MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Jane Holl Lute, Assistant Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations at the United Nations, unpacks the process of the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping mission to Darfur. She addresses what an assessment mission entails, how assets are acquired for the operation, why most contributions come from developing nations, what type of mandate the Darfur mission will have, and why the timeframe for deployment is so long.
TRANSCRIPT:
NARRATOR: Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Your host is Jerry Fowler, Director of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience.
JERRY FOWLER: Our guest today is Jane Holl Lute, Assistant Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations at the United Nations. Before going to the United Nations, she served as a career officer in the United States Army on the National Security Council Staff in the first Bush and Clinton Administrations, and as Executive Director of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. Jane, welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention.
JANE HOLL LUTE: Thanks very much.
JERRY FOWLER: Jane, we kind of wanted to unpack this process of creating a United Nations force. I was wondering if we could just start by outlining the major steps in organizing and deploying such a force.
JANE HOLL LUTE: We do not think of it really as just a United Nations force; we think of it as a United Nations mission on the ground that tries to weave together the political aspects of the issues, economic development and capacity building as required, necessary humanitarian engagement, and kind of uniformed assets, be they military or police that are necessary to create an environment of transitional stability, so what we are looking at is a much more complex approach to peacekeeping than I think we have seen in years past, and in this respect, putting together such a mission, whether it be in the Congo, or in Burundi, or in Darfur, Sudan, we approach it really in the same way which is the Security Council makes all the decisions regarding whether and when a mission will be put in place. This is obviously cognizant of all the factors that go into it, the domestic, political conditions on the ground in the potentially hosting country of a peacekeeping mission, the international aspects as well, and so that gauges whether or not there will be party consent to the introduction of an international presence through a United Nations peacekeeping mission. The process really begins there.
JERRY FOWLER: At this point the Security Council has not formally authorized—well, they have authorized a United Nations mission in Sudan, but they have not included in that the uniformed assets, as you say. Yet, planning has started for such uniformed assets. Are there things that are not being done now that should be being done, other than the fact that the Security Council has not authorized it?
JANE HOLL LUTE: Right; and just to clarify, the mission in Sudan, the United Nations mission in Sudan does, in fact, have uniformed assets, but that is really in the context of the North-South peace agreement, the so-called Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was reached by the parties, and this mission is designed to help them implement their own agreement along the timetables that they have themselves set. That mission has been in place for well over a year, and we have talked about how it can be used to help support the AMIS Mission—the mission of the African Union which is currently existing in Darfur—but only as a lateral assistance effort; it is not the main focus of the United Nations presence currently in Sudan. Now, the main focus again has been the North-South agreement, and what people are talking about now is broadening the United Nations’ scope potentially in Sudan to include assuming responsibilities from the African Union mission on the ground in Darfur which currently numbers about 7,000, and so we have been in dialogue with them. We have been instructed by the Council to work in very close coordination with the African Union, which we have been doing, and others in planning for what many have termed to be an eventual transitional to a United Nations Mission, but that is not at all, in any way, to diminish the contribution that the African Union has made on the ground. Their numbers may be small, but where they have been, they have been reasonably effective, and so what we want to do, and what everyone wants to do, is to build on that success; as the circumstances change with an agreement through the political dialogue that has been being conducted in Abuja, to build on that and to transition to a broader United Nations Mission.
JERRY FOWLER: Let me just push on that for a second because I did not ask the previous question that clearly, but the Security Council has called for moving toward this transition which you describe, but they have not actually decided on the transition. If they had decided on the transition, would there be things that you would be doing today that you are not because they have not made that decision?
JANE HOLL LUTE: We would certainly be well into the throws of an on the ground assessment mission of a very comprehensive nature. One of the ways peacekeeping has changed in the past couple years is that every complex mission that we put in on the ground is preceded by an on the ground assessment, again a very comprehensive one, a political, economic, social, humanitarian, logistics, infrastructure, military, police, all the facets of a United Nations peacekeeping mission that are in present in today’s complex missions would be represented in an extensive assessment mission on the ground. Certainly that would have been done by now had the Council made a decision to transition, but it is more important that we deal in the reality that we have, so in dialogue with the government in Sudan, with the other parties on the ground, through the Abuja process, there are some that believe that we need to have a definitive marker, a political marker on the ground, through the Abuja process, that would then have any transition to a United Nations mission make the kind of sense for international engagement that it needs to have.
JERRY FOWLER: You mention the deployment of an assessment team which is what the Security Council has called for the Sudanese government to allow such a team in. Can you give me an idea, first, you make it sound as though it is quite a large team; how many people are involved? How long does the assessment take? What are some of the specific things that they do once they get onto the ground?
