Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform (GFN-SSR)

The Pitfalls of Action and Inaction: Civilian Protection in MONUC’s Peacekeeping Operations

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How successful has the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) been in protecting civilians? This study, by the Institute of Security Studies, assesses MONUC’s strategy during its more passive phase from 2000 to 2004 and during the period from 2005, which included more forceful peace operations. The study concludes that, in its passive role, MONUC failed to protect civilians altogether. However, its more aggressive operations occasionally led to greater civilian abuse.

The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the bloodiest in recent history. From 1998 to 2002, the conflict drew in eight other African countries, produced several rebel groups and resulted in the death of over three million people, mostly from disease and hunger. The gravity of the crisis, located at the crossroads of the continent, made it impossible to ignore. Yet the complexity of the conflict dynamics and the failure of the state made it one of the most daunting cases for intervention.

The UN mandate failed in the DRC as it did in Rwanda and Srebrenica during the 1990s. Appeals to protect civilians and support the Lusaka Agreement were not met with either a solid commitment or the capacity to enforce it. In a country over twenty times the size of Liberia yet with only a third of the number of peacekeeping troops at one point, MONUC lacked the resources to undertake even minimal measures to protect civilians.

From 2005 to the present, MONUC’s mandate to protect civilians remained essentially the same, even though its operations changed considerably.

• MONUC appeared to have had no initial plan to enforce the civilian protection clause. When events on the ground forced it to do so, its strategy occasionally backfired.
• Pakistani and Indian peacekeepers in North and South Kivu executed more aggressive operations against armed groups and occasionally devised alert systems to warn civilians of imminent attacks.
• In Ituri, peacekeepers operating jointly with the Congolese army rooted out rebels embedded in the villages.
• In some places, more robust operations did bring security to the civilian population, but they also exposed villagers to retaliatory attacks.
• MONUC’s partner in many of its operations, the Congolese national army, was sometimes a greater perpetrator of civilian abuses than the armed rebel groups.

An examination of incidents when civilians’ lives were at risk reveals the difficulties of implementing the increasingly accepted notion of civilian protection. Invoking civilian protection in UN mandates has complex implications and a responsibility that missions may not be able to meet immediately.

• While many UN missions today have eschewed the more passive approach that characterised MONUC’s first years, more robust operations also have unintended consequences and can put civilians in greater danger than before.
• The two different periods in MONUC’s history reveal that the civilian protection will have to be approached more prudently than originally envisioned in the notion of the responsibility to protect, drawn up by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty.
• Incorporating the lessons learned from its recent peace operations, UN missions should pursue a more deliberate and coordinated combination of political overtures with forceful operations.

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