CIVILIAN POLICE IN U.N. PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS

Introduction

Lester B. Pearson

So wrote former Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1957. Although Pearson’s words may be considered inappropriate in the politically correct 1990s, the implication is strikingly relevant in the post-Cold War era, particularly in the context of postconflict peace building. As with many problems facing an increasingly global community today, the causes of conflicts may be clearly identified, but the solutions are much harder to come by. In his 1992 report, “An Agenda for Peace,” former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali suggested, “Peacemaking and peacekeeping operations, to be truly successful, must come to include comprehensive efforts to identify and support structures which will tend to consolidate peace and advance a sense of confidence and well being among people.”¹ Indeed, the international community has become increasingly aware that without a fair, functioning, and transparent criminal justice system, of which law enforcement agencies are an essential part, there is little chance for meaningful lasting peace in divided communities.

With the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, threats to peace have taken on a new character. The fear of nuclear war, which ironically imposed an awesome stability on the international system, has been replaced by unpredictable “brush-fire” conflicts, which are much more likely to be intrastate than interstate.

This transformation of the international system had obvious implications for the role of U.N. peacekeeping. The traditional function of “holding the line” between opposing forces and supervising a truce has been superseded by more complex and more risky roles. Almost all peacekeeping operations before 1989 involved relatively simple situations where the potential combatants were easily identifiable, and the task of policing a buffer zone was relatively straightforward.²

Today, peacekeepers are called upon to serve in a complex, often tense milieu of domestic conflict, one largely characterized by civil war and ethnic rivalry. The roles of peacekeepers have come to include a wide range of confidence-building measures, such as holding of elections and restructuring government institutions.

As a vital part of this challenge to restore and nurture confidence and well being among people in divided communities, the UNCIVPOL are responsible for monitoring, reconstructing, and restructuring some of the elements of the national criminal justice system. From local police forces to the courts to even the prison systems, a fair and effective justice sector is at the heart of civil society and as such is now often the focus of U.N. peacekeeping efforts.

UNCIVPOL in a Peacekeeping Mission

Philosophy of CIVPOL

Each U.N. Civilian Police Mission is guided by a similar objective: ensuring that local law enforcement officers and institutions are respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms.

In “first-generation” peacekeeping operations, U.N. personnel were deployed as impartial referees. During these missions, only U.N. military troops were deployed, and they frequently assumed police duties, including riot control. Only two peacekeeping operations prior to 1989 contained U.N. civilian police components, both dating from the early 1960s. The U.N. operation in the Congo (1960-64) drew on Ghanian and Nigerian police for a few months, and the Cyprus operation (1964 to the present) originally included a 175-person U.N. civilian police unit,³ which was the first to come under the now familiar term “UNCIVPOL,” but which was reduced to 35 by the late 1970s.⁴ By and large, therefore, most operations focused on monitoring the military forces of opposing states. Thus, U.N. peacekeeping operations were composed of “blue helmets” rather than “blue berets.”⁵ Since 1990, however, a CIVPOL component has become an integral part of most U.N. operations, and in the case of Bosnia, it is the primary focus of U.N. involvement.⁶

The “classic” UNCIVPOL concept was to draw experienced police officers from Member States, deploy them to troubled areas and, through various mandated responsibilities (some more realistic than others), expect them to perform a host of ostensibly impartial activities aimed at creating the law and order conditions necessary for lasting peace.

Unlike military personnel, CIVPOL usually work and live in the local community, in many cases sharing accommodations with a local family; hence, in many ways, they are the eyes and ears of the peacekeeping operation. UNCIVPOL has their own command structure within the overall context of the mission headed by a U.N.-appointed Commissioner (with the exception of U.N. Peackeeping Force in Cyprus, where UNCIVPOL comes under military command). In the planning stage of the U.N. Angola Verification Mission III (UNAVEM III), bringing the CIVPOL component again under the Military Force Commander was considered. In hindsight, this would have been an incorrect decision.⁷

Although both civilian police and the military form the uniformed part of peacekeeping operations, there are significant cultural differences between them. The traditional role of the military is to provide territorial security against armed attacks from outside. They are unit and group oriented, with emphasis on purely military operations. In peacekeeping operations, their role is mainly related to demobilization of forces; supervision on cessation of hostilities; and disarmament of warring factions and providing security for the mission.

The traditional role of a police force is to provide internal security by enforcing law and order. The focus of CIVPOL activity centers primarily on relationships with local police and civilians and requires a different mindset. The role of police in peacekeeping is almost the same as traditional local policing, with one important exception: CIVPOL in a peacekeeping operation (PKO) normally has no law enforcement powers. There are very good reasons why CIVPOL normally is not responsible for the enforcement of law and order: this is par excellence a responsibility of local authorities. Neither they nor CIVPOL-contributing governments are inclined to accept that such responsibilities be assumed by the United Nations; the costs would be prohibitive; and the risks of casualties and escalation would be great. However, when “civilian police” arrive in a war-torn country where the local institutions of law and order are not working properly, there is an understandable tendency for the local population to expect CIVPOL to assume an authoritative role and correct the situation. This perception must be addressed by ensuring that the local population understands the limitations of the CIVPOL mandate.

