Understanding contemporary conflicts

Peacekeeping and United Nations Police

/ stefanfeller / 3 Comments

This is a long one, and it’s technical, just so that you know. This one is on what we in the United Nations call “peacekeeping”. We do much more, and if you continue to read future blog entries, you will see that. But we, United Nations Police, or UNPOL, we have our roots in peacekeeping, so a narrative of where we come from, in order to understand where we should go, it comes from here. You will, if you bear with me, see step by step the unfolding picture of the nexus of conflict prevention, conflict intervention, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and why I believe there is an important role for our policing work in all of it, and what needs to be done to get better with it.

Which, by the way, is not what I say. We all say it, and our voices get heard more. So here you go. There are other versions of these articles, for an internal audience, with internal conclusions. This is the version for the external audience, based on what everyone can research for oneself. Conclusions are mostly general, so that I can say that here, without mixing up a private post and an official function which I hold.

After this one, I will publish a piece on what we call Special Political Missions. Then, in the following instalment, I will go beyond, leading to the larger question of why international policing needs to be considered an important element in the struggle of the World finding answers for our most pressing problems, stemming from crime, violent extremism, terror, and corruption, and their interrelation with maddening conflict, leading to people desperately wanting to escape from it, to the safe harbors of States who get overwhelmed by this migration, struggling for finding answers.

Meanwhile, I will also work on unrelated, or partly related blog articles.

General aspects of conflict and mandates for PKO

The development of peacekeeping operations is often broadly categorized into the early years, a post cold-war surge, and an ongoing and rapidly evolving contemporary, increasingly complex situation⁠1. The role of international policing in UN peace operations has grown over time, in numbers, complexity, and forms of deployment. International policing in UN peace operations begins, but does not end with, peacekeeping operations, though peacekeeping forms the largest base, in terms of numbers of operations, and numbers of UN police (UNPOL) deployed.

Since 1948, the United Nations is looking back on sixty-nine peacekeeping operations (PKO), of which sixteen operations are currently ongoing⁠2. Overall, until today the UN deployed PKO into forty-nine different countries, and twenty-three of these countries were subject to more than one PKO. The Security Council mandated thirty-nine of these sixty-nine operations to include police capacities. Twelve of the current sixteen operations include police components. In terms of duration of currently ongoing PKO, two were founded before 1950, one dates back to mid of the sixties, and two originate from the 70’s. Two ongoing operations stem from the time between 1990 and 1999. Ten currently ongoing peacekeeping operations are, therefore, less than fifteen years old.

The UN undertook a first peace operation in 1948, the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO), pursuant to the Charter of the United Nations. Over many years to come, a gradual development of mandates of such operations would lead from the deployment of unarmed military observers towards the use of armed military peacekeepers, beginning with the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF I) in 1956⁠3. UN peacekeeping would see the first deployment of police peacekeepers, alongside military colleagues, in 1960 with the establishment of the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC). However, the post cold-war decade can be seen as the decisive turning point from when on mandates of UN PKO grew more and more complex, towards what nowadays is known as “multidimensional mandates” of peacekeeping operations.

The Security Council mandated two PKO between 1948 and 1949, two PKO between 1950 and 1959, six PKO between 1960 and 1969, three PKO between 1970 and 1979, five PKO between 1980 and 1989, thirty-five PKO between 1990 and 1999, ten PKO between 2000 and 2009, and six PKO between 2010 and 2015. The surge within the nineties reflects the World’s struggle to find a new order after the end of the cold war.

New peacekeeping operations of the post cold-war era found themselves confronted with ongoing, or emerging intra-state conflict, the breaking of Nations, with assistance throughout and after the forming and recognition of a new State, or a continued presence in case of disputed situations. In some cases, in presence of ongoing PKO, conflict culminated in atrocities against civilian populations, and genocide: The United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) was deployed in 1993. It was meant to assist in the implementation of an accord aiming at ending a civil war. In 1994, the mission found itself confronted with a collapse of the peace agreement, and with a genocide leading to atrocities on an unimaginable scale: Within 100 days, an estimated 800.000 to 1.000.000 minority Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed⁠4. The United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) was deployed in 1992 in Croatia and Bosnia & Hercegovina during the conflict that would ultimately lead to the breaking up of Yugoslavia. In July 1995, forces under the command of General Ratko Mladić killed more than 8.000 Bosniaks in and around the enclaves of Srebrenica and Žepa⁠5. Both situations in Rwanda and Bosnia&Herzegovina were ruled as genocide. They confronted the United Nations with painful questions of how to protect civilians affected by conflict. The experience has profoundly impacted on the conscience of the United Nations. Twenty-five years of discussion are still ongoing and include political and aspects of international law⁠6 and they impact policy decisions until then, including in actual situations⁠7.

The continuation of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia through the Kosovo conflict in 1998 and the violence in Timor-Leste after the referendum in 1999 led to the deployment of peacekeeping operations including the Security Council mandating the UN to carry out transitional authority. Peacekeeping operations in Kosovo and in Timor-Leste were based on mandates with extensive executive powers, including a full executive policing authority vested into United Nations police peacekeepers. Whilst the following decade saw no repetition of such comprehensive powers vested into a peacekeeping operation, a partial renewed reoccurrence can be witnessed with the inclusion of so-called “Urgent Temporary Measures” into the mandate of MINUSCA in the Central African Republic, 2014.

More generally, the continuation of the development post cold-war led to the increasing use of peacekeeping operations to deal with restoring a State’s ability to maintain security and public order, building political and legal institutions in disrupted States, and promoting a culture of law, democracy, and social economic recovery. Consequently, peacekeeping operations now bring together international military, police, and civilian personnel, all of which are jointly engaging in ‘multidimensional peace operations⁠8’. In an increasing number of cases, intra-state conflict continued to include atrocities against the civilian population on a very large scale, requiring from peacekeepers to both contribute to the protection of the civilian population to the best of their abilities, and to begin the arduous long-term task of assistance to restoration and development of legitimate and capable State authority. At times backlashes would occur under the eyes of the UN, such as, for example, in Kosovo in 2004, in Timor Leste in 2006, or in South Sudan at the end of 2013, leading to renewed or reinforced commitment including of police components.

Twelve out of sixteen PKO which were established between 2000 and 2015 can be characterized as multidimensional operations, including police components. In addition, two of the remaining four PKO include policing aspects: In September 2005 the Security Council, in consultation with the authorities of Chad and the CAR, authorized the deployment of a UN civilian and police operation, MINURCAT, and a European Union military force (EUFOR), in order to contribute to the protection of civilians⁠9. With the Security Council mandating UNISFA⁠10 to monitor and verify the redeployment of any Sudan Armed Forces, Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLM) or its successor from the Abyei area, provision was also made for the anticipated establishment of the Abyei Police Service, leading to a small deployment of UNPOL.

In relation to conflicts leading to a multidimensional engagement of UN peacekeeping, the case of the situation in Mali in 2013 stands out: The conflict situation in Mali included a clearly identifiable intra-state conflict including an armed confrontation including Tuareg rebels and a military coup, but also the activities of regional terrorist groups affiliated to Al Qaeda, attempting to destabilize, and ultimately to overthrow, legitimate governance in Northern Mali. Likewise, the situation in Mali can be identified as the first situation in which the United Nations now recognizes the influence of transnational organized crime affecting the implementation of the mandate of a peacekeeping operation, together with violent extremism, terrorism, and corruption.

