August 19, 2022
Earlier this month, the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) published, “Protecting Civilians While Avoiding Harm: The Implementation of ‘Do No Harm’ by UN Peacekeepers in South Sudan,” which examines the ways in which the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) can do to more to create a better environment for the protection of civilians. The piece, written by CIVIC’s Daniel Levine-Spound, not only provides a template for how the UN can contribute to the creation of a better protective environment in South Sudan, but also contains a number of suggestions that would be useful elsewhere in Africa as well as around the globe.
The concept of a “do no harm” (DNH) approach, which is embedded in the United Nations’ 2019 policy on the Protection of Civilians in United Nations Peacekeeping, outlines that individual, “must be mindful in their activities and engagement with individuals and communities not to expose civilians to risk or to cause harm, including by exposing civilians to possible reprisals for cooperation with the mission.” Furthermore, the concept states that confidentiality must be observed when using sources in the community; that military and police operations take all necessary precautions to prevent and minimize harm to civilians; and that decision makers need to exhibit zero tolerance for sexual exploitation or abuse by peacekeepers.
Despite this definition being part of the UN’s policy guidance, Levine-Spound argues that more could be done to mainstream the DNH concept in the peacekeeping context, as certain activities UNMISS engages in could pose an elevated risk of harm to communities despite the mission’s best intentions. In that light, it is worth taking a look at “do no harm” in a peacekeeping context; its applicability in the current environment in South Sudan; and an examination of where else that putting “do no harm” into action could pay dividends.
Do No Harm in South Sudan
According to Levine-Spound’s analysis, despite the addition of “do no harm” into the 2019 UN POC policy, the concept’s application remains more limited in the peacekeeping context compared to its more pervasive use in planning for humanitarian interventions. The concept, which is closely related to the notion of “conflict sensitivity”—defined by the international non-profit, the CDA Collaborative, as, “the practice of understanding how aid interacts with conflict in a particular context, to mitigate unintended negative effects, and to influence conflict positively wherever possible, through humanitarian, development and/or peacebuilding interventions,”—understands that merely introducing aid into a conflict situation risks tipping a delicate balance of power, which can lead to conflict and violence. In that light, a “conflict sensitive” approach that tries to “do no harm” would be one that takes into account both the possible positive and negative impacts of a given intervention in terms of its potential impact on conflict dynamics; the overall context in which aid is provided; and how the conflict dynamics ultimately impact the outside intervention.
Furthermore, instituting a “do no harm” approach is distinct from the UN peacekeeping policy’s civilian harm mitigation obligations, which generally relates more to how peacekeepers employ the use of force during their interventions. Although there exists a good degree of overlap between the two concepts—and a DNH policy would obviously include restrictions on the use of force by peacekeepers—civilian harm mitigation applies more to peacekeeping operations involving possible kinetic engagements.
Either way, application of a “do no harm” policy is advised in South Sudan due to the number of potential flashpoints for civilian harm that exist in the country. In particular, while most are aware that South Sudan is still struggling to rebuild state capacity following the brutal civil war in 2013, fewer may be aware of how, as the violence has ebbed, the UN Security Council has shifted the nature of UNMISS operations. For instance, in 2020, the UN began to transition the Protection of Civilians (POC) sites that it had set up at the outbreak of the war in 2013 into internally displaced persons (IDP) camps to be administered by the South Sudanese government. This came despite a continued sense of impunity amongst the soldiers of the South Sudan Army, some of whose members are accused of illegal detentions, torture, and summary executions.
Furthermore, efforts to address this pervasive sense of impunity have largely failed to have an impact on the South Sudanese armed forces, making their continued custodianship of displaced persons camps even more troubling. Moreover, with ongoing violence in the country and political elites frequently putting the brakes on implementation of the 2018 peace agreement, UNMISS must be very careful—in implementing its mandate to, amongst other things, “foster a secure environment for the safe, informed, voluntary, and dignified return, relocation, resettlement, or integration into host communities of the millions of people displaced by the conflicts in South Sudan and in neighboring countries, including those who fled to UN bases and are now living in redesignated POC sites,”–not to provide support to South Sudanese leadership that eventually ends up harming the civilian population.
