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quarterly Newsletter issue 2 > 2015
will the high-level independent panel manage to revitalize a new generation of un peace operations? special feature
a young graduate in nuremberg report
acuns activities at the 13th UN congress on crime prevention and criminal justice
Another spoiler of UN peacekeeping in the Middle East: ISIS
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Q > contents quarterly
feature one
will the high-level Independent panel manage to revitalise a new generation of UN Peace operations? | 3 Cedric de Coning | Senior Research Fellow, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Senior Advisor to the African Center for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD)
special feature
a young graduate in nuremberg | 5 Yves Beigbeder | Nuremberg Tribunal, 1946 Former UN Senior Official, and lecturer for UNITAR, Geneva, Switzerland
special report
ACUNS’ activities at the 13th united Nations congress on crime prevention and criminal justice | 5 Milica Dimitrijevic | Collaborator, ACUNS Vienna Liaison Office
feature two
another spoiler of un peacekeeping in the middle east: isis | 7 Swadesh Rana | Senior Fellow, World Policy Institute, New York
AM15 the un at 70: guaranteeing security and justice
AM15 k e ynote sp eaker
Mrs. Fatou Bensouda Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
John W. Holmes Mem orial lecture
Abiodun Williams President, The Hague Institute for Global Justice and Chair, ACUNS View their biographies on page 10 >
Thursday – Saturday
> June 11-13, 2015 The Hague Institute for Global Justice and the International Institute of Social Studies The Netherlands
welcome to acuns
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up2date news & opinions
Jam-packed and full of energy secretariat staff
Much like the healthy foods we seek out to fuel our bodies as we go about our lives, ACUNS is actively organizing and taking part in events and activities that fuel our minds and engage our expertise to help shape a better world.
Alistair Edgar Executive Director, ACUNS Associate Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University
Dr. Alistair Edgar, ACUNS
Before getting to my usual discussion of ACUNS projects and programs, please indulge us here as we do a little tooting of our own horn – to tell you that for the second time, the ACUNS Newsletter has been awarded a Hermes Creative Awards’ ‘Gold Award’ by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. Congratulations and thanks must go to everyone at the Laurier CPAM team for their tremendous imagination and dedicated support in designing and producing this award-winning publication!
T > 226.772.3167 E > aedgar@wlu.ca
Brenda Burns, Co-ordinator T > 226.772.3142 F > 226.772.0016 E > bburns@wlu.ca
Readers will see that we have ‘over-packed’ this issue of the Newsletter, to include three articles and one special report reflecting the theme of the Annual Meeting – security and justice – as well as the historical dimension of this year as the 70th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. Yves Beigbeder gives us his thoughts on his quite unique experiences as a young legal assistant at the Nuremburg Tribunal; Swadesh Rana discusses the challenges posed to UN peacekeeping in the Middle East by ‘spoilers’, in particular by ISIS; and Cedric de Coning takes a careful and critical look at the work and prospects of the High-Level Independent Panel on UN peace operations led by Jose Ramos-Horta, whose final report is expected to be released in June, when our Annual Meeting will be talking about exactly these challenges (amongst others!). The special report comes to us from Milica Dimitrijevic of the ACUNS Vienna Liaison Office, who along with soon-retiring Michael Platzer, attended the 13th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, in Doha, Qatar as representatives of ACUNS where they organized several panels and spoke to issues including femicide, education, ‘delivering as one’, and the contributions of science and religion to the post-2015 agenda. The Vienna team will be at The Hague, as a Workshop Panel on youth contributions to UN policies.
Denoja Kankesan, Administrative Assistant T > 226.772.3121 E > dkankesan@wlu.ca
Board members 2014-2015
Chair-Elect: Lorraine Elliott Australian National University
We have a very full AM15 program at The Hague Institute for Global Justice and the International Institute of Social Studies, with four plenary sessions, two special lunchtime panels, thirty-three workshop panels, two evening receptions, the Opening Keynote Address and the John Holmes Memorial Lecture. Immediately preceding the AM15, members attending also may choose to join us for a Thursday afternoon “pre-launch” presentation by the Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance. On behalf of the ACUNS Board of Directors, I am pleased to give an especial welcome to our colleagues from the Chinese, Korean and Japanese UN studies associations who have made a special effort to join us, and who will be making a number of contributions to our AM15 proceedings.
Chair: Abiodun Williams The Hague Institute for Global Justice
Vice Chairs: Roger Coate Georgia College and State University Melissa Labonte Fordham University
m e mb e rs
Altogether, it is enough to keep our secretariat team busy – but we are planning ahead, as always. By the time we meet in The Hague, we are intending to be able to announce the dates for the 2016 Annual Meeting which will be held next June at Fordham University in New York City, thanks to the initiative of ACUNS Vice-Chair Melissa Labonte. Looking further ahead, we can tell our members, that we are planning the 2017 Annual Meeting for South Korea, in collaboration with our KACUNS colleagues and strongly supported by CANUNS and JAUNS.