Geographic deployment of PKO

The Security Council mandated UN Peacekeeping Operations for situations in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central&South America, Europe, and the Middle East. Whilst there are little noteworthy patterns for the time between 1948 and 1989, and the overall numbers of peacekeeping operations per decade remained comparatively low, the development for the post cold-war period, leading into contemporary development, is significant: Since the last decade of the 20th century, until today, the vast majority of PKO has been mandated in Africa⁠11. The breakup of the the former Yugoslavia in the nineties is the main responsible factor for an exceptional number of PKO mandated in Europe⁠12 during the last decade of the 20th century. Aside of Africa, only Asia and the Caribbean saw three new PKO between 2000 and 2009. Since 2010, until today, the Security Council has exclusively established PKO in Africa⁠13. Nine out of sixteen currently ongoing PKO operate in Africa. Three ongoing PKO operating in the Middle East belong to the group of the most long lasting PKO⁠14. Two ongoing PKO in Europe are older than 15 years⁠15. Likewise, the only existing active PKO in Asia looks back at 67 years of existence⁠16. All current newer development, except one PKO in the Caribbean⁠17, relates to Africa. The ongoing nine PKO in Africa are between two and 25 years of age.

Peacekeeping operations and United Nations Police

The evolution of conflict situations the Security Council had to grapple with, and the gradual development of mandates through which peace operations were mandated to address them, had a direct impact on the deployment of police officers into UN peace operations. Historical data from the early decades is sparse, compared to the period between 2000 and 2015, but the numbers of police officers deployed into peacekeeping operations between 1960 and the end of the Cold War were very low. Peacekeepers were military staff, either unarmed observers, or lightly armed soldiers. For very specific reasons, sometimes police officers were added. Until mid 1992, the overall numbers on average amounted to less than hundred⁠18.

Available data from 1992 onwards begins with almost 3.700 police officers deployed, peaking 1993 around 4.500, and showing variations between 1.500 and 3.500 police officers until the end of that decade: The time between 1989 and 1999 can be identified as the first phase of an increased use of policing capacities within the handling of post-conflict situations by the United Nations, beginning with a large police contingent in UNTAG, for the situation in Namibia, in 1989. Within the following decade, the Security Council mandated twenty-one new PKO (roughly two-third of all new PKO during that time) to also deploy police contingents, then known as Civilian Police, going by the acronym CivPol. Counting UNTAG from 1989 as well, these PKO were deployed into States struggling with conflict, and into various phases and regional areas of the disintegrating former Yugoslavia, from where new States and the still unsolved status question of Kosovo emerged. Counting the latter as one geographic area with the same underlying conflict, therefore these twenty-one PKO addressed conflicts in thirteen States/disintegrating States. Six affected States are located in Africa, including UNTAG in Namibia with the first ever very considerable police deployment⁠19. The last decade of the outgoing 20th century witnessed a three years authorized deployment of up to 3.500 police in Cambodia, whilst this decade saw the beginning of the considerable sequence of PKO addressing instability in Haiti, the disintegrating Yugoslavia, and East Timor, today known as Timor Leste. It were these big-hitters where tasks of restoration of State authority, including transitional UN governments, required large police contingents.

Therefore, the steep rise to almost 8000 police officers from mid 2000 on stems from PKO with large scale deployments of police into the situations in  Bosnia&Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Timor Leste. The transition from United Nations peacekeeping to European Union crisis management in Bosnia&Herzegovina in 2002 and the downsizing of UNPOL contingents in Kosovo and Timor Leste after building up domestic policing capacity led to a decrease to around 4000 police officers in PKO around mid 2003. At this low-point, the numerical majority of UNPOL in PKO was deployed to Kosovo.

From 2004 on, numbers are rising steadily until end of 2008, at which time the UNPOL deployment into Kosovo becomes residual. Responsible for this increase is a fundamental shift towards UNPOL deployments into situations in Africa: The emerging deployments to Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Sudan (through two separate PKO, UNMIS and UNAMID) add to renewed commitments to Timor Leste after unrest in 2006, and a continued deployment to Haiti. The decrease in overall deployment of UNPOL to PKO between late 2008 and early 2009 is solely attributable to the hand-over of policing activities from UNMIK in Kosovo to the European Union, as was the case as well at the end of 2002 with the hand-over of such activities in Bosnia&Herzegovina.

From early 2009 on until summer 2012, UNPOL sees an increase in actual deployed officers from less than 10.000 to 14.500, more or less uninterrupted. The continued commitment to Timor Leste and a significant increase in Haiti in the aftermath of the terrible earthquake in January 2010 add to more or less continuous deployments to Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Liberia. The UN took, together with the AU, responsibility for peacekeeping in Darfur, Sudan, by establishing the so-called hybrid mission UNAMID, jointly led by the UN and the AU. Taking over from a previous AU peace operation AMIS, which included considerable police capacities, UNAMID became the PKO with the largest police component ever so far, peaking beyond 5.500 police. With the emergence of the new country South Sudan in 2011, separating from Sudan, a commitment to UNMIS was seamlessly followed up through the establishment of two new PKO, UNMISS in South-Sudan and UNISFA for the demilitarized area of Abyei.

At the end of 2012, the termination of peacekeeping in Timor Leste and adjustments in Haiti were the main reason for a small decrease in deployed numbers. Since 2013, the deployment numbers are on the rise again, currently culminating in 14.000 police officers towards the end of 2015. Despite adjustments in ongoing PKO, due to progress, but also significant political pressure to redistribute, rather than requesting for the deployment of more police, this increase is attributable to the emergence of a civil war in South Sudan in December 2013,  and the establishment of new PKO in Mali (2013) and the Central African Republic (2014).

 

Major external factors affecting UN peacekeeping, and especially the deployment of UNPOL

The UN categorizes development of peacekeeping into the early years, a post cold-war surge, and an ongoing and rapidly evolving contemporary⁠21, increasingly complex situation⁠22. As shown above, the period after the end of the cold war has led to major developments for, and within, PKO between 1989 and 1999 which include the visible immediate consequences that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Towards the end of the past millennium, and at the dawn of the new millennium, three developments influencing policing in peacekeeping and peace operations at large stand out. They are formative, both affecting contemporary conflict and the International Communities’ response to it. In sum these developments are: (1) The emergence of the European Union’s Crisis Management within it’s Common Foreign and Security Policy CFSP; (2) The impact of the post 9/11 situation; (3) The emergence of peace support operations of the African Union.

(a) The emergence of the European Union’s Crisis Management

The Cologne European Council June 1999 included a declaration on strengthening the EU’s ability to act externally, paving the way into the Union’s Common Policy on  Security and Defence⁠23 CSDP. The members of the European Council declared that they want to develop “an effective EU-led crisis management”. This is the beginning of setting the European Security and Defence Policy ESDP into motion, a part of the larger CSDP. It quickly led to the establishment of capacities and capabilities for aspects of civilian crisis management, including policing. Subsequently, the European Union established its first ever crisis management operation under this policy, the European Union Police Mission in Bosnia&Hercegovina EUPM. EUPM followed seamlessly on to UNMIBH, re-hatting United Nations police. EUPM lasted from end 2002 to mid 2012. A deployment of international police into peace operations, therefore, began in Bosnia&Hercegovina immediately after the Dayton Peace Agreement and lasted for seventeen years. Likewise, a few years later the European Union began its preparation to take over from UNMIK in Kosovo. In 2008, the EU civilian crisis management mission EUJUST LEX followed on to the work of UNMIK within the field of security and the rule of law, leading to a continuation of the deployment of international police officers in significant numbers, lasting until today. In the case of Kosovo therefore, an ongoing line of sixteen years of deployment of international police into a peace operation has been formed. This fits into the picture as can be seen in UN PKO and will later be demonstrated as week in the case of the African Union: The contemporary duration of intense deployment of policing capacity through peace operations bridges at least a decade, and more. The deployment of police capacity itself, however, frequently witnesses a mix of different peace operations, involving various actors aside the UN.