For instance, while the UN Mission has a mandate to provide support and capacity building to state actors such as the country’s law enforcement actors or its court system, Levine-Spound argues that such UN support could end up being used to empower a South Sudanese National Security Service (NSS) that has been provided with overly broad powers under the country’s 2014 National Security Service Act; which its officers have been accused of abusing in order to, “target people deemed to be anti-government, including human rights defenders, journalists, opposition party members and suspected rebels,” as well as, “people accused of fraud, petty offenses, or at the behest of individuals fulfilling personal vendettas.” Therefore, without further safeguards, UNMISS support could contribute to even further abuses committed by the NSS.
The 2020 Independent Strategic Review of UNMISS contained similar complaints about the behavior of the South Sudan National Police Service (SSNPS), which has seen officers and police stations, “lack the basic infrastructure and equipment required to perform their roles, such as electricity, forms for recording crimes and a secure space for storing files.” As a result, “low-level extortion by underpaid police officers is common in South Sudan and the police service remains heavily militarized in some areas of the country.”
To give an example of how UNMISS’s provision of assistance to state security forces can still carry risks, Levine-Spound looks at the case of the Joint Police Force (JPF) in Bentiu, which was tasked with taking over policing duties from UNMISS officers at the POC site there when it was redesignated as a site for internally displaced persons back in 2020. As part of that effort, UNMISS completed construction of a new police post for thirty-six South Sudanese officers serving with both the SSNPS and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-In Opposition, provided training, organized joint patrols, and offered the JPF logistical support. Despite this, both the people in the camps and humanitarian actors were concerned about whether the JPF will actually protect civilians, with one civilian Levine-Spound spoke to saying of the JPF that, “I don’t trust them, because some of them are among the looters, you find them in the day wearing uniforms but at night they can attack and they loot.”
Therefore, Levine-Spound argues, it is vital that UNMISS incorporate a “do no harm” approach when providing support to the JPF, SSNPS, or the South Sudan National Security Services. Given the overall weakness of the South Sudan justice system, even the construction of new detention camps to alleviate the poor living conditions of South Sudanese prisoners could be misused by security services to detain children or as future torture sites.
In order to protect against such abuses, UNMISS needs to rigorously assess and monitor the ways its support is used in order to determine the long-term effects of its assistance. Therefore, alongside technical support, such as the establishment of new prisons, UNMISS must also assist decision makers in implementing needed legislative reforms to reestablish the rule of law in South Sudan. In one example of how the UN can assist part of that effort, UNMISS might decide to scale up support to organizations that provide services for survivors and witnesses testifying in South Sudan’s mobile court hearings.
Another risk area that UNMISS must be cognizant of is when assisting efforts to address the relocation, resettlement, and integration into host communities of IDPS and refugees. With over 300,000 refugees and over 2,000,0000 internally displaced persons living in South Sudan, and in a, “context where land rights are disputed, comprehensive records on land ownership are lacking, and land disputes are often deeply connected to the ethnic and political dimensions of the conflict,” finding homes for nearly two and a half million people is an extremely delicate and difficult task. As such, even when attempting to assist the South Sudan government in resolving the problem, there is a risk that a lack of contextual knowledge by UNMISS personnel can lead to abuse of the return process by political actors in South Sudan. For instance, while 2021 saw the movement of thousands of IDPs from Melut County to Baliet County in Upper Nile State, facilitated by UNMISS logistical support, some humanitarian outfits told Levine-Spound that given contested land rights in the Baliet County area, such movements could provoke negative humanitarian consequences in the long term as political actors attempt to ethnically reengineer the region for future political gain. .
Ultimately, when considering repatriation, the primary concern must be that such returns are truly voluntary, which is difficult given the political pressure surrounding returns, as there are fears that government officials might use forced returns in order to, “ build up demographic majorities for their constituencies with a view to a future election, while ensuring that other groups – more likely to vote against them – remain displaced.”
