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Tag Archive for: United Nations
Tag Archive for: United Nations
Elections at the UN: Australia’s approach
Australia is poised to be elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) when the General Assembly meets on 16 October. Until recently, Australia, Spain and France were locked in a tight contest for two of the three available seats. However, in a demonstration of how hard these races can be, France announced in July 2017 that it would postpone its candidacy to the next term (2021–2023). It’s now almost a fait accompli that Australia and Spain will be elected by the UN membership. It’s a significant role—we’ll have the opportunity to make a valuable contribution to the work of the pre-eminent intergovernmental body overseeing the protection and promotion of global human rights. In doing so, we can promote our own interests and build influence as a global player.
Our HRC candidacy presents a timely opportunity to consider the value of serving on UN intergovernmental bodies and Australia’s rationale for and approach in regularly putting itself forward as a candidate. My paper, released today by ASPI, does just that. It also offers the following recommendations for the Australian government to strengthen Australia’s engagement in UN electoral processes:
- maintain Australia’s extensive electoral representation as part of a strategic plan for engagement at the UN
- engage in greater public outreach to the Australian community, to strengthen the implementation of the government’s public diplomacy strategy and to increase awareness about the importance of Australia’s UN engagement, including its pursuit of UN candidacies
- engage more strategically with Australians working in the UN and related organisations to identify potential candidates for UN elections
- explore possibilities for strengthening Australia’s relationship with non-traditional partners. That will facilitate Australia’s future campaigns for UN bodies and is consistent with Australia acting as a sustainable global player.
The paper draws on my experience as elections officer for the Australian government at its Permanent Mission to the UN in New York. I represented Australia in the numerous elections held at UN headquarters, including those that involved an Australian candidacy. I had the honour of promoting the successful candidacies of two Australians: Professor Ron McCallum for election to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Professor Megan Davis for election to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Both made major contributions as experts to those UN bodies. My paper suggests that the impressive work of Australians at the UN should be better promoted domestically, not just to advertise that opportunities exist for qualified Australians to serve in the UN, but to show that Australians’ expertise is recognised internationally.
My main job was working on Australia’s successful candidacy to the Security Council for the 2013–2014 term. Australia was seeking one of the two available non-permanent seats, in an intense contest with Luxembourg and Finland. Our competitors had a head start of seven and six years respectively before Australia entered the race in 2008. The vote, of all 193 member states of the UN General Assembly, was on 18 October 2012. I recall approaching the GA Hall with the Australian ambassador, Gary Quinlan. As the Australian delegation entered the iconic building, some friendly faces immediately approached us—some longstanding allies, and some more recent but equally genuine friends born out of Australia’s extensive outreach in its campaign. There were others who were interested observers of the intense contest. And some who were clearly hopeful that our European competitors would be successful.
What I most remember is the importance of the day for Australia. The vote marked a culmination of years of intensive global effort by many Australians and our candidacy represented a desire to contribute to the rules-based global order and to shape outcomes from the pre-eminent body responsible for maintaining international peace and security. Election would also be meaningful for Australia’s international standing and influence. A defeat would have been crushing. But the inevitability of contests in Security Council elections meant that Australia had to put itself on the line if it wished to serve.
Of course it’s not just about the campaign—the contribution afterwards is critical. Throughout the UN’s 72-year history, Australia has been an influential and engaged actor. Due to our geographic location, size and approach to diplomacy, we’ve often been able to navigate fractious issues. That was demonstrated during our Security Council term, when Australia took the lead with Luxembourg and Jordan on initiatives to address the Syrian humanitarian crisis—something rarely done by a non-permanent member of the council. Australia also led the council’s response to the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, in which 298 people were killed, including 38 Australians. Australia’s seat at the council table gave us leverage to negotiate directly with council members, especially Russia. Australia obtained the resolution supporting an impartial international investigation and demanding accountability for the perpetrators. It was an important global response.
Australia’s election to the HRC will be historic for Australian foreign policy. Australia will no doubt look to build on its UN reputation to make a strong contribution to the work of the HRC. Our interest in serving can also be viewed as an effort to maintain our momentum at the UN and sustain our influence.
Relative deprivation and the debate about refugees
In his much-acclaimed 1970 book, Why men rebel, Ted R. Gurr postulated that political violence could be explained by looking at social psychological factors. Gurr’s theory about political activism, and specifically political violence, centred on what people think their living conditions should be as opposed to what those conditions are. He called this ‘relative deprivation’: people’s perceptions of their status and what they believe they’re entitled to are fundamental to contemporary political activism and public discontent.
A statement by former US House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich in 2016 exemplified the phenomenon. When it was pointed out to him that violent crime in the US was down, he retorted, ‘The average American, I will bet you this morning, does not think that crime is down, does not think that we are safer … People feel more threatened. As a political candidate, I’ll go with what people feel.’ In another example, Michael Gove, Britain’s former education minister, famously declared during the Brexit debate that ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’. Gove’s aim was to emphasise that, even though most experts believed that a British withdrawal from the EU was a mistake, the experts were either wrong or didn’t reflect what the people wanted and needed—or felt that they wanted and needed.