The European Union development from 1999 until today includes a large variety of missions of different types many of which, at least on the civilian side, have led to smaller and more specialized deployment of police contingents or police missions, with specialized mandates reflecting the interest of the EU abroad. Aside of the two above cases of taking over responsibility from UNPOL, these past and ongoing missions do in significant numbers deploy into the same theaters of operation in which UNPOL is contributing to the task of  protecting civilians, and building host State capacity. In one case, a small specialized EU police contingent was directly given to the African Union Mission AMIS, assisting the African Union Mission in Sudan in policing aspects in Darfur, before the UN/AU hybrid operation UNAMID took over from AMIS at the beginning of 2008. In all cases where parallel engagements including policing happens, synchronization on operational, strategic, and policy level on headquarters and field level have a direct impact on successful implementation of either mandate⁠24. Deployment figures of EU policing are not as readily available as they are for the UN.

(b) The impact of the post 9/11 situation

Following the terror attack of September 11, 2001, global change affected peacekeeping operations. Related to effects on the UN’s ability to deploy UNPOL into UN peacekeeping, and the overall activities of UN Member States and Regional Organizations to utilizing national police assets within their own conduct of peace operations, two country situations stand out: Iraq and Afghanistan.

Coalitions of States, all of them UN Member States, and many of them Member States of the EU and of NATO, contributed significant police contingents into multilateral or bilateral efforts of crisis stabilization and post-crisis development of domestic capacities. The financial, staff, and development aid efforts for both country situations are huge. Detailed overviews do, unfortunately, not exist. However, it is fair to establish the hypothesis that UN Member States including those which form today’s EU, as well as the United States of America and Canada continued to uphold a significant contribution of police to overseas operations throughout the following decade. These operations include multilateral coalitions beginning with military campaigns which later broadened into multilateral peace support operations, NATO peace support operations, and EU crisis management operations. Multilateral coalitions used a large diversity of conceptual approaches how to utilize police capacities. However, the necessary police capacities were not added to the contribution into UN PKO. Rather, a realignment of limited resources to shifting national priorities led to a decrease of their contribution to UN PKO.

(c) The emergence of peace support operations of the African Union

With the establishment of the African Union AU in 2001 and its launch in 2002, UN Member States in Africa formed a continental political body including the intent to promote peace and security in Africa. It led to the AU conducting own peace support operations PSO, including the utilization of police capacities and capabilities. Amongst other operations, and relevant for this analysis only, the AU has conducted a PSO in Sudan, Darfur Region (AMIS), in Mali (AFISMA), the Central African Republic (MISCA), and is conducting a PSO in Somalia (AMISOM), all of which include police. Currently, the AU is preparing for the deployment of a peace support operation to Burundi (MAPROBU). All AU PSO have included police components, and all have been followed on by UN peacekeeping operations: AMIS has handed over its operations in Sudan’s Darfur region to a UN peacekeeping operation jointly conducted by UN and AU, the first and, so far, only hybrid mission. AFISMA in Mali was succeeded by MINUSMA, and MISCA in the Central African Republic was succeeded by MINUSCA. All these cases have led to the re-hatting of military and police contingents. De facto all these contingents were far away from any UN minimum standard, in terms of training, equipment, command and control, and the relationship between field operations and strategic headquarters. Politicial needs and the dire situation of civilians horribly affected by violence and terror simply dictated a pragmatic approach, leading to extraordinary challenges, including within the police contingents, by the UN, regional organisations such as the EU, and bilateral commitments, in order to bring these contingents up to minimum standards. The operational challenges of the hybrid mission in Darfur add. Instruments formed by political and security mechanisms of the AU co-exist with mechanisms of the UN, and the EU, in the same countries, posing another set of challenges to effective assistance. From a peacekeeping perspective, two country situations stand out at this moment: Somalia and Burundi: (1) The AU PSO AMISOM in Somalia is the largest AU operation on the continent, including a fighting force combatting the terror of Al Shabab, and including a relatively small police contingent with operational and capacity building tasks. The UN on the other side is engaging in Somalia with the Special Political Mission UNSOM, including a small but capable rule of law and security element, including UNPOL. Recently, the collaboration between police in UNSOM and AMISOM has been systematically strengthened, following a UN initiative. This included specialized deployment of the UN Police Division’s Standing Police Capacity SPC. A joint political benchmarking process regularly revisits the question whether the AU mission could, and should, be followed on by a UN PKO. (2) In December 2015, the UN Security Council authorized the AU to deploy a prevention force into the deteriorating situation in Burundi. This deployment has not happened yet and is, at the time of this writing, being met by strong political resistance from Burundi itself. Taking this into account, the UN has been requested to carry out contingency planning for worst-case scenarios, including own operational deployments. Aside of the already complicated process of support for AU PSO and hand-over from these operations, this presents the UN, including police planning and operations, with new scenarios including for forceful preventative entry.

The impact of these factors on UNPOL in PKO

Complex political, policy, and operational cooperation between UN, AU, and EU with relevance to UNPOL will be discussed later. In terms of impact on peacekeeping, and policing deployment into PKO, the deployment of UNPOL into PKO underwent a fundamental change: In addition to the Security Council continuing, and increasing, to focus PKO on conflict in Africa, the composition of major Police Contributing Countries to UN PKO in these operations dramatically changed: (1) The decrease in overall deployment of UNPOL into PKO to a low point end of 2003 includes a first downsizing in Timor Leste, but also a re-hatting of UNPOL into police in EU crisis management in Bosnia&Herzegovina. (2) The decrease of contribution of EU Member States, but also the USA, beyond the end of UN peacekeeping is further rooted in steady downsizing and, finally, the same transfer of responsibility to the EU in Kosovo, 2008. (3) The commitment to bi- and multilateral engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan consumed police capacities, financial, and development commitment on the side of States who added this to their much larger costly military engagement. As a result, the contribution from these PCC to UNPOL went down to a minimum in numbers. As the overall deployment of UNPOL nearly doubled since 2000, the share of these PCC has become marginal. Despite some discussion as to whether the ending engagement in Afghanistan could lead to a renewed commitment to UN PKO, this trend has not stopped. (4) A similar trend is visible for PCC from Central& South America, however for none of the reasons above. (5) Subsequently, today’s majority of UNPOL come from PCC in the Middle East (with Jordan being the only major PCC in this group), Asia, and Africa. (6) A trend is visible with a reduced contribution from Asian PCC. Partly this might be a consequence of national policy decisions, including, but not only, contemporary struggle with violent extremism and terror at home. Equally, the promotion of the value of African ownership in Africa plays a role. Finally, the increased demand of francophone capacities in Africa affects the Asian supply side. (7) Many of the reasons above logically contribute to the fact that PCC from Africa continue to increase their share, beyond the fact that they constitute today’s majority. African PCC were a minority in 2000, with main contributors coming from Europe, North America, and Asia. African PCC are the only constituency with uninterrupted growth in terms of UNPOL deployment since 2003. With a growing role of AU peace support operations, and no end in sight for the trend of ever more PKO on the African continent, this poses a prime challenge to the UN system, requiring consolidated efforts of All. The support to policing in PSO, through assistance to the AU headquarters, and to AU missions on the ground, but also the interrelationship between AU and UN missions will increase, and needs to: UN and AU draw policing capacities from the same Police Contributing Countries PCC in Africa, who are limited in their capacities and capabilities, whilst there is no alternative to policing contribution within peace operations on either side.