Thomas Biersteker, The Graduate Institute, Geneva Mary Farrell, University of Greenwich Kirsten Haack, Northumbria University
If you have not already seen the Call for Applications, the 2015 ACUNS-ASIL Summer Workshop is to be held a little later than usual, in October, and will be hosted in Oslo by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). Thanks to Cedric de Coning, Kari Osland and everyone at NUPI for their support in making this happen. Cedric and NUPI have contributed one of the feature articles to this issue of the Newsletter, reflecting in part the subject matter of the 2015 Workshop as well as an important part of NUPI’s expertise. Given the timing, even before the 2015 workshop has taken place, we will be putting together the pieces for the 2016 ACUNS-ASIL Summer Workshop, which I am pleased to report will be hosted by Vesselin Popovski at O.P. Jindal Global University in Sonipat, north of New Delhi, India.
Sukehiro Hasegawa, Hosei University Margaret Karns, University of Dayton Nanette Svenson, Tulane University
Last but definitely not least, are you a potential host institution for the ACUNS Secretariat, 2018-23? The Board of Directors invites interested institutions to contact the Secretariat directly, or any member of the Board, with questions and expressions of interest.
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raising high expectations Feature story
will the high-level independent panel manage to
revitalize
a new generation of un peace operations?
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> c e d r i c d e co n i n g senior research fellow, Norwegian institute of international Affairs (NUPI) senior advisor to the african center for the constructive resolution of disputes (ACCORD)
the un secretary-general appointed a High-Level Independent Panel to review UN peace operations in October 2014. The Panel is expected to publish its report in June 2015. The Panel is led by Nobel Peace Laureate and former President of Timor Leste, Jose Ramos-Horta. With 17 members it has a broad geographical spread and a wide range of experiences, including former special representatives, force commanders, ambassadors, scholars and civil society leaders. The last such major external review of peacekeeping operations was undertaken in 2000 and led by Lahkdar Brahimi. The Brahimi report had a considerable impact on the direction of peacekeeping operations, even though many of its recommendations have not been implemented. It is thus not surprising that the Ramos-Horta report has raised similar high expectations. One significant difference between these two reports is that the Ramos-Horta panel have been tasked with assessing both peacekeeping operations and special political missions. This expanded focus reflects a significant shift in the orientation of UN peacekeeping from conflict resolution to conflict management. A decade ago, most UN peacekeepers were engaged in post-conflict peace agreement implementation missions in countries like Sierra Leone, Burundi, Liberia and Sudan. Today, approximately two thirds of the UN’s peacekeepers are deployed amidst ongoing conflict in missions where there is ‘no peace to keep’. Over this same period the UN has developed a significant operational political and peacemaking capacity. As a result, a division of work has emerged where UN peacekeeping missions are increasingly limited to containing violence, whilst UN special political missions and special envoys are tasked to seek enduring political solutions.
feature one the panel is likely to emphasize that force can only be meaningfully applied in a peace operations context if it is part of a strategy to achieve a peaceful outcome.
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he missions in CAR (MINUSCA), the DRC (MONUSCO) and Mali (MINUSMA), together with an earlier generation example in Haiti (MINUSTAH), are indicative of this shift and represent a new category of UN stabilization operations. These missions are tasked to protect a government and its people against aggressors identified by the UN Security Council, and in the case of the Force Intervention Brigade in eastern DRC, to undertake offensive operations to forcefully disarm the aggressors. These stabilization missions should not, however, be misunderstood as military solutions - they should rather be seen as part of a larger strategy to proactively shape the security environment in order to create space for political solutions. In light of these developments it is thus not surprising that the most important issue that the Ramos-Horta Panel will have to consider and provide guidance on is how far we can stretch UN peacekeeping along the use of force trajectory, before the core principles of UN peacekeeping – consent, impartiality and minimum use of force – lose its relevance? The Panel is likely to emphasize that force can only be meaningfully applied in a peace operations context if it is part of a strategy to achieve a peaceful outcome. This raises the question, however, of who is tasked with overseeing the execution of such an over-arching strategy and ensuring system-wide UN coherence? Is it necessary to update the UN’s integrated approach and One UN policies to reflect these new developments? And will the Panel speak out on the potential merging of the UN Secretariat’s departments of political affairs and peacekeeping operations, to create a new integrated, geographically organized peace and security department? Another closely related issue the Panel is expected to give guidance on is the degree to which the financing of the UN’s peace and security work has been skewed towards peacekeeping. Currently the UN’s peacekeeping operations cost almost 9 billion USD annually, whilst less than a billion is allocated to early warning, prevention, peacemaking and peacebuilding. This imbalance is untenable, but sustained by the practice of using assessed contributions for peacekeeping operations. The Panel may recommend that special political missions, including special envoys, should also be funded using assessed contributions because their contribution is equally critical to maintaining international peace and security. At the same time, and to the relief of the major contributors to assessed contributions, the Panel may question the size of UN peacekeeping missions, and especially the causal assumptions behind the number of peacekeepers and the expanding comprehensiveness of mandates. The Panel may argue for a return to the basics, with a more narrow focus on the political and security dimensions of peacekeeping. Other important issues the Panel is likely to address are the critical role of gender in peace and security, the role of state-society relations and the strategic importance of partnerships with regional organizations. On gender, peace and security the Panel is likely to coordinate closely with the review of Security Council resolution 1325, and offer recommendations for increasing the number of women in peacekeeping and special political missions, including especially in senior positions; stronger action against sexual abuse and exploitation and more resources for combatting conflict related sexual violence.
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two thirds
of the UN’s peacekeepers are deployed amidst ongoing conflict in missions where there is ‘no peace to keep.’
