Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 19:05:23 +0200
The Agony of UNMISS
By <http://www.clingendael.nl/person/lauren-huton> Lauren Hutton
15 July 2014
South Sudan celebrated its third year of independence on July 9, 2014. The
United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS) also marks
its third year of operation. Designed to complement southern independence,
UNMISS was tasked by the Security Council (UNSC) to consolidate peace and
security in a country devastated by decades of war. UNMISS was formed under
a mandate logic of peace consolidation through statebuilding; an ambitious
agenda in a territory which had barely been touched by administration, and
where formal institutions were the exception. Amidst widespread poverty and
illiteracy, achieving independence was the first step for South Sudanese
toward the realization of equal rights and the opportunity for
self-governance, signaling for many an opportunity for stability and
economic growth.
However, the challenges were many, and the hopes for the young state have
been held hostage by the ambitions and interests of a powerful few able to
draw on deeply divisive ethnic and militarized identities to pursue
political and economic gains through violence. Since December 2013, South
Sudan has experienced a brutal civil war claiming countless lives.
Pro-government forces, including the Ugandan army and former militia groups
loyal to President Salva Kiir, are facing an onslaught from anti-government
forces comprised of former government soldiers and youth militias coalescing
around former Vice President Riek Machar. Civilians have been targeted by
both sides causing massive displacement within the country and forcing
thousands of people to flee to neighbouring states. To avoid the violence,
more than 100,000 people have sought refuge in the bases of UNMISS.
The mission that was tasked to advance the state now finds itself providing
protection to people unable to rely on their state for security. Not only
are civilians facing attack, but UNMISS bases have also been directly
targeted, and harassment and obstruction of the international aid effort has
become somewhat routine.
This is UNMISS in 2014: outnumbered, out-gunned, and seemingly unable to
influence the government that it helped to build.
Key Conclusions
* The Government of the Republic of South Sudan (GRSS) has proved to
be a difficult partner, leaving UNMISS with a flawed relational assessment
at the heart of its mandated logic.
* The UNMISS early warning system has been found wanting. The scale of
violence that spread through the capital, Juba, in December shocked the
unprepared mission that had until then been cautiously optimistic about the
ability of the ruling party to manage internal tensions.
* The security gaps at UNMISS bases and the inability of the uniformed
personnel to defend the bases exposed a crucial weakness in preparedness and
exposed the high levels of risk aversion of the military component;
including an aversion to active patrolling and mobile presences beyond bases
that has been a long-term problem.
* The challenges exposed by the December crisis have their roots in
strategic, organizational, and operational problems that UNMISS has been
facing since its inception.
Analysis
The current civil war has revealed a number of problems facing the mission.
First, it laid bare the tensions in balancing statebuilding objectives with
protection of civilian (PoC) responsibilities, and by extension, exposed the
risks liberal interventionists had accepted years prior in backing the cause
of a fractious southern independence movement. A key founding assumption of
the mission was that the GRSS was willing and able to work in tandem with
the UN to protect civilians and advance a rights-respecting,
service-delivering state. In reality, though, the GRSS has proven to be a
difficult partner leaving UNMISS with a flawed relational assessment at the
heart of its raison d’être. UNMISS’ approach to PoC and GRSS created a set
of expectations and relationships which were unrealistic and unsustainable.
Second, the war uncovered the shortcomings of the mission’s early warning
system. Just after the December fighting started, the head of the mission
and Special Representative of the Secretary-General Hilde Johnson,
acknowledged: “No, we did not see this coming,” and that, until the outbreak
of violence in Juba, the mission had been “cautiously optimistic” about the
ability of the ruling party to manage internal tensions. Part of the problem
of the lack of quality of early warning information is the focus on incident
reporting, extractive information gathering, and a lack of relationship
building. This is a challenge throughout the UN system, as even the
reporting and benchmarking structures to the UNSC show a more static
approach to measuring progress (or a lack thereof). Lack of routine UN
presence beyond bases is often cited as a key factor affecting the
information-gathering potential of UNMISS. In large part, the two issues
most affecting the mobility of UNMISS personnel are its application of UN
security rules and the government’s respect for the Status of Forces
Agreement.
Third, the current crisis has exposed the weaknesses of the UNMISS uniformed
forces to intervene during fighting and the challenges of having a
relatively small deployment of fighting forces facing the mass mobilization
of combatants within the context of an ethnicized civil war. Even securing
the UN bases has proven difficult for the troops assigned there, leading to
civilian fatalities in Bor and Akobo in recent months and serious protection
concerns for civilians moving in and out of the other PoC sites around the
country. By not investing in troop strength, engineering capacity, and
high-end military equipment, the Security Council left UNMISS with a small
military component less than adequately equipped and unprepared for an
escalation in violence.
In May 2014, the UNSC re-framed the mandate of UNMISS to focus on PoC, human
rights monitoring, enabling the humanitarian response, and supporting the
regional peace process. This subtle admission of the limitations of
statebuilding through intervention enables UNMISS to focus on its priority
task of ensuring the survival of the 100,000 people now under its
protection. This doesn’t necessarily make the mission more effective but
rather just enables it to maintain a highly unsustainable status quo, much
like the conditions faced by the missions in Darfur and Abyei.
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Photo: Khalid Albaih/flickr
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