Expanded Darfur Peacekeeping Force Needs Support of International Community
24 January 2008
At about one-third of its strength, the new peacekeeping force in Darfur faces great challenges as it tries to provide protection for civilians and make the region safe for aid agencies.
At 26,000-members strong, the new peacekeeping mission planned for Darfur will be the largest of its kind in the world. And potentially that’s good news for millions of people in that remote western region of Sudan who have suffered through nearly five years of conflict.
But the force, which took over on January 1 from a small and under-resourced African Union mission, has barely 9,000 members on the ground—most of whom were already here with the African Union—and is facing serious delays. The Sudanese government is questioning the deployment of troops from certain countries, and donor nations have yet to contribute basic equipment, such as helicopters, that will be vital to the mission’s success.
And that success is critical: Four million people in Darfur now need humanitarian help, but violence and lawlessness in the region are making it increasingly difficult for aid groups to deliver that assistance. The entire humanitarian response is at risk of collapsing because of daily attacks on aid workers that include hijackings, assault, abductions, and robbery.
Known as UNAMID, or the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur, the force is a mix of personnel from the original 7,000-member mission deployed by the African Union and new troops gathered by the United Nations. Oxfam says there are two things UNAMID must do right away: provide urgently needed protection to the people of Darfur and make the region safe for aid agencies to deliver the help people need.
What would that protection entail? Oxfam would like to see UNAMID set up a permanent presence in the region’s major camps for displaced people. The force will include military, police, and civilian members. Those members need to patrol main roads as well as villages and rural areas. Protection of women both inside and outside of the camps must be one of UNAMID’s priorities. It needs to assign patrols to accompany women when they collect firewood or go to the market to reduce the risk that the women will be attacked.
Among the people of Darfur, who have been asking for protection for five years, expectations for this new force are running high. But it’s got to prove itself quickly if it’s going to maintain their confidence—and that’s going to take the full investment of the international community.
The world, however, seems in danger of repeating the mistakes of the past two years when it offered only anemic support to the African Union mission. Its job was to patrol a region the size of France—without enough troops, equipment, training, or financial support. The end result was a demoralized force rejected by the local people. UNAMID, whose first year of operation is expected to cost about $3.4 billion (including $1.5 billion in start-up costs), must not be allowed to suffer the same fate, says Oxfam.
The challenges this new force faces are great. Already is has come under violent attack—the same way the earlier African Union force did. Fatal attacks on the African Union peacekeepers not only undermined their ability to protect people, the attacks chipped away at the credibility of the force in the eyes of the people they were trying to help.
Adding to the difficulties UNAMID confronts is the need for it to coordinate closely with other protective forces in the region—one each in Chad and the Central African Republic. Any change to the security situation in Darfur—good or bad—could create factors that result in large movements of people across the borders of all three countries. The forces need to make joint plans to address the protection issues that could result from those migrations.
While Oxfam welcomes the deployment of this new force, the aid organization is concerned that even if UNAMID reaches its full strength, it will have only a small impact on the lives of people unless the violence in the region stops. That means the many armed factions contributing to the conflict must agree to cease their hostilities—and back that agreement up with monitoring. No number of peacekeepers in Darfur is likely to succeed if there is no peace to keep.