Chapter conclusions:

Opposed to UN figures as used earlier, the accuracy of data provided publicly by other organizations and especially in relation to bilateral and multilateral coalition engagement is much less, partly not in existence at all. The relevance of the development of own crisis management capacities of the EU and the AU will become clear in other chapters as well, but already at this point the diversity of engagement, different policies, different training and equipment approaches, and the constraints stemming from the fact that all three organizations and bi- and multilateral operations request contributions from domestic police organizations all around the World, becomes clear. Beyond, the question of impact of engagement depends on cooperation, coordination, and use of synergies of a multiplicity of engaged actors. Significant difficulties here, and their impact on UN police in PKO, will be addressed later. Taking the average duration of post-crisis assistance into account, and the risks stemming from relapse into conflict in case of less successful assistance, pressing needs to engage better with costly resources meant for domestic purposes become very clear. This requires adequate capacity and capabilities in Headquarters, and in Missions.

Looking back at this development, the diversity of engagement will continue, and, at least from a UN perspective, likely increase. This issue will come back when analyzing the development of UNPOL engagement in Special Political Missions of the UN Department of Political Affairs, and in relation to the Global Focal Point GFP, and is relevant for the cooperation with other actors contributing to contemporary challenges, such as the impact of violent extremism, terror, and transnational crime, and corruption.

A harmonization of policy, strategy, and operational engagement of policing in peace operations is essential for long term impact on conflict situations. The UN Strategic Guidance Framework for international policing, it’s further development, and broad international acceptance, within and beyond the UN is key for this.

__________

1 See, for example, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/history.shtml

Last access Dec 10, 2015

2 United Nations, list of peacekeeping operations,

Click to access operationslist.pdf

Last access Dec 08, 2015

3 Peacekeeping Operations – The Early Years; http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/early.shtml;

Last access Dec 07, 2015

4 For detailed reading: Lt.Gen (ret.) Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, Random House Canada, 2003, ISBN 978-0-679-31171-3

5 For detailed reading: Hasan Nuhanovic; Under The UN Flag: The International Community and the Srebrenica Genocide, DES 2007, ISBN: 978-9958-728-87-7

6 For detailed reading on the “Responsibility to Protect”: Gareth Evans; The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All, Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008, ISBN-13: 978-0815703341

7 For example: Decisions undertaken by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) after the breaking out of a civil war, Dec 15, 2013, or discussions leading to the establishment of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), as a consequence of a resumption of violence by the mainly Muslim Séléka and the subsequent taking up arms by the mainly Christian anti-Balaka. Likewise, the inability of the Security Council to come to resolutions on cases such as the current one in Syria can be directly connected to a fundamental political dispute between Member States of the United Nations on whether a Responsibility to Protect (R2P) supersedes a principle of international law, territorial or Westphalian sovereignty.

8 Bruce Oswald, Helen Durham, Adrian Bates, Documents on the Law of UN Peace Operations, Oxford University Press New York, 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-957126-0, pg 3

9 http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/past/minurcat/background.shtml

10 http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unisfa/mandate.shtml

11 Fifteen between 1990 and 1999, seven between 2000 and 2009, and six since 2010 until today.

12 Nine PKO between 1990 and 1999

13 Six new PKO

14 67, 42 and 38 years of duration

15 UNFICYP in Cyprus: 52 years; UNMIK in Kosovo: 17 years.

16 UNMOGIP in India and Pakistan

17 MINUSTAH in Haiti, twelve years

18 Scattered data can be found under http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/contributors_archive.shtml. Figures are documented from the end of 1990 on.

19 1.500 police officers

20 Data publicly available on the UN Website. The author compiled all data for the purpose of this visualization. The data reflects the real deployments, on a monthly registration basis. Small deployments are not visible, but included.

21 For example: http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/history.shtml

22 See, for example, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/history.shtml

Last access Dec 10, 2015

23 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/summits/kol2_en.htm, and more specifically http://www.europarl.europa.eu/summits/kol2_en.htm#an3

24 For an actual overview about all peace operations, including UN, EU, and AU, the Center for International Peace Operations (ZIF) offers a highly visualized overview on a World map: http://www.zif-berlin.org/fileadmin/uploads/analyse/dokumente/veroeffentlichungen/ZIF_World_Map_Peace_Operations.pdf

25 Download link: http://www.zif-berlin.org/fileadmin/uploads/analyse/dokumente/veroeffentlichungen/ZIF_World_Map_Peace_Operations.pdf

Setting the Stage

/ stefanfeller / Leave a comment

At times with rising and ever more complicated conflicts threatening global peace and security, we look for renewed commitment to United Nations peace operations, and we collectively search for new approaches. This series of articles will focus on United Nations policing within peace operations. It will take stock of long-term development, outline more recent achievements, and argue that a fresh look needs to be undertaken, allowing policing to punch it’s weight: UN policing plays an important role within the United Nation’s efforts preventing conflicts, engaging in conflicts, and the Organizations efforts to promote sustainable peace and security through peace building: To protect civilians and to assist in building domestic capacity in the field of security and the rule of law are two interrelated core functions of UN peace operations. Policing needs to be strengthened in both, and beyond, in conflict prevention and peace building.

June 16, 2015, a High-Level Independent Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, commissioned by the United Nations Secretary General, presented it’s findings⁠1. The report is now commonly referred to as the HIPPO-Report. About two weeks later, June 29, 2015, an Advisory Group of Experts presented their review of the UN Peacebuilding Architecture: “The Challenge of Sustaining Peace⁠2”. This report has become known as the AGE-Report.

On 2nd of September, UN Secretary General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon presented⁠3 the HIPPO-Report to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and the UN Security Council (UNSC). In Paragraph 2, Ban Ki-moon writes:

“To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. The opening words of the Charter capture the purpose of the UN. Seventy years later, that objective has never appeared as urgent or as challenging. Since 2008 the number of major violent conflicts has almost tripled. Long-simmering disputes have escalated or relapsed into wars, while new conflicts have emerged in countries and regions once considered stable. Labels assigned to conflict – internal, inter-state, regional, ethnic or sectarian – have become increasingly irrelevant, as transnational forces of violent extremism and organized crime build on and abet local rivalries. Environmental degradation and resource deprivation are not contained by borders. Exclusion at home is driving tension abroad. People displaced by war approach 60 million and global humanitarian needs for 2015 are close to $20 billion.”

Fifteen years earlier, a Panel on United Nations Peace Operations issued the “Brahimi-Report⁠4”. The HIPPO-Report can be seen as the first comprehensive follow-up. In it’s introductory parts, the HIPPO-Report notes that “United Nations peace operations are a unique instrument for advancing international peace and security.” Peacekeeping Operations have a history that began in 1948. Seventy years later, they have evolved in type and complexity. Peace operations include peacekeeping operations, special political missions, good offices, and mediation services. The HIPPO-Report notes the current deployment of more than 128,000 civilian and uniformed personnel in 39 missions across four continents. Looking back at the Brahimi-Report, the HIPPO-Report acknowledges the significant strengthening efforts and efforts to ensure that peace operations adapt to new roles.