Notwithstanding their lack of law enforcement authority, CIVPOL can and do undertake tasks that place them in difficult and dangerous situations. CIVPOL often have to operate outside the bounds of normal community policing and are thus exposed to confrontation with one or more of the parties. An example is the checkpoint policy introduced by the U.N. IPTF in Bosnia in order to ensure implementation of the freedom of movement provisions of the Dayton Agreement.⁸ Under this policy, IPTF requires the removal of unlicensed checkpoints established by the parties and, if they do not comply, calls in the NATO-led SFOR to remove the checkpoints, by force if necessary. This policy has an obvious advantage and an obvious risk: it will be good for the peace process if the parties can be persuaded by IPTF to permit freedom of movement rather than being forced by SFOR to do so; but when IPTF is obliged to ask SFOR to use force, it puts at risk its relations with the local police force concerned and thus its ability to carry out other parts of its mandate that require the daily cooperation of that force. Thus, a decision has to be taken on whether higher priority should be given to local police reform or to enforcement of freedom of movement.

Another reason for not giving UNCIVPOL law enforcement powers is that the police are part of the justice package (public administration, police, prosecutor, judges, prison system). If one of those five institutions is not in place, which is often the case in a troubled area, there is a huge problem. In the last phase of the mission in Cambodia, U.N. police were given powers of arrest, with a special U.N. Prosecutor and a prison that was built and secured by personnel of the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). However, no judge was prepared to sentence Cambodians. As a result those individuals were put in prison, sometimes for more than 3 months, without being brought before a judge, which obviously is a significant violation of human rights and led to allegations of abuse against the United Nations.⁹

Mandates and Tasks of CIVPOL

Mandates of UNCIVPOL have varied widely, although the overriding objective has not altered. The most common and successful CIVPOL mandates have included:

The primary duty of U.N. police is monitoring, which means ensuring local police carry out their tasks without discrimination against any individual and with full respect for human rights of all persons in the mission area. Tasks evolving from the monitoring function are:

Implementing a U.N. CIVPOL Mission

It was with the 1964 UNCIVPOL concept in mind that the United Nations initiated in Namibia in 1989 its first large-scale civilian police deployment. In essence, the U.N. Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) mandate was to monitor the local police forces and to assist in creating the necessary conditions for the March 21, 1990, elections. Unlike the U.N. Forces in Cyprus (UNFICYP) mission, where the United Nations had the relative luxury of only 35 well-prepared monitors, the sheer size of the Namibia operation (drawing 1,500 police from 25 countries¹⁰) required assistance from Member States with little or no experience of policing in a U.N. peacekeeping domain. Although in general the UNTAG mission was considered relatively successful, it clearly illustrated that without adequate preparation deployed civilian police were often functionally ineffective. Unfortunately, the lessons identified with the large-scale UNTAG deployment were to be repeated with successive large-scale police deployments in the early mid-1990s.¹¹

Because there has been a major change in the types of conflicts that the United Nations is being enlisted to confront, most peacekeeping operations since 1989 concern not the monitoring of politics across borders, but rather the politics within borders. Whereas once peacekeepers were situated solely between two combatants who had agreed to a cease-fire and were rarely engaged in offensive action, “second-generation” operations are involved in a variety of activities associated with nation building and peace enforcement.

Reflecting this change, there has been a sharp expansion in the presence and responsibilities of U.N. civilian police. Because most of the recent peacekeeping operations have involved an attempt to foster political reconciliation and to establish democratic law enforcement institutions, the role of the U.N. civilian police has grown in importance.

In February 1995 there were 1,325 police officers deployed in various U.N. Missions.¹² This number increased to 2,998 by July 1997,¹³ drawn from 53 countries and deployed in seven missions. The largest mission is UNIPTF in Bosnia-Herzegovina with an authorized strength of 2,027.¹⁴

General View

At the end of July 1997, the President of the U.N. Security Council made a statement emphasizing the increasing role and special functions of civilian police in U.N. missions.

In this statement, the following important aspects are worth mentioning:

This statement underlines the demanding challenges facing UNCIVPOL. To meet these challenges several issues, discussed below, must be addressed.

Recruitment Standards

During the last few years, recruitment standards have been strengthened to include the following requirements:

Further, recruitment efforts are now targeted toward specialized skills in a variety of fields, like judges, lawyers, investigators and computer specialists.