Relative deprivation lies at the heart of the discourse on migration. Nigel Farage, exploiting fear and opposition to the wave of migration from the Middle East and North Africa, was able to claim that Sweden’s liberal immigration policy has facilitated a massive increase in the number of refugees, which has led to Sweden becoming the ‘rape capital’ of Europe. Others have referred to asylum seekers as ‘economic refugees’—a term that doesn’t exist in law, but that fosters a perception that most refugees are ‘queue jumpers’, are ‘taking the system for a ride’, and pose a security threat, even though most terrorist acts are carried out by nationals not migrants.
Relative deprivation also feeds into the perception that the West is being inundated by migrants, as Pauline Hanson claimed in a speech to the Australian parliament in 2016: ‘We are in danger of being swamped by Muslims, who bear a culture and ideology that is incompatible with our own.’
Out of 24 million Australians, 7 million were born overseas. We’re a nation of immigrants, especially if we count the 40% of Australians who have at least one parent who was born overseas (20% of Europeans are foreign born). And yet, despite these figures, there’s tremendous opposition to Australia taking in migrants—especially if they’re Muslim, as there’s an assumption that such migrants won’t integrate.
Hard data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that migrants are far from a drain. They participate in and contribute to society, especially when we take declining birthrates into account. Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, links economic growth to population growth. He points out that population growth, especially in the West, has been in decline since the 1960s, and argues that population growth is the key to ensuring American economic power (over the past decade, population growth in the US has averaged 0.8%). Sharma adds, ‘In the past decade, population growth, including immigration, has accounted for roughly half of the potential economic growth rate in the US, compared with just one-sixth in Europe, and none in Japan.’
The goal of Gingrich, Gove, Farage, Hanson and others is to heighten perceptions of relative deprivation in order to sustain their own positions. Mainstream politicians who fail to challenge such views are not leading but being led. As well as making our society more intolerant, those attitudes undermine the economic development of the West, which is increasingly being defined by its ageing population, declining birthrates and failure to look after the elderly. There’s also an ethical problem: by rejecting those who seek refuge from violence and insecurity, we’re undermining our own moral values.
Policymakers should remember that Australia has played a key role in shaping the UN and international law. When we served on the Security Council, we showed great leadership in building consensus on key issues relating to Afghanistan and the Islamic State, as well as demanding action over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. We’re now hoping to join the Human Rights Council for the 2018–2020 term and re-join the Security Council for the 2029–2030 term. This requires us to be leaders, which means that instead of supporting and advancing misconceptions, we should emulate Angela Merkel, who has declared that she stands by her 2015 decision to admit a million refugees to Germany despite the political cost that came with that decision.
Policymakers have a simple choice when it comes to the discourse on migrants. They can either be on the right side of history or be on the wrong side. They can help advance a dignified discourse on migration that’s based on fact and not on xenophobia, jingoism and distrust of the ‘other’.
We should remember that migrants could also strengthen Australia’s economy and society. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Global Liveability Index rated Melbourne as the world’s most liveable city (for the seventh time), followed by Vienna and Vancouver. It might be no coincidence that Melbourne is also Australia’s most culturally diverse city, suggesting that multiculturalism helps to make cities more liveable.
Australia and the Human Rights Council: principles or opportunism?
When Foreign Minister Julie Bishop launched Australia’s bid for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in 2015, gender equality and indigenous people’s rights were two of the five ‘pillars’ of the campaign. In an address to the UN General Assembly last week, Bishop reaffirmed Australia’s commitment to furthering international standards of human rights, to make ‘meaningful difference to the lives of individuals’.
Things are looking good for the campaign, so I discuss here how Australia could turn those pillars into policies. Bishop’s laudable aims might flourish or fizzle, depending on how Australia deals with domestic shortcomings in its treatment of indigenous people and asylum seekers, especially as both issues also have incredibly complex gender equality challenges. Australia’s contentious domestic human rights record might diminish potential leadership opportunities in the HRC. The international and domestic agendas for gender equality and indigenous rights should not be siloed off from each other.
A failure to align our international and domestic policies on human rights may undermine our ability to provide what Bishop called ‘principled’ leadership in the council. Of course, some current HRC members have woeful human rights records (Saudi Arabia, Kenya, the Philippines and Nigeria among them), but Australia should not be held to those standards. We should lead by example, standing tall and upholding international standards of equality, good governance and democracy—at home and on the global stage.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are often the most disadvantaged within their already deprived communities, facing both gender and racial discrimination. Aboriginal women and girls suffer extraordinary levels of assault; Aboriginal mothers are 17.5 times more likely to die from homicide than non-Aboriginal mothers. Aboriginal women are the fastest growing segment of Australia’s prison population; they’re 21 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-indigenous women.
