The United Nation’s approach to mitigating conflicts has changed dramatically.

By Dr. Brian Frederking

When we are in the middle of a conflict between co-workers, friends or family members, we have two options: remain neutral and act as peacekeeper or join the conflict on one side. Most prefer the first option. Keeping the peace is often honorable, less messy and more likely to preserve long-term relationships – but sometimes it is difficult to keep the peace.

Consider family disputes over politics. Often, one side is older, more traditional and holds “old-fashioned” values on race and gender; the other is often younger, more modern and progressive. You try to remain neutral and mediate during family gatherings. But, over time, social norms change and old-fashioned values become retrograde. In an attempt to keep the peace in this new context, you tell the older party that some of their comments are not appropriate. After saying that, the older side no longer sees you as neutral. They feel you have taken sides in the conflict.

An analogous process is taking place on the United Nations Security Council. The UNSC has the same limited options when addressing an armed conflict – act as a peacekeeper and mediate or act as a participant and take sides. The UNSC prefers to act as a peacekeeper. However, global norms regarding human rights have slowly strengthened, and the UNSC now authorizes peacekeepers to protect civilians. When peacekeepers act to protect civilians, they look like participants in the conflict. It looks like the UNSC is taking sides.

UN peacekeeping relies on three basic norms: consent of the warring parties, neutrality and self-defense. The goal of peacekeeping is to mediate a resolution to the conflict. When the UNSC pursues peacekeeping, it says: Here are some important rules (territorial integrity, non-use of force, peaceful settlement of disputes, etc.), and we will help you follow them.

The other approach is collective security, and collective security enforcement missions violate all peacekeeping norms. Collective security does not need the consent of the warring parties. It takes sides in a conflict and has a coercive mandate beyond self-defense. When the UNSC pursues collective security, it says: This is an important rule (do not support terrorists, do not commit genocide, etc.), and we will punish those who violate that rule.

Peacekeeping – with a big stick?

The UNSC asserts that peacekeeping and collective security are distinct and separate pursuits. It is an open secret, however, that this is no longer the case. The UNSC often sends its peacekeepers into war zones without the consent of all parties. They often have mandates beyond self-defense that include using force to protect civilians or to “stabilize” an area. They often end up, in effect, taking sides and acting like a combatant in the conflict. It is difficult, if not impossible, to act as both a neutral mediator and as a participant in the same conflict. Yet that is exactly what the UNSC increasingly asks its peacekeepers to do.

The UNSC routinely sends peacekeepers into places where there is no peace to keep. It gives them a long list of mandates: disarm combatants, protect civilians, ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid, repatriate refugees, train police and military, and monitor everything from human rights violations and elections to weapons sales. The UNSC continues to insist that the peacekeepers are neutral non-combatants.

At a minimum, the UNSC is pursuing peacekeeping in new and more aggressive ways. It is trying to help countries resolve conflict by encouraging them to adopt the most important rules: the Western project of trade, democratization and human rights. At a maximum, the UNSC has obliterated the distinction between peacekeeping and collective security. It is engaging in collective security – in effect punishing those who resist the Western project – and calling it peacekeeping. This transformation of UN peacekeeping may be sincere and there is much evidence of it reducing worldwide conflict, but it is hardly neutral. This transformation is clear when examining the following examples of UN intervention in armed conflicts during the last three decades.

In Cote d’Ivoire

A peacekeeping mission authorized in 2004 in Cote d’Ivoire had a typical mandate following a civil war: monitor the implementation of a peace agreement, oversee elections, provide humanitarian assistance, and disarm, demobilize and reintegrate former combatants. However, the UNSC also authorized a separate mission of French forces to use all necessary means to protect civilians. The UNSC in effect decided to pursue both peacekeeping and collective security at the same time.

Cote d’Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo did not cooperate with the UN when he realized that it was actually serious about having elections. His military forces attacked the UN peacekeepers, and violence against opposition supporters escalated throughout the campaign. There was no agreement in the country about who was a citizen and who should be allowed to vote. As the UN monitored the voter registration process, the military continued to attack peacekeepers.

The UNSC steadily increased collective security enforcement efforts as the government committed war crimes by using child soldiers and attacking civilians and peacekeepers. It authorized an arms embargo in 2004, diamond sanctions in 2005 and financial sanctions on regime members in 2006. It authorized the peacekeeping mission to monitor weapons flows and diamond sales. Despite all these efforts, the violence continued to escalate. UN peacekeepers – as in Somalia, Rwanda and so many other conflicts – were in a situation in which there was no peace to keep.

Peacekeepers stayed in the conflict zone, though, and eventually the government and the main rebel group signed (yet another) peace agreement in 2007. After dealing with all the voting rights issues, Cote d’Ivoire finally held UN-supervised elections with Gbagbo running against former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara in 2010. The circumstances were not great for an election: each side had its own armed forces controlling territory. While there was clear evidence of violence on both sides, it was also clear that Gbagbo lost the election. UN officials, along with the African Union and the European Union, declared Ouattara the winner. Gbagbo refused to give up power and violence erupted again. Ouattara organized the rebels and began an offensive against the military.