Language Problems

Probably the most glaring issue confronting UNCIVPOL has been monitors having little or no English language fluency. Although the United Nations required that monitors “had the ability to communicate in the official mission language”¹⁷ (usually English¹⁸), this requirement has often been ignored. It was not uncommon for monitors to arrive in the theater of operations barely able to write their names on the forms required for their identification cards.¹⁹ The reasons behind this were many and varied ranging from Member States (and individual monitors) simply unable to afford expensive English language training courses to monitors being sent on mission as political favors regardless of their language ability. On a recent visit to Nepal, a U.N. Selection Assistance Team (SAT) discovered that, in an attempt to meet required English language standards, some police officers were spending the equivalent of a full year’s salary enrolling in English language courses.²⁰ The lack of fluency in the mission language translates directly into lack of effectiveness on the ground, which has seriously hampered successive UNCIVPOL missions. Monitors lacking the necessary language skills found it difficult to write even the simplest of reports, often sending in copies of previous reports reading “situation calm, patrolling proceeding as normal” or “NTR”—nothing to report— regardless of the situation on the ground. These same monitors had difficulty understanding spoken and written instructions and were largely unable to communicate with the local population through interpreters. In addition to problems with the official mission language, some monitors even had difficulty communicating in the official language of their home country, further complicating an already unsatisfactory situation.

Various attempts have been made to address the language issue. In 1994, UNCIVPOL Commissioner for the UNPROFOR, Michael O’Reily, RCMP, initiated a simple English language test (consisting of a number of multiple choice questions) that monitors had to pass on arrival in Zagreb.²¹ Although the test was a step in the right direction, it was not long before contingents were arriving with memorized answers, and cheating during the testing procedure was not uncommon.²² All too often the real work in police stations was left to those monitors possessing adequate language skills, which tended to create resentment toward those without, who either did the best with their limited skills or tended to withdraw both personally and professionally in the station.²³

Driving Problems

The second major issue confronting civilian police in the 1990s was poor driving skills. In every mission, from UNTAG in Namibia to IPTF in Bosnia-Herzegovina, there has been a significant disparity in driving abilities ranging from excellent to absolutely appalling. As with poor language skills, this has seriously hindered monitors ability to perform in the mission area. Not only have they posed a safety risk to themselves and others, they also added extra strain to fellow monitors who had to assume driving responsibilities. In addition, frequent accidents have created extra burdens on already “thin” logistical resources. In the current IPTF mission, as many as one-third of vehicles are out of order²⁴ largely because of traffic accidents. Some monitors have arrived without even knowing the basic rudiments of driving. As with language skills, the reasons for poor driving are varied, ranging from an acute lack of access to vehicles in some Member States, to driving in unfamiliar vehicles and conditions, to driving on a different side of the road, to having driven only with a police-provided chauffeur. Unlike language skills, however, poor driving skills can be, and often are, life threatening. From the inception of the U.N. missions in the former Yugoslavia until December 1995, over 250 United Nations personnel were killed and 1,900 injured—slightly over one- third were from traffic accidents.²⁵ Compounding this driving problem is the poor quality of many U.N. vehicles.

Cultural Tension

There have been tensions caused by mixing police from many different cultures. Often there have been as many as 15 to 20 different nationalities working in the same station, bringing with them differing policing traditions, religious belief systems, working ethics, hygiene standards, eating habits, and agendas. In a training needs assessment (TNA) conducted by the UNPROFOR Training Management Unit in September 1995, many monitors identified the issue of working within a multicultural station environment as the most pressing issue that needed to be addressed through training at a station level.²⁶ One Finnish monitor interviewed as part of the TNA was appalled when, upon visiting a police station in Knin, Croatia, he witnessed the local Serb militia beating a detainee. His UNCIVPOL partner at the time was not fazed by the beating, seeing it as a necessary part of the interrogation process. Another interview revealed toilet habits as a source of frustration in one particular station, with one monitor continually cracking the toilet seat as a result of standing and squatting instead of sitting.²⁷

Planning

While Member States must assume much of the responsibility for poor language and driving skills of the monitors, U.N. Headquarters has also been found deficient in its own UNCIVPOL premission planning and logistical support. This has been, in part, because of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) sailing in uncharted waters, with the enormous growth in global peacekeeping responsibilities in the early 1990s, and also in part because of a lack of importance attached to the civilian police concept at a strategic planning level. In UNTAC, for example, UNCIVPOL Commissioner Brigadier General Klaas Roos noted at an extensive debriefing session held in Singapore in December 1995,

Roos also noted that no police element was included in the U.N. Advanced Mission in Cambodia (UNAMIC), which was deployed to Cambodia in November 1991 to facilitate the later arrival of the UNTAC mission. Roos himself was only officially appointed Commissioner 1 week before he left for Cambodia in March 1992, and it took the United Nations almost 8 months to achieve the peak staffing level of just over 3,300 UNCIVPOL monitors.²⁹

It was not until May 1993, after the UNTAG and UNTAC experiences, that a separate Civilian Police Unit was established as part of DPKO (containing only one funded position, that of Police Adviser, with minimal administrative support). A further problem was the lack of attention given to other crucial criminal justice elements. The UNTAC and UNMIH missions were good examples of this where inadequate judicial and penal support proved a hindrance to the newly established and trained Cambodian and Haitian police forces, respectively.

