The United Nations says 56 peacekeepers were killed in 2017, marking the highest number of deaths through violence for the international peacekeeping force since 1994, according to a new report.
While there have been spikes in violence against U.N. peacekeepers, the report argues that the sustained nature of current peacekeeper fatalities indicates a dangerous new reality for the United Nations. “This increase is not a spike but rather a rise to a continuing plateau,” wrote Brazilian Lt. Gen Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz, lead author of the report and a former U.N. commander in Congo and Haiti.
The report calls for significant changes in the way that peacekeepers use force while in dangerous environments, arguing that the “the blue helmet and the United Nations flag no longer offer ‘natural’ protection” for U.N. forces anymore.
In the future, peacekeepers should be better prepared to fight back when threatened or initiate the use of force themselves.
“Unfortunately, hostile forces do not understand a language other than force,” the report argues. “To deter and repel attacks and to defeat attackers, the United Nations needs to be strong and not fear to use force when necessary.”
Titled “Improving Security of United Nations Peacekeepers: We need to change the way we are doing business,” the study of peacekeeper deaths was commissioned by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres in November, after a spate of high-profile attacks on U.N. troops. Cruz, along with retired U.S. army colonel William Phillips and other figures in the U.N. peacekeeping department, visited missions in the Congo, Central African Republic and Mali to better understand the operational issues.
These locations represent some of the new challenges being faced by peacekeepers. In Mali, for example, U.N. forces have found themselves increasingly engaged in counterterrorism rather than more traditional peacekeeping operations, making it one of the organization’s deadliest ongoing operations.
Meanwhile, just last month at least 15 peacekeepers were killed and dozens wounded in eastern Congo — a country where the U.N. mission has a rare mandate to pursue offensive operations against armed groups, making it a frequent target for attacks from rebels in the country’s civil war.
Along with an increased willingness to fight, the United Nations is told that it should provide better leadership for peacekeeping forces, as well as better predeployment training and equipment while in the field. Cruz and his fellow writers also lay some of the blame on the forces provided by contributing countries. These countries “may seek to participate in peacekeeping for different reasons and interests. This is normal and acceptable, but they must perform. The United Nations should not accept caveats, because they weaken integration and mutual protection within missions,” the report states.
The report’s authors did not, however, look closely at the expanding mandates for U.N. peacekeeping forces.
Critics have argued that sending peacekeepers on offensive or counterterrorism missions can make them a target for violence, rather than a solution to it.
“Peacekeepers are only meant to use deadly force to protect civilians or to stop spoilers from threatening a peace process, not to pursue any group’s military defeat,” Aditi Gorur, director of the Protecting Civilians in Conflict program at the Stimson Center, told The Washington Post last year.
The expanding scope of U.N. peacekeepers’ activities around the world has brought with it a variety of complications.
In a number of cases, the force has been accused of recruiting from militaries with a history of repression or abuse and lacking the measures to exclude human rights violators from its ranks. There also has been a growing crisis in recent years due to allegations of sexual abuse by its forces.