A few UNEPS Frequently Asked Questions:
1. How are people recruited for the United Nations Emergency Peace Service? Who would compose the force?
Members of UNEPS would be individually recruited from among those who volunteer from many countries. In this regard, it would not suffer the delays of creating ad-hoc forces or the reluctance of UN members to deploy their own national units. It would be an integrated service encompassing 12,000 to 15,000 civilian, police, judicial, military, and relief professionals, enabling it to deploy all the components essential for peace and enforcement operations.
2. Who makes the decision to deploy the United Nations Emergency Peace Service?
The Security Council is the first, the most legitimate, and the most likely body to authorize the UN Emergency Peace Service and to clarify the threshold criteria that would justify deploying it. But if the Security Council is unable to act because of a veto, then other forms of authorization may be desirable. The two next best alternatives to the preferred legitimacy of Security Council action are: authorization by the UN General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace Resolution, or authorization by a regional international organization for intervention in one of its own member states. Perhaps also acceptable would be authorization for intervention by a regional international organization in a state not a member of the organization, especially if the conflict affects member states.
The United Nations could also authorize the Secretary-General to deploy the Emergency Peace Service as a result of his or her own decision under carefully specified conditions defined in advance by the Security Council or General Assembly. If such authorization did occur, the Security Council could retain its power to withdraw the Emergency Service by passing a resolution following its normal voting procedures.
3. What happens if a country where a UNEPS intervention is to take place refuses to permit the intervention?
Although the existence of a permanent, non-partisan UN Emergency Peace Service is likely to elicit consent in some cases where consent might otherwise not have been forthcoming, governments may be subjected to coercive (Chapter VII ) deployment. In such cases, UNEPS should continually strive to elicit informal consent for an operation, especially among the local population, while doing law enforcement in a manner that serves citizens' needs for law and domestic tranquility.
4. What is the specific mandate of UNEPS? Could the force be used for natural disaster relief or for purposes not directly related to human rights?
UNEPS would be a dedicated service with a wide range of professional skills within a single command structure, prepared to conduct multiple functions in diverse UN operations. This would enable it to avoid divided loyalties, confusion about the chain of command, or functional fragmentation.
Each field unit would contain sufficient strength and versatility to provide robust security as well as the necessary range of skills and services to initiate conflict transformation and the rule of law within their sphere of control while simultaneously addressing human needs. The Emergency Peace Service might deploy UN protection personnel to prevent large-scale killings, a police unit to help provide safety in tense local communities and to protect those delivering humanitarian services to threatened people, and a disaster relief service. Where needed, it could also provide reliable, early, on-site fact-finding, rapid mobility for preventive action to protect civilians at risk, information-gathering for war crimes investigations, humanitarian assistance, and prompt start-up of peacebuilding operations. The UN Service would also include units to re-train and monitor local police, to conduct conflict resolution efforts, and to respond to humanitarian crises growing out of environmental or natural disasters that national governments are unable or unwilling to address.
UNEPS might also be authorized to address environmental accidents and natural disasters, but only in situations where they threaten enormous loss of life and if local and national governments are unable or unwilling to avert a severe humanitarian crisis. UNEPS would be deployed only where severe threats to human life exist.
5. Who decides when a situation reaches the level of "genocide" or "crimes against humanity?"
The agency authorizing deployment makes the determination of whether genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity are threatened or present. Of course there are many sources of information, including the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, the Peacebuilding Commission, the normal Security Council channels, the information services of human rights organizations, and member states' intelligence services.
6. Is preventive deployment a possibility?
Whenever the Security Council, General Assembly, or another appropriate authorizing agency (if any) determines that a severe humanitarian threat exists, UNEPS can be deployed. UNEPS would function with the understanding that “last resort” should mean restraint from premature use of international coercion, but not necessarily that every other option has been tried and failed. When internationally authorized personnel function as much as possible in a police mode of operations to enforce international law against genocide, for example, the goal presumably would be to address the crisis at a moment early enough to avoid mass murder. Early deployment of law enforcers and conflict specialists to address an imminent threat of genocide not yet underway can sometimes avoid later need for more large-scale military combat. A conflict that in retrospect might appear to have been beyond the capacity of a small emergency service might have been amenable to successful intervention if it had occurred in an early preventive phase of a conflict's life cycle. Increasingly, governments understand that early preventive action is more effective and less costly than later, larger efforts after a conflict has escalated and spread.
7. Will UNEPS replace or compete with other existing UN or regional organizations' peace operations?
The proposed UN Emergency Peace Service will complement but not replace existing or expanded peace operations by the United Nations, regional international organizations, and national governments. Protecting people against victimization from armed conflict and gross violations of human rights may at times require more personnel than the proposed UN Emergency Peace Service could provide by itself, so other existing agencies are necessary. Moreover, because peacebuilding often requires extensive and sustained efforts, long-term success in preventing genocides and other crimes against humanity will require support from the wider UN system and complementary efforts by national and regional actors. The proposed Emergency Service might be viewed as a “first in, first out” response to a crisis.
UNEPS will work closely with other UN operations, often complementing or supplementing other agencies. It might, for example, continue the deployment of some of its personnel, such as for training and monitoring local civilian police, after other UN agencies have arrived to in a crisis satiation to address needs too large and long-term for the UN Emergency Peace Service to handle by itself.
UNEPS would have an absolute obligation to conduct exemplary operations in accord with international human rights and humanitarian law. A high degree of transparency, an ombudsperson, and grievance procedures for injured parties are essential. Where legal issues arise, related either to authorization or operations, they should be referred to the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, or to other relevant tribunals that exist or might be created, depending on the nature of the legal question.
###
FAQs compiled by Jessica Finz, Program Intern for Global Action to Prevent War, June 2006. |