Quantity and Quality

Another problem is the inadequate survey of police officers to serve as UNCIVPOL. It has both a quantitative and a qualitative aspect. The quantitative problem is that governments do not have at their disposal police officers who are not already engaged in important functions in their own country. Soldiers can normally be made available for U.N. peacekeeping service without impairing their governments’ ability to defend the national territory. Most police forces, however, are already stretched and are, therefore, reluctant to spare good officers for U.N. service. Sometimes political pressure from one Member State on another is needed to get the numbers of police officers required for a peacekeeping operation. In many countries, constitutional factors make it difficult for the central government to order them to do so. Recent experience in Bosnia has demonstrated the hazards of recruiting retired officers unless candidate backgrounds are meticulously checked.³⁰

The qualitative aspect arises from the nature of CIVPOL work. It involves daily interaction not only with local police but with the ordinary people of the country, sometimes in trying circumstances and usually through interpreters. This requires personal skills of an even higher order than those expected of police officers dealing with their compatriots in their own country in their own language. They differ from skills required of U.N. military officers, even military observers, who usually deal with their fellow-soldiers. The organization’s practice therefore has been to seek rather senior officers for CIVPOL missions, both because of the delicacy of their tasks and the clout needed vis-a-vis their local counterparts. This adds to the quantitative problem. A further complication is the wide variation in the qualifications required to attain a given rank in different police forces. This problem exists to some extent with military officers, too; the education, training, experience, and military skills to be expected in a lieutenant-colonel will vary somewhat from army to army, but planners can nevertheless design a mission headquarters, for instance, in the knowledge that they can count on a certain minimum level of qualifications in an officer of that rank.

To compensate for this wide variation in skills, the police commissioner (PC) in a U.N. mission must be able to identify those police officers who have the skills required to perform senior management roles, taking into account a global distribution of functions. In requesting police officers for a PKO, the CIVPOL Unit in DPKO makes it clear to Member States that it is the prerogative of the PC to select his management team.³¹

Weapons

The success of CIVPOL operations depends largely on the support and cooperation given to it by international military forces, and there must be a clear understanding of the roles played by CIVPOL and the military. After almost 30 years of operations, it must be clear that CIVPOL is not a security force. In most cases, CIVPOL is unarmed and does not have executive law enforcement authority.

A major point of discussion at the startup of a CIVPOL mission is whether CIVPOL should be armed or unarmed. UNCIVPOL are generally unarmed with the notable exceptions of UNMIH in Haiti, the U.N. Guards Contingent in Iraq (UNGCI),³² and for a short time, UNTAC in Cambodia. Hence, the security of the CIVPOL relies largely on the moral authority of the blue beret. At the Singapore CIVPOL conference in December 1995,³³ discussions on this topic were lengthy and intense. The positions correspond also to the national tradition of the police, some being armed at home, others not. Views were varied but, in general, there was consensus that while some missions could warrant the need for carrying arms, in most cases this was not welcome; being unarmed remained one of the particular features that distinguished civilian police from the military, for example.

In the former Yugoslavia, some monitors were of the firm belief that they needed sidearms for self-protection in the often volatile Yugoslav theater.³⁴ However, these monitors were in the minority, with most realizing that they were much less of a threat and therefore much less at risk while unarmed. This point was well illustrated when, in 1995, in an attempt to combat a spate of U.N. car-jackings, armed U.N. military escorts were assigned to civilian drivers. In the first week after this initiative was introduced, a Kenyan soldier and Czech civilian found themselves in a car-jacking. The Kenyan was shot dead, the Czech was shot through the ankles, and the U.N. vehicle was stolen.

The first discussion of arming CIVPOL arose when the Namibian operation (UNTAG) was set up in 1989. To bridge differences of opinion, a compromise allowed those national contingents normally armed in their home country to bring their sidearms and ammunition to the mission area and keep them in storage there. Despite this arrangement, UNTAG still faced problems. One national contingent brought AK-47s, claiming this was a regular police weapon in the home country.³⁵ Two other contingents unilaterally decided to issue the stored sidearms when some of their contingent members felt insecure at a certain point in the mission.