Finally, yet another area in which UN Mission’s must take extra care is when conducting any and all interactions with civilians. When missions interact with civilians, they can expose them to the risk of even accidental reprisal from those forces in the country that oppose the foreign intervention. Furthermore, Levine-Spound notes, this risk is particularly elevated when UNMISS assists efforts in addressing sexual or gender-based violence (SGBV) or conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). In such cases, the societal stigma attached to survivors of sexual assault brings with it an added duty of care on the behalf of peacekeepers. As Levine-Spound expounds, international actors like UNMISS can avoid re-traumatizing victims by confidentially sharing information with other relevant groups and ensuring that their programming takes a survivor-centered approach to dealing with the aftermath of such violence.
Mainstreaming “Do No Harm” in UN Peacekeeping Missions
Balancing a philosophy of robust engagement with civilians against a strategy of “do no harm” can be a tough circle to square, as interactions with foreign peacekeepers can ultimately be a dangerous undertaking for civilians in conflict-related settings. However, in recent years, the UN has strengthened implementation of its Human Rights Due Diligence Policy (HRDDP), prohibiting UN support to government security forces when there is real risk of those forces harming civilians or committing violations of international law.
However, Levine-Spound argues that more can be done, with the UN needing to increase the number of staff dedicated to implementation of the Human Rights Due Diligence Policy, increased monitoring of how exactly UN support is used by state forces, and ensuring that HRDDP is a part of the overall strategy of the Mission, rather than simply a bureaucratic exercise in box-ticking.
An example of how this can be done in practice is how UNMISS Civil Affairs Division staff adopted a community engagement strategy that established “do no harm” as a guiding principle and includes a “do no harm” checklist staff can use to help ensure community activities are done in a way that safeguards the civilian population. Furthermore, Levine-Spound notes that the Civil Affairs Division also has created templates that aid its officers in mapping both local stakeholders and the root causes of conflict in a given area in order to promote conflict sensitivity and a DNH philosophy in their actions on the ground.
However, Levine-Spound argues that beyond the Mission’s Civil Affairs Division and its Human Rights Division, conflict sensitivity in programmatic activities is more often applied on an ad hoc basis, based more on the specific experience and knowledge of particular practitioners rather than as a systemic element of the Mission’s organizational design. When coupled with the frequent turnover of personnel experienced at these missions, such institutional knowledge is hard to retain, and leads to a haphazard approach to DNH. Therefore, decision makers should take care to incorporate efforts like those of UNMISS’s Civil Affairs and Human Rights Divisions in order to make the mitigation of potential civilian harm an essential element of every aspect of the Mission.
In order to make better use of the UN’s Human Rights Due Diligence Policy, the UN must more stringently evaluate whether assistance recipients are likely to violate international law or commit human rights violations. If analysis shows such a scenario is likely, the UN must either withhold its support or come to an agreement with the host country to allow for more stringent monitoring of how UN assistance is eventually used, with the UN retaining the ability to withdraw any and all assistance if conditions are deemed unsatisfactory.
However, doing so will require a more robust commitment than the Mission has already demonstrated. As Levine-Spound points out, only two UNMISS Human Rights Division officers are tasked with HRDDP implementation, while other missions, such as MONUSCO in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have a dedicated secretariat devoted to implementing HRDDP. As such, it takes days for requests to be approved, compromising overall mission effectiveness and the overall implementation of the policy.
In incorporating such a philosophy, UNMISS could do more to improve how it monitors the support it provides, by, for example, ensuring that after it builds police stations, they are not used as torture sites or to indefinitely detain women or children. Such follow-up is vital, as, worryingly, Levine-Spound’s report notes a 2020 Office of Internal Oversight Services audit, which found that in 35 of 38 cases where UNMISS provided support to South Sudanese security forces, there was, “no subsequent follow-up by HRD and other relevant mission components on beneficiaries’ compliance with the required conditions,” with the oversight failure primarily due to the fact that insufficient staffing prevented a more investigation.
