UN Report on the security situation in Cote d’Ivoire

From Secretary-General, dated April 15.

The good news is the overall security situation stable, along with the country’s budding political atmosphere. However, the report raises worries about the disarmament about the northern-based Forces Nouvelles and militias in the western part of the country. Violent crime remains a concern, especially armed robberies.

In the political arena, the opposition party Rassemblement des republicans held its convention in Abidjan and named Allassane Dramane Ouattara as the party’s candidate for the presidential election scheduled for November 30. The ruling Front populaire ivorien held a rally in the former rebel capital Bouake.

Prime Minister Guillaume Soro attended a Women’s Day celebration in President Laurent Gbagbo’s hometown, and claimed the northern-based prime minister has a good working relationship with the president.

Civil society groups still clamor to be included in the Ouagadougou Agreement. Burkinabé president Blaise Compaore expressed desire to hold a national meeting with such groups.

Regarding the sticky issue of voting rights, more than 110 mobile courts have been dispatched throughout the country to issue duplicate birth certificates to any Ivorian over the age of 18 and not part of the previous census. By April 8, the courts had issued more than 565,000 certificates. They hope to finish by the end of the month.

While the legal framework for the electoral process has not been finalized, its budget has: $83 million, which the Ivorian government will chip in $18 and the European Union, Japan and Korea will provide $25. This currently leaves $40 million unaccounted for. (Any takers?)

The International Crisis Group is a little less sanguine about the political situation. In a recent report, the group points out that in the presidential election certain candidates may be willing to go to extremes, reigniting a potentially explosive environment.

The report also claims implementation has been shaky of many of the Ouagadougou Accords that brought a halt to the civil war. Importantly, they claim voter identification has not completely determined who is a citizen and who may vote. However, the largest worries go to all major political parties sticking to the Ouagadougou Accords and insuring the election is carried out in a transparent manner, with proper identification for all registered voters and a security situation that allows people to vote in peace.

Open letter from Human Rights Watch to Ban Ki-moon

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is currently touring four West African states. On the eve of that trip, Human Rights Watch wrote an open letter to the Secretary General regarding outstanding human rights issues in Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire.

Here are the excerpts.

Liberia:

While the [Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission]—empowered to recommend for prosecution the most serious offenders—has made significant progress chronicling a record of abuses, there appears to be no national strategy and little discussion by Liberian or international actors for holding perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity to account. Human Rights Watch believes that the many victims of these unspeakable crimes deserve justice for what they have suffered, and that prosecutions of the most serious crimes committed would go a long way towards consolidating and firmly anchoring respect for the rule of law in Liberia.

During your discussions with representatives of Liberia’s government and civil society we therefore urge you to emphasize the importance of accountability for past human rights violations, and also to encourage them to develop a strategy for prosecuting those allegedly responsible for the most egregious crimes. Given the persistent weaknesses in the Liberian justice system, international support is very likely to be necessary to ensuring justice for these crimes.

Cote d’Ivoire:

Impunity for Past and Ongoing Human Rights Abuses: Côte d’Ivoire is characterized today by an intense focus on the part of nearly all actors with a stake in the Ivorian crisis—at both the international and local levels—on the process leading towards upcoming presidential elections, currently scheduled for November of this year. While Human Rights Watch salutes the progress that has been made in implementing the Ouagadougou Agreement and the role the United Nations has played therein, we are concerned that in its narrow focus on elections, the international community risks losing sight of the need to resolve issues of impunity for human rights violations that are critical not only to calm during the upcoming elections themselves, but also to long-term prospects for peace and stability.

Despite the relative decrease in political tensions since the signing of the Ouagadougou Agreement, impunity for past and ongoing violations of human rights persists. Should political tensions rise in the lead-up to elections, Human Rights Watch is concerned that the prevailing climate of impunity could facilitate a dramatic resurgence of human rights abuses, which in turn could threaten the integrity of the elections themselves. It is therefore imperative that the international community begin to work with the government of Côte d’Ivoire in advance of the elections to tackle issues arising from impunity and the need for justice.