On state-society relations the Panel - that made a special effort to include civil society in its regional consultations - may call for a more people’s oriented approach to peace operations, to counter the UN tendency to benchmark the withdrawal of peace operations against the improved capacity of State institutions. Such an approach can include benchmarks that monitor the progress of peace operations against improvements in the perceptions of safety and wellbeing of the people the UN is tasked to protect, rather than only monitoring improvements in the capacity of the state to provide safety and security. On strategic partnerships, the most important regional relationship for the UN is its relationship with the African Union (AU). African capacities are an important resource for UN peacekeeping, currently contributing approximately 45% of the UN’s uniformed personnel. UN support is a critical enabler for AU operations, and the UN is an important exit strategy partner for the AU. The effectiveness of both the UN and the AU are thus mutually interdependent on several levels. At the strategic level the Panel could encourage the UN and AU to foster a common narrative that is mutually re-enforcing and respectful of each other’s roles. At the operational level the Panel can recommend that the UN and AU should develop mechanisms to ensure strategic guidance and joint guidelines on transitions, so that it becomes easier for both organizations to involve each other from the earliest stages in assessments, planning, coordination mechanisms, mission support, benchmarks and evaluation. More efforts are needed to creatively and innovatively find ways to support African peace operations. For instance, the Panel can recommend that the UN Department of Field Service make some of its capabilities available to the AU, including its Brindisi and Kampala logistical depots; include the AU in some on-call procurement arrangements, for instance strategic airlift; and partner with the AU in developing essential mission support planning and managing capabilities in the AU Commission and AU missions. Most important, however, is the issue of making use of UN assessed contributions to support AU operations. The Panel would be amiss if it does not come out in support of the UN supporting those AU operations that are critical for maintaining international peace and security. African peace operations represent regional and local responses to global problems. Most African conflicts are global in the sense that they are heavily influenced, if not driven, by external factors like the international agenda of Islamic extremists and the global war on terror; the exploitation of natural resources by multinationals; capital flight facilitated and solicited by the international banking system, and transnational organized crime, driven by markets in the West for narcotics, human trafficking, timber and illegally caught fish. Effective African peace operations thus represent a significant contribution to the global common good and prevent the UN, as a last resort, from being prematurely drawn into a stabilization role. * Cedric de Coning is a senior research fellow with the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and a senior advisor to the African Center for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD).
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a young graduate in nuremberg
SPECIAL FEATURE
I worked at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial as an assistant to my uncle Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, the French judge, from March to August 1946. The judge needed some help and he called on two nephews in succession to Nuremberg. I was the second one, a recent law graduate (the French ‘licence en droit’) aged 22. I was asked to summarize French verbatim records of the hearings, delivered daily in four languages, on seven defendants. They included Hans Frank, originally a lawyer, the Governor-General of Poland, the “Butcher of Poland”. I wrote a short article in the French weekly ‘Réforme’ (25 May 1946) on his unique guilty plea of 18 April 1946: a converted Catholic, he said that he was possessed by a deep sense of guilt. Baldur von Schirach, the Nazi youth leader, but also the Vienna Gauleiter, was another of my “clients” entrusted to me by my uncle in view of my (then) strong interests in scouting. In his testimony in May 1946, he said that he was always tolerant. He learned about the gas chambers and massive exterminations only in 1944. He concluded: “Hitler is a murderer. Auschwitz must mark the end of racism. It is a shame in the German history”.
My summaries were dictated to French secretaries, older than me, who wondered whether I was up to the job. My work was in the back office but I was allowed occasionally to be present on important occasions during a Tribunal’s session. This was my first job.
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the trial was set in a destroyed Nuremberg, where only the restored Tribunal looked like an oasis of order and justice. Coming from a France not yet recovered from its defeat, German occupation and restrictions, the Tribunal set in the American zone of Germany was to me a place of luxury of all goods we still missed in my country. French participation in the trial suffered from the lack of adequate financial resources, available documentation and the shortage of qualified jurists: the French judges had almost no legal staff and the French prosecution staff was meagre in comparison with US and British delegations. Transportation from Paris to Nuremberg was provided by the US military, and British cars took the French judges on excursions. There was a contrast between the dramatic solemnity of the trial sternly and ably led by its British President, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, the rows of the defendants, former powerful Nazi leaders, the smooth American operational efficiency, and the offer of evening distractions and week-end tours. Among the gifted interpreters who initiated the new “simultaneous interpretation” technique, I remember the Russian interpreter who forgot his stuttering when he spoke to the microphone.