Finally, there is the issue that UNMISS rarely rejects support requests due to the Human Rights Due Diligence Policy process, largely because the process is seen as a technical safeguard rather than as an overarching process to guide strategic decision-making. Only by implementing the policy at the top level of the Mission Leadership Team, and as part of the overall strategic decision-making process for the Mission, can UN officials truly incorporate HRDDP into every aspect of Mission operations.
Ultimately, UN peacekeeping missions have both a moral and practical obligation to better incorporate a “do no harm” strategy into all elements of the assistance mission, as abuse of civilians at the hands of security forces reduces perceptions of government legitimacy. As Helmoed Heitman has written for the Africa Center for Strategic Studies’, “acceptance and trust by the people,” is a fundamental requirement for African security services, as, “without [it], effective operations against groups moving and operating among the people are not possible.”
Fundamentally, without the trust and acceptance of the people that they protect and serve, African security forces will not only be ineffective, but they are likely to engage in abuse against those same civilians they are ordered to protect. Similarly, without the trust of the civilian population, UN peacekeepers will be similarly ineffective and run the risk of exacerbating already difficult situations for the population on the ground.
While “do no harm” is a well-developed concept in the field of humanitarian assistance, it is often not as thoroughly inculcated in the world of militarized peacekeeping. In as fragile a context as South Sudan, “the credibility of UNMISS, and the United Nations more broadly, requires a “do no harm” approach, working with unified entities and balancing engagement between government and non-governmental actors,” as the 2020 UN Independent Strategic Review of UNMISS noted.
Do No Harm in Other United Nations Peacekeeping Missions in Africa
MINUSMA
However, as pointed out by the 2020 Independent Strategic Review, UNMISS is not the only mission where UN credibility could be bolstered by incorporating a “do no harm” approach from the top-down. In Mali, a 2022 UN report noted a 16% rise in civilian killings in the last six months of 2021, with jihadists, armed militias, and the Malian armed forces responsible for the deaths of close to 600 civilians last year. More disconcertingly, the Malian military was accused of being responsible for the deaths of at least twenty-five civilians and the arbitrary execution of at least seven civilians in one October 2021 incident. This came after violence against civilians was up in the first half of 2021 as well.
With Mali having already suspended the rotation of UN military and police forces following June’s renewal of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), and the Malian armed forces credibly accused of involvement in the massacre of Malian civilians–along with Russian Wagner mercenaries—it is perhaps a better time than ever to more fully incorporate a “do no harm” strategy into MINUSMA’s overall mandate as well as its operations.
While the protection of civilians makes a number of entries into the UN Security Council Resolution re-authorizing MINUSMA’s mandate, many of the references to civilians in the document exist as a reminder to Malian authorities that they bear primary responsibility for the protection of civilians, not the UN Mission, with the document’s general principles declaring that, “the second strategic priority of MINUSMA is to facilitate the implementation by Malian actors of a comprehensive politically-led strategy to protect civilians…”
However there are elements of the mandate renewal that are relevant to the protection of civilians, including a priority to, “to strengthen community engagement and protection mechanisms, including interaction with civilians, community outreach, reconciliation, mediation, support to the resolution of local and intercommunal conflicts and public information,” to, “take mobile, flexible, robust and proactive steps to protect civilians, including through the set-up of a Mobile Task Force, prioritizing the deployment of ground and air assets, as available, in areas where civilians are most at risk,” and to, “mitigate the risk to civilians before, during and after any military or police operation, including by tracking, preventing, minimizing, and addressing civilian harm resulting from the mission’s operations.”
Clearly, with the atrocities alleged to have been committed by the Malian armed forces, more will have to be done if the Mission is to actively ensure that it does nothing to further exacerbate the already difficult situation on the ground. More specifically, MINSUMA can do more to help address the, “intensification of violence by extremist groups, community-based armed groups and militias,” which has been seen in Mali in recent years by standing ready to proactively respond to incidences of civilian harm when they do occur. For instance, the United Nations must do more in order to improve the efficacy of its casualty evacuation procedure for non-UN civilians in order to demonstrate the Mission’s commitment to preventing and addressing civilian harm incidents.