The letter called for three ways the United Nations could continue its critical role:

• Initiate a public dialogue regarding the human rights abuses that occurred during the civil war.
• Publish the findings of the 2002 study on human rights violations in the country
• Push the Ivorian government to accept a mission of the International Criminal Court to asses the possibility of an investigation regarding crimes committed in the country.

What is the UN Peacebuilding Commission and what is it doing in Guinea-Bissau?

According to the Global Policy Forum, the Peacebuilding Commission was first proposed by then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to assist with the prevention of violent conflicts before they started, which appeared easier for the UN than their normal task of tamping down existing conflicts. “Annan proposed that the PBC would have a broad membership that would include not only UN member states but also development agencies and possibly even NGOs,” Global Policy Forum writes of the new integrated approach.

The important matter, notes Ellen Margrethe Løj, Co-Chair of the General Assembly Working Group on the Peacebuilding Commission, is that the international community was not very good with dealing with transitioning a war-torn country form military support (the blue helmets) to the long-term development phase. (A place like Haiti comes to mind.) Hopefully, by bringing the actors together around a single table – and there is still some debate on the role of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the process – this umbrella organization can help move the country beyond security issues to development and nation-building issues.

From its website, the Peacebuilding Commission will:

• Propose integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery;
• Help to ensure predictable financing for early recovery activities and sustained financial investment over the medium- to longer-term.
• Extend the period of attention by the international community to post-conflict recovery;
• Develop best practices on issues that require extensive collaboration among political, military, humanitarian and development actors.

So far, this method has been employed in Sierra Leone and Burundi.

How is it doing? According to Carolyn McAskie, head of the Peacebuilding Support Office, the office has learned this:

"The development link to peacebuilding is also very important," she explains, "to the G77 members of the Commission but also to the western countries because, as any practitioner knows very well, one of the reasons these countries fail is that they are often 'aid orphans.' They may have two or three faithful donors but do not have the 25 donors that their neighbors have. Thus, resources for development are a very important issue for these countries. But that has to be juxtaposed with keeping them on track politically as well. You can have the most beautiful reconstruction program, but if you run into serious political problems, it can all be offset. We need to get the balance right." She adds, "Therefore the SC has to be engaged, as the GA will be. But the GA is a very large body and we should keep in mind that it is difficult for it to engage in practical change, which is why I believe ECOSOC, as responsible for economic and social issues, could be involved."

With this in mind, perhaps the one benefit the Peacebuilding Commission can lend is providing certain “failed states” with the proper exposure they need to become stable.

So, finally: What is the Peacebuilding Commission doing in Guinea-Bissau? Here is a summary of exploratory meetings with the government:

While Guinea-Bissau was struggling to overcome years of political strife, civil unrest and corruption, Prime Minister Martinho N’Dafa Cabi today told the Peacebuilding Commission that his Government was consolidating recent fragile gains, but needed help to make improvements in key areas, including security, fiscal management, combating drug trafficking, youth vocational training and election assistance.

“We have the courage necessary to see the peace consolidation process through, but that courage must be [bolstered] by commitment and support from the intentional community,” Prime Minister N’Dafa Cabi said, as he highlighted the serious challenges his country faced after years of sporadic civil conflicts and military uprisings, which, by the late 1990s, had left the tiny West African nation politically polarized, poverty stricken and unable to pay its workers or to educate its children.

Genocide and public opinion

Jim Hoagland, former foreign correspondent and now foreign affairs columnist for the Washington Post, wonders whether Kenya will join the ranks of other countries he once filed dispatches from in capital cities beset by destruction and war – Algiers, Tehran, Baghdad, Mogadishu, etc.

