Acquiring a Fire Engine Before the Fire Breaks Out:
A Proposal for a UN Emergency Peacekeeping Service
By Don Kraus
The Journal of International Peace Operations (PDF)
Volume 2, Number 3
(November-December, 2006)

Once again the international community is acquiring the backbone to address the deteriorating situation in Darfur, Sudan. However, if the United Nations had a rapidly deployable Emergency Peace Service in place, this delay in helping Darfurians would have never occurred.

Presently, the U.N.’s tool for responding to emergency situations is with peacekeeping forces. This is insufficient for a number of reasons. Secretary General Kofi Annan has described current U.N. peacekeeping as “the only fire brigade in the world that has to acquire a fire engine after the fire has started.” In the past, U.N. peacekeepers took three to six months to arrive at a conflict. While response time has improved, “rapid deployment” is still defined as 30 days for a “traditional” peacekeeping mission (where all parties agree to allow in peacekeepers) and 90 days for “complex” missions (where spoilers attempt to derail a peace agreement). This delay can not only prove fatal for civilians whose lives depend on fragile accords, but also for the accords themselves.

Additionally, U.N. Peacekeeping often struggles to rapidly secure enough personnel for the job. Current Security Council resolutions authorize over 115,000 peacekeepers for 16 missions at a cost of about $8 billion dollars. When sufficiently staffed, U.N. missions are hampered by troops from multiple nations who speak different languages, have different levels of training, and use different communications and weapons systems. Further complicating the situation is the lack of coordination between the military and essential non-military elements of a peace operation including humanitarian relief experts and international civilian police.

The international community needs a new tool in its toolbox to fill the gap between need and capacity, something a U.N. Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS) could provide. It is envisioned as a 12-18,000-strong unit of military personnel, civilian police, legal experts, and relief professionals from various countries who are voluntarily employed by the U.N. This force would be carefully selected, expertly trained, and coherently organized, so it would not fail due to a lack of skills, equipment, experience in resolving conflicts, or gender, national, or religious imbalance. UNEPS would operate out of a permanent U.N. base and could deploy mobile field headquarters within 48 hours of a Security Council authorization.

UNEPS would complement existing peace operations capacities and operate according to a “first in—first out” deployment philosophy. It would be equipped to respond to serious threats to human security and human rights, to offer secure emergency services to meet critical human needs, to assist in the establishment of institutions to maintain law and order, to initiate peace building processes with focused incentives and to restore hope for local people in the future of their society and economy.

One major hurdle facing UNEPS is cost. Yet early deployment of UNEPS in an emergency situation would still be more cost effective than the expense accrued from a prolonged disaster brought on by delayed deployment, like in Darfur for example. In addition, post-conflict reconstruction efforts from such a disaster would add to the expense—something an early UNEPS deployment could avert. According to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, the international community could have saved nearly $130 billion of the $200 billion it spent on managing conflicts in the 1990s by focusing on conflict prevention rather than post conflict reconstruction. Last year U.S. Representatives Albert Wynn (D-MD) and Jim Leach (RIA) introduced bipartisan legislation supporting the proposal. Wynn estimates that UNEPS would cost the U.N. $2 billion to create and less than $1 billion per year to sustain.

Critics in the developing world worry that the great powers will use UNEPS to leverage against weaker countries. Despite this concern, new Global South voices are speaking up in favor of UNEPS. Professor Hussein Solomon from the University of Pretoria’s Centre for International Political Studies believes that UNEPS could collaborate with the African Union. He said that a “definite need has arisen for the implementation of a permanent U.N. Emergency Service, not as a solitary solution for security challenges, but rather as a complementary approach to other regional, national, and U.N. efforts.”

The responsibility for breathing life into UNEPS now lies with civil society, working with allies in the U.N. and interested governments. A growing number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are determined to follow the examples of the International Criminal Court and the Ottawa Land Mines Treaty and develop a global network of NGOs and like-minded nations to kick-start UNEPS.

“There is one overwhelming argument for the United Nations Emergency Peace Service,” says former U.N. Under-Secretary General Sir Brian Urquhart. “It is desperately needed, and it is needed as soon as possible.” While no peacekeeping force can assure an immediate peace, UNEPS would give the U.N. a long overdue rapid response capacity. For the people in Darfur, and throughout the world, this cannot come quickly enough.

Don Kraus is the Executive Vice President of Citizens for Global Solutions.


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