BLOG

Sanctions – economic embargoes, travel bans, freezing of assets – are popular measures used by diplomats to target countries, organizations and individuals violating international law. The effectiveness of sanctions is a matter of debate, but what is clear is that it is the commitment to enforcement that determines success. It’s one thing to ban the import of Cuban cigars; it’s another to prevent small arms from entering a country with porous borders and 3,200km of unguarded coastline.

A new report by Security Council Report (SCR), a think tank housed at Columbia University, details the failure to enforce the UN arms embargo in Somalia. Calling the embargo “quite possibly the least successful example of [UN Security] Council imposed sanctions,” the report goes on to list the various ineffective mechanisms that the UN put in place over the past sixteen years to evaluate, monitor and enforce the sanctions.

As noted earlier, it’s an uphill battle to monitor shipments entering a country with no central government, not least when neighboring states with political interests in Somalia’s civil war are charged with monitoring embargo infractions. But what is most striking in the report is the apparent unwillingness of the UN Security Council to effectively tackle the problem. Security Council members passed several resolutions and issued numerous presidential statements on the escalating conflict in Somalia; but at the end of the day no forceful action has been taken to prevent the flow of arms into the country. Tragically, despite sixteen years of sanctions, there are now more arms in Somalia than in 1992.

The arms embargo is just another example of the international community’s hands-off approach to Somalia. As the Security Council Report puts it, “for many years the arms embargo became a substitute for an active policy on Somalia following the failure of peacekeeping missions in the early 1990s.”

The Security Council is now contemplating a new peacekeeping mission, but as we argued in our bulletin in March 2008 and before the Security Council, the lack of political will to seriously address the Somali crisis ultimately undermines the chances of success for peacekeepers. In our conclusion we stated: “a Security Council mandate that amounts to no more than a symbolic gesture would be one more betrayal in two decades of missed opportunities and broken promises.” Worse, a failed peacekeeping mission could have grave consequences for future UN interventions. In that case, the Security Council would only have itself to blame.

--Patrick Duplat

Labels: Somalia