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I was lodged in a requisitioned house in the near suburbs of Nuremberg together with Donnedieu and Robert Falco, his alternate judge and their wives. Donnedieu was a former professor of criminal law and an eminent specialist in international law. His lack of judicial experience was somewhat compensated by his expertise in international criminal matters and Falco had long experience as a magistrate in the Cour de Cassation. He had been expelled from the Court by the Pétain regime as a Jew in December 1940. Falco, at the preliminary London negotiations and Donnedieu during the pre-judgment deliberations challenged the validity of a “crime against peace” under international law and raised objections to the concept of conspiracy both charges initiated and strongly maintained by Robert Jackson and included in the Nuremberg Charter. My uncle knew German but no English, which hampered any professional or social familiarity with his American and British colleagues. Falco and his wife knew good English. We were driven each day to the Tribunal under the protection of two US military bodyguards. Hermann Goering, although thinner and deprived of his flamboyant uniforms, was the leader in the dock and faced the charges of Robert Jackson in April 1946 with aplomb and better insider knowledge of Nazi facts. Rudolf Hess looked absent except to reject the jurisdiction of the Tribunal and deny, like all defendants, any guilt. The generals and admirals maintained their dignity. One of the most impressive testimonies also in April 1946 was that of Rudolf Hoess, who had been Commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp from May
> yves Beigbeder Nuremburg Tribunal, 1946 Former senior official with the UN and lecturer at UNITAR, geneva, switzerland
1940 to December 1943, as a damning witness for Kaltenbrunner. Hoess declared calmly having personally sent to their deaths in gas chambers close to two million people (present estimates are 1.1 million detainees’ deaths). He was told that this was to prevent the Jews from annihilating the German people. He also gave details on the Nazi medical experiments. I remember a visit of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer, to our house. He was promoting his concept of genocide and tried to have it mentioned in the judgment. He failed, but the Genocide Convention was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December, 1948. I left Nuremberg in August 1946. The four judges and their alternates had started their deliberations in June, before the end of the public proceedings. The trial, which started on 18 October 1945, ended on 1 October 1946. Donnedieu and Falco gave me a precious testimonial that I had performed my duties to their entire satisfaction.
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I went to Indiana University in Bloomington on a two-year scholarship, where I completed the requirements for a Master’s degree in Education and Psychology, leaving the Nuremberg trial well behind. I then engaged in a long career in UN organizations, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN in Rome, and the World Health Organization in Africa, Denmark, Alexandria, New Delhi and Geneva. I was a Personnel Officer, and finally Assistant Chief of Personnel in WHO at Geneva. My work involved legal duties. Continued on next page >
S i g n u p f o r o u r e > upda t e b y b e c o m i n g a m e m b e r !
member publications Nuremberg is credited as a major juridical and judicial precedent in international law
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Routledge Handbook of Transnational Criminal Law Neil Boister, Robert J. Currie | Routledge
i returned to the nuremberg trial when I started giving courses on international organization to universities in North America and in Europe, besides my WHO work and after my retirement. Part of my courses concerned international justice, and Nuremberg came back in the picture. The creation of international criminal tribunals in the 1990s – the Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Lebanon – and the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002 renewed my interest in the fight against the impunity of major leaders. I published five books on international criminal justice and tribunals between 1999 and 2011. The Nuremberg and the Tokyo Tribunals were later criticized as “Victors’ Justice”. Their jurisdiction and judgments were also deemed to be based on charges not in force when the alleged crimes were committed. In Nuremberg, the German lawyers used the tu quoque argument: they denounced the Soviet aggressions against Finland and Poland (crimes against peace) and the Katyn massacre, and the British and American mass bombing of German cities. On the positive side, Nuremberg is credited as a major juridical and judicial precedent in international law: for the first time, high level political and military leaders were held responsible for crimes committed in their name or in the name of their government. Individual responsibility replaced the ineffective state responsibility. A civilized, punctilious, judicial process replaced raw vengeance and summary executions.
The Nuremberg Charter, the new definition of international crimes, the Tribunal’s procedures and jurisprudence have served as essential precedents for the creation and functioning of the later international criminal tribunals and of the International Criminal Court. It opened international law to individuals, previously reserved to states: individuals had obligations under international law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, affirmed that they also had rights.
* Yves Beigbeder served at the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946. After a long career in UN organizations as a senior official, he lectured on international law and organizations for UNITAR in Geneva, Switzerland and various other European and North American universities.
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Routledge Handbook of Transnational Criminal Law Edited by Neil Boister and Robert J. Currie
Routledge research on the united nations
Martin Daniel Niemetz | Routledge This book offers a concrete and practically applicable answer to the question of how to reform the UN and increase the legitimacy of the UN’s decision-making procedures on issues of global peace and security. In order to provide this answer, it connects the minutia of institutional design with the abstract principals of democratic theory in a systematic and reproducible method, thereby enabling a clear normative evaluation of even the smallest technical detail of reform.
Reforming UN DecisionMaking Procedures Promoting a deliberative system for global peace and security Martin Daniel Niemetz
acuns activities at the
13th united nations congress on crime prevention and criminal justice
Among NGOs, ACUNS organized the largest number of sessions, addressing issues including: gender-based and conflict-related violence against women and girls; educating succeeding generations for justice, inclusiveness and equality; and the challenge of uniting United Nations bodies to “deliver as one” on the post-2015 agenda. Led by Michael Platzer and Milica Dimitrijevic, the ACUNS Vienna team drafted and coordinated the
In spite of its limitations and failings, international criminal justice remains as a necessary instrument to fight against the impunity of criminal leaders.
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Reforming UN Decision-Making Procedures: Promoting a Deliberative System for Global Peace and Security
At the 13th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, 12-18th April in Doha, Qatar, the ACUNS Vienna Liaison team organised 8 ancillary meetings, with more than 35 speakers and over 300 attendees. At an official opening event of the Congress United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed there could be no development without human rights or the rule of law.
Donnedieu wrote in 1947 that although Nuremberg was human justice, incomplete justice, a relative justice was better than no justice. For him, the Nuremberg judgment ratified the supremacy of international law over national law. It also affirmed the primacy of conscience over the exigencies of discipline.