The UNSC could no longer pretend to inhabit both a neutral peacekeeping role and a collective security enforcement role. It explicitly took sides, authorized additional sanctions on Gbagbo (and his wife), strengthened the protection of the civilians’ mandate for both the UN mission and French forces, and demanded that Gbagbo respect the election results and step aside. The peacekeepers and French forces, as they protected civilians, joined with the rebels against the standing military of Cote d’Ivoire, a UN member state. In April 2011, the joint efforts of the rebels, the UN forces and the French forces drove Gbagbo from the presidential residence, leading to his arrest. A month later, Ouattara was sworn in as president. The UNSC clearly tipped the scales of this conflict. The International Criminal Court subsequently charged Gbagbo with four counts of crimes against humanity. Ouattara won re-election in 2015 with 84 percent of the vote.

In the Republic of Mali

This West African country has two inter-related security threats in the northern part of the country: Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Tuareg nationalist rebellion. This partly transnational and partly indigenous insurgency has captured territory, advanced toward the south, displaced 350,000 people and dramatically increased food insecurity. Mali’s military, outraged at the government’s inability to address these threats, ousted the democratically elected president in March 2012, and the conflict escalated.

As in Cote d’Ivoire, the UNSC authorized both a peacekeeping mission and a collective security enforcement mission. The French, working under the UN, halted the rebel advance and pushed them out of the main cities. The mandate for UN peacekeepers was to stabilize areas retaken by the French, protect civilians, monitor human rights and extend state authority into the north in preparation for elections. The French military campaign was so successful that they withdrew in June 2014.

However, after the French left, the terrorist and Tuareg groups resumed their insurgency, and the violence again escalated. In this context, the “stabilization” mission amounted to assisting the government in neutralizing spoilers. The peacekeepers engaged in joint operations with Mali’s military and they engaged in counter-insurgency efforts. They were in every sense combatants, and the insurgents treated them accordingly. The UN mission sustained constant attacks in the form of mines, IEDs, suicide attacks and ambushes similar to the asymmetrical warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. The insurgents have already killed over 200 peacekeepers, more than during any other UN mission.

 The UNSC has annually renewed this peacekeeping mission with its “stabilization” mandate. It has also taken sides and pursued collective security by authorizing sanctions against individuals who “engaged in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, or stability of Mali.” This conflict continues, with the UNSC consistently authorizing ostensibly neutral forces to work with the Mali government to suppress rebel activity. All of the sanctioned individuals are from the insurgency and terrorist groups. None are government officials. The UNSC typically sanctions both sides when it deals with civil wars. Of late, it is doing so less and less.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Since the 1990s the Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered civil war, military incursions from its neighbors and brutal human rights violations by Hutu extremists in the eastern regions of North Kivu. The UNSC authorized a traditional peacekeeping mission in the late 1990s to oversee the implementation of a peace agreement ending the civil war. Most parts of the country became more secure but the eastern provinces remained unstable. Both domestic rebel groups, like M23, and foreign armed groups, like the Lord’s Resistance Army, fostered conflict, humanitarian crises and serious human rights violations, particularly sexual violence and the use of child soldiers.

The attacks against civilians led the UNSC to alter the mandate of the peacekeeping mission in 2010 to use “all necessary means” to protect civilians. The attacks continued, and the UNSC in 2013 escalated the mandate again, authorizing a Force Intervention Brigade of nearly 20,000 soldiers to neutralize armed groups, restore state authority and the safety of civilians in the eastern DRC, and prepare the region for stabilization activities. The FIB was to conduct offensive military operations both unilaterally and jointly with DRC forces.

The UNSC recognized that the FIB clearly blurred the lines between peacekeeping and collective security enforcement, calling it an exception “without creating a precedent or prejudice to the agreed principles of peacekeeping.” They renewed this mandate annually, each time adding this wording about the exceptional nature of this peacekeeping mission. Yet it is clear that the UNSC is really authorizing continuous collective security enforcement. It names specific rebel groups as the aggressors in the conflict. The FIB often acts as a military arm of the DRC rather than a standalone military force. It uses standard counter-insurgency tactics, including special forces, human intelligence and drone technology. No one on the ground sees the FIB as neutral.

As these three examples illustrate, it is impossible for peacekeeping missions to follow traditional norms in civil wars in which armed combatants routinely attack civilians. The growing importance of human rights norms has indirectly made traditional peacekeeping norms moot. A typical conflict is a civil war with a host government trying to deal with multiple armed opposition groups, with many of the actors attacking civilians. How does the UN get consent from all of the actors? How would the UN remain neutral amongst all the actors? What particular mandate would all the actors interpret as neutral? What particular combination of countries making up the peacekeeping forces would all the actors interpret as neutral? How would the UN maintain neutrality and self-defense while trying to deal with human rights violators?