In 2011, the Department of Social Services released the third national plan to reduce violence against women and their children, which listed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children as a priority area. However, the 2014 UN periodic review of Australia identified the ‘unacceptable level of disadvantage experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’, as well as $13.4 million worth of cuts to funding of indigenous legal aid and policy reform programs. The 2015 Human Rights Watch review of Australia further highlighted the controversial elements of Australian policy in addressing indigenous rights. These references, combined with the statistics for assault, homicide and incarceration, show that a far stronger government commitment is needed.
Bishop’s pledge to advance rights for indigenous peoples falls considerably short of the mark. Australia’s position on international indigenous human rights risks being undermined by the unsatisfactory conditions faced by indigenous Australians.
To sit confidently on the HRC and to speak authoritatively on human rights problems elsewhere, Australia should concentrate urgently on improving the security, rights and resource access of Australian indigenous peoples, particularly women. If Australia doesn’t maintain robust and sustainable policies that advocate for citizens who are the most vulnerable, with limited agency or access to resources, its HRC membership won’t stand up to scrutiny.
There’s been no real effort to integrate gender perspectives into Australia’s refugee and humanitarian program; nor does Australia’s national action plan on women, peace and security ‘have a mandate to incorporate the protection of women and their dependents [sic] fleeing conflict zones … as irregular migrants or asylum seekers’.
It’s vital to consider the gendered experiences of refugees and irregular migrants when processing immigration and resettlement streams. Women are often disproportionately affected by conflict, war or trauma, and often need specific types of support and welfare as a result (such as sexual health care, childcare and education). Australia’s commitments to gender equality and to women, peace and security can align to address vital issues for women fleeing conflict. For example, Julie Bishop’s pledge to create a further 12,000 places for the permanent resettlement of refugees fleeing war in Syria and Iraq would benefit from a nuanced policy that addresses gender-specific concerns and experiences. The safety and security of vast numbers of women and children remain precarious while they wait for visa applications to be processed.
Australia’s stand on human rights will seem capricious and opportunistic for as long as it champions international human rights principles without applying those principles to domestic challenges. Canberra has chosen to highlight certain elements of human rights in its five HRC campaign pillars. It should seize the opportunity of being on the HRC to demonstrate meaningful reforms, provide effective leadership and shape future policy.
With opportunity comes responsibility. If Australia wants to position itself as a role model that’s truly committed to advancing indigenous rights and gender equality internationally, prioritising the rights of the most vulnerable Australians should be the first step.
Trump’s UN hypocrisy
US President Donald Trump’s first address to the United Nations General Assembly will be remembered, above all, for its bizarre language, and its descriptions of North Korea as ‘depraved’, Iran as ‘murderous’, and Cuba and Venezuela as ‘corrupt’. And, beyond calling out miscreant member states by name, Trump also offered a fervent defence of his ‘America First’ agenda.
But while Trump’s particular choice of words was new to the UN, his arguments were not. He pointed out, with some justification, that other countries also put their own national interests first. And he reprised a longstanding complaint within US foreign-policymaking circles: that it is somehow excessive and unfair to expect American taxpayers to pay for 22% of the UN’s total budget.
After calling on the General Assembly to do its part to implement and then enforce sanctions against North Korea, Trump said, ‘Let’s see how they do’. But referring to the UN as ‘they’ implies that it is something apart from the US. Trump’s tone was that of a dissatisfied tenant, blaming the landlord for his home’s poor state of repair. But the UN is only as good as those who inhabit it, not least the US itself.
In his speech, Trump listed America’s many contributions to the world, and suggested that it keeps the UN around as a sort of favor to other countries in need of an international forum. He assumed no US responsibility for the UN’s fortunes, failures, or even its achievements. But, in addition to contributing more than any other country to the UN budget, the US also plays an outsize role within the institution. The US can thus claim credit for many of the UN’s successes; but it is also responsible for many of its failures.
It is worth remembering that no UN secretary-general assumes office without US support. And, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the US has veto power over any UNSC action, including sanctions, deployments of peacekeepers, and official condemnations of other member states. Even if the UN’s large institutional bureaucracy can be unwieldy at times, its effectiveness ultimately depends on its most influential members.
Consider the Bosnian conflict in the early 1990s, when the Security Council decided to send in UN peacekeepers, rather than deploying a more robust multilateral presence, as would have been allowed under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. The United Kingdom and France, which contributed the bulk of the peacekeeping force, insisted on a peacekeeping mandate, because they did not want to put their troops in harm’s way.
The US, for its part, refused to contribute any troops at all, and thus had no right to call for a stronger mandate that would have allowed UN forces to step in to end the violence. Although many Americans had witnessed the carnage from their living rooms and wanted the UN to do more to stop it, neither they nor their leaders—first George H.W. Bush and then Bill Clinton—had any interest in sending American troops to be a part of a Bosnian peacekeeping force. The result, as we now know, was that the killing continued, sometimes in the presence of UN peacekeepers whose countries had not given them a strong enough mandate to intervene.