A C U N S q uart e rly n e wsl e tt e r
The Routledge Handbook of Transnational Criminal Law provides a comprehensive overview of the system which is designed to regulate cross border crime. The book looks at the history and development of the system, asking questions as to the principal purpose and effectiveness of transnational criminal law as it currently stands. The book brings together experts in the field, both scholars and practitioners, in order to offer original and forward-looking analyses of the key elements of the transnational criminal law.
SPECIAL report > milica dimitrijevic collaborator with the ACUNS vienna LIaison Office
Doha Civil Society Declaration, with the Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. H.E. Ambassador Martin Sajdik, President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), gave his opening remarks at the ancillary meeting “Delivering as One” on the UN Post2015 Agenda: Peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development. The meeting examined how UNODC and the other UN organizations can work together to fulfill Goal 16 of the Post2015 Development Agenda, recognizing that sustainable development and the rule of law are mutually reinforcing. The Doha Declaration calls for comprehensive approaches to counter crime, violence, corruption, and terrorism in all their forms, to be coordinated along with broader measures for social and economic development, poverty eradication, respect for cultural diversity, social peace and social inclusion. Continued on next page 9 >
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another spoiler of un peacekeeping in the middle east: isis
> s wa d e s h r a n a senior fellow, world policy institute, New York
Feature story
as a relative newcomer among the spoilers for United nations peacekeeping in the middle east ISIS has created more insecurity in a shorter time period in
this increasingly volatile region. While doing so, it has also hit at more than one button for self-destruction. One, by claiming statehood with mobile frontiers and a commitment to “Remaining and Expanding“ as its motto. Two, by using the same brutal methods for coercing uncritical obedience within the territory it occupies as it employs outside to convert, convict and punish. Three, by inadvertently encouraging political line-ups against it even by those who do not see eye to eye otherwise. And four, by setting aloud the alarm bells for UN Peacekeepers to seek a closing of the gap between their mandates under Chapter VI of the UN Charter on Pacific Settlement of disputes and their actual dealing with a changing nature of armed conflicts that fall more under Chapter VII on Threats to International Peace and Security. Prior to the establishment of ISIS with the onset of Syrian Civil war in 2011, those conflicts had already moved to a fourth generation in a post World War Two genealogy: from inter-state, to intra-state, to states vs. non-state actors, and to societies at war with themselves. ISIS has added yet another that defies categorization and poses an immediate hazard for the already stressed UN Peacekeepers in the Middle East. Of the 15 ongoing UN Peacekeeping Operations, 3 are located in the Middle East: UNTSO, UNIFIL and UNDOF. Since the deployment of UNTSO in 1948 as the UN’s first ever Peacekeeping Operation, the Middle East has been a virtual test case of the UN’s political resilience in adapting to the changing nature of armed conflicts. Accounting for roughly one fifth of the total worldwide there is often simultaneity in the 65 armed conflicts occurring in the Middle East since 1948. All 16 countries in the Middle East have been engaged in or adjacent to the theatre of one or more of those conflicts that divide the regional political line-ups into Arab-Israel, PalestinianIsrael, Inter- Arab and Intra-Arab. All the three ongoing peacekeeping operations were mandated to deal with the Palestinian –Israel, ArabIsrael and Inter-Arab conflicts until the situation in Syria assumed an added intra-Arab dimension. None so far made a significant difference in bringing down the incidence and outcome of these conflicts. Each became a direct target of local extremism. UN Mediator in Palestine Count Folke Bernadotte, to assist whom it was set up, was assassinated soon after establishment of UNTSO. In the 1980’s UNIFIL was the target of so many local militant groups that guarding its own personnel became its major pre-occupation amidst cross border terror attacks launched through its territory. To demand a reversal of their inclusion in the UN’s list of terrorist organizations in 2014, Islamic militants in Syria kidnapped and surrounded UNDOF personnel from Fiji and the Philippines. In last one year, the Middle East suffered the largest single number of peacekeeper fatalities worldwide. It also witnessed the highest civilian casualty in any single country where UN peacekeepers were deployed, when Syria alone lost more than a quarter of its population to fatalities and
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displacement. Yet to date, no Middle Eastern country has called for a termination of UNIFIL or UNDOF, and UNTSO operates as a training centre for peacekeepers long after events overtook its role to supervise the truce between Palestine and Jordan. Sir Brian Urquhart, a mastermind for UN peacekeeping as an extra-constitutional evolution of the UN Charter without an amendment, attributes its durability by asking us “to imagine the Middle East without UN Peace Keepers.” The Middle East remains a priority in the ongoing reviews and outlook for UN Peacekeeping. A major UN presence in the Middle East is foreseen by 2017 with additional troop deployments in Syria and Lebanon, and possibly a new operation in Yemen. “If the UN has a major role in the Middle East in the next five years, European countries will probably make a major contribution to forces in the region” says a 2012 report on “UN Peacekeeping: The Next Five Years.” Counting China and India as doing the same, the report lists the following to strengthen future UN peacekeeping including political missions like the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) set up in 2003: Enabling units, including (i) helicopters; (ii) drones; (iii) engineers; (iv) gendarmerie and riot police; (v) special forces and protection units; (vi) field hospitals and (vi) maritime capabilities. Highly specialized personnel, including: (i) air planning and movement specialists; (ii) information analysts; (iii) chemical weapons experts; and (iv) security sector and defense reform specialists. Some ranking UN peacekeepers believe that without the spoiler effect of militant extremists, a timeframe of 7 to 8 years could bring the peace process in the region to fruition. Among half a dozen such groups that include Al-Nusra, Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS comes atop. Within less than a year of announcing its statehood in June 2014, ISIS has not only assaulted UN peacekeepers but also obstructed other international efforts to underpin the peace process through timely humanitarian assistance and protection of civilian populations. During the briefings by the Commanders of UN Peacekeeping Missions in the most difficult areas, Lieutenant General Iqbal Singh Singha, the Force Commander UNDOF talked of “Blue helmets” for the Golan coming under fire, getting abducted, hijacked, having their weapons snatched and offices vandalized by Islamic militants. Besieged in the western neighborhoods of Deir ez Zor by ISIS since May 2014, the only humanitarian assistance received by 250,000 Syrians until March this year was 140 sheep through the UN’s humanitarian partners. A calculated use of brutality by ISIS to dominate every aspect of the lives of those living in ISIS-controlled territory includes public beheading, shooting and stoning of civilians and captured fighters. An estimated 1.8 million Iraqis were displaced and at least 4,692 civilians killed between June and August 2014 alone due to ongoing violence involving ISIS.