As Ban Ki-moon notes, “violent crises are drawing unprecedented levels of international engagement”, leading to the engagement of the UN in peace operations, but also crisis management operations undertaken by the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU). Proliferation of conflict is outpacing our efforts, millions of people continue to live in fear and misery, and failure to prevent or halt war is dominating public consciousness. The UN Secretary General goes on to say: “Too often, however, efforts have been fragmented and unequal to the task. The limits of our engagement are reflected in UN peace operations, the most visible face of the Organization. Over six decades they have shown a remarkable capacity to adjust to evolving situations and new demands, guided by well-established principles. But missions are struggling to cope with the spread and intensity of conflicts today, and lack of unity among Member States over their scope and application is thwarting their adaptation. Within peace operations, shameful actions of some individuals are tarnishing efforts of tens of thousands.”

Consequently, the UNSG calls on tackling these profound challenges. In doing so, he does not only assess the HIPPO-Report as being a solid foundation for this, but simultaneously points to the AGE-Report and more, including the Global Study on the implementation of Resolution 1325, which examines progress in placing women at the centre of the UN peace and security agenda⁠5, with a High-Level Review in October 2015.

On initiative of the President of the United States of America, a Peacekeeping Summit of World Leaders took place on occasion of the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly. In his speech⁠6 on September 28, 2015, Ban Ki-moon recalls that “the situations into which peacekeepers are deployed have never been more challenging, as tasks multiply and we face extremists, criminal groups and others who show no regard for international humanitarian or human rights law.” He recalls that more than 120 countries currently contribute over 125,000 troops, police and civilian personnel. Amongst five most pressing needs, the call for more qualified police personnel, including more female police officers, and Formed Police Units, as well as experts in the justice and corrections sectors, features prominently.

Likewise President Obama⁠7: “…today, I’m issuing new presidential guidance — the first in more than 20 years — to expand our support for U.N. peace operations.” He points to the need to reform and modernize peace operations, making them fit for purpose in contemporary complex environments, appreciating the commitment of more than 50 countries to do more, including contributing troops and police. The White House Memorandum on United States support for United Nations peace operations⁠8 itself is even more specific and detailed in the U.S. Administrations’ support for policing in UN peace operations, and it stands as an example for an increased commitment that was subsequently demonstrated in speeches by Heads of States, or their representatives, over more than four hours of pledging.

To date⁠9, PCC contribute 13.940 police officers to United Nations Police (UNPOL). Broadly speaking, 4.653 officers are deployed as Individual Police Officers, and 9.287 officers are deployed into Formed Police Units. Taking stock on the police side, the 2nd Peacekeeping Summit led to significant new pledges⁠ of UN Member States. Finally, all the above is accompanied by a wider and complex set of efforts of the United Nations to modernize peace operations⁠.

Quo vadis, United Nations policing? The extrapolation of the future can never be attempted without a thorough look into the development itself, in this case the development of policing in UN peace operations. A look back will map the history, and will become more detailed for the past decade, or possibly fifteen years. Whilst the focus is on UN policing, within UN peace operations, the narrative for the beginning 21st century has, to some extent, to look at aspects of coherence and cooperation, within the larger UN system, and in relation to other international, regional, and bi- or multilateral actors. Without, the current challenges can hardly be understood.

anImage_9.tiff

1 Uniting Our Strengths for Peace – Politics, Partnerships And People; Report of the High-Level Independent Panel on United Nations Peace Operations. http://www.un.org/sg/pdf/HIPPO_Report_1_June_2015.pdf

2 The Challenge of Sustaining Peace – Report of the Advisory Group of Experts For The 2015 Review of the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture.

Click to access 300615_The-Challenge-of-Sustaining-Peace.pdf

3 The future of United Nations peace operations: implementation of the recommendations of the High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations. Report of the Secretary-General to General Assembly and Security Council; Document A/70/357–S/2015/682. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N15/270/74/PDF/N1527074.pdf?OpenElement

4 Report of the Secretary-General to General Assembly and Security Council; Document A/55/305–S/2000/809; http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/55/305

5 http://wps.unwomen.org/en/high-level-review

6 http://www.un.org/sg/statements/index.asp?nid=9048

7 https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/28/remarks-president-obama-un-peacekeeping-summit

8 http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2015peaceoperations.pdf

9 Figures represent the deployment as of November 2015

International policing in peace operations

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“Restoring confidence and transforming security, justice, and economic institutions is possible within a generation, even in countries that have experienced severe conflict.” 

World Development Report 2011, Conflict, Security and Development; The World Bank, April 2011; http://www.worldbank.org

“The worst times in European history were in the fourteenth century, during and after the Hundred Years War, in the seventeenth century at the time of the Thirty Years War, and in the first half of the twentieth century. The twenty-first century may be worse than any of these.”

Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations, 2003, Atlantic Books, pg. vii

“To understand the present we must first understand the past.”

Ibid, pg. 7

 

Over the past months, I have found my way back into writing. It has been an arduous process, and so many reasons were contributing to that it took so long. What appears to be the result of a brilliant or less brilliant idea, put into words then, in reality it is the product of many months where the subconscious parts of the mind wrestled with it. And then, all of a sudden, it comes up in to the clear of the conscious. That’s one part of the story.

Another one is that the theme of the articles I am going to publish into the testing ground of my blog could not be written earlier. In my line of professional work, 2015 has been a year with most important events which set the stage for this writing. The first article will highlight some of the strategic events.

Next is the reasons that 2015 saw an almost incredible amount of things happening which the world is struggling with. In my view, like for many others, it is changing the global fabric of what we are challenged with, for many reasons.

So there were operational challenges. And there was more reading blogs than writing. Witnessing how the world wrote about some events, including terror attacks, and forgot about others, like the areas in which my colleagues and I work. I watched the migration crisis, in amazement. And I watched the many visible aspects of xenophobia, and reverberating patterns, like ping-pong-balls, of radicalization of language, and cruel action. Look, in retrospective, on what I wrote about Charlie Hebdo. We now have many of these, many more, and many more worrying patterns of that the world becomes resentful, that simplifying and manipulative language drives the discussions, rather than educated and informed talking and writing, rather than compassionate thinking, breaking up the fiefdoms of egotism.

We need voices of compassion, empathy, rational understanding, able to contribute to the appropriate dealing with very complex development. The great simplifiers, we have too many of them, all over this world. It is their hour, they yell their manipulations from the rooftops. As long as the voices of reason stay silent, they find easy prey.

So, in order to write, another reason was that I needed to research, and to think. Sometimes, every sentence took me a day. And many days in order to rewrite that sentence, until I was satisfied. Behind some articles there is intense number crunching. And nothing is referring to data which would not be public. In everything I am writing I am referring to data and information that you can look up on the Internet, or books that you can buy.

I got the hang of it again, so now my writing, as a process, is much easier than it has been, say, summer 2015. And many other things happened that summer, of which none is to be shared here.

Alright then, if you like what I will post, enjoy!

On Trauma, Children, and Societies

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I introduced three categories of conditions in my previous blog entry (Trauma; addictive/compulsive behaviour; certain personality disorders), and three general categories of individuals who draw their appreciation of these conditions from their specific ability or inability to relate to them. Members of these categories either have never experienced one of these conditions personally, or they suffer from one or several of them, or they are in a state that I have named recovery.