It is premature to compare Nairobi at this point to those other, more tumultuous capitals. But most of them -- as Nairobi certainly did -- originally had serious chances to succeed as workable or even important regional or international centers of governance, and they failed. Nairobi must now avoid their mistakes if it is to avoid their fate.

Hoagland makes the point that the global communications revolution may have connected people in visceral ways, but it has not been matched by “understanding of the Third World's dilemmas or a commitment to help resolve them.”

Unfortunately for aggrieved Kenyans, the nation's most serious troubles in its brief modern history arrive at a moment when international outrage is spread thin in Darfur, the Middle East, Iraq and elsewhere. The United Nations' unsuccessful struggle with Sudan to send into Darfur peacekeeping units that can protect themselves suggests that the once proudly proclaimed "duty to protect" abused citizens from their own governments is degenerating into something like the duty to scold.

Stop in the name of genocide
In a related matter, a story in the New York Times reflects on a far-reaching law adopted by the United Nations in 2005 to allow outside powers to intervene inside countries that are unwilling to stop genocide within their own borders. What some of the resolution’s original supporters claimed was a high-water mark for human rights around the globe has met certain cold realities on the ground. For one, the refusal of rich countries to deploy their well equipped militaries to hot zones like Darfur. Secondly, when troops finally do arrive, they are handcuffed by various roadblocks set up by host governments. (One aspect of this story that must be pointed out: its small sample size. This law has only been tested by the incidents surrounding the issues in Darfur.)

The resolution, nicknamed the “Right to Protect,” was something of a philosophical turning point for the United Nations, a body since its inception always upheld the rights of sovereign states. For proof, see the largely uninterrupted genocides by Hutu power groups in Rwanda, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Derg in Ethiopia. For the first time, the “Right to Protect” meant that sovereignty could possibly take a back seat in favor of stopping unabated bloodshed and violence.

The role of the public
Piggybacking on a theme brought up by Hoagland: What is the public’s responsibility in stopping genocide? Donald Steinberg, director of the International Crisis Group’s New York office, was a special assistant for Africa in the Clinton administration during the Rwanda genocide. He points out that during the slaughter, the U.S. government debated whether to jamming the hate radio that whipped supporters to a froth and organized the génocidaires or reinforcing the UN mandate in the country.

“But each time some of us pushed for these steps,” he said, “others would ask, ‘Where’s the legal basis for these actions, where’s the public outcry, the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus of support? Where’s the evidence to show that these actions will end the killings?’ ”

It’s an important point. Without public outcry, few leaders will act boldly against killings where a country has limited interests. The festering bloodshed in former Zaire is a case in point. So is the 2006 Israeli bombing of Lebanon – a pretty clear account of a military targeting citizens – which went unchecked by the U.S., who simply sent ships to evacuate the thousands of Americans on vacation in the country and the Lebanese holding U.S. passports.

On one level, Darfur does seem different. A large coalition has been built to force governments to act on the bloodshed. The media certainly has provided (relatively) extensive coverage. Keeping people aware of the killings may have abated the violence, but it certainly has not stopped. Neither have the warring sides been forced to come to the table.

Has the PR campaign against Darfur tipped the balance towards rectifying the situation? It’s difficult to tell. The intransigence of the Sudanese government may come about from the greatest trump card of all: sovereignty, and the belief that the power of the nation state holds supreme. All governments understand it, and in response to external pressures stemming from the “interdependence” of globalization, desire it.

There’s something else at work here. The U.S. invasion of Iraq, whatever the political motives debated in the United States, is largely seen around the world as a unilateral imperialistic attack on a sovereign state. The story points out that 150 countries originally supported the resolution. Many of these countries hail from the third world, and they are presently shying away from the “Right to Protect” because they feel they could be the law could be enforced in their own backyard.

One could also argue that geo-politics plays a roll with Darfur. Many in the West look to China’s patronage of the Khartoum regime as a reason for the political stalemate in solving the problem. It’s more complicated than that. While Washington scolds the Sudanese concerning its government role in Darfur, the two countries enjoy a cozy relationship over the war on terror.