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uestioning the very existence of ISIS as an independent state, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned even its very nomenclature. “The terrorists calling themselves the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) should not get to use that name because they are not truly Islamic and do not represent any state,” he told a press conference in New York during the week long session of the General Assembly last year. “They should more fittingly be called Un-Islamic Non-State.” Denouncing it as “unacceptable” after ISIS took control of large parts of the Palestinian Camp at Yarmouk he labeled the “massacre” thereafter as “the deepest circle of hell” that has driven out all but 18,000 of its 160,000 Palestinian refugees and Syrians residents who escaped the fight between the government and Syrian insurgents since 2011. “The deliberate destruction of our common cultural heritage constitutes a war crime,” said the Secretary-General after ISIS bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, smashed artifacts in the Mosul museum and was reported to set its sights on the 2,200-year old city of Hatra, a world heritage site in the north of Iraq. Militant groups resorting to terrorism as a mode of combat usually thrive on the strongest condemnation of their acts as they see in it an acknowledgement of their power to hurt. The ISIS is no exception. If anything it flaunt its uniqueness as a normally functioning state with expanding borders and dares those who believe that it can be destroyed militarily. “At some stage, you’re going to have to face the Islamic State as a country, and even consider a truce,” says an article entitled “Paradigm Shift” in the eighth issue of Dabiq, the official ISIS magazine. It first assumes that Western leaders have now accepted that unlike any previous terrorist organization, ISIS is a country with all the attributes of a bona fide state—from a police force and schools to a functioning court system and supposed currency. Then it asks rhetorically “What’s the alternative, launch airstrikes in half-a-dozen countries at once?” And finally it adds, “They’ll have to destroy half the region if that’s the case.” By now, according to the Pentagon, 20 percent of ISIS controlled territory has been recovered by Iraqi forces and “ISIL is no longer the dominant force in roughly 25 to 30% of the populated areas of Iraqi territory where it once had complete freedom of movement.” Of an estimated 31, 000 fighters available to ISIS, with a fighting force of between 9000 to 18000, the coalition forces are believed to have killed close to 6,000 including half of the top command. At least 184 Humvees, 58 tanks and nearly 700 other vehicles were destroyed or damaged in the more than 1,600 airstrike missions that hit over 3,000 ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria since August 2104. The targets included 26 MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles , over 700 artillery, mortar and infantry fighting positions and 14 small boats used by ISIS to ferry personnel and supplies on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Iraq. In releasing further details of ISIS losses by February 2015, Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary portrayed the cumulative effects as severely restricting ISIS’ ability to communicate and maneuver. Of all the losses suffered, and denied by ISIS, nothing compares to the symbolism and impact of its loss of territory within which it forces a given population to uncritically practice the teachings of Islam by Prophet Muhammad pbuh. Confined so far mostly around the edges of its front line, the military push against ISIS may go behind those lines for breaking it up, according to Afzal Ashar, a counter-insurgency specialist and consulting fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
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What could ensue is “a maneuverist warfare” that uses airpower to take over land along main supply routes to put friendly forces thereon and cut it into chunks that cause a more massive disruption and rapid collapse for command, control and supply chains than normally possible with a frontal push. The high tech capability required for such a maneuver is available in the region, particularly with helicopters and aircraft of Jordanian and Egyptian forces outraged by ISIS’ execution of their compatriots. In February this year, Jordan’s King Abdullah II cut short a visit to Washington to deal with the ISIS murder of a Jordanian pilot. In the same month, ISIS provoked condemnation in Egypt after publicly executing 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Tripoli where they were held captive. If the military odds against ISIS are heavy, the geo-political landmines in its route are no less intimidating. “Properly contained, the Islamic State is likely to be its own undoing. No country is its ally, and its ideology ensures that this will remain the case,” says Graeme Wood, an expert on the historical roots of Caliphates - as ISIS claims to be one today. “The land it controls, while expansive, is mostly uninhabited and poor. As it stagnates or slowly shrinks, its claim that it is the engine of God’s will and the agent of apocalypse will weaken, and fewer believers will arrive. And as more reports of misery within it leak out, radical Islamist movements elsewhere will be discredited.”1 A worst-case scenario could bring together Al-Nusra and ISIS with either one or both holding UN peacekeepers to ransom by an ultimatum to use crude chemical devices assembled from the abundantly available medical waste in any civil war with large-scale civilian casualties. Doctors from Medicine Sans Frontiers, operating in conflict torn areas of Middle East, are known to be intrigued if not alarmed by the exaggerated demand by