NOTE: This guest column was written by James Welsh. James is a 2014 graduate of the Seton Hall School of Diplomacy and International Relations. His specializations, International Security and Africa, steer his research towards Boko Haram in Nigeria, and Sudanese and South Sudanese ethnic and political conflict. Previous published pieces include, for the Interdependent, Mali’s Peacekeeping Mission Yields Peaceful Elections and Women and the HIV/AIDS Fight, and for the Love and Forgiveness in Governance project, On Forgiveness and Reconciliation. Follow him on Twitter @JamesCWel.
With international recognition and the creation of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, or UNMISS, the people of South Sudan should have been better able to pursue their own future free of conflict. Yet the tragedy of South Sudan is as much the continuation of conflict as it is the fact that the UN failed to take the UNMISS mandate seriously. To meet the expectations the world has of a UN mission, the gravity of UNMISS’ mandate must be recognized and the mission must be funded, lead, and staffed commensurate with that gravity.
Mandated on July 8th, 2011 by UN resolution 1996, UNMISS was formed with the birth of the Republic of South Sudan. The main tasks of the original mandate, creating conditions for development in the world’s poorest country, and consolidating peace and security in a country with myriad ethnic differences, would have been a challenge under the best of conditions.
In December of 2013, the government fractured along political and ethnic lines between President Salva Kiir Mayardiit and the Dinka tribe, and Vice President Riek Machar and the Nuer tribe. The severe fighting that followed lead to ethnic conflict and cleansing that has resulted in an estimated ten thousand deaths in the first month.
Responding to criticism that the UN had not done enough, the Security Council increased the emphasis on protection of civilians, or PoC, in the mandate with Resolution 2155. In order to adequately secure the rapidly overflowing refugee camps, maximum military presence was increased from seven thousand to twelve and half thousand. These changes would prove ineffective. As the civil war has dragged on, it has claimed tens of thousands of lives, forced around one million people to flee their homes, and created a food crisis which is generally considered the worst in the world.
Quickly after the start of the conflict, refugee camps overflowed with refugees of all ethnicities expecting the UN to deliver the protection it mandated. Yet, being unprepared for the sheer number of internally displaced people, or IDPs, generated by the conflict, estimated at just under one hundred thousand, the conditions of the camps deteriorated and strained the ability of UNMISS to meet their mandate. The camps have been criticized for being unable to provide adequate food, living conditions, medicine, and security.
Secondly, UNMISS has managed to make enemies on every side of the conflict. It is forced to maintain a working relationship with the legitimate government, despite widespread allegations against it. This relationship is icy at best, for example, after one incident, President Kiir insisted Ban Ki-Moon intended to usurp his position. As poor as that relationship has been, the UN has become a target for other groups. The Nuer White Army, a third rebel force now loosely allied with the rebels, publically declared in 2010 that the UN was the enemy. Another incident, the downing of a UN Mi-8 helicopter delivering cargo on August 26th, has recently been determined to have been shot down, quite possibly by the rebels. Finally, armed militia groups have attacked UN refugee camps many times with the goal of killing the refugees therein. These attacks have led to the deaths of UN personnel and peacekeepers as well as refugees.
In short, this overly optimistic and short sited UN mission was underfunded and then caught in the crossfire of an ethno-political conflict and is now responsible for the lives of thousands of refugees it cannot afford to care for.
Any plan of action to improve UNMISS would be constrained by the South Sudanese Government, which it cannot afford to further antagonize. Therefore, barring a radical change of scope and mandate, nothing will solve the crises in South Sudan, but some changes can improve the situation.
From the start the mission has done what it could with what it was given, and the inability to care for refugees can be traced back to the core issue of underfunding stemming from shortsightedness. This must now be corrected. Budget increases as of July of this year, to five hundred and eighty million, have not been enough to ameliorate the situation. As famine and disease may potentially kill more than the conflict has, what is needed is not so much money but medicine and, most pressingly, large quantities of food. With these, the UN can avert a catastrophic loss of life among the refugees it cares for.
To handle the strain on the camps, the facilities need to be increased in size or number, and medically trained personnel in greater number need to be assigned the camps to reduce strain on those already in country. While increasing UNMISS’ capacity will have the likely effect of, in turn, increasing the number of refugees who flock to it, those people would be refugees with or without an increase of capacity.
Even granted the above changes, UNMISS cannot meet its PoC mandate without greater, and more proactive, security. This is of paramount importance, and will become all the more so should the UN provide a greater quantity of food and medicine to the camps. Rather than assuming the disposition of a peacekeeping force, as there is no peace to keep, the military component of UNMISS should be more akin to an active military force. The current twelve and half thousand military personnel should be increased to perhaps twenty-five or thirty thousand. With the greater number should come an increased readiness and preparedness, essentially, UN personnel should consider themselves always under threats, as though they were not in a friendly nation. UN convoys, camps, and other sites should be essentially fortified positions accompanied by an obvious military force to dissuade potential attackers.
To be sure, this action plan is nothing too inventive or out of the box, in fact, it is what the UN should have done from the beginning. While the best outcome would be the UN somehow bringing about the end of the war, this is not a possibility. Though, by taking seriously the facts, failures, and critiques of the mission, and responding appropriately, the UNMISS can meet its mandate and end the farce of a mission being played out in South Sudan.