By the time the US-led Dayton Accords had put an end to the war, in December 1995, the UN’s peacekeeping capacity had been so thoroughly discredited that NATO war-fighting troops were sent in to take over from the UN Protection Force. In other words, when the situation required war fighters, peacekeepers were dispatched; and when the situation called for peacekeepers, war fighters were sent. None of this apparent dysfunction had anything to do with the UN. It was a direct result of UN member states’ decision-making.
Even Trump’s dystopian and dyspeptic speech conceded that the UN makes valuable contributions to world peace, through peacekeeping missions and other forms of assistance. More often than not, this work is done in far-flung countries, where direct US involvement would be unpalatable to many American politicians’ constituents.
The UN is far from perfect. But, rather than bash it, American leaders, starting with Trump, should understand that its actions and decisions are often an extension of their own.
RAAF to fly Vietnamese peacekeepers to South Sudan
Forty-four years after Australian troops came home from Indochina, the Australian Defence Force will help Vietnam deploy a peacekeeping contingent to South Sudan. During a visit to Hanoi last Friday, Defence Minister Marise Payne agreed that the Royal Australian Air Force would transport the Vietnamese peacekeepers to the troubled African nation and provide some of their equipment.
In a demonstration of increasingly close security cooperation between Canberra and Hanoi, Australian instructors in Vietnam are helping the Vietnamese prepare for the deployment, including coaching the members of a field hospital to bring their English up to the standard required by the United Nations for large-scale medical operations. The 70 hospital staff include doctors, nurses and support personnel. Australia is also helping Vietnamese officials work their way through the UN’s bureaucratic processes.
In recent years, the relationship between the two nations’ defence forces has become steadily closer. Over the past week, Senator Payne visited Singapore, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam for talks on regional security issues. She was accompanied by the ADF’s special forces commander, Major General Adam Findlay, who met his counterparts in each country to discuss escalating regional security threats and ways to improve cooperation in dealing with them.
In Vietnam, local special forces put on an extraordinary display of counterterrorist and hostage-rescue techniques for the Australian delegation. Teams of male and female soldiers emerged from the landscape in a display of camouflage skills and then scaled the walls of buildings and blasted targets with sniper fire.
Keen to play a greater role on the world stage, Vietnam approached Australia some time ago saying it was looking for a UN non-combat mission to showcase its capabilities. It sought Australian help in planning the mission. The RAAF is likely to use some of its giant C-17 transport planes to carry the Vietnamese to South Sudan. That will happen once the contingent reaches the required level of English language competence.
Senator Payne said that over decades of diplomatic engagement, Australia had sent strong messages of support to Vietnam ‘that we are prepared to be very consistent in our involvement, that we are not capricious in any way, we just get on and do business’. The English-language training that Australia has provided to Vietnamese defence personnel and officials over many years stood Australia in very good stead. Her interpreter on this trip was Australian-trained.
Senator Payne said that in wishing to become international peacekeepers, the Vietnamese were crossing a significant threshold. ‘They are saying up front that they want to work with other nations. That’s a very good sign for ASEAN and a very good sign for them internationally. It’s a really strong sign of their willingness to engage in the international space.’
At the Hanoi Peacekeeping Centre, Senior Colonel Nguyen The Trung said Australia was providing Vietnam with considerable help and that was greatly appreciated. ‘We are very proud of the cooperation with Australia’, he said. ‘We consider that the Vietnamese people have a responsibility to play a role in this peacekeeping operation. We want to contribute to humanitarian activity to demonstrate our responsibility to the UN and to the people of the world.’
Australia will provide the Vietnamese with around $400,000 worth of specialised equipment, including a large deployable shelter which will serve as accommodation, an ambulance and a power generator. The United States has agreed to provide the Vietnamese military with two buildings to house field hospitals, one in Vietnam, which will be used for training, and the other in South Sudan.
The Vietnamese will replace a British medical contingent there and hope to later send a 268-strong engineering team. As its military personnel gain international peacekeeping experience, Vietnam hopes to also dispatch police and civilian specialists on UN operations. An Australian official said the ADF understood the difficulties involved in deploying whole units overseas, ‘but we do it all the time’.
With its considerable expeditionary experience, the ADF will give the Vietnamese ongoing logistical advice over the coming year. Vietnamese officers have been invited to attend a military training exercise in Australia which will include deployment of a field hospital. The Vietnamese aim to deploy to South Sudan within 12 months.
The spread of slavery in the Asia–Pacific
We tend to think of ‘slavery’ as an archaic term. But the fact stands that slavery is still a significant issue in the contemporary world; both in the Asia–Pacific and more locally here in Australia. The problem may be widespread in our region but 2 December 2016—when the United Nations observed the ‘International Day for the Abolition of Slavery’—passed without stimulating much meaningful reflection.
The day marked the adoption of the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others in 1949. Since that date, numerous international instruments to prevent slavery have entered into force. Those include the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (2003) and its supplementary Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (2003) among others; both of which Australia has ratified.
