In Afghanistan, a UN convoy was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing a driver for the UN's political mission, UNAMA, and two doctors working for the World Health Organization. Remarkably, these marked the first killings of UN staff operating in Afghanistan in over a year and a half.
In Somalia, unfortunately, there has been little respite in the violence directed toward UN workers and peacekeepers. Over just the last two days, two Ugandan soldiers operating as a part of the African Union's undermanned mission in Somalia have been killed by militants. 11 employees of the World Food Program, meanwhile, remain in captivity after being kidnapped on Sunday.
Besides underscoring the risks frequently taken on by UN personnel in these missions, it is worth noting from whom these attacks originated. While it is yet unclear who was behind the abductions in Somalia, the militant Islamist group Shabab, in claiming responsibility for the killings of the AU peacekeepers, continues its explicit efforts to derail the country's peace process. In Afghanistan, the likelihood that the Taliban, resurgent in much of the country, organized yesterday's suicide bombing does not bode well for UN and humanitarian personnel working in an increasingly dangerous environment.
As the title of the film The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo suggests (whose director Mark interviewed here), the rampant violence against women that has occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo over the past decade-plus has gone severely unreported. The silence on this issue, though, is most damaging in the areas of DR Congo where so many rapes are taking place. Today, the UN organized an event to bring women and girls together to talk about the horrors they have experienced.
The day-long programme in the eastern city of Goma is part of a joint campaign - "Stop Raping Our Greatest Resource, Power to Women and Girls in DRC" - organized by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. "It's a historic occasion in the Democratic Republic of Congo in that for the first time women survivors are publicly speaking out on the situation of sexual violence," UNICEF spokesperson Jaya Murthy said in an interview with UN Radio.These are the kind of tangible on-the-ground activities that the UN thrives at bringing to local populations -- and which are as important to the region's emergence from war as the frequently more talked aboutpeacekeeping work being undertaken by blue helmets.
When I first saw that Ethiopia is being kicked out of soccer's 2010 World Cup, I wondered whether the decision had anything to do with the country's role in its spat with neighboring Eritrea, which resulted in the departure of UN peacekeepers from the fragile border region. But I should have learned the lessons of politics and sports from the Beijing Olympics, I guess; this "crisis" involved only a controversy surrounding the dismissal of the Ethiopian soccer federation's president.
According to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, meanwhile, there is little danger of renewed hostilities with his neighbor because, in his words, Eritrea's troops "do not match the power of Ethiopian armed forces...are not capable...[and] know[] the consequences of igniting another conflict with Ethiopia." I hope he's right that the tense situation does not erupt into a violent confrontation, but taunting the military of a not-entirely-friendly neighbor during an uneasy truce is probably not the best way to ensure peace.
In case you haven't been reading UN Dispatch, the Darfur peacekeeping force (UNAMID) urgently needs helicopters. As time passes, this urgency has not faded, and UNAMID still has not received a single chopper. Speaking to The Guardian, UNAMID's force commander, General Martin Luther Agwai, attests to the crippling gap between the mandate that the international community set up for his force and its stinginess in providing the equipment that UNAMID needs to fulfill this mandate. Agwai frustratingly observes that this has essentially rendered his peacekeepers into equipment movers.
"I was never part of the drawing of the mandate or the planning of the operation. But at least there was a minimum they thought the mission required," the general said during a visit to London. "This is the basic minimum that we need and now we are very far away from it. No country has come up to offer helicopters to us." Even the troops that have arrived have not been able to operate properly because in many cases, Agwai said, their equipment was stuck in logistical bases with no means of getting across the roadless, parched terrain of Darfur. "Most people expect us to carry out the primary role of our mandate - protection of civilians, helping the humanitarian agencies. But right now that is not our priority, because for us to be able to do that we need the troops, we need the equipment ... so we are struggling," the Nigerian general said. "Now we have even turned some of our own personnel into drivers to bring in the equipment."Agwai even speculates that a few helicopters could have prevented the killings of eight of his troops in July. I don't believe he's exaggerating. The notion of a peacekeeping force operating in Darfur without any helicopters of its own -- the few it has access to are operated by civilian contractors, subject to numerous restrictions and not even permitted in conflict zones -- would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. (Photo of General Agwai, from our flickr friends at the Genocide Intervention Network, using a Creative Commons license.)
At the end of July, when the Darfur peacekeeping force's mandate was renewed, a small group of Security Council countries -- led by Libya and South Africa, and supported by Russia, China, and others -- pushed for including in the Council's resolution a suspension of ICC proceedings against Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Their effort -- which would have required the invocation of the Article 16 provision of the ICC's founding statute allowing the Security Council to postpone ICC operations for up to 12 months (though the applicability of Article 16 to this case is debatable) -- fell short, resulting in watered-down language simply "taking note" of the African Union's concern with the ICC's decision. The issue has remained afloat, however, as the ICC Pre-trial Chamber's decision on whether or not to actually indict Bashir approaches. We don't know when that decision will come, but we do know that no Article 16 suspension will likely be coming out of the Security Council this month. According to Sudan Tribune:
The UN Security Council (UNSC) received no request from any of its members to take up the issue of the International Criminal Court (ICC) seek an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir. "This issue was not raised by any delegation. No delegation raised that for the time being at least" Michel Kafando UN Representative of Burkina Faso told reporters in New York today.It seems odd that no delegation would even propose discussing the possibility of invoking Article 16, particularly given the pressure that Sudan has put on its potential allies in the Council, but I see at least three possible explanations behind this story.
