Book Review: UN peace service long overdue
A UN Emergency Peace Service: to Prevent Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
Robert Johansen, Editor

Published by World Federalist Movement – Institute for Global Policy, New York, in conjunction with Global Action to Prevent War and Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

by Fergus Watt

The World Federalist Movement has a way of incubating, often for decades, good solid ideas for dealing with global problems until the moment arrives when wider political acceptance and implementation become possible.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the treaty establishing an International Criminal Court are two examples that come to mind. In both cases, the movement not only helped ‘keep the idea alive’ over the years through its publications, resolutions, meeting debates and various other bits of accumulated organizational dogma. These are instances where world federalists also made modest contributions to the realization of the idea when its political moment arrived.

The subject matter of the present volume is another example of an idea whose time is surely long overdue. A UN Emergency Peace Service offers up-to-date thinking about a not-so-new idea: a standing rapid deployment force or, as it is called in this book, a UN Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS).

The need for a permanent, individually recruited UN peacekeeping contingent is often presented by analogy to a town or city fire brigade. As Kofi Annan put it a few years ago, “Every time there is a fire, we must first discuss the fire, then find fire engines, and the funds to run them before we can start dousing any flames. The present system relies on last minute, ad hoc arrangements that guarantee delay.… Although we have understandings for military standby arrangements with member states, the availability
of designated forces is unpredictable and very few are in a state of high readiness.”

When a peace force is needed, governments are too often unwilling to take action. The atrocities in Darfur, Sudan provide yet another tragic example of failure by world leaders to fulfill the international community’s responsibility to protect innocent civilians by providing sufficient military support – either to an African Union force or the anticipated (but as yet unformed) UN peace force.

The UNEPS book reports outcomes from two expert conferen-ces, in 2003 in Santa Barbara, California and in February 2005 in Cuenca, Spain. Its aim is twofold:

1. to make the case for a UNEPS, (which it does quite well), and

2. to provide guidance for a
campaign to build political support (which is less well developed).

There have been lots of proposals over the years for UN standing forces or a rapid reaction capability (a matter which is canvassed in a forward by the eminent Sir Brian Urquhart). However, on the substance of the UNEPS proposal, the book provides more than just old wine in a new bottle.

Framing the concept as a “peace service” that would respond in clearly defined circumstances not only reflects recent normative advances in global acceptance of the international community’s responsibility to protect individuals who are victims of large scale violations of international humanitarian law. This formulation also addresses critics that allege that a UNEPS could become a rogue “UN army” intervening at the behest of powerful governments.

The structure of a UNEPS is clearly presented: 10,000 to 15,000 personnel located at regional sites but with a dedicated and coherent doctrine, training and command structure; individually recruited (and therefore not vulnerable to delays due to the reluctance of member states); an integrated force, including civilian, police, military, judicial and humanitarian relief professionals. It would complement, not replace, elements of the present collective security system.

Much of the background research and intellectual heavy lifting in developing the design and structure of a UNEPS relies on work undertaken over the course of many years by a Canadian World Federalist, Dr. Peter Langille, at the University of Western Ontario. This core proposal is then discussed from the perspective of a number of critiques: cost, placing the UNEPS within the international system, and legal and political considerations regarding decisions to deploy. Not all of these critiques are adequately addressed, as the editors acknowledge.

The book also tries to address the challenges associated with building support in a world where sovereign governments are reluctant to pool sovereignty in support of shared goals. Civil society will need to work with key like-minded government and UN allies. Sound familiar?

As a campaigning resource, this volume disappoints. It bears too many of the hallmarks of a “civil society mobilization” conceived by western academics – as if a few well-meaning professors need only hammer out the difficult details and the world will come rushing to embrace this received wisdom.

A UN Emergency Peace Service:  to Prevent Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity provides new thinking about an old but important idea. Finding the political will to make it happen has always been – and remains – the greater challenge.