Australia is known as a destination country for people trafficked from parts of Asia—Thailand, Republic of Korea and Malaysia alike. Australia has recorded instances of human trafficking and other slavery-like practices including servitude, forced labour and forced marriage. Historically, the numbers were made up predominantly by women in the sex industry. But interestingly enough, a shift over the past two years has seen a greater number of victims in the agriculture, construction, hospitality and cleaning industries. But even so—and while statistics grow significantly worse in the region—Australia has actually seen an improvement in the numbers, from an estimated 4,300 living in slavery in 2014 to 3,000 in 2016.
Looking to the Asia–Pacific more broadly, no country is free from the effects of slavery and the numbers are alarming. According to The Global Slavery Index, the region holds a stunning two thirds—approximately 30 million people—of the estimated global 45.8 million enslaved people. Forced labour, child soldiers, forced begging, sexual exploitation and forced marriage were all identified forms of slavery across the region. In absolute terms, China and India have the highest number of people living in slavery. But when considering the estimated percentage of a population in slavery, the biggest culprits in the region are North Korea, Cambodia and India. Worse still, the situation is only deteriorating, with numbers on the rise since 2014 when the estimated number living in slavery in the region was 23 million.
The trends primarily mirror the lack of solutions to address the root of the problem in the region—namely, labour exploitation in supply chains of food production, garment and technology industries. In 2012 the ILO estimated there to be 20.9 million forced labourers globally, with 56% in the Asia–Pacific alone. Those numbers are especially worrying for Australia, given that four of our top five import sources are Asia–Pacific countries; three of which—China, Republic of Korea and Thailand—boast poor track records of slavery
Australian businesses continue to be implicated in labour abuses in-country and abroad, with slave labour occurring in the manufacturing of Australian clothing in North Korea, labour exploitation in Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai fishing industries and labour abuses in domestic fresh food supply chains and 7-Eleven stores. That reflects the need for a broadened approach to anti-slavery that encompasses working with companies, investors and consumers, to complement the existing traditional criminalisation focus.
Remarkably, that was acknowledged at the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Crime earlier this year, which was co-chaired by Australia and Indonesia. Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop acknowledged the need to work with the private sector to ‘combat human trafficking and related exploitation, including by promoting and implementing humane, non-abusive labour practices throughout their supply chains.’
Australia’s general response to slavery and human trafficking and National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking and Slavery have been commendable and exceptional compared with other regional countries. But it could do more; tangible solutions to the specific issue of supply chain labour exploitation have been delayed.
The Supply Chains Working Group, established under the Attorney-General’s Department in 2014, presented the Australian government with nine recommendations to combat supply chain exploitation in December last year. On 28 November, Australia responded and convened its eighth meeting of the Australian Governments National Roundtable on Human Trafficking and Slavery, announcing that it’ll work with business and civil society to:
- create a suite of awareness-raising materials for business;
- further consider the feasibility of a model for large businesses in Australia to publicly report on their actions to address supply chain exploitation;
- examine options for an awards program for businesses that take action to address supply chain exploitation; and
- explore the feasibility of a non-regulatory, voluntary code of conduct for high risk industries.
That response, already a year delayed, remains vague about committing to any of the Working Group’s recommendations. The only clear cut commitment is to create awareness-raising material, a worthy enough step, but the meatier suggestions are seemingly still just for ‘consideration’ at this point. In comparison, the US and UK have implemented measures requiring businesses with an annual turnover greater than £36 million to report on efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their direct supply chains.
Australia needs to step up its response and prove commitment to tackling labour supply chain exploitation through timely, tangible solutions. If the short term game is an Australian seat on the Human Rights Council, the longer term game must surely be one where Canberra pursues good international citizenship in order to stamp out slavery and buttress stability in its own backyard and beyond.
From peacekeeping to counterterrorism: Africa matters
UN peacekeepers are often deployed when there’s no longer any peace to keep. In the current strategic environment of non-state actors, peacekeeping has also become increasingly complex and non-traditional in character. Despite those new challenges, we rarely hear about UN peacekeeping operations in Africa, as the news is dominated by the Middle East.
It’s now time for strategic decision makers in the West to appreciate why Africa matters. Of the 16 current PKO missions, nine are on the African continent. Of the roughly 100,000 uniformed peacekeepers currently deployed, 82,000 of them are based in Africa. Those statistics are significant because terrorist organisations—like the so-called Islamic State (IS)—thrive in unstable and insecure environments. Those are the same places that typically require UN peacekeeping operations. That situation will become even more apparent once the IS caliphate is reduced in the Middle East and the group looks elsewhere for safe havens from which to train and launch attacks.
In the future, peacekeepers need to be capable of conducting the full spectrum of peace operations, from humanitarian assistance/disaster relief operations through to missions with a more offensive mandate. For example, the current MINUSMA operation in Mali requires more of a counterinsurgency mindset than a traditional peacekeeping approach. But the problem is that many UN peacekeepers are neither trained nor equipped to deal with evolving threats in the contemporary operating environment.