In June, al Qaeda released a video seeking to undermine a UN-brokered peace deal that had recently been reached between the Somali transitional government and some opposition factions. Moderates rejected the call to violence, but more radical and militant groups, such as the notorious Shabab, stepped up their attacks, including toward UN personnel. They had not affirmed the connection with al Qaeda, however -- until now at least. On the heels of another peace deal -- the timing likely is not coincidental -- Shabab is proclaiming its allegiance to bin Laden.
"We are negotiating how we can unite into one," said Muktar Robow, a top military commander of Shabab, which the U.S. State Department designated a terrorist organization this year. "We will take our orders from Sheik Osama bin Laden because we are his students."A senior U.S. official tempered Shabab's enthusiastic affirmation, which could be as much a tactic of provocative rhetoric as it is an indication of a stronger relationship between the two terrorist organizations.
U.S. Ambassador Michael E. Ranneberger acknowledged growing links between Shabab and Al Qaeda, but said ties remained in the early stages. "There are indications of a fairly close Shabab-Al Qaeda connection, though it's not clear to what extent they've been operationalized," he said. "Is Shabab taking orders from Al Qaeda? I would say no. They are still running their own show."Even Shabab "running their own show," of course, still poses a threat to Somalia's fragile hopes for stability.
Piracy is a big problem off of the Somali coast. World Food Program shipments have been held up, threatening the food security of an already vulnerable population. But, thanks to Canada, it looks like the WFP is about to get some relief. The Royal Canadian Navy is sending a frigate to the Horn of Africa to protect World Food Program Vessels. From the UN News Center:
Some 90 per cent of WFP food aid for Somalia arrives by sea. Since a naval escort system began last November, no escorted ships carrying WFP food have been attacked. The last escorted ship loaded with WFP food arrived in Mogadishu in late June. There were a total of 31 incidents off Somalia in 2007 - the worst year on record for Somali piracy. Without escorts, WFP's whole maritime supply route is under threat, according to the agency, which noted that since the escorts ended in late June some shippers have refused to load WFP food for Somalia. WFP urgently needs to double the amount of food it delivers to Somalia - which is facing a dire humanitarian crisis owing to drought, insecurity, failed harvests, the weakness of the Somali shilling and rising food and fuel prices - through the coming months so it can feed 2.4 million people by December.Read more. (Image: a Canadian Naval Vessel at flag lowering from Flickr user MiguelB)
One year ago today, members of the UN Security Council authorized the deployment of an unprecedented 27,000-strong joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission to Darfur, Sudan (known by its acronym, UNAMID). While some critics have chosen this anniversary to focus on the slow pace at which UNAMID has deployed, recent developments give reason to think about what has been accomplished and how the UN and international community can best follow up on these gains.
After another year of humanitarian crisis, sporadic outbreaks of violence, and a crippling lack of peace, one could reasonably ask what recent developments could signal a turn for the better in Darfur. Indeed, the most significant occurrence in the past two weeks is actually something that didn't happen. In the wake of the news that the International Criminal Court (ICC) would hear evidence for the indictment of Sudanese President Bashir, many Darfur analysts feared that Khartoum's response would be to unleash a wave of coordinated military attacks. Fortunately, this has not happened. In fact, as Nicholas Kristof points out in his blog, "humanitarians have had just about their best week so far" in Darfur. This relative calm points to the likely marginalization of hardliners within Bashir's inner circle--a crucial prerequisite for peace.
Serious analysts can legitimately debate whether ICC involvement in Sudan will help or hurt prospects for peace in the country. But it becomes far easier to blindly damn the ICC when you distort the rules under which the Court operates.
The ICC can acquire jurisdiction in a country in one of three ways. First, the country in question can be an "ICC country," a signatory to the 2002 Rome Statute that established the Court. Second, a host government can invite the ICC to begin proceedings in its country. In Uganda, for example, President Yoweri Museveni requsted that the ICC prosecute members of the Lord's Resistance Army, which had been terrorizing the northern part of his country for over twenty years. Third, if a country is not a party to the ICC and does not request the Court's involvement, the Security Council can vote to authorize ICC jurisdiction.
David Rivkin, Jr. and Lee Casey, two lawyers writing in The Wall Street Journal op-ed page, acknowledge -- albeit with the minimalizing sarcasm of quotation marks -- that this last method was the one by which the ICC obtained jurisdiction in Sudan.
It [the ICC] can also follow-up on "referrals" from the U.N. Security Council. In 2005, the council made such a referral with respect to Sudan's campaign of mass murder in Darfur.Correct. This was no mere recommendation; it was a formal authorization, and, according to the ICC's charter, it provided a legitimate means for the Court to operate even in a country that had not signed the Rome Statute and that opposed ICC involvement. Yet Rivkin and Casey backtrack in their very next sentence:
Under international law norms, the ICC can prosecute citizens of signatory states. But it cannot prosecute citizens of nations, such as Sudan, that are not party to the ICC.The ICC is operating in Sudan. It has been for over three years. The only way for it to suspend its jurisdiction is for the Security Council to authorize it to do so. This leverage should be interpreted as a new opportunity to press for peace, not, as Rivkin and Casey dramatically bemoan, as a "blow" that "takes Darfur's second-best hope for peace -- a diplomatic settlement -- off of the table." The ICC's action should be seen as a "blow," but as a blow to the idea of impunity, not to peace negotiations that have not even yet gotten off the ground, let alone on the table.