Public health emergencies: a new peacekeeping mission? Insights from UNMIL’s role in the Liberia Ebola outbreak

The UN Security Council meeting on 18 September 2014 represented a major turning-point in the international response to the Ebola outbreak then underway in West Africa. However, in the light of widespread criticism over the tardiness of the international response, it can be argued that the UN, and particularly the Security Council, failed to make best use of a potential resource it already had on the ground in Liberia: the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). This article examines whether UNMIL could have done more to contribute to the emergency response and attempts to draw some lessons from this experience for potential peacekeeper involvement in future public health emergencies. UNMIL could have done more than it did within the terms of its mandate, although it may well have been hampered by factors such as its own capacities, the views of Troop Contributing Countries and the approach taken by the Liberian government. This case can inform broader discussions over the provision of medical and other forms of humanitarian assistance by peacekeeping missions, such as the danger of politicising humanitarian aid and peacekeepers doing more harm than good. Finally, we warn that a reliance on peacekeepers to deliver health services during ‘normal’ times could foster a dangerous culture of dependency, hampering emergency responses if the need arises

Policy Entrepreneurship by International Bureaucracies: The Evolution of Public Information in UN Peacekeeping

The UN Secretariat’s role in the expansion of peacekeeping after the cold war is debated. Different theoretical accounts offer competing interpretations: principal–agent models and sociological institutionalism tend to emphasize the Secretariat’s risk-averse behaviour; organizational learning scholarship and international political sociology find evidence of the Secretariat’s activism; constructivism analyses instances of both. I argue that the UN Secretariat can be both enthusiastic and cautious about new tasks depending on the circumstances and the issue area. For example, UN officials have been the driving force behind the development of public information campaigns by peacekeeping missions aimed at the local population. During the cold war, it was not regarded as necessary for UN missions to communicate with the public in the area of operation: their interlocutors were parties to the conflict and the diplomatic community. With the deployment of the first multidimensional missions in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, UN staff realized the need to explain the organization’s role to the local population and provide information about UN-supported elections. In promoting this innovation, they played the role of policy entrepreneurs. The institutionalization of this innovation, however, was not an automatic process and required continuous advocacy by UN information staff

From Crisis to Reform: Peacekeeping Strategies for the Protection of Civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The latest cycle of violence in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the brief occupation of Goma by the “M23” rebels call for a re-examination of how UN peacekeepers have approached the physical protection of civilians in the DRC over the past 13 years. This article examines how lessons from early protection crises led the UN missions in the DRC to develop a series of innovative tools for a better peacekeeping response based on improved civil-military coordination and enhanced communication with the local population. It analyzes how the need to mitigate the negative impact of joint UN-Congolese military operations led to a progressive shift from a largely UN-centric and troop-intensive approach to physical protection to a greater focus on the Congolese security forces. As the UN peacekeeping understanding of the protection of civilians – and its concomitant bureaucracy – continues to expand, peacekeeping strategies should refocus on strengthening national protection capacities through security sector reform. This article concludes that the 2012 crisis in DRC could serve as a trigger for such a shift, aimed at building legitimate institutions and encouraging the host government to shoulder its primary responsibility to protect its citizens. The new Intervention Brigade together with the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework for the DRC and the region could provide the broader political strategy on which to anchor this reform process