JANE HOLL LUTE: The assessment teams, again, in more recent years have been relatively large, between three and four dozen individuals, and they cover areas of political affairs, civil affairs, humanitarian aspects, looking at the institutional infrastructure, the physical infrastructure, looking at gender, HIV AIDS, justice and corrections, early recovery and development, looking at the environmental impact a mission would have, from an operational point of view, so there is a great deal of technical assessing that has to go on in terms of logistics, access, lines of communications, regular communications for command and control, and organizational coherence. These missions can last upwards of three weeks actually on the ground. There are accompanied by dialogue, obviously, with the host country government, with our other United Nations partners, and other international partners, member states, other organizations, for example, the African Union in this case. It is a very serious attempt to get as comprehensive an understanding of the circumstances that we would be going into in order to have the best affect possible.
JERRY FOWLER: Once the assessment has been done and you come up with a plan for the operation, how do you go about staffing the operation, or getting the assets, and I am especially focused here on the uniformed assets that will be deployed?
JANE HOLL LUTE: This is a really important question. I think one thing that people do not really understand about the United Nations. The United Nations is the second largest deployed military presence in the world, in terms of uniformed and non-uniformed assets in our missions, numbering nearly 90,000 in the field. We have no standing capacity for these missions, so each mission must be built from the ground up by approaching our donor states who are willing to put military units, or police units, or other kinds of capacity on the ground. We will impart be going to them again. There is also an expectation that a good portion of the AMIS force—the African Union force on the ground now in Darfur—will be able to transition to the United Nations Mission when that begins. We begin from the ground up essentially, calling on contributing member states to put together the kind of force that we think is necessary for this sort of situation.
JERRY FOWLER: One thing that is difficult to understand for outsiders is the amount of time that it can take. For example, we were talking about the United Nations Mission in Sudan which is dealing with the North-South Peace Agreement, and my understanding is that it was authorized well over a year ago to have ten thousand troops, and that even today it is only about eighty percent deployed. First, is that right? Secondly, why does it take so long?
JANE HOLL LUTE: That is right, and nobody is happy with the pace of deployment of there, and a number of factors have come to present difficulties and challenges in putting that force, or any force together on the ground. I will just list several of them generically, rather than point to any specific difficulties that Sudan has, but generically the difficulties can be countries are overstretched and so do not have the kinds of units that we need, some of the capacities we have are quite specialized in the area of lift, or in engineering, or in medical, and it can be difficult to mobilize contributions in those areas. It rains a lot, and when it rains in Sudan—I do not know if you have been there; I have—you can hold your arm out in front of you and not see the end of your fingertips; it rains so intensively. This has a paralyzing effect in certain portions of the country during the rainy season. The roads are mined; again I am, I suppose, talking about the specific case of Sudan in the South. Considerably, in other places where we have deployed, they are also mined or parts of territory where we are contemplating deploying our troops to, have to be first cleared of unexploded ordinates, so that can take time, and we need specialized units to do that. A combination of all of these factors can results in delays in deployment to no one’s satisfaction.
JERRY FOWLER: Realistically, looking forward, how long will it take to organize and deploy a force in Darfur?
JANE HOLL LUTE: I think we are looking at the kind of timeline frankly that begins at six months to do the kind of proper planning and preparation to get a mission in on the ground and to have the initial units identified, ready for deployment and deploying in that course of time. It can take longer, obviously, depending on the conditions on the ground, the availability of troops, the availability of specialized units, but in any case, this is not something that you throw together ad hoc or in haste and have it be at all effective on the ground. We have learned a lot of lessons about how to do this right, and so that is the approach we currently take.
JERRY FOWLER: Stepping back a second in terms of this idea of contributions—you referred to contributing nations—my understanding is that if you look at all United Nations peacekeeping operations of which—what, there are about fifteen or so?
JANE HOLL LUTE: Seventeen currently.
JERRY FOWLER: Seventeen. My understanding is that the nations of Europe contribute about ten percent of the troops and the United States, something about one percent. Most of the contributions are from countries like India and Pakistan, and I suppose Nepal and Ethiopia. Why is that most of the contributions are from developing countries?
JANE HOLL LUTE: It is a really interesting question and something that has happened over time. We see a change in the complexion and make up of our principle troop contributing countries and they are as you say, our principal ones, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jordan, a number of countries from Africa as well. The question of why they feel that part of their international responsibility to contribute to peacekeeping is one you might better direct to them; they can answer certainly on their own behalf, but we in the department of peacekeeping certainly feel the need to have all member countries represented on the ground, in representative numbers, and if not through the standard kind of infantry battalion contribution, then perhaps through the specialized, what we call enabling units that we find so necessary and important to any mission to succeed, and here much of that capability does lie in the West or from countries of the North, and we would be eager to receive those contributions for any and all of our missions.