It took Commissioner Stephen Fanning and his Chief of Operations Colonel Klaas Roos (later Commissioner of CIVPOL in UNTAC) quite a bit of discussion and negotiation with contingent commanders, as well as diplomatic representatives, to restore the U.N. policy concerning unarmed CIVPOL. Three years later, in Cambodia, Roos again had problems regarding the issue. As a confidence-building measure, Roos had ordered CIVPOL monitors to patrol local communities 24 hours a day. Because of the presence of groups of undisciplined armed soldiers and armed bandits, the commissioner requested a security backup from the U.N. military component. Some of these military contingents, however, were reluctant to leave their compounds at night. Instead of trying to convince these contingents otherwise, the Military Force Commander requested the SRSG to arm the CIVPOL so that they could act more efficiently as a security force. The CIVPOL Commissioner, however, fiercely opposed this idea and strongly advised the SRSG against it. Similarly, certain CIVPOL contingents even suggested they would withdraw from the mission if ordered to arm themselves.³⁶

In the end, the SRSG decided not to arm CIVPOL. There is solid evidence to indicate this is a prudent policy. In large CIVPOL missions, (e.g., UNTAG at 1,500; UNTAC at 3,600; and UNMIBH/IPTF at 2,000) no CIVPOL lives have been lost as a result of the unarmed status of U.N. police officers.³⁷

When he was Chief of Operations in Cambodia, Peter Fitzgerald outlined several reasons why CIVPOL should not be armed:

Another argument could be added: in UNCIVPOL operations the police generally do not have law enforcement powers, and sidearms are mainly for self-defense in situations in which the police have to make an arrest.

The overriding opinion of civilian police leadership, both past and present, is that the U.N. policy not to arm the police is the correct one.

International Standards

Another issue arises in the context of CIVPOL monitoring of, and advice to, local police forces. What standards of policing should CIVPOL insist on? Should they be “international standards” and, if so, how defined? Or should they be standards commonly applied in the region concerned? Partial answers can be found in the international human rights instruments to which the country in question is party and in the country’s existing legislation, assuming that it conforms with those instruments. The Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Division in Vienna has prepared a handbook with criminal justice standards for peacekeeping police.³⁹ It attempts to provide a compact overview of relevant international standards and norms, and it is designed to serve both as a basis for reporting on activities of local law enforcement officials and as a reference source to work with them. The “Blue Book” regulates the following 10 areas:

It has been used in several training courses for civilian police components of U.N. missions and has been translated into Arabic, French, Spanish, and Serbo-Croat.

Furthermore, the U.N. Centre for Human Rights has provided training in international human rights standards and criminal justice to CIVPOL in ONUMOZ and UNPROFOR in recent years.⁴⁰ It is also preparing a manual on human rights and field operations. Answers may also be found in the peace agreement that provides the basis for the U.N. operations. In Bosnia, for instance, guidelines on “democratic policing” were prepared on the basis of the Dayton Agreement and issued by the IPTF Police Commissioner.⁴¹

Logistics

One of the most common problems identified by many police commissioners at the Singapore Conference in 1995 was the lack of sufficient logistical support caused by what they called the U.N. “Blue Tape.”⁴² Usually military troops arrive in the mission area with their own equipment whereas the CIVPOL forces are deployed only with their own national uniform. They are dependent on logistical support provided by the United Nations, but lack of adequate equipment, communication systems, and transportation arrangements has been problematic in many CIVPOL operations.

In Singapore, the recommendation was made that U.N. Headquarters develop the capacity to be more responsive to specific requests made by the team in the field with regard to logistics. Authority, and subsequent accountability, should be delegated to the U.N. Police Commissioner in the field. It is unlikely that this suggestion will be implemented because of the accounting processes incorporated in United Nations regulations, but the Lessons Learned Unit in DPKO has made several recommendations to address logistical problems:

In the startup phase of every peacekeeping mission in which UNCIVPOL is deployed, there is an immediate need for transportation and communications. Therefore, it is essential that the Logistic Base in Brindisi maintain a reserve stock of the most essential equipment required to set up a new mission.⁴⁴

Measures Taken

Introduction

The UNCIVPOL picture painted so far is fairly bleak, primarily because the focus has been on recent shortcomings. Nevertheless, there have also been many successes and positive lessons identified for UNCIVPOL since 1989. Not the least of these were the intangible benefits to local populations in war-torn communities of the calming presence of international police. UNCIVPOL also has a long list of more tangible achievements. BG Roos noted following the UNTAC mission:

It would be fair to say that these sentiments could be echoed for UNCIVPOL missions undertaken in the past decade. Nonetheless, the progress made to strengthen the United Nations’ capacity has resulted from initiatives undertaken by a variety of parties: the United Nations, specialized agencies, and Member States.