The debate over democracy and sovereignty remains unsettled. But there’s another matter at work here. The convictions of the person on the street. A dedicated clique attuned to the injustices in Darfur is one thing. What about the rest of us? Like Hoagland pointed out, the world at large displays a limited attention span. Issues like Darfur became significant when the public’s attention was already stretched by other issues: Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine.

I tend to take a more positive viewpoint of the campaign to keep Darfur in the media. Think of the counterfactual: What would be taking place there if the public awareness campaign was never hatched? An imperfect solution, yes; but it beats doing nothing.

The Kenya subtext
The subtext, of course, to both of these articles is as unmistakable as their timing. Kenya, a former stable country, is apparently on the verge of chaos. Regardless of the U.S. press’ swing-and-miss on the history of ethnicity and tribalism in the country, ethnic violence appears to be taking place. How far must this escalate before the world’s powers draw up a list of conditions before it contemplates intervention? Better yet, when do the t-shirts and bumper stickers get printed for “Stop the Killing in Kenya”?

Google Earth now tracks UN statistics

Google Earth now comes replete with UN statistics. Take a peek at a country and find how many people live on less than $1 per day, literacy rates and other statistics tied to the UN's Millennium Development Goals.

I’ve been told that Google and Cisco Systems, creators of the new site, are also working on a different module for rich countries that will let users know how many televisions per house, cars per family and incidence of methamphetamine use.

For now, we have to stick with statistics about poor countries. Here is the site: http://www.mdgmonitor.org/

Koffi Annan for British Knight: Vote No

Former U.N. Secretary General Koffi Annan a British Knight?

“Few international figures are less deserving of an honorary knighthood,” writes Nile Gardiner in the National Review Online.

Why? Because Annan’s tenure as the head the UN and his role as undersecretary general for Peacekeeping Operations “were a monumental failure, and he left behind an institution whose standing could barely be lower and a legacy that is a testament to appeasement, mismanagement, corruption, and anti-Americanism.”

Continuing to quote:

It took Annan and the U.N. several years to even acknowledge that the mass slaughter of more than 200,000 villagers by Sudanese-backed Janjaweed militias in Darfur was an act of genocide. He remained silent over the forced starvation of millions of Zimbabweans by the Mugabe regime, barely said a word about human rights in Burma and North Korea, and never stood up to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats against Israel. The U.N. Human Rights Commission was a complete farce, populated with many of the world’s worst human rights violators, from Libya to Cuba. Even Annan himself eventually acknowledged that the Commission was broken, and its successor, the new Human Rights Council, is just as bad if not worse.

...

As Secretary General Annan oversaw a huge scandal involving United Nations peacekeepers in the Congo as well as in southern Sudan, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Guinea, Liberia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, and Cambodia. In the Congo alone, U.N. personnel were accused of hundreds of crimes, including the rape and forced prostitution of women and young girls across the war-torn country. The victims were defenseless refugees who had already been brutalized and terrorized by years of war and who looked to the U.N. for safety and protection.

UN triple shot: Cote d'Ivoire, Somalia, Guinea-Bissau

Cote d’Ivoire: In a recent report, the UN claims Cote d’Ivoire’s military is obstructing inspections regarding the international embargo on arms and related material.

During the investigations, which took place between mid-July and mid-August, the Group “observed a lack of understanding on the part of certain Ivorian political authorities who believed that, with the signing of the Ouagadougou Political Agreement on 4 March 2007, their mission was out of step with the current reconciliation process.”

The Group also heard reports of Malian smuggling rings to ferry illegal diamonds out of the country and potential violations on diamond exports.

Somalia: Increased violence between the Transitional Federal Government and other parties has resulted in “suspicion” toward the humanitarian community, which is impeding relief work and food deliveries.