Of the 100,000 peacekeepers currently deployed, just 39 are Australians. Yet the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has more than 2,300 troops deployed on operations elsewhere around the world. Coalition operations, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, are seen to more directly serve Australia’s defence interest of maintaining a rules-based global order. If there was an urgent need for UN intervention in Southeast Asia, however, we’d likely see Australia playing a leading role.
In balancing ways and means to achieve its national security objectives, Australia—as the world’s 12th largest economy—provides more funding than troops for peacekeeping operations. Notably, Australia is the 11th largest financial contributor to the UN peacekeeping budget and the 9th largest donor to the UN peacebuilding fund, which serves to prevent conflict in fragile states. Within our region, the peacebuilding fund is currently supporting peacebuilding projects in Myanmar, PNG, Solomon Islands and Sri Lanka.
Within the UN’s Peacekeeping Capability Readiness System, Australia has pledged the use of C-130 and C-17 aircraft for strategic airlift, capacity building for troop and police contributing countries, and counter-improvised explosive device (CIED) training. At the September 2016 UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial Meeting in London, Defence Minister Payne announced additional funding of $1.2 million over five years to further enhance regional UN peacekeeping capacity.
That’s is a noteworthy contribution given Australia’s strategic interests, but Africa deserves more attention. It’s important to Australia for several reasons.
Firstly, Australian companies have billions of dollars invested in Africa—an investment surely worth protecting.
Secondly, just as in the Middle East, we have a moral obligation to protect civilians, particularly women and children in conflict zones. We can’t stand by to allow another Rwanda-like genocide to unfold in Africa. Prevention requires positive action.
Thirdly, the US military has steadily increased its military presence in Africa as a result of growing instability and the rapid expansion of terrorism on the continent. We live in a complex and interconnected world and the terrorism phenomenon is a global threat that will have consequences here if sanctuaries are allowed to exist over there.
UN peacekeeping operations also provide our service men and women with valuable operational experience. I’ve benefited greatly from serving on UN peacekeeping operations in East Timor (UNTAET), Lebanon (UNTSO) and Sudan (UNMIS). UN missions enable a unique and diverse perspective, different from other coalition operations.
Australia can do more. Our service personnel are highly effective trainers who are building partner capacity all over the world. The ADF’s Peace Operations Training Centre (POTC) already trains hundreds of peacekeepers from more than 50 countries every year, but the Centre should be better resourced to increase its rate of effort. POTC should be expanded to become an international centre of excellence for peacekeeping operations.
Additionally, the UN needs to better harness technology in peacekeeping to improve early warning and enhance the ability to detect, deter, mitigate and respond to threats, particularly in an asymmetric environment with non-state actors. Developed countries—like Australia—can contribute more to PKO in the future by providing niche capabilities, like drones, CIED and intelligence sharing.
It’s time we think big picture, look strategically and anticipate future threats. The problems in Africa won’t be fixed overnight. We’re likely to see further atrophy before improvement. As such, terrorist organisations will look to the African continent for opportunities.
From peacekeeping to counterterrorism, Africa matters.
South Sudan: politics, protection and peacekeeping
On 12 August, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 2304 authorising the deployment of a further 4,000 troops to the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) as part of a regional protection force. The mandate shift took place amidst recent reports of yet more failures by peacekeepers to come to the aid of civilians. Unfortunately, unlike many UN peacekeeping mandates, the Council wasn’t united in its approach. Russia, China, Venezuela and Egypt all abstained on the resolution. It’s not the first time there have been differences of opinion over the mandate for UNMISS. Yet the growing chasm within the Council comes at a time when UNMISS is being tasked to do even more to secure South Sudan’s capital, Juba, and protect the civilian population.
The latest outbreak of violence in South Sudan erupted in the capital, Juba, just days prior to the five year anniversary of independence for the world’s newest country on 11 July. For most of the population of South Sudan—some 12 million people—there was very little to celebrate anyway. The country has been trying to extricate itself from a violent civil war since December 2013, which has resulted in the displacement of more than 1.6 million civilians internally, forced more than 700,000 to flee across the borders, and resulted in between 160,000 to 200,000 civilians seeking protection at UN sites across the country at any one time. Horrific atrocities and human rights abuses have been inflicted on the civilian population. This has been compounded by an acute humanitarian emergency, with estimates that 4.8 million people are food insecure.
This isn’t the first time that the Security Council has tried to draw South Sudan back from the precipice. Following the outbreak of civil war in December 2013, the Security Council increased the size of the mission and significantly reconfigured it to focus primarily on protection of civilians. Yet the mission continued to limp along in the absence of any political solution to the ongoing conflict until August 2015, when the two major protagonists—President Salva Kiir and the now deposed First Vice-President Riek Machar—eventually signed onto an agreement that would provide a political pathway forward to resolve the largely ethnic-based conflict. The mission mandate was then extensively adjusted again. But not surprisingly, commitment to the agreement wavered from the outset and sporadic fighting continued. That reached boiling point on 7 July 2016 with brutal armed clashes in the capital forcing yet more civilians to flee.