JERRY FOWLER: We did a short film about the Rwandan genocide. It was based on an interview with General Dallaire who was the commander of the United Nations force that was on the ground when the genocide began and one of the most dramatic things he said was describing the difficulties he had because his troops showed up—or most of his troops—showed up without any equipment, and he actually specifically pointed to Bangladeshis coming without even a pot to cook in. Does that continue to be a problem?
JANE HOLL LUTE: Our troop contributing countries come from a wide array of economic backgrounds, and what we have tried to do over the course of the past dozen years or so, is to work with them to ensure that when troops deploy to peacekeeping missions they are fully able to meet the commitment that their country has made, and so we now have routinely both pre-deployment visits by these units, so they come into the mission area and look around at the area that they are going to be asked to serve in and the tasks that they are going to be asked to undertake. Then we go there and we have a pre-deployment assessment to look at their equipment, look at their sustainability, and have a dialogue with them to ensure that there are no surprises. We are getting better and better at it every year.
JERRY FOWLER: One of the issues that has been mentioned in public debate is the chapter of the United Nations Charter under which United Nations deployment in Darfur would be authorized, and I know that the United States and the resolutions that it has circulated, and so far, in the resolutions adopted, has insisted on authorization under so-called Chapter Seven as opposed to Chapter Six. Can you explain what the distinction is there and how important it is?
JANE HOLL LUTE: The real distinction between Chapter Six and Chapter Seven is the degree of consent of the principle warring factions or warring parties on the ground. Are we walking into a benign environment or are there active hostilities for which the peacekeeping mission needs to be prepared to use the measures necessary in order to ensure the safety and security of the mission in being deployed as well as the implementation of its mandate? There is a real correlation between the agreement or the consent of the parties and the potential for early, meaningful success of the missions. Peacekeepers can very usefully accompany a process to which parties have given a genuine commitment. They cannot substitute for that process and we would all do well to keep in mind the important relationship between a meaningful political dialogue or process, the parties’ commitment to that process, and then the role of a assistance that the international community can take via peacekeeping mission or some other kind of intervention to help that process and those parties succeed.
JERRY FOWLER: Let me just push on that though, in terms of the concrete situation of Darfur where there is ostensibly is a peace agreement in place, but you have a lot of actors on the ground, including militias that are not parties to the peace agreement. Is it important, in order for a United Nations deployment to be able to, in particular, protect civilians, that it be authorized under Chapter Seven?
JANE HOLL LUTE: Again, it really depends on what is the state of the political dialogue and the parties’ commitment to that dialogue. There will always be spoilers, and the United Nations Missions, when they deploy, have the ability to protect themselves under any mandate or under chapter under which they would be deployed, but what we are really looking for here is what is the climate in which the United Nations Mission would be deployed to Darfur, and for that, first and foremost, we have to look to the viability and robustness of the political process that has brought us to the point that would permit a mission to come in, and then the parties—including the government of Sudan—the parties’ commitment to upholding the provisions of that political process and let the mission come in and do its assistance work. It cannot substitute for those other elements.
JERRY FOWLER: If we step back and look at the whole landscape of peacekeeping operations, you mentioned earlier that there are now seventeen operations of varying sizes stretched all over the world; how much more peacekeeping capacity is there in the world?
JANE HOLL LUTE: That is a really interesting question. It really also relates, I think, to the awakening to prevention, the preventive role that such deployments have in the minds of many governments as they think about deploying forces all over the place. The prevention dimension of peacekeeping or any of this work is, I think, an important one to keep in mind. For some, the prevention task is already not possible; the damage has been done, but we should not forget that these types of interventions help prevent the further expansion or spread of the violence, and they can often help prevent the resumption of violence once peace has been achieved. For that, these missions are exceedingly necessary and viewed as such by governments. Are we at the limits of what the international community can bare? Certainly, in the department of peacekeeping; we have just something less than one percent of relationships, of headquarter staff to the field, so if you ask if we are overstretched here at the United Nations, the answer is maybe not overstretched, but stretched, probably to capacity without some major adjustments to our ability to support field-based operations. All of the member states that we go to are also member states that contribute to our missions, so they are feeling the pinch. There are a number of countries that are engaged in Afghanistan and in Iraq and elsewhere who feel that they are doing everything that they can, some of them who also have issues at home to which they need to be attentive. The world has enormous capacity for peacekeeping. Have we reached its limits? I do not think so. We can always find more; we can always do better, but we really need to think about how we approach these problems in order to make the kind of qualitative engagements that we want to make.
JERRY FOWLER: Jane Holl Lute is Assistant to the Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations at the United Nations. Jane, thanks so much for being with us.
JANE HOLL LUTE: My pleasure.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about the Museum’s Committee on Conscience, visit our website at www.committeeonconscience.org.