It is possible that such a systematisation only fits a cultural context of Western societies. The perception of reality by a self-aware mind happens within a cultural context, though it may be influenced by some genetic predispositions. For sure the main influence is happening throughout childhood and adolescence, in every specific society. Literally all aspects of what an individual learns about where he or she belongs, what defines the identity within a group, a society, a culture, a belief system, a system of faith, it begins with education by parents and caregivers.

In my attempt to describe the context of trauma and my line of work, I have to appreciate that. I have to acknowledge that my approach; my way relating to it; my way of empathising with, for example, victims of trauma; my ideas about which impact the consequences of trauma have; my ideas how to assist in healing trauma; that all this happens within the framework of the societies of the type I grew up in. My appreciation is formed through education, through science, through value systems and belief systems to which I have been exposed, which form the Western world in which I live.

Let me explain this with a little example:

I came across an interesting statement (look here for one of several references) on the fundamental cultural context of healing, and assistance to it. In this piece, a Rwandan genocide survivor makes reference to healthcare professionals from Western countries, attempting to apply a Western approach to healing:

“You know, we had a lot of trouble with Western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide, and we had to ask some of them to leave…They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun like what you’re describing – which is, after all, where you begin to feel better. There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again when you’re depressed and you’re low and you need to have your blood flowing. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. There was no acknowledgement of the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out of you again. Instead, they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to get them to leave the country.”

Trauma experienced by adults is a well explored issue which has made it into public awareness. Scientific research has made tremendous progress in understanding how trauma impacts on the brain. The long form of the acronym PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, is known by many. People share at least a little conceptual understanding. You and I have experiences within our families and networks of friends about the impact of trauma. My grand uncle never spoke about his experiences as a soldier during the most brutal World War I. My former father in law never ever opened up on his experiences during the Nazi Regime. Both of them were visibly and deeply affected.

I want to focus on what trauma does to young children: The impact of trauma on a child in its early or later stages of development is tremendous, in any society. What I say is that the way how societies deal with trauma may be specific to the societal and cultural context, but the fact that trauma happens to children, and has a deep effect, is common to all individuals in all societies who face violence and abuse of children, and their caregivers. Therefore, every society affected by conflict needs to address these effects of trauma in order to move on, and this way is specific to every society in question. There may be an universal framework for healing, but I suspect it is limited.

My personal experience would indicate that we empathise with the impact of violence and trauma on children, but we stop short from real acknowledgement of its lifelong consequences: It appears to me that we often deny, or disregard, its impact. This impact on life when somebody is exposed to early trauma is much more fundamental, and to some considerable extent unalterable. It may be that, in a mainstream discussion, we feel empathy, and pity, but we may wrongly expect that the child has to move on, on its way into adulthood, and as an adult.

As a matter of fact, no single child can do that.

Trauma requires support for healing. Any seriously traumatised individual is unlikely to undo the impact of trauma without support, and this is especially true for children. A child literally has no single tool which would enable it to support his or her own healing. A child completely depends on the support of caregivers. If these caregivers then are affected by massive trauma as well, they are becoming dysfunctional in many ways that affect their nurturing and educating children. Consequently, the child will almost certainly grow up becoming a dysfunctional adult. It’s a double whammy: Suffering from own trauma, being raised by traumatised caregivers. In societies that are affected by massive violence, including acts of genocide, including systematic use of rape and violence against women, children, and other vulnerable groups, as an instrument of conflict and war, this has catastrophic consequences: These societies form, from individual wounds, common wounds. These common wounds persist, their results are visible in generations of that society to come. They, in my experience, form the foundation for future relapse into violence.

No matter which society, no matter which culture, children are born with a clean slate. Certainly, genetic predisposition impacts on how children develop, but newborn always are, as Pia Mellody⁠1 describes it, valuable, vulnerable, imperfect, dependent, and immature. This is just one attempt to frame the initial condition a child is in, but it appears to be useful to me.

If you look at these categories, nurturing and raising of children means to assist them in moving from this highly dependent initial condition into interdependent adulthood. “Interdependent” means that an individual is able to function within a societal context, and doing so in a more or less healthy way. “Living healthy” always relates to quite some extent to what a peer group would generally consider to be appropriate.

Like all mammals, we learn what we need to know, how to be, how to act as an adult from caregivers. Instincts and genetically coded behaviour exist, but every mammal learns how to interact, how to hunt, how to relate to a peer group, through nurturing, play, and education. In our human case, it requires, give or take, twenty years. I believe that even in societies in which children take on roles that we, in Western societies, would consider appropriate only much later, this profoundly biological, psychological, and social, process simply requires that much time. No matter whether a society marries a girl early on to an adult, no matter from when on a child begins to take family responsibilities, or has to begin to work: Forming the adult self, able to function in any society in an appropriate interdependent manner, in our human case it takes time.

In a Western context, there is established clinical and therapeutic evidence for a group of symptoms that follow protracted and/or severe forms of abuse in childhood (which impact on a child as trauma). Citing one of many authors on this, Pia Mellody⁠2, I am not motivated by the topic of her specific book, a phenomenon called “codependence”, but by it’s healthy opposite, what I referred to above as “interdependence”. In her vast work, Pia Mellody identifies the following conditions as a consequence of the inability or impairment of an individual to act in an interdependent (healthy) way: (1) Negative control; (2) Resentment; (3) Distorted, or nonexistent spirituality; (4) Avoiding reality; (5) Impaired ability to sustain intimacy. Her work represents important experience in understanding a fundamental connection between childhood trauma, through physical or emotional abuse, and, what she calls “less than nurturing” education.

With more easy, but blunt words: Dysfunctional parents, unwillingly and often unknowingly, create dysfunctional children, who grow up becoming dysfunctional adults. So, how does a surviving parent, traumatised by the loss of loved ones, and traumatised as a victim of violence and abuse, educate a child in a way that this child becomes an interdependent healthy member of the society? How more complicated is this, if also that child itself has been subjected to unimaginable violence? I will write about sexual and gender based violence, or about slavery, and forming children into child soldiers, in later articles. But how does a child with such trauma wounds grow up, being taken care of by caregivers who struggle with recovery from trauma themselves?

Clinical experience in our Western societies establishes in almost all cases of childhood trauma a direct link into dysfunctional patterns including compulsive/addictive abuse of substances and/or behaviour, or developing physical or mental forms of illness. Cases of widespread abuse of alcohol or substances through the loss of cultural context, identification, collective low self-esteem, in subjugated minority communities come to my mind. I remember my knowledge about Australian aborigines, for example, but also the dysfunctional behaviour in ghetto communities that we all deal with as police officers. We allow, create, or accept, unhealthy conditions in minorities, and/or ghettos, and then we blame the members of those groups for the dysfunctional behaviour which is an inevitable consequence.

But aside that common experience, which has very concrete consequences for the community-oriented policing work in all our countries, in my line of work I see the huge numbers of victims of horrible violence, children and caregivers, after conflict, and genocide.

Which sets the stage for case studies, but before that, within a next instalment, for further quantification and qualification of the violence that is part of contemporary conflicts. I have case studies including my own experiences, like in Bosnia & Herzegovina on my mind, or, for example, Rwanda. But also case studies of ghetto situations, in countries of the Western world.

Now, finishing with a book recommendation. Read the memoirs of a child soldier. It is heartening, but it will go under your skin: “A Long Way Gone⁠3: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah”.

From Amazon’s book page: “This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.

In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

“My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.

‘Why did you leave Sierra Leone?’

