MaximsNews Columnist

Todd Howland

          Todd Howland is the Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights. The Center supports the human rights work of 34 RFK Human Rights Award Laureates and Social Justice Fellows working in 20 countries.  www.rfkmemorial.org

Can the UN Reforms Fix What is Wrong with the UN Mission to Haiti?

          UNITED NATIONS -- 6 April 2005 / www.MaximsNews.com  / Having worked in peace missions in Rwanda and Angola, I have seen their many dysfunctions first hand.  

The current movement toward reform is encouraging because so many in the system know what is needed.  

But the true test of In Larger Freedom:  Towards Development, Security, and Human Rights for All is whether such reforms, if implemented, would fix the UN’s present failure in Haiti.  

Let's not kid ourselves, regardless of the 1984 speak of Secretary Rumsfeld in Argentina recently, the mission to Haiti is more akin to a human rights violation shared by the entire world community than a successful peace mission. 

Haiti has received thousands of blue helmets.  

And yet Haiti was not involved in a "hot" war and the blue helmets are not keeping two warring factions apart as a peace treaty is being developed -- the reason why UN peacekeeping missions are normally deployed.  

One can only hope that Mr. Bolton will identify those who would normally be assigned this task and ask why the UN has fielded a peace mission to a country in conflict without any political process in place to develop a peace treaty.  

Perhaps he would then realize that not all UN "failures" can be laid at the doorstep of the Secretariat. 

It is possible that a Security Council with a different composition would accept Caribbean Community (CARICOM)'s view of Haiti and its proposal for resolution, rather than the present US-authored approach.  

Trying to predict the dynamic of the Security Council in the post-reforms era is best left to fortune tellers.  

More importantly, in many ways UN ineffectiveness in Haiti today relates to traditional political/bureaucratic limits that have put a stranglehold on the organization's ability to field a cross-sectoral peace mission.  

It is not just the composition of the Security Council that has lead to failure. 

1.  Define the root cause of the instability and develop the appropriate response.  While the political instability in Haiti is quite real, the greatest threat to most Haitians' lives is the lack of clean water, access to basic health care, and the lack of dignified employment.  

Once again, the UN is employing the wrong tool in Haiti to address these problems.  Development, human rights, and security cannot be addressed in phases in Haiti, but rather must be looked at as overlapping and mutually reinforcing facets of developing a lasting peace and combating extreme poverty.  

Viewing the problem as a human rights violation and calling it such helps to highlight the need for changing the way peace missions are fielded.  

Human rights violations should motivate an urgent response, somewhat akin to a humanitarian one, but one that pays attention to the capacity of the state to maintain basic infrastructure to benefit the citizenry and one in which those beneficiaries are empowered to complain if the system is not functioning. 

2.  Avoid the artificial bureaucratic pigeonholing of a problem.  

Is it a peacekeeping, humanitarian, development, or human rights problem?  

Depending on the pigeonholing, a method to respond is determined and the appropriate UN entity or partner sent to address the problem.  

Lack of clean potable water is killing people on a daily basis in Haiti.  

If they were refugees, it is very possible UNHCR with a partner NGO would put accessible potable water in within days.  

Unfortunately for Haitians the problem is chronic and widespread, calling for development projects to be run by the government and supported by the UNDP, IDB, and World Bank.  

Given such projects depend on voluntary contributions and good relations between the Haitian government and donors, this type of development project just never gets implemented in a place like Haiti.  

While alternatives could be considered heresy to ideal development practice, we can't ignore this fact. 

Of course the blue helmets don't have the training to do this work.  

A cross-sectoral peace mission would ideally have the needed resources and expertise to undertake these tasks.  

This would mean that DPKO and the blue helmets would not be the only ones receiving assessed contributions, but also WHO, UNDP, UNICEF, FAO, OHCHR et al would all be integral parts of the mission with money to make a positive difference.

3.  Develop real concrete measures of success.  Every conflict is different, but given the Secretary-General's understanding of the conceptual and empirical link between development, security, human rights, and the creation of sustainable peace, accountability should not be limited to a rhetorical goal of the reforms.  