Resolution 2304 is the latest attempt by the Security Council to coerce the Government of South Sudan to resolve the conflict within its borders. However, the UN has been backed into a difficult corner. The political situation is far from conducive to a UN peacekeeping mission. As Aditi Gorur and I note in this report following our visit to South Sudan last year, efforts by UNMISS to move about the country are frequently obstructed by parties to the conflict. Notwithstanding these significant challenges, however, the mission remains the default tool to provide some measure of physical protection for the civilian population. Yet unfortunately even those efforts have been significantly flawed.
Despite protection of civilians being part of the mandate since UNMISS deployed in July 2011, peacekeepers are still failing to respond when civilians come under attack. This has had tragic consequences in South Sudan, not only for the local population but also for foreign aid workers. Adjusting the mandate alone won’t respond to these deficits in the mission. If UNMISS is to be effective when it comes to protecting civilians, then UN personnel need to be held accountable when they fail to intervene. And that message will only be sent if under-performing troop and police contributors are repatriated home when they fail to act.
But this again presents another problem for the mission. It now needs to generate an additional 4,000 military personnel to fulfil the new mission mandate of 17,000 troops. Past experience has shown that will be difficult. When the mission reconfigured in December 2013, efforts to generate an additional 5,500 military personnel were still underway nearly two years later. While recent UN peacekeeping summits have shown that countries are willing to engage, force generation efforts are likely to be compounded by the difficult relationship with the Government of South Sudan, as well as ongoing concerns among contributing countries about the volatile security situation on the ground.
Ultimately a UN peacekeeping mission isn’t the solution to the conflict in South Sudan. Political pressure needs to be brought to bear on the protagonists to fully implement the peace agreement. The arms embargo threatened in resolution 2304 could provide the necessary coercive ‘stick’. But that will require two items in short supply—a degree of political unity in the Council and regional willingness to implement the embargo.
In the absence of any political solution in South Sudan, UN peacekeeping remains the default mechanism to physically protect some of the tens of thousands of civilians seeking a reprieve from the current conflict. Australia is among the more than 60 countries providing uniformed personnel as peacekeepers to UNMISS. And like all those countries, we have an interest in ensuring UNMISS can fulfil its mandate, protect the civilian population and support efforts to find a political resolution to the conflict.
The refugee problem in New York
Every September, many of the world’s presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers descend on New York City for a few days. They come to mark the start of the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly, to give speeches that tend to receive more attention at home than they do in the hall, and—in the diplomatic equivalent of speed dating—to pack as many meetings as is humanly possible into their schedules.
There is also a tradition of designating a specific issue or problem for special attention, and this year will be no exception. September 19 will be devoted to discussing the plight of refugees (as well as migrants) and what more can and should be done to help them.
It is a good choice, as there are now an estimated 21 million refugees in the world. Originally defined as those who leave their countries because of fear of persecution, refugees now also include those forced to cross borders because of conflict and violence. This number is up sharply from just five years ago, owing primarily to chaos across the Middle East, with Syria alone the source of nearly one in every four refugees in the world today.
The attention of the UN and its member states does not reflect only the increase in numbers or heightened humanitarian concern over the suffering of the men, women, and children who have been forced to leave their homes and their countries. It also stems from the impact of the flow of refugees on destination countries, where it has upended politics in one country after another.
In Europe, the rise of political opposition to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Brexit vote, and the growing appeal of nationalist parties on the right can all be attributed to real and imagined fears stemming from refugees. The economic and social burden on countries such as Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and Pakistan, all of which are being asked to house large numbers of refugees, is immense. There are also security concerns about whether some of the refugees are actual or potential terrorists.
In principle, there are four ways to do something meaningful about the refugee problem. The first and most fundamental is to take steps to ensure that people need not flee their countries or, if they have, to create conditions that permit them to return home.
But this would require that countries do more to end the fighting in places like Syria. Alas, there is no consensus on what this would require, and even where some agreement exists, sufficient will to commit the required military and economic resources does not. The result is that the number of refugees in the world will grow.
The second way to help refugees is to ensure their safety and wellbeing. Refugees are particularly vulnerable when they are on the move. And after they arrive, many fundamental needs—including health, education, and physical safety—must be met. Here, the challenge for host states is to guarantee adequate provision of essential services.
A third component of any comprehensive approach to refugees involves allocating economic resources to help deal with the burden. The United States and Europe (both European Union member governments and the EU itself) are the largest contributors to the UN High Commission on Refugees, but many other governments are unwilling to commit their fair share. They ought to be named and shamed.
The final aspect of any refugee program involves finding places for them to go. The political reality, though, is that most governments are unwilling to commit to take in any specific number or percentage of the world’s refugees. Again, those who do their fair share (or more) should be singled out for praise—and those who do not for criticism.