some local doctors for chloride and potassium. Better-scrutinized methods of medical waste disposal merit a place in the issues for urgent attention for the ongoing comprehensive review of the whole question of UN peacekeeping. So does a revalidation of information analyses for tracking any impending coalitions for terror between Al- Nusra, ISIS and their common mentor: the former Iraqi Revolutionary Guards. With speculation over the future of ISIS after rumors in late 2014 about a dead/disabled/many alias assuming Caliph Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi, a merger between Al Nusra and ISIS was reported in social media in August 2014.2 ISIS claims receiving oaths of allegiance by the Nigeria-based Boko Haram and Somali based Al-Shabab, the latter having failed already in getting attending RSVP’s for its open invitation to the mujahedeen worldwide to “come home” to Somalia. An optimistic scenario may turn a spoiler for UN peacekeepers into an inadvertent game changer for the peace process in the Middle East. Within the region, the Palestinians after Yarmouk are reported to have approached President Assad of Syria to offer their support to crush the ISIS. The Israelis presumably asked UN peacekeepers to convey to President Assad a message to count them in for defeating the ISIS. Outside the region too, the coalition forces opposed to President Assad seem inclined to put their demands for his ouster on hold to strengthen his hand in overwhelming ISIS militarily and isolating it politically. Even a temporary coalition of convenience among the Palestine-Israel, the Arab- Israel, the Inter-Arab and the Intra Arab line-ups on the civil war in Syria, if successful in out- maneuvering ISIS, would have a lasting impact on equipping the UN peacekeepers better in dealing with terrorism as a tool of combat for a group of non-state actors claiming to be a state that is non-existent. * Swadesh Rana is a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York.
1 Graeme Wood on “What ISIS Really Wants” the cover story in the March 2015 issue of The Atlantic. 2 Kurt Nimmo in Infowars.com, August 30, 2014.
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acuns’ activities at the 13th united nations congress on crime prevention and criminal justice Continued from page 6 > At the ancillary meeting Femicide: Genderrelated and mass killing of women and girls, ACUNS presented its recently released third volume of Femicide: A Global Issue That Demands Action with an overall theme Targeting of Women in Conflict. H.E. Dubravka Simonovic, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Republic of Croatia, chaired the panel; Thelma Esperanza Aldana Hernandez, Attorney General from Guatemala, and Austrian Federal Minister of Justice Wolfgang Brandstetter, delivered keynote statements. Luis Alfonso De Alba, Ambassador of Mexico and Permanent Representative to the International Organizations in Vienna introduced with a discussion of the Doha Declaration. Kanchana Patarachoke, Deputy Director-General, Department of International Organizations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand, emphasized the recommendations of the UNODC expert group on gender related killing of women and girls. Panelists focused on violence and the mass killing of women, and the work being undertaken by various countries and organizations to promote and protect women’s rights. A key message from panelists was that Member States should be responsible for undertaking initiatives to send a message to their own citizens and to the global community that violence against women will not be accepted. Dean Al-Khulaifi of Qatar University chaired the ACUNS ancillary meeting on Scientific evidence and religious belief in support of the adoption of the 2016-2030 Sustainable Developments Goals by the United Nations General Assembly. The event focused on the adoption of the UN 2016-2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs), particularly to reducing injustice and other inequalities through the interfaith dialogue (between secular and non-secular actors) to counter resource deprivations and inhuman and degrading treatment. The ancillary meeting Women and children as victims, offenders and agents of crime prevention, organized in collaboration with the Thailand Institute of Justice, focused on early crime prevention as one of the most viable means to prevent future offending and victimization. This event looked into crime issues through the lens of prison reformers and educators. Experts discussed the issues of women and children as victims, offenders and agents of crime prevention. The period 2016-2030 is designated by the UN Secretary-General as “The Road to Dignity”. The side event Educating Succeeding Generations for Justice focused on the emerging new UN priorities, specifically the rehabilitation, reintegration and intercultural education of youth in conflict with the law, and education of global youth on the United Nations. ACUNS presented the example of the Regional Academy on the United Nations (RAUN), as a unique program with the aim to train young scholars.
ACUNS in collaboration with the Thailand Institute of Justice organized the session, Political aspects of crime prevention and their effects on reducing crime. The side event looked into this topic from the international perspective that may contribute to countering crime domestically, with a view to making it work for the UN sustainable development agenda.
The ACUNS Vienna Liaison team would like to extend our gratitude to the Thailand Institute of Justice, our thoughtful donors and partners. Their efforts continue to help raise awareness and contribute to ending the mass killing of women and girls, and educate succeeding generations for justice, inclusiveness and equality. With TIJ’s assistance, ACUNS Vienna’s initiatives have been recognized globally.