Furthermore, the Mission could benefit from greater funding levels in order to meet the requirement that it increase its activities to protect civilians. Finally, the Mission must do more to build a staff that has, “the appropriate language skills to gather information, liaise with their colleagues, or build relations with their Malian counterparts,” as in Mali, “the sharing of information regarding potential threats and the coordination of responses have not always been performed in a formalized and consistent manner,” resulting in a situation where MINUSMA has been unable to, “accurately and preemptively identify threats to civilians.” Whether it is military service officers that are unable to fluently conduct briefings in English or police officials assigned to Regional Joint Operations Centers that are not bilingual, MINUSMA has had trouble filling required positions with individuals that speak the languages required to facilitate mission-critical information, which poses a risk that Mission officials will miss incidences of civilian abuse when they do occur.
What’s more, with the deterioration in relations between the junta in Bamako and the French government—resulting in the ultimate withdrawal of French forces from the country—MINUSMA peacekeepers will likely become the last line of defense between an increasingly brutal Malian armed force and a population that has already seen enough human suffering. As part of a renewed focus on “do no harm”, MINUSMA decision makers should also undertake a re-evaluation of their overall presence in the country. While the Malian authorities recently re-authorized UN troop rotations, France has already withdrawn from the country and Germany recently announced the suspension, until further notice, of its participation in MINUSMA in response to Malian authorities refusal to grant flyover rights for the rotation of personnel on the ground.
With the hostility exhibited by the military regime in Bamako towards the international troop presence, as well as the continued violence perpetrated by security forces against civilians, it is perhaps time to weigh a complete suspension of the overall UN Mission until a more democratic transition occurs, as continued UN presence and support to Malian security services risks creating a situation where state security forces and extremists target civilians cooperating with UN peacekeepers. If the UN does decide that the Mission must remain to assist the civilian populace, it must ensure that it carries out the investigations into alleged violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the Malian security forces that were necessitated under MINUSMA’s June 2022 mandate renewal. Furthermore, the Mission must do more to investigate and prosecute all credible allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse committed by peacekeepers.
MONUSCO
Another African UN Mission that could benefit by more fully integrating a “do no harm” approach into its programming is the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), which has been operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2010, but, in recent months, has seen a rising swell of opposition to its presence.
As noted by Daniel Levine-Spound and Niku Jafarnia in a June 2022 piece for Just Security, recent fighting between the DRC-based March 23 Movement (M23) and the Congolese Military (FARDC) has had deadly consequences for civilians, with the UN recording nearly 1,000 civilian deaths and over 150,000 displaced. This is, depressingly, merely a part of a regular pattern of violence in the region, as, since the early 1990s, “Congolese and foreign armies, as well as non-state armed groups, have committed countless crimes under international law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, and grave human rights abuses,” with too little done to, “hold human rights violators to account.”
As such, Levine-Spound and Jafarnia write, “in a reigning climate of impunity, the pattern of attacks against civilians has continued,” as, “M23 soldiers committed scores of violations of international law, including summary executions, rapes, and forced recruitment of children,” during their operations. Furthermore, the Just Security article notes that in addition, “FARDC soldiers committed dozens of rapes, including against girls as young as 13. In the town Minova, for instance, Congolese military and police officials fleeing M23 raped over 1,000 individuals over a ten day rampage in 2012,” and that, “Congolese government forces remain regularly responsible for over 40 percent of human rights violations recorded in the DRC each month.”
Despite these atrocities, MONUSCO has continued to train FARDC troops in combat tactics, which risks the UN being seen as complicit in any future attacks committed by those forces on Congolese civilians. Moreover, there is the overall issue that Congolese civilians often do not feel that UN peacekeepers are keeping them safe from armed groups; rather some feel that the peacekeepers have often been sources of instability and violence themselves. As such, you have a situation where Congolese civilians are out, actively protesting the presence of the UN Mission, with twenty-two year old protestor Clémence Zawadi telling a freelance journalist for The New Humanitarian that, “I demonstrated to express my disapproval at the actions of MONUSCO. It does things that would not be expected of it. [MONUSCO] came to secure us, but there is only insecurity. It has failed in its primary mission of protecting civilians.”