Each mission clearly needs measures of success specific to its own context; however, at the very least the UN should introduce a simple administrative procedure to give the word "accountability" any meaning. 

As a peace mission is being organized, baseline data regarding the level of respect for the full spectrum of human rights should be collected.  

The "full spectrum" is understood as meaning each right found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (e.g., access to justice to health care and education).  

Every six months the Security Council would review whether progress has been made towards increasing the level of respect for each of these rights.   

If we were to use this system of accountability related to the present UN mission to Haiti, we would be dismayed to learn that after one year and expenditures totaling twice the annual budget of the Haitian state, some indicators would be constant and others have actually gotten worse (e.g., right to health and violence against women). 

4.  Maximize the mission's transformative potential. 

The funds for the peace mission to Haiti don't go to improving the level of respect for economic rights in Haiti, but are directed to self perpetuating a mission that is ill conceptualized and bound to fail in its present configuration.  

The mission's funds are – as with all peace missions – budgeted to be spent on themselves and contribute nothing to the weak infrastructure of the communities where they are located. 

For example, huge sums will be spent in Haiti to repair UN vehicles and to helicopter troops and officials around because the main highways are dirt roads that are often impassable.   

This is not a problem limited to Haiti.  

In Monrovia, Liberia, all diplomatic posts, UN agencies and peacekeeping outposts, NGOs, government buildings and businesses have their own generators; those without suffer a lack of electrical power.  

Many of these generators are newly purchased, given so many were looted during the last episode of civil war in the capital city.  

If the UN is just fighting poverty (yawn – like it has been doing for 50 years) its leverage to organize resources is extremely limited.  

To end such financial dysfunction, rights-based accountability is needed to motivate the Secretariat to actually stop this type of insanity that is repeated in disaster zone after disaster zone and simply fix the power grid and charge every Member State for it.  

In the end it will not only be cheaper, but it will improve the human rights situation (not because we have a fundamental right to watch TV, but because electricity can enhance a basket of rights -- among them, association, health, education, and political participation). 

5.  It is not just about more money, but the injection of funds at the right time.  

It is unclear if the goal of providing resources adequate to the task means that assessed contributions are going to be available for what previously had been considered "development work."

In reality these actions are indispensable to addressing the root cause of the instability and measurably improving the human rights situation.  

It should come as no surprise, but the UN peace missions need to stimulate employment.  

By this, I do not mean the handful of drivers, interpreters, maids and prostitutes that benefit financially from the presence of peace missions.  Rather, the UN missions need to allocate funds that would produce opportunities for dignified employment to help rebuild the roads, work on local water and sanitation projects, and plant trees to combat erosion.   

Shortly after the ouster of the Aristide government, I spent time in a "rebel stronghold" in the Central Plateau of Haiti.  

Reliable diplomatic sources indicated the rebels that toppled the previous government numbered from 200-300 men.  

The largest contingent I ran across of about 10-15 "rebels" were busy jury-rigging an antenna so they could watch the European Cup Finals.  

Of course, once it became clear that money or some form of compensation would be offered for demobilizing, the rebel ranks swelled with the unemployed and underemployed and now exercise influence in many parts of the country.  

This demobilization plan did more to reestablish as a political force the dreaded and discredited military of the Duvaliers than the actions of the previous government.   

By implementing a human rights-based approach that places great importance on the process of listening to, assessing, and responding to the human rights priorities of the Haitian people and in turn builds the government's capacity to respond to those expressed needs, the UN will be securing Haitians' individual rights specifically and thereby human security in general.  

This will maximize the transformative potential of the reconstruction process and contribute to Haitians building a human rights culture.  

Without human security there can be no state security and the UN peace mission will be unable to assist Haiti in building a lasting peace. 

To date, the international community has "bequeathed" a series of failed peace missions to Haiti.   

Haiti was and still is a perfect place for the UN to break free from its traditional political/bureaucratic limits and field a peace mission that addresses the root causes of the conflict and to do it immediately. 

       ToddHowland@MaximsNews.com