeping Operations, distributed to the General Assembly as UN document A/50/572, 24 October 1995.
2. Statement by the President of the Security Council, UN document S/PRST/1994/22 of 3 May 1994, p2, discussing the Secretary-General's report, Improving the Capacity of the United Nations for Peace-keeping, UN document S/26450, 14 March 1994.
3. The Clinton Administration's Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations (Washington DC: US Department of State Publication 10161, May 1994), 15pp. This is virtually the text of Presidential Decision Directive 25, less some appendices. The two factors cited are both on p4.
4. Figures supplied by UNHCR, Geneva, 12 February 1996.
5. UNHCR, The State of the World's Refugees 1995, p126.
6. The Berlin blockade lasted from 24 June 1948 to 12 May 1949. Figures for monthly tonnages delivered varied from 70,241 (June-July 1948) to 235,377 (April 1949), delivered by 14,036 and 26,025 sorties respectively. The airlift continued until September 1949, because of a railway strike and continued traffic restrictions, with even higher tonnages delivered. Robert Jackson, The Berlin Airlift (Wellingborough, Northants: Patrick Stephens, 1988), p146.
7. Supplement to An Agenda for Peace: Position Paper of the Secretary-General on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations, UN document A/50/60, 3 January 1995, paragraph 34.
9. UNSCR 770, 13 August 1992. This point was reaffirmed in UNSCR
787, 16 November 1992.
April 1997