CIVPOL Unit in DPKO

One response to the massive increase in both the number and relative importance of UNCIVPOL operations was to establish a separate Civilian Police Unit as part of DPKO in May 1993. The Unit was made responsible for “all CIVPOL officers deployed to U.N. peacekeeping operations, including advice on implementation of the mandate, preparation/selection of qualified officers and discipline in the field. It provides information to Member States via the Permanent Missions. The Unit prepares/reviews SOPs and Guidelines for CIVPOL on mission assignment, as well as training materials, e.g., manuals and handbooks for CIVPOL training.”⁴⁶ The evolution of the Civilian Police Unit has been a difficult struggle. The November 1994 Report of the Secretary-General stated, “In order to enhance the current role of the [Civilian Police] Unit and respond to the present and future demands placed on it, bearing in mind the various missions in which United Nations Civilian Police are currently involved, it is proposed that the Unit be strengthened by the provision of one D-1 post,⁴⁷ for a Chief of Unit, and one General Service post.” Even today, with UNCIVPOL accounting for 12-15 percent⁴⁸ of all U.N. peacekeepers in the field, the Civilian Police Unit still has only the one Support Account funded position and five on-loan, Government-provided personnel to assist the Police Adviser.⁴⁹

The staffing situation of the unit will be further complicated by the reform proposals from the Secretary-General, which call for a plan to phase out the use of gratis personnel in the Secretariat at the earliest possible date. It is recognized, however, that this can be achieved only by consolidating the existing capacity in DPKO and with a budget that reflects DPKO’s real personnel requirements for DPKO.

Cooperation with Other Institutions

The Civilian Police Unit in DPKO is being aided in its efforts to address UNCIVPOL shortcomings with the assistance of other institutions interested in improving policing standards in peacekeeping operations. The IPS/UNITAR “Conference on the Role and Functions of Civilian Police in Peacekeeping Operations” held in Singapore in December 1995 brought together some of the world’s most knowledgeable CIVPOL minds to examine the “lessons learned” in peacekeeping operations in the first half of the 1990s. Soon afterward in Washington in June 1996, the U.S. Institute for Peace conducted a similar exercise, “Police Functions in Peace Operations,” broadening the scope to include non-U.N. international policing in troubled communities.

On a more operational level, between 1994 and 1995, the U.N. Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Division, based in Vienna, facilitated three workshops for UNCIVPOL leadership personnel from the U.N. missions in the Former Yugoslavia. These workshops were funded by the Austrian Government and held at a gendarmerie training school in Wiener Neustadt. The workshops examined substantive issues confronting and frustrating UNCIVPOL operations on the ground. The third of these also drew on recommendations from the recently completed Training Needs Assessment, conducted by the Training Management Unit in Zagreb.⁵⁰ Together, these recommendations largely shaped the conceptual development of the UNCIVPOL Support Unit in Zagreb.⁵¹ Of particular importance was the induction course that ensured that all monitors received basic instruction in safety and security issues, human rights training (initially conducted by the U.N. Centre for Human Rights), computer training, personnel issues, winter-driving training, as well as briefings about policing in the mission area. Monitors completing the induction course in Zagreb in 1996 and 1997 had never been better equipped to “hit the ground running” in a peacekeeping operation.⁵²

Training Guidelines Before Deployment

While the Support Unit in Zagreb was testing and training monitors (repatriating 80 monitors in the first three months of 1996⁵³), recommendations from the third workshop in Vienna and interest generated by the massive deployment of monitors to UNIPTF created a new sense of urgency to develop more concrete predeployment selection and training guidelines for UNCIVPOL monitors. In response, the DPKO Training Unit, the Civilian Police Unit, and the Lester B. Pearson Canadian Peacekeeping Training Centre conducted a seminar aimed at establishing clear guidelines for Member States to follow in the selection and preparation of their monitors.⁵⁴ They concluded that the minimum requirements for UNCIVPOL service would be as follows: monitors must be a citizens of their home country; monitors needed to be sworn, serving members of the police force in their home country; monitors had to have at least 5 years (recommended 8 years) active community policing experience; monitors must meet established U.N. health requirements; monitors needed a valid 4 x 4 driving license and the ability to operate a 4 x 4 vehicle in any conditions; monitors must be able to communicate effectively (in writing and orally) in the official mission language and in the official language of their home country; if necessary, monitors must be competent in the care, use and discharge of personal issue firearms and; monitors must have impeccable personal and professional integrity.⁵⁵

In addition to establishing selection standards, the seminar also addressed generic, mission-specific, and in-theater training guidelines for Member States to follow when preparing monitors to go on mission. The selection standards and training guidelines have been combined in a DPKO Training Unit publication, “Selection Standards and Training Guidelines for United Nations Civilian Police,” which has already been communicated to many Member States contributing civilian police. This document complements the other three U.N. Civilian Police publications produced by the Training Unit since 1995 (The United Nations Civilian Police and Peacekeeping Training Curriculum: United Nations Civilian Police Course, English Language Course for United Nations Civilian Police, and the U.N. Civilian Police Handbook). However there remains a significant lack of appropriate resources to assist civilian police trainers in Member States.

