oStatement delivered by Ambassador Ranko Vilovic, Charge d'affaires a.i. of the Republic of Croatia to the United Nations, on the UN Security Council debate on Peacekeeping operations.
Mr. President,
First of all, we would like to thank the Turkish presidency of the Security Council for convening this important debate on an issue that commands special importance for Security Council member states and the general membership alike. No other issue in the United Nations brings together so many branches of its everyday work, which has naturally left it in the focus of this august body for many years. Let me also use this opportunity to thank Under Secretaries-General Le Roy and Malcorra for their interventions.
We are not saying anything innovative when we affirm that the international landscape has changed sharply over the past 20 years and with it the nature of contemporary conflict. Traditional peacekeeping as we have known it has also gone through its transformations and reincarnations, and is nowadays becoming increasingly more robust and multidimensional in its approach. Peacekeeping missions are moving away from the, if I may say, old way of thinking of separating forces and monitoring ceasefires, and are increasingly being tasked with rebuilding societies from the ground up. This is a reality and we commend both the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Department of Field Support for factoring this new reality into their organizational and operational preparations.
Cognizant of this new reality on the ground, and the need to strengthen unity and cohesion amongst all stakeholders in order to make the future of peacekeeping as successful as possible, especially in light of the challenges we are faced with, we would like to highlight some issues that we feel need further attention.
Whenever approaching the question of contemporary peacekeeping in a holistic manner, it would be remiss not to mention the Brahimi Report and other UN documents that have followed, including the recently distributed Executive Brief of the DPKO/DFS New Horizon non-paper. We support the guidelines provided in these documents, especially given that the UN acts under the premise that conflict cannot be resolved first and foremost by military means, but rather seeks to address the problems at their root causes. Croatia fully supports the standpoint according to which the building of lasting peace and security can only be built through adherence to the three interlinked and firmly grounded basic pillars of security, development and the protection of human rights.
Even when taking this into consideration, it should also be stressed that there is no “one size fits all” type of peacekeeping operation. Each new mission needs to be tailored according to concrete conditions as well as the political realities on the ground. A clear political strategy and integrated mission planning is to this end extremely important, and should include the provision of a precisely defined mandate with clear and achievable benchmarks and goals, and a clear exit strategy.
As stated, Croatia believes that the most promising approach to peacekeeping operations is an integrated or comprehensive approach, one which will bring together the various UN departments and agencies in a common goal. The contemporary role of peacekeeping is not only to reestablish and provide continual security in their areas of operation, but is ultimately there to enable governments and societies to resolve their own problems in a self-sufficient manner, so that the role of the international community can gradually be reduced to that of advisor. Local ownership should be the overarching demand of both the host country and the international community alike. This also includes, of course, the development of local forces, the importance of which we have seen first hand during visits of the Security Council to some countries.
That being said, development is of crucial importance for the eventual long term success of peacekeeping operations. If the foundations for future prosperity are not built into the mandates of peacekeeping operations from the beginning, and by this we mean long term issues like the protection of civilians, the strengthening of civil society, security sector reform, including the strengthening of police and judicial forces, as well as economic revitalization and development, repeated recourse to violence can and is quite often probable. Croatia has paid a great deal of attention to these issues, and has in fact deployed some civil sector experts to places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Croatia considers the training and education of peacekeeping personnel as another key aspect to the eventual success of any given peacekeeping operation. Since 2001 Croatia has conducted education and pre-deployment training of Croatian and foreign officers at the UN certified International Military Operations Training Centre near Zagreb, while a similar international course has since 2006 been regularly organized for UN police officers (UNPOC) and this course has been certified by the UN since 2008.
Croatia particularly supports all the proposals aimed at greater coordination and strengthening of relations between the Security Council and troop and police contributing countries. This aspect is crucial as TCCs and PCCs must have confidence that their contribution will be entirely appreciated and that conditions will be created for them to fully express their respective interests. It is clearly counterproductive to plan a peacekeeping operation without the unambiguous support from a core number of nations willing to provide troops for the proposed mission.
Croatia also believes that in order to share the burden imposed by peacekeeping, the UN should strengthen its cooperation with regional organizations, as well as improve cooperation between its and other international agencies active on the ground. Since the majority of UN peacekeeping takes place in Africa, we believe that the cooperation between the UN and AU and ECOWAS is particularly important.
Before finishing we would like to highlight one final issue, especially in light the ever increasing burdens, both financial and logistical, being put on UN peacekeeping and its troop contributors. Much has been written and discussed on the issue of multidimensional versus traditional peacekeeping, but little work has been done on the possibility of promoting the idea of preventative peacekeeping. We have one concrete example, that of UNPREDEP in FYR Macedonia, which itself proved to be very successful in diffusing a tense political and military situation and preventing the outbreak of wider conflict. We need to ask ourselves the perennial question of whether prevention is better than cure, and how much can we potentially save foremost in lives as well as financial and other logistical resources if we are to act preemptively in situations that have the potential to seriously challenge international peace and security.
Thank you, Mr. President.
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