Given these important difficulties, the UN has adapted – or redefined? – peacekeeping norms. “Consent” now means consent from the host state, not necessarily all relevant actors. “Self-defense” now means “defense of the mandate,” which routinely includes the protection of civilians. And “neutrality” now means “impartiality,” which means peacekeepers will protect citizens against any attackers. If one side is harming civilians and the peacekeepers respond to protect civilians – in effect taking sides – then so be it. This is still neutral in the sense that the peacekeepers do not predetermine whom they need to neutralize: They are simply there to protect civilians.

Along with the blurring of peacekeeping and collective security, there is a related blurring between international humanitarian law (IHL) and human rights law (HRL). These two areas of international law were originally intended to be completely distinct. IHL includes the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions regarding the “laws of war,” and it applies to how states treat each other – and each other’s citizens – during armed interstate conflicts. HRL applies to how states treat their own citizens, referring to a range of treaties regarding bodily integrity (an umbrella term for rules designed to prevent torture, kidnapping, political imprisonment, and other acts where someone inappropriately decides what to do with other people’s bodies), political rights and due process.

However, the increased prevalence of civil wars and the near absence of interstate wars blur this distinction. In a pragmatic attempt to protect non-combatants, IHL now applies to civil wars in addition to interstate wars. One can now violate IHL and be a war criminal as a participant in a civil war. HRL now applies to situations of armed conflict. One can now be a member of a rebel group during an armed conflict and violate human rights, particularly if your rebel group controls some territory.

Growing human rights norms have influenced these trends because applying HRL to civil wars offers more protections to civilians than IHL. For example, IHL rules about the use of force differ from, and are weaker than, HRL rules about the deprivation of life. Consider the use of drones – HRL constrains more uses of force and protects civilians more often than IHL. Or consider detentions – again, HRL provides more protections regarding due process than IHL. Given the prevalence of civil wars, the fluidity between conflict and post-conflict situations, and the ambiguity of when a state of war exists and thus when IHL applies, many in the international community have asserted that in order for international law to protect civilians, we need to apply HRL in conflict settings.

The UNSC has embraced and facilitated this trend by including human rights components in peacekeeping missions. And, as the above examples illustrate, if the UNSC is going to send soldiers into a conflict to protect civilians, then it will stretch traditional peacekeeping norms beyond recognition. The UNSC will authorize “peacekeeping” missions that act like collective security enforcement operations that punish actors for violating human rights norms.

The UNSC is unwilling to come clean and call these operations “collective security.” It is not only because peacekeeping is routine and legitimate while collective security is sporadic and controversial. It is also because there are important legal distinctions that the UNSC wants to maintain. Peacekeepers are protected as noncombatants under IHL. The International Criminal Court considers it a war crime to attack peacekeepers. International tribunals have concluded that there is an important legal distinction between protecting civilians and participating in hostilities. A big difference is that it is widely understood that soldiers in collective security operations are defined as combatants under IHL.

The UN does not want to lose the protected legal status given to its peacekeepers. These missions rely on voluntary contributions from UN members for resources and soldiers. Will states contribute troops to peacekeeping missions if they routinely engage in collective security enforcement without protected noncombatant status under the Geneva Conventions? What happens to UN peacekeeping if the rebel groups on the ground know that it is no longer a war crime to attack them because they are considered legal combatants in the conflict? 

For the UN to maintain this protected legal status, it continues with the fiction that UN peacekeepers are, in fact, peacekeepers rather than combatants. But there are simply too many illogical examples to sustain this conceptual juggling act. Consider this: An international tribunal ruled that the practice of UN peacekeepers arresting individuals indicted by that tribunal for war crimes in Bosnia is consistent with protecting civilians and thus those peacekeepers remain protected noncombatants under the Geneva Convention. Under this approach, if you are a participant in a civil war and foreign soldiers knock on your door to arrest you, resisting and/or attacking those soldiers would be a war crime.

This kind of elaborate juggle may be the only way to proceed in today’s world. Civil wars – and war crimes – have increased. The UNSC has adapted, like family members trying to keep the peace, to a changing moral context. It is much more likely to take sides in a conflict yet still call it peacekeeping. While that may be the right thing to do, the UNSC cannot be considered neutral. Because of this dramatic change, we cannot automatically expect all conflicting parties to view UN peacekeepers as neutral mediators, ones they should welcome into their countries. We may need to call this new form of peacekeeping exactly what it is: Collective Security.

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Dr. Brian Frederking is a professor of political science at McKendree University, about 30 miles east of St. Louis. He received his graduate degrees from Syracuse University and his undergraduate degree from McKendree College. His research interests include the United Nations Security Council, international law and organization, and global governance. This is Dr. Frederking’s second essay for Supplement St. Louis.

Illustrations by Gabriel Shapiro, editor of Supplement St. Louis.