In conjunction with the DPKO Civilian Police Unit, the DPKO Training Unit has also played a major role in raising the global status of civilian police in peacekeeping training. In addition to the above mentioned publications, the Training Unit has included a major Civilian Police component in both its U.N. Training Assistance Teams (UNTAT) and the Training Course for Military and Civilian Police Trainers, Peacekeeping, Human Rights, and Humanitarian Assistance held biannually at the Training Centre in Turin, Italy. The UNTAT concept is to gather Military and Civilian Police Trainers from a grouping of Member States and enhance their capacity to develop and conduct coordinated and uniform predeployment mission training. The most recent of the UNTAT Seminars was held in Ghana where representatives from 23 countries (including eight Civilian Police specialists) gathered in Accra for a week of intense training assistance. Similarly, the course in Turin aims to enhance the capacity of civilian police trainers, particularly in the field of Human Rights. It was interesting to note that in the 12 countries visited by SATs in 1997, seven of these had participated in the Turin course and all seven had initiated, within the past 12 months, a human-rights training component as part of their premission training.⁵⁶

Selection Assistance Teams

The creation and strengthening of the Civilian Police Unit have enabled other issues to be addressed, the most important being the language and driving skills of monitors deployed to missions. At the beginning of 1996, with large numbers of monitors being deployed to the newly created IPTF in Bosnia, it soon became apparent that some Member States had again largely ignored the language and driving criteria communicated to them by the United Nations via their Permanent Missions. By mid-March 1996, 1,075 monitors had been sent to the IPTF mission and undergone English and driving tests. These tests had been significantly improved from the previous multiple choice test initiated by Commissioner Mike O’Rielly during the UNPROFOR mission. They included reading and listening comprehension (and an oral interview retest if monitors failed the first two), which better determined if incoming monitors would meet the language necessities of the mission. Of the 1,075 monitors tested, 57 failed to meet the required English standard, and a further 23 failed to meet the required basic safety standard in driving.⁵⁷ These monitors were repatriated at the Member States’ expense; however, the initial travel costs and mission subsistence allowance (MSA) incurred before repatriation had to be borne by the United Nations. This amount was considerable, given the number of monitors repatriated. The average cost to the United Nations of a monitor arriving in the mission and failing the English test was $3,060.⁵⁸ The average cost of passing the English test but failing the driving test was $4,500 (those monitors failing the driving test were allowed additional days to take driving lessons and given three attempts to pass the test).⁵⁹ Of the 80 monitors repatriated, 50 came from just 5 countries. To avoid repatriation costs and facilitate recruitment of qualified monitors, the Civilian Police Unit and the Civilian Police Support Unit in Zagreb, supported by Member States, developed the Selection Assistance Team (SAT) concept.⁶⁰ Initially, the concept was to send U.N. representatives to Member States prior to deployment to test potential UNCIVPOL candidates. The first SAT was deployed to India and Nepal mid-March 1996, saving an estimated $527,360 for the United Nations. There were many other spinoff benefits, however, for the individual monitors, the United Nations, and Member States through use of the SATs. Of the more tangible was the direct savings to Member States. Under U.N. guidelines for repatriation of monitors who do not meet the language and driving criteria, the Member State is responsible for return travel as well as for all travel costs for the replacement, often amounting to over $3,000 for each monitor repatriated.

In several Member States, police authorities responsible for selection and training of potential CIVPOL monitors are often under considerable pressure to favor candidates who are politically well connected. The use of SATs in these countries has greatly reduced pressure on selection personnel, who are able to distance themselves from the results of the impartial SAT. That said, in several countries the SAT has been requested to “reconsider the results of some unsuccessful candidates” by senior police leadership, a request that invariably has been rejected on the basis of “protecting” the failed candidate on safety grounds. This spinoff also sent a very clear message to Member States to refrain from sending unqualified or inappropriate personnel to mission.

By testing monitors prior to deployment, the SAT also saves unsuccessful monitors a great deal of in-country humiliation and heartbreak suffered in repatriation. In recent conversations with several monitors who had been deployed to the former Yugoslavia, only to fail the English test on arrival in Zagreb, they all expressed the most distressing aspect of the exercise was facing families and professional colleagues again, when only weeks previously they had said their farewells.

A further tangible benefit for Member States, and to a certain extent the United Nations, is the inclusion of a training specialist as part of the SAT. The role of the training specialist is to enhance the pre-mission training capacity of Member States by conducting a “training exchange” with local selection and training personnel, exchanging training ideas, concepts, resources, and U.N. policing trends. The training specialist encourages good practice and makes recommendations pertaining to premission selection and training of candidates in the light of what is already being done and the track record of monitors from that particular country. This concept was first successfully tested with a SAT visit to Argentina in May 1996 and has been a regular feature of subsequent SAT visits to other Member States. This process has proved very successful, with several countries developing comprehensive premission training courses. Jordanian police, for example, have initiated a 12-week training course including 192 hours of immersion English training, 56 hours of computer training, first-aid procedures, human-rights training, radio communication training, UNCIVPOL duties and responsibilities, police administration skills, map reading, and briefings from UNHCR and the ICRC.⁶¹ The training exchange also serves the purpose of establishing key contact personnel in each of the Member States, and may, in the future, lead to the creation of regional multilateral training assistance to support countries new to the UNCIVPOL domain.

