06/10/2004

The United Nations could improve the performance of its peacekeeping operations by taking a more regional approach to efforts to end conflicts, Refugees International concludes in a new report.  Regional cooperation is particularly important in the design and execution of programs to disarm, demobilize and retrain soldiers, interdict weapons shipments and even halt the cross-border movement of combatants.   The RI study, “Peacekeeping in West Africa: A Regional Report” [PDF download], focuses on the need to coordinate separate UN operations in Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast.  However, the report notes that a regional peacekeeping approach also should apply to East Africa, where the UN is conducting several peacekeeping operations to halt conflicts that have spread from one country to another. Over the last decade, a civil war in Liberia spilled into Sierra Leone, generating refugee flows and arms trade throughout the region.  The fighting also contributed to instability in the Ivory Coast.   Yet “no one at the UN Security Council or the Department of Peacekeeping Operations has been assigned or has assumed a leadership role in developing, sponsoring and imposing regional initiations in West Africa,” RI  says. Cross-border peacekeeping operations would make it easier to deal with other problems, such as refugee flows, smuggling and human rights abuses--that can afflict an entire region. The report, the fifth in a series of RI studies on UN peacekeeping operations in Africa, recommends that the UN Secretary General establish a high-level commission to study regional peacekeeping opportunities and instruct the UN Department of Peacekeeping operations to pursue regionalization initiatives. In addition, the report recommends a number of other actions, including greater attention to gender issues, to improve the training and performance of UN peacekeepers.