2015 dissertation award announcement the academic council on the united nations system is pleased to announce the winner of the 2015 Dissertation Fellowship Award
Dahlia Simangan PhD Candidate, Department of International Relations, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University
for her dissertation entitled,
The Responsibility to Rebuild: Exploring the Future of UN’s Approach to Post-Conflict Peacebuilding view the 2016 dissertation fellowship award call for applications online
> visit acuns.org/2016da/
acuns/asil summer workshop on international organization studies
call for applications
swios15 study opportunity
The Evolution of UN Peace Operations: Contemporary Challenges and Requirements October 26 - November 1, 2015
Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI) | Oslo, Norway
Online applications Visit: http://acuns.org/2015-summer-workshop-on-line-application/ Applications must be completed by Monday, June 8, 2015. Questions? Please email admin@acuns.org or call (1) 226.772.3121 A C U N S S e cr e tariat > Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5
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AM15
the un at 70: guaranteeing security and justice
scheduled events 11-13 june, 2015
The Hague Institute for Global Justice and the International Institute of Social Studies | The Netherlands J ohn W. Holmes Memorial lect ure
key not e sp ea ker
Abiodun Williams
Mrs. Fatou Bensouda
President, The Hague Institute for Global Justice and Chair, ACUNS
Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
Dr. Abiodun Williams was appointed the first President of The Hague Institute for Global Justice on January 1, 2013. From 2011 to 2012 he served as Senior Vice President of the Center for Conflict Management at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington, DC. He led USIP’s work in major conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. He served as Vice President of USIP’s Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention from 2008 to 2011, and had primary responsibility for the Institute’s work on conflict prevention, Iran, and Northeast Asia. From 2001-2007, Dr. Williams served as Director of Strategic Planning in the Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary-General, where he was a principal adviser to Secretaries-General Ban Ki-moon and Kofi Annan. He served in three peacekeeping operations in Macedonia, Haiti, and Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1994 to 2000 as Special Assistant to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, and Political and Humanitarian Affairs Officer. Dr. Williams has also had valuable experience in academia. He has served as Associate Dean of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, and held faculty appointments at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, University of Rochester, and Tufts University. In 2012 Dr. Williams was elected Chair of the Academic Council on the United Nations System. He is a Member of the Executive Board of the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University. Previously he served as a Trustee of the Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific in Canada, and a Member of the International Board of Directors of the United World Colleges. He is the author or editor of three books on conflict prevention and multilateral negotiations. He has received several awards including the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University and the Constantine E. Maguire Medal from Georgetown University. Dr. Williams attended Lester B. Pearson College, where he gained the International Baccalaureate Diploma. He holds an M.A. Honors in English Language and Literature from Edinburgh University, as well as an M.A.L.D. and a Ph.D. in International Relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
On 12 December 2011, Mrs. Fatou Bensouda was elected by consensus by the Assembly of States Parties to serve as the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). She was nominated and supported as the sole African candidate for election to the post by the African Union. Between 1987 and 2000, Mrs. Bensouda was successively Senior State Counsel, Principal State Counsel, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Solicitor General and Legal Secretary of the Republic, and Attorney General and Minister of Justice, in which capacity she served as Chief Legal Advisor to the President and Cabinet of The Republic of The Gambia. She has also served as a General Manager of a leading commercial bank in The Gambia. Her international career as a non-government civil servant formally began at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she worked as a Legal Adviser and Trial Attorney before rising to the position of Senior Legal Advisor and Head of the Legal Advisory Unit (2002 to 2004), after which she joined the ICC as the Court’s first Deputy Prosecutor. Mrs. Bensouda has served as delegate to United Nations conferences on crime prevention, the Organization of African Unity’s Ministerial Meetings on Human Rights, and as delegate of The Gambia to the meetings of the Preparatory Commission for the ICC. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the distinguished ICJ International Jurists Award (2009), presented by the then President of India P. D. Patil; the 2011 World Peace Through Law Award presented by the Whitney Harris World Law Institute, Washington University; the American Society of International Law’s Honorary Membership Award (2014), and the XXXV Peace Prize by the United Nations Association of Spain (2015). In addition to holding several honorary doctorates, Mrs. Bensouda has been listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world (2012); by the New African magazine as one of the “Most Influential Africans;” by Foreign Policy as one of the “Leading Global Thinkers” (2013), and by Jeune Afrique as one of 50 African women who, by their actions and initiatives in their respective roles, advance the African continent (2014 & 2015).
Booking information, schedules and more information can be found online at
quarterly newsletter Issue 2 > 2015
AC U N S S e cr e tariat
Editor: Brenda Burns, Co-ordinator, ACUNS
Wilfrid Laurier University 75 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 3C5
Contributing Writers: Cedric de Coning, Yves Beigbeder, Milica Dimitrijevic, Swadesh Rana, Alistair Edgar and Brenda Burns
Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) Quarterly Newsletter is published four times a year with the support of the Department of Communications, Public Affairs & Marketing (CPAM) at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Design: Dawn Wharnsby, CPAM Imagery: Thinkstock.com
We welcome and encourage your feedback. Opinions expressed in ACUNS Quarterly Newsletter do not necessarily reflect those of the editor, ACUNS or the host institution.
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© ACUNS 2015. All rights reserved.
A C U N S q uart e rly n e wsl e tt e r
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