An estimated 60 uniformed and armed members of the Somalia National Security Service stormed a UN compound October 17 and abducted a member of the World Food Program staff member. So far the captive, Idriss Osman, is reportedly unharmed.

Since then, the WFP has discontinued work in the region where three million people are in need of assistance.

The abduction of Mr. Osman follows the shooting death of three WFP-contracted drivers.

Guinea Bissau: The UN Security Council called for the United Nations to examine how best to support Guinea-Bissau, which has been awash in claims that drug trafficking undermines its peace and stability.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the West African nation has become a transit point for cocaine moving between Latin America and Europe. Even though the government has made at least 50 drug seizures in the past two years, it is a small a portion of drugs moving through the country.

Drug traffickers have leveraged the country’s poverty and political instability, the lingering effects of a brief civil war six years ago, to outmaneuver weak government surveillance with planes and ships to drop-off and pick up drugs.

Another issue remains that drugs confiscated by the government often find a way back to the street through corruption and thievery.

Another chapter for Darfur

Sometimes it's hard to believe that Lydia Polgreen and I live on the same continent. The stories from this New York Times reporter based out of Dakar has always appeared hell bent to prove that in in West Africa the glass is half full. This may say more about her choice in story assignments than her intellectual bent. If there's a war, any sundry tragedy, an airplane crash, she's usually one of the first American reporters filing stories for her newspaper. In her defense, there is plenty of tragedy to go around a handful of West African countries: Nigeria, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea. Throw Sudan and its blood-stained region of Darfur, where most of her datelines appear, one must wonder if she's gunning for a spot in the Baghdad bureau. Throw out the Darfur stories and my question has always been: Isn't there more to life in West Africa than kidnappings and greedy warlords?

This week she deserves kudos for single handily dousing some of the high spirits accompanying the announcement of a giant underground lake found beneath the northern part of the Darfur region in Sudan. Researchers who found the lake – and some groups observing the Darfur crisis from afar, including the United Nations – argue that the crisis is built around environmental issues that could be rectified by this new bountiful water source.

Don’t bet on it, Polgreen says.

That hope is built upon an argument, advanced by a United Nations report released last month and an opinion article in The Washington Post by Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, that environmental degradation and the symptoms of a warming planet are at the root of the Darfur crisis.

“There is a very strong link between land degradation, desertification and conflict in Darfur,” said the United Nations Environmental Program report, which noted that rainfall in northern Darfur has decreased by a third over the last 80 years. Exponential population growth and related environmental stress have created the conditions for conflicts to be triggered and sustained by political, tribal or ethnic differences,” the report said, adding that Darfur “can be considered a tragic example of the social breakdown that can result from ecological collapse.”

The idea that more water — unearthed through a thousand wells sunk into the underground lake — could neatly defuse the crisis is seductive. Messy African conflicts, from Congo to Liberia, from northern Uganda to Angola, have a way of defying all efforts to solve them.

Instead, they seem to become hopelessly more complex as they drag on, year after agonizing year. A scientific explanation for the problem (environmental degradation) along with a tidy technological solution (irrigation) gratifies the modern humanitarian impulse.

But the history of Sudan, a grim chronicle of civil war, famine, coups and despotism, gives ample reason to be skeptical.

Polgreen backs up her argument by skirting environmental issues and investigating the human roots of the Darfur crisis, taking readers through the bloody tour of Sudan’s colonial and post-colonial history. It's a wonderfully clear-eyed and educated analysis. As a reporter based in West Africa, she still relies too heavily on Western scholars in her work – no Africans were interviewed for this story that appeared in the Week in Review. I’d like to see her get a little more creative with her choice of story assignments, starting with visiting a few different countries and increasing her datelines in, say, Mali, Mauritania, Ghana and Burkina Faso.

Anyway, all this mucky-muck aside, Polgreen brings a healthy dose of reason to this issue.