When it comes to MONUSCO’s implementation of a “do no harm” strategy, a central question that decision makers must ask themselves is whether the Mission has the right strategy for delivering peace and security to DRC. As noted by Robert U. Nagel, Katie Fin, and Julia Maenza in a May 2021 report for the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, MONUSCO’s approach to civilian protection—referred to as Protection by Projection and involving increased peacekeeper mobility and a proactive posture to allow for rapid deployments to high-risk areas in a crisis—is unsuitable for MONUSCO, as, “the mission does not have the resources to effectively respond, especially due to a lack of air assets and environmental factors that impact mobility depending on the seasons.” Essentially, this means that, “in many cases deployments are delayed, which means that the mission in many cases responds to incidents rather than preventing them.”
Furthermore, the Georgetown Institute authors also note that MONUSCO’s strategy fails to take into account women’s unique protection needs. As a result, their report finds that, “MONUSCO generally fails to protect civilians and respond quickly to alerts; peacekeepers sexually abuse and/or exploit local women, boys, and girls; and peacekeepers are distant from and disrespectful towards local civilians,” with MONUSCO mandates unreflective of conditions on the ground.
As such, if MONUSCO decision makers want to better incorporate a “do no harm” philosophy into their operations, the Mission Leadership Team must deal with language and culture barriers preventing engagement with local communities; a lack of trust from locals, which results in limited information sharing and sometimes even collusion against the mission; and a lack of within-mission support and follow-up, which results in requests from the local population that go unfulfilled, decreasing the local populations’ trust in the Mission.
Moreover, as argued by CIVIC’s Daniel Levine-Spound and Samuli Harju in a December 2020 blog post, when ultimately drawing down the mission in DRC, the UN must be careful to construct a timeline for withdrawal that keeps MONUSCO in the most conflict-affected provinces until the latest possible moment. The mission also can do more to strengthen its early warning system, mainstream the HRDDP amongst all MOUNSCO actors on the UN Country Team, plan the transition in coordination with local civil society actors, and evaluate the performance of the Force Intervention Brigade, which—as Adam Day of the United Nations University has written previously–has not achieved its goals and which has allowed the rest of MOUNSCO’s POC efforts to atrophy.
Final Thoughts
The protection of civilians should be the sine qua non for all UN peacekeeping operations, as violence committed against civilians is not only morally reprehensible, but counterproductive for building trust between the state and local communities, as well. However, the only way that the protection of civilians can be fully incorporated into all UN peacekeeping missions is to do so from the Mission Leadership Team on down, designing the entire intervention with a “do no harm” strategy at the heart of all programmatic activities. Whether it is providing training to unaccountable partner-country troops or failing to investigate and prosecute incidents of civilian harm by blue helmets, UN missions continually create self-inflicted wounds by their failure to understand how all of their actions—and lack thereof—impact local civilian populations.
Too often, it seems, the civilian population of countries receiving UN peacekeeping assistance are treated as afterthoughts, with the wills and whims of the host-nation seemingly of overriding import to decision makers back in New York. However, while the protection of civilians has received a great deal more attention by UN officials in recent years—as seen in the mandate renewals of MINUSMA and UNMISS—more still needs to be done to systematically incorporate “do no harm” into all UN activities abroad.
Therefore, moving forward, all UN peacekeeping operations should carry with them a requirement for planners to consider how each and every action taken can have unintended impacts on the local civilian population. From more stringent monitoring of partner-country military units trained by UN peacekeepers, to the monitoring of how facilities built by UN personnel are used over the long-term, decision makers must understand that every action in conflict-affected areas carries with it secondary and tertiary consequences, which may not be immediately foreseeable. By mainstreaming the UN’s Human Rights Due Diligence Policy as a tool to reduce and prevent risk, UN missions will also better be able to protect civilians that are supposed to be under their care. Until, and unless, they do so, not only will UN peacekeeping missions not be embracing a “do no harm” approach, they risk exacerbating already dire situations that exist in Africa and throughout the rest of the world.
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