Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 10. september 2004 / Timeline September 10, 2004
Version 3.59. September 2004, 11. September 2004
09/10/2004
UN rejects private peacekeepers
By Thalif Deen
As the United Nations continues to face a shortage of
well-equipped, professionally trained soldiers for its growing
peacekeeping operations overseas , a proposal to hire private
security forces to rectify the shortfall has been greeted with
scepticism.
"There is little or no support for the privatisation of UN
peacekeeping," says a senior UN official, speaking on condition of
anonymity. "I cannot think of any member state willing to go along
with the proposal," he told IPS.
A proposal to double the current peacekeeping force in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), from 10,800 to about
23,900, and the possibility of a new 10,000-strong UN mission in
Sudan are expected to bolster the total number of UN peacekeepers
from 59,000 to over 82,000.
But most western states remain reluctant to provide peacekeepers,
mostly for political and security reasons, abdicating the role of
peacekeeping mostly to developing nations.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan complained in 2003 that although
these countries have the world's best-equipped military forces,
they have refused to actively participate in peacekeeping
operations.
Last November, the London 'Financial Times' said Annan was
exploring the possibility of hiring private security forces for UN
peacekeeping missions as a means of resolving the problem.
In anticipation of this, the paper said, at least one British
security firm was building a database of some 5,000 former soldiers
who would be available to work for the United Nations at short
notice.
But David Harland of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations
told IPS the privatization of UN peacekeeping was not on any
agenda. Asked if the peacekeepers who were killed in Kosovo in
April this year were from private security firms, as originally
reported, he said they were "seconded for service" by member
states.
The shooting incident in the town of Mitrovica left three
international police officers dead and almost a dozen others
wounded, 10 of who were US correctional officers while the 11th was
an Austrian civilian police officer. But none was from any private
security firm.
As of July, the 10 largest troop contributors to UN operations were
from developing nations: Pakistan (8,544 troops), Bangladesh
(7,163), Nigeria (3,579), Ghana (3,341), India (2,934), Ethiopia
(2,863), South Africa (2,480), Uruguay (1,962), Jordan (1,864), and
Kenya (1,831).
In contrast, the number of troops from western nations averaged
less than 600. The largest contributors were United Kingdom (567
troops), Canada (564), France (561), Ireland (479), and the United
States (427).
Of the 16 UN peacekeeping missions, seven are in Africa: Burundi
(since June 2004); Cote d'Ivoire (since April 2004); Liberia (since
September 2003); Ethiopia/Eritrea (since July 2000); Democratic
Republic of Congo (since November 1999); Sierra Leone (since
October 1999); and Western Sahara (since April 1991).
Last April, US President George W. Bush approved a plan to train
about 75,000 soldiers, mostly from Africa, over a five-year period
for peacekeeping. The Bush administration, which has called the
project 'the Global Peace Operations Initiative', has committed
some 660 million dollars to build peace keeping capacity.
"This is meant to expand world wide capacity that could be used by
the United Nations or by others," said Douglas Feith, under-
secretary-general for policy at the US department of defence.
Feith told reporters "there was not enough capacity in the world to
deal with the requirements. Other countries have shown an interest
in building up their peacekeeping forces, but they need help."
But Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution warns the
international humanitarian community to be cautious about its
dealings with private security forces. "The emergence of a global
trade in hired military services, better known as the 'privatized
military industry', is one of the most interesting developments in
warfare over the last decade," he writes in the current issue of
'Humanitarian Affairs Review', a quarterly journal of global policy
issues published in Belgium.
These firms, he says, now operate in over 50 countries, helping win
conflicts in Angola, Croatia, Ethiopia-Eritrea and Sierra Leone.
From 1994 to 2000, the US defence department alone entered into
over 3,000 contracts with US-based firms, which provided goods and
services estimated at a value of more than 300 billion dollars.
The Canadian military, Singer adds, recently privatized its supply
chain to the British firm, Tibbett and Britten. But the work of the
privatized military industry is not limited to governments, because
clients have included rebel groups, drug cartels and humanitarian
non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Singer says no example better illustrates the industry's growing
activity than the war in Iraq, where private military contractors
handled everything - from feeding and housing coalition troops to
maintaining the most sophisticated weapons systems.
He warns that the presence of these firms might jeopardise norms of
neutrality among aid groups and lead to a further multiplication of
armed forces on the ground.
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