The SAT, whose composition normally includes experienced police testers from the mission area, allows potential monitors the opportunity to ask questions about the mission, usually in a briefing session held at the conclusion of the English and driving testing. In the first 6 months of 1997, 12 major UNCIVPOL-contributing Member States requested SAT assistance. SATs deployed to these Member States tested 1,985 potential UNCIVPOL candidates in English and/or driving, with 804 monitors meeting the selection criteria. Criteria used in 1997 were slightly more difficult than in 1996, reflecting the increasingly complex nature of UNCIVPOL missions. The new criteria included a reading and listening comprehension test; writing a police report based on a video presentation; an oral interview where candidates were asked five questions and assessed on the time it took to develop the answer; and grammar, pronunciation, and the amount of information contained in their answers. Candidates needed to achieve a grade of 60 percent or better to be eligible for UNCIVPOL service.

The use of SATs has vastly improved the level of English and driving skills of monitors deployed to various UNCIVPOL missions, (particularly in the former Yugoslavia). This contributes to successful achievement of mandated responsibilities, a vast improvement in the “public image” of UNCIVPOL, fewer fatalities resulting from accidents and has generated an estimated saving to the United Nations of over $3.5 million.⁶²

Conclusions

Certainly, these seminars, round tables, and workshops have contributed to the enormous progress made on some problems identified in the early 1990s. Many challenges, however, continue to confront the United Nations and the international community. Foremost among these challenges are the ever more complex mandates being assigned to peacekeeping operations with civilian police components. In addition to normal monitoring duties, UNCIVPOL has moved from monitoring electoral processes, to supporting and training local police, judiciary, and penal systems. The current mandate of the UNIPTF mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina involves the total overhaul of a criminal justice system⁶³ involving police officers, judges, and other officials from three different ethnic groups in an atmosphere of delicate peace. These challenges call for increasingly specialized civilian police. To a certain extent, the United Nations has begun to meet this challenge by issuing specialized job descriptions to Member States in advance of new deployments or rotations. These “position descriptions,” developed by UNIPTF Headquarters in Sarajevo, detail the duties, responsibilities, and experience required for 12 specialized positions ranging from Director of Local Police Training and Assistance to Human Rights Officers/Investigators.

In his “Blue Book,” former Australian Foreign Affairs Minister, Senator Gareth Evans recommends development of Justice Packages for future U.N. peacekeeping missions:

To this end, UNCIVPOL must be viewed as a necessary component of most, if not all, peacekeeping operations. This is particularly true with respect to the long-term rehabilitation of a war-torn society. In his 1992 “Agenda for Peace,” Boutros Boutros-Ghali stated that peacekeeping operations, to be truly successful, must include comprehensive efforts to identify and support structures which will consolidate peace and advance a sense of confidence and well-being among people.⁶⁵ This should include the restoration of law and order, and hence, there is need for the United Nations to provide technical assistance, particularly with respect to the transformation of deficient national structures, such as the judicial system in all its aspects.

At the 51^st session of the General Assembly, the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations has stressed the need to further enhance cooperation between peacekeeping operations and other related U.N. activities and has requested that the Secretary-General continue to look into ways of ensuring this cooperation. The U.N. Development Program (UNDP), the Centre for Human Rights, and the Criminal Justice and Crime Prevention Division (CJCPD) should be included in the consultative process when defining the scope and nature of a proposed operation, especially regarding the role of CIVPOL. Close cooperation should be maintained with these agencies for the duration of the operation to ensure that after the withdrawal of CIVPOL there is no collapse of law and order institutions within the country in transition.

In Haiti, UNDP is already running a technical assistance project by providing technical advice to everyday operations of the Haitian National Police. The CJCPD could be involved in judicial reform programs, helping to redraft criminal and procedural codes and other legislation if needed, plus training criminal justice personnel (i.e., judges, prosecutors, prison officers) and rebuilding correctional services. The Centre of Human Rights, together with the High Commissioner for Human Rights, must be involved to coordinate human rights field work in the context of peacekeeping operations.

Postconflict peace building is the best guarantee to the international community that the sacrifices it has made in a peacekeeping operation will not be wasted by the return of violence. This must involve restructuring and rehabilitation of the whole judicial system. It requires time and coordination, but it offers the best hope of turning tenuous agreements into lasting peace.

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