All of which brings us back to New York City. Sadly, there is little reason to be optimistic. The 22-page draft ‘outcome document’ to be voted on at the September 19 High Level meeting—long on generalities and principles and short on specifics and policy—would do little, if anything, to improve refugees’ lot. A meeting scheduled for the next day, to be hosted by US President Barack Obama, may accomplish something on the funding side, but little else.
The refugee issue provides yet another glaring example of the gap between what needs to be done to meet a global challenge and what the world is prepared to do. Alas, the same holds true for most such challenges, from terrorism and climate change to weapons proliferation and public health.
We can expect to hear a lot of talk in New York next month about the international community’s responsibility to do more to help existing refugees and address the conditions driving them to flee their homelands. But the cold truth is that there is little ‘community’ at the international level. So long as that remains the case, millions of men, women, and children will face a dangerous present and a future of little prospect.
Nuclear weapons: are we creeping closer to a ban?
It’s difficult to keep track of disarmament fora. So readers could be forgiven for overlooking the fact that the UN’s Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) on Taking Forward Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations will hold its third meeting in Geneva in mid-August. The group—which has already met during February and May—is a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly. Its task is to finalise a set of recommendations which ‘substantively address concrete effective legal measures, legal provisions and norms that will need to be concluded to attain and maintain a world without nuclear weapons’. Moreover, the OEWG is also meant to come up with a series of recommendations to facilitate multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations, including transparency measures, enhancements to nuclear weapon safety and security, and measures to raise awareness of the humanitarian consequences that would result from any nuclear detonation.
That’s no small task. Frankly, nuclear disarmament looks harder now than it did 20 years ago. Much of the first task—some describe it as ‘filling the legal gap’ in the NPT—has turned upon the question of whether the time’s ripe for a treaty banning nuclear weapons. That would be a huge step, made more challenging by the fact that none of the nine current nuclear weapon states seems at all engaged in the UN process. Previously, even when nuclear weapon states have been willing participants, nuclear arms reductions have proved to be fantastically complex exercises. And those negotiations have essentially been bilateral, not multilateral. It’s hard to believe that much progress can be made towards actual nuclear disarmament simply by delegitimising the weapons. Putting it bluntly, we don’t accept the premise underpinning the OEWG’s activity—that what’s essentially a strategic problem can be solved by passing a law against it.
Swirling through the OEWG’s thinking about legal measures—supposedly made ‘concrete’ and ‘effective’ by the enforcement power of the UN Security Council, the permanent five of which are nuclear weapon states—is a strong theme that nuclear weapons are inhuman. Efforts to ban nuclear weapons are founded on the proposition that the humanitarian consequences of their use are intolerable. The campaign is centred on the Humanitarian Pledge movement which Austria initiated in 2014 and pushes for efforts to ‘stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons’. An UNGA resolution says that they have unacceptable humanitarian consequences because of their ‘immense and uncontrollable destructive capability and indiscriminate nature’.
UNGA voted on the Humanitarian Pledge in July 2015, adopting the resolution with 139 ‘yes’ votes and 29 ‘no’s’, with 17 countries abstaining. Australia voted no, as did Canada, Germany, South Korea and all the P5—except China which abstained, as did Japan and North Korea. Let’s face it, there’s never going to be a majority voting against it. But that doesn’t make Australia’s position wrong. None of the pledgers are nuclear weapon states, nor the beneficiaries of an extended nuclear assurance, so the pledge is merely the strategic equivalent of teetotallers swearing off alcohol.
By what standards do we judge that nuclear weapons are ‘inhuman’? Obviously, the test is rather more than simply one of whether they kill, maim and injure people. All weapons do that. Rather the tests are the classical ones from just war theory. Do the weapons allow for a sense of proportionality? Do they allow for a sense of discrimination between military and civilian targets? Does any sort of use impose unacceptable costs on the broader international community?
The problem is that the answers to those questions depend on how nuclear weapons are used. Most use is, of course, gravitational, not direct: that is, the weapons generate their most helpful effects merely by existing. In direct use, consequences would vary. Obviously, a large warhead dropped on a city would have far greater humanitarian consequences than, say, a tactical nuclear weapon used against a naval target at sea. The first case would be the equivalent of a modern-day Hiroshima; the second an instance of nuclear use in a limited war scenario. True, even the use of a low-yield warhead in an overtly military context would still be ominous—and not least because such use would be freighted with escalation dangers. Still, the actual use might kill no more than a conventional weapon used in the same setting.
Conversely, the fire-bombing of cities in World War 2—Tokyo and Dresden, for example—showed that large numbers of civilians could be killed using conventional weapons. To quote Robert Jervis, the nuclear revolution ‘magnifies in force and compresses in time imperatives that already were present’ in pre-nuclear days. But that magnification and compression ensures nuclear weapons are special and terrible—which is why the mere threat of their use is so effective at inducing caution among decision-makers. Yes, in the long run we should be looking to a world beyond nuclear weapons. But that will take time and effort, not just a vote at the UN.