‘Because there is a war.’

‘You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?’

‘Yes, all the time.’

‘Cool.’

I smile a little.

‘You should tell us about it sometime.’

‘Yes, sometime.'”

1 Pia Mellody, With Andrea Wells Miller and J. Keith Miller; “Facing Codependence”, HarperCollins, 1989 and 2003, New York, ISBN 978-0-06-250589-7, page 63

2 Ibid, page 45

3 Beah, Ishmael (2006). A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Sarah Crichton Books

On Trauma and Societies

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This entry amends and deepens my earlier article “Trauma – An Entry Point”. So some is a repetition, but put into a larger context.

There is a group of conditions with damaging impact which’s members, at first sight, may seem disparate. These conditions fundamentally affect development, personality, and behavior, and impact on forming relationships. Scientific understanding of these conditions, and what they do to individuals, has made significant progress over the past decades.

However, in my experience they also impact on communities, and societies, especially when some of them occur on a large scale, to a huge number of members of a society, as a consequence of violent conflict.

To my knowledge, this area is less charted, in psychology, and in sociology.

The three conditions are:

(1) Trauma;

(2) Compulsive behavior and addiction and their interrelationship; and

(3) Certain personality disorders which, at least, seem to occur as a consequence of trauma especially when exposed to it at an early stage of life.

These conditions can be examined using a multidisciplinary approach including genetic, neuronal, biochemical and environmental/behavioral  sciences. This is especially useful when it comes to the various degrees of their influencing each other and working together.

These conditions, in principle, can be seen in any living organism, at least of some complexity, and to varying degrees, again depending on the complexity of the organism in question.

We all know the story of the dog where it’s owner knows or suspects that the animal has been abused, say, the dog was rescued from being chained and beaten frequently, for example. We immediately see the impact, some animals are extremely anxious, others may be aggressive and can not be held around children. I have not seen anyone who does not understand the causal consequence between the abuse and the behavior of an animal. The dog may even have been adopted for reasons including pity. Animal adoption online markets are full of narratives about abuse.

My experience with human beings who have experienced trauma, especially early trauma, is different. The layers of human development from child to adult, and within an adult’s life, seem to make the causal context less visible. I may hear on a party sentences like “Our new dog was clearly abused as a puppy”. I can neither remember or imagine a similar easygoing discussion about a human being. These conversations are very different.

It appears to me that we can readily appreciate the impact of violence on an animal, but my personal experience with the set of reactions when confronted with somebody who has been subjected to violence, to trauma, to injustice on an extraordinary scale, is different. The scale of reactions includes indifference, disinterested attitude, or inability to appropriately interact with such an individual. Reactions can include gossip to third people like “He or she should get over it”, they can, not only in extreme cases, even outright victimize and traumatize this individual again.

Why? I struggle to come up with a comprehensive answer, but to me it stands out that the topic of abuse appears to be a societal taboo: Victims, if they can remember that they were abused, regularly don’t talk. The reasons include shame, and alienation by others. Every police officer knows (or should…) the term “secondary victimization”. It happens, for example, to rape victims, through the sometimes helpless, sometimes outright malicious, and always inappropriate reactions of family, friends, law enforcement, and justice.

Moreover, in my experience the reactions to human abuse appear to include other elements which make the consequences so difficult to see, and to deal with. They include uneducation, sometimes almost medieval belief, and disinterest. As an example, I take a sentence many of us have heard all too often: “A slap does not harm a child, it’s good for the child”.

Despite well-documented negative impact on the development of children, this belief is very common. To my disbelief, I had even to learn that some State legislation in the U.S. still allows physical punishment of children. Just read this one.

I do believe that massive experience of violence, and especially sexual and gender based violence on a mass scale which occurs in conflict, not seldom deliberately used as a weapon of war, of individual and societal destruction, leads to the occurrence of all three conditions on a scale that affects that societies’ ability to move on, and to reconcile, or not. I have made practical experience of that everywhere where I have worked.

Our ability to appreciate these phenomena and to relate to the behavioral consequences of their existence in an individual is radically different, in my view, within the three following groups, which I introduced in my first article:

(A) Those who don’t have one or several of these conditions;

(B) Those who have, and often don’t know; and

(C) Those who recover from one or several of these conditions, and/or integrate the knowledge of their partly unalterable consequences consciously into their lifes.

These three constituencies mix and may communicate about these issues on basis of a vastly different understanding:

The person who is not affected (A) has limitations to relate, and thus, to understand. Relapse into addictive behavior, compulsive disorders, anxieties, anorexic behavior, just to name very few, appear to be alien to these persons. They have genuine difficulties grappling with relating to why this is happening, beyond an intellectual level. Read “Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent in Plain Sight” by M.E. Thomas. Try to relate to her narrative, assuming you, the reader, are not a sociopath. It’s really demonstrating the case.

The person who is affected (B), does not, at least fully, know and/or is in a condition excluding understanding, through complex denial mechanisms. This person is genuinely unhappy and may even be ready to admit that, but understanding does not suffice and denial adds. The denial can be visible to (A), but that person has often no idea what this denial really means, and how it works. Often, a person (A) concludes that a person (B) is weak. An addict has character deficiencies, full stop. A traumatized abuse victim is weak, he or she should get over it. Full stop. A personality disorder, like, let me just say, frequent panic attacks and inability to be with other people, may establish pity at best. But that person is weak, full stop.

In order to appreciate my entry point into this discussion, read, for example, the definition of the American Society for Addiction Medicine ASAM. According to this definition, based on what we now know through sophisticated science, addiction is a brain disease. I will come to addiction much later, the point here is “brain disease”. The very same way, trauma is a wound inflicted on the brain.

Whilst we may talk about brain injuries and diseases on a neuronal level in educated academic discussions, my impression is that much of society approaches these conditions including from a perspective treating them as character deficiencies.

The person who recovers (C), increasingly understands, as his or her recovery progresses. Recovery is hard work. Thus, the recovering person develops an intimate understanding of what happened, and why.

It is from this perspective that I see and want to examine the impact on societies where large groups of individuals are victimized. Understanding the impact helps finding better ways to help addressing it, increasing the ability of a society to reconcile.

Because if there is no reconciliation, there is high likelihood of relapse into new conflict.

For further reading, here is just one personal account. I will use some more in future entries.

Trauma – An Entry Point

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So far, I have been writing about peace, justice, and security. This blog is also about conflict, trauma and reconciliation. And frankly, it is perhaps the biggest unexplored land that I need to enter, to cross, and attempt to map. Trauma is one of the most challenging terms I have ever been dealing with.

My knowledge about trauma is growing. As I write, I also contribute with this to my own recovery from trauma. So this will be part of a healing process, quite frankly. As this is a public blog, there only will be a very limited disclosure.

I am so aware of how difficult it is, in general, to understand what trauma does to an individual, and in cases of massive trauma by conflict, to communities and societies. From what I am learning and researching, the effects of trauma on societies may be better explored than methods to address recovery from trauma on a societal level.

In my professional experience, this recovery process appears to be a crucial factor for reconciliation in a society that has experienced conflict. I will try, how many blog entries down the road, and repeatedly, to explain and to reflect on supporting methods for recovery from individual trauma. My feeling since a while is that there is much potential for finding better ways to support the process of societies that have been traumatized through conflict, on their way towards reconciliation.

Because if they don’t, the common experience in my line of work is that these societies have a higher chance to relapse into conflict. History is full of proof for this.

Thinking about how to find the best common understanding for this topic, I want to note that there are several categories of individuals who need, when reading about trauma, to understand that their own experience with it massively defines their way, and even their ability, to relate to what I am going to write.

In a simplification, three groups stand out to me:

(1) Those who are lucky that they grew up without being subjected to their own trauma;

(2) Those who are trauma victims and don’t know;

(3) Those who actively recover, using a large variety of tools for it, based on what science learns about trauma, and on recovery tools that work.

Each of these groups have a massively different ability to understand the notion of trauma, with some similarities between the first two groups. The best understanding might be within the third group, to which I belong. Thus, I also know from my own experience how challenging it may be for those who understand trauma better, to explain it, on basis of their own experience. Because this group is labeled in different ways, there often is the complete absence of understanding what suffering from trauma means. Lifelong. Reactions go across the whole spectrum, including muted silence and aversion, to ridiculing, and moral judgement.

Which leads me to my second last general comment: I would believe that as of today, many who deal with trauma and its consequences would agree to that a multidisciplinary explanatory model and recovery approach is necessary. Explaining the mechanism of traumatization, and the approaches to healing, went through a huge scientific learning process over the past few decades. It is still ongoing, but there truly is exciting progress. Thats why both the knowledge about trauma and its effects, but also what trauma means for communities and societies at large, are so incredibly relevant and, perhaps, insufficiently explored and understood. My suspicion is that, as a result, we struggle with finding more effective methods of assisting recovering societies, in my line of work.

My last general comment: Science is knowledge, is enlightenment, is allowing humanity to develop tools. The opposite is the darkness that we often associate with the medieval ages. Believe me, from my viewpoint, which is supporting science, we are not out of the woods of the medieval ages yet. Specifically when it comes to contemporary understanding of behavior, learning, nurturing, and abuse in all its various forms, I see the medieval ages in full existence. The result is an uninformed approach of morality, and it has a huge impact in societies which believe that they are educated, and believing that the darkness of not knowing is just for labeling “elsewhere”.

I will give examples.

Here is one for starters: Follow these two links below. I may continue to work myself into the issue of trauma from various viewpoints, using these examples, and others. I deliberately refrain from judging the extremely different events that are reported in these articles too much, except that they both upset me equally:

During the same 30 minutes whilst riding on a train home, I read the news about that Boko Haram, in their most recent attack, killed hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people, with utmost cruelty, and for sure with what always comes with it: torture, and rape, unspeakable horror and suffering. Then I read about a father in Florida calling the cops for witnessing his punishing his 12-year-old daughter with slaps on her buttocks.

The common denominator for my later dissection: Trauma. And whilst All here would agree that Boko Haram’s actions are coming from Hell, yet there is a common understanding that physical abuse of children is justified for “educational” purposes. Even more, the notion I grew up with, including the sentence “A little slapping is healthy for children”, this notion is more widespread than I would have hoped, after so many decades of educational progress. It is truly medieval, as one can see, it’s still the law, even in some Southern parts of the United States.

So, the challenge is education about the effects of trauma. I will attempt to contribute.

Here are the links.

Dad Calls Cops to Watch Him Spank 12-Year-Old Daughter

http://gawker.com/dad-calls-cops-to-watch-him-spank-12-year-old-daughter-1677493594

Deadliest-Ever Boko Haram Raid Leaves Hundreds Dead in Nigeria: Reports

http://gawker.com/deadliest-ever-boko-haram-raid-leaves-hundreds-dead-in-1678538005

I really can not say: Enjoy reading…

Conflict, organized crime, extremism and terror, and corruption

/ stefanfeller / 1 Comment

Within most of our peace operations, we face security and justice institutions being incapacitated by conflict. Achieving peace and security requires establishing sustainable governance in a community, nation, and State. 

Whilst we do base our mandate implementation on the understanding of a specific local context and regional dimensions, we also acknowledge that every local or regional conflict is tied into a global context. It is important to better understand the global drivers of conflict, interconnected to each and any peace operation, a knowledge with which we can establish better foundations for achieving progress on the road towards sustainable peace and security. This includes an in-depth understanding of the level of collaboration of transnational organised crime with extremists and terrorists, on a fertile soil of corruption, including global, regional, and local, schemes of their operations.

Within the UN Secretary General’s key priorities, promoting a safer and more secure world features prominently. Ban Ki Moon calls on enhancing coherence and scale up counter-terrorism efforts, and addressing the heightened threat of organised crime, piracy and drug trafficking. The collaboration between transnational organised crime and extremism and terrorism is undermining legitimacy of governance in the interest of some, and against fundamental and inalienable human and individual rights of all. The collaboration between organised crime and forms of extremism and terror is more than a local or regional phenomenon, and it needs to be much better understood, on all levels, global, regional, and local.

New dimensions of violence, such as seen within horrible and seemingly senseless actions of “Islamic State IS”, “Boko Haram”, and others, have rekindled international outrage. Within organised crime however, organised crime groups such as, for example, “Los Zetas” in Mexico, or Central America’s criminal groups named “Maras”, are by no means different. All are united in their ideology and politics of establishing power and total influence. These organisations are unified in applying the sheerest form of evil: The utter absence of any respect for humanity. Behind horrible and seemingly senseless violence there is an emerging business model which connects all of them: The establishment of power including through a threat of horror. Homicide ratios per capita in some States affected by transnational organised crime go far beyond a ratio threshold that would indicate the existence a war-, conflict- or post-conflict-zone, such as the places where our peace operations are deployed.

Contemporary scholars and experts discuss which side, organised crime or terror, has adopted this strategy of reigning through massive violence from the other. Or, may be, there is just coincidence in its (re)emergence. However, we should consider that others might adopt similar strategies, and we shall not make a mistake by believing there is only similarity in the strategic application of evil: The business model of both transnational organised crime and terror is the same, in radically attacking all forms of governance that go counter to their own goal. The message is: If you are not with us, we will kill you, torture your loved ones, and we will do it without a blink of the eye.

Secondly, there is indication for a global collaboration between transnational organised crime and terror. Global interests of, for example, the South-American narco-cartels; regional African interests of groups facilitating trafficking in narcotics, weapons and human beings and illegal immigration; and interests of any form of violent extremism and terrorism meet where we deploy peacekeepers. The interests of such groups run counter to any governance, and our assistance to establishing it. We inflict on their goals. More recently, peacekeepers have come increasingly under direct attack because of our mandate to assist in restoring governance, peace, and security. In Mali alone, we have lost twenty-three peacekeepers since the end of June by the time of this writing. In short, looking at the reasons for this, we should not limit ourselves to looking at extremism and terror, alone.

It is important to take into account that the systematic application of seemingly senseless violence is one strategy, a very effective one, for creating antagonism and hatred, beyond fear. Newly emerging violent patterns of organised crime and terror do not only aim to mute, or to retaliate. Rather, violence is a tool supporting the feeding ground on which they thrive, and grow. 

Enforcement action needs to be embedded into a profound and comprehensive strategy on a higher level: (1) To understand better the context of complex collaboration between organised crime and terror; (2) To be placed into an overarching strategy, within and beyond individual peace operations, so to avoid the antagonisation which is intended by the other side, and which will include a significant risk of us getting weaker and them getting stronger. (3) We need to find innovative ways to return to the sentence with which I began: We face security and justice institutions being incapacitated by conflict. Understanding the drivers of conflict better will allow us to calibrate what needs to be done to reduce the threats these institutions face from organised crime and terror.