The U.N. Can Do More to Protect Civilians in South Sudan

As the conflict in Sudan continues to intensify, thousands of refugees^[1] have been fleeing southward to South Sudan, where the world’s largest United Nations peacekeeping mission is based. But refugees may not be any safer there, despite the presence of U.N. peacekeepers.

In recent years, civilians in South Sudan have been the victims of attacks by both rebels and government forces, and the U.N. mission has a poor record of protecting them from this violence. To change this, the international community needs to hold the mission’s civilian and military leadership accountable for their failures, rather than relying solely on naming and shaming the South Sudanese leaders who are behind the actual abuses. 

On April 4, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights for South Sudan delivered its latest report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. For the first time, it named 14 civilian and military leaders it deems responsible for “crimes against humanity and war crimes,” including officers of the South Sudanese People’s Defense Force, such as Lt. Gen. Thoi Chany Reat; rebel leaders, like Simon Gatwech; and South Sudanese politicians, like Gordon Koang. The report links them to the killing and rape of civilians, recruitment of child soldiers, extrajudicial killings and forced displacement of the civilian population. The commission rightly calls for accountability for the 14 individuals named, by which it seems to mean prosecutions. 

But unmentioned in the report is accountability for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, known by its acronym UNMISS. As the report acknowledges, in the past several years, U.N. peacekeepers have repeatedly stood by while attacks on civilians were being perpetrated. For example, in September 2022, 5,000 civilians in Adidiang endured a day-long spree of killings and rape that lasted into the night, with many drowning as they attempted to escape along the edges of the Nile. But troops at a UNMISS base only 15 miles away did nothing. Similarly, in November, a camp for displaced persons at Aburoc was attacked. Once again, U.N. forces at Kodok, only 12 miles away, failed to prevent the attack or intervene once it began. 

These are just two of the documented cases^[2] in which U.N. peacekeepers’ failure to act resulted in deaths, sexual trauma and atrocities so grave and widespread that they met the standard for crimes against humanity. Indeed, the commission’s report states that “UNMISS peacekeepers provided for the evacuation of humanitarians from these areas,” but they left the South Sudanese civilians to their fates. 

Historically, one explanation for failures of peacekeeping missions to protect civilians has been that doing so falls outside their mandate. During the genocide in Rwanda, for example, peacekeeping troops associated with a U.N. mission stood by while 800,000 Tutsi civilians were murdered by Hutu militias. In that case, as political scientists Martha Finnemore and Michael Barnett showed^[3], the U.N. believed the troops were there to monitor a cease-fire and provided for a defensive mission only. 

But that isn’t the case in South Sudan. Over the past two decades, U.N. missions have developed remarkably robust civilian protection mandates^[4]. The current UNMISS mandate^[5] for example, clearly states that peacekeepers must protect civilians—and especially internally displaced people and refugees, including those in protected sites—who are “under threat of physical violence, irrespective of the source of such violence.” It adds that they must “promptly and effectively engage any actor that is credibly found to be preparing attacks, or engages in attacks, against civilians.” 

Of course, a paper mandate isn’t always enough. The original peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia received an enhanced mandate to protect civilians when the U.N. Security Council declared a number of towns “safe areas” in 1993. However, Dutch troops stationed at the town of Srebrenica did not receive^[6] the necessary equipment, personnel or rules of engagement to fit that mandate. As a result, they notoriously stood by as one of the worst civilian massacres of the conflict was carried out. 

There have been no concrete repercussions for senior leaders of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan who fail to deploy the available troops at their disposal to protect civilians.

But UNMISS doesn’t have these excuses either. Their rules of engagement explicitly authorize them to use deadly force to protect civilians. Nor does the mission lack personnel or equipment. In places such as Unity state, where government-aligned forces deliberately killed and raped civilians from February to April in 2022, UNMISS had over 1,500 peacekeepers equipped with armored vehicles, anti-tank weapons and heavy machine guns. They were backed up by hospitals, engineers, and military police. Moreover, the mission has air-mobile reserve forces in Juba that should be able to reinforce any of its bases or mobile patrols in a matter of hours. 

Neither are training or troop morale the problem. When given the opportunity, these well-trained UNMISS troops have shown themselves willing and able to save lives. The same battalions based in Unity state, for example, have repeatedly acted with appropriate levels^[7] of force to protect civilians in the immediate vicinity of their bases. If they did not do the same in villages they were tasked to defend, it is because the mission’s civilian leadership ordered them to stand down. 

The U.N. commission rightly calls out the South Sudanese military for failing to protect civilians and its “role in allowing the violence.” But while the report recognizes that UNMISS could have done more, it does not include the similar role played by UNMISS leaders in its calls for accountability. This is itself part of the problem. Simply put, there have been no concrete repercussions for senior UNMISS leaders who fail to deploy the available troops at their disposal to protect civilians. 

Even in the worst cases of attacks against civilians in South Sudan, in 2013 and 2016, the investigations into the mission’s lack of preparedness^[8] and failure to act did not name the special representative of the U.N. secretary-general—the mission’s senior civilian leader—at the time. In both cases, the special representatives—Hilde Johnson and Ellen Loj, respectively—quietly stepped down from that position and simply moved on to other senior leadership roles in the United Nations. Johnson became a member of the U.N. Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Peace Operations, and Loj went on to lead the U.N.’s strategic review of its mission in Mali.

In 2021, when then-Special Representative David Shearer stepped down, he said that he “was proud of the progress that had been made” under his watch. But he never acknowledged the fact that civilian casualties had doubled from 2019 to 2020, or that he did nothing to stop the 2020 massacres in Jonglei, in which 738 civilians were killed and 686 abducted, many of them women and children. Shearer’s successor, Nicholas Haysom, has done no better at fulfilling his mission’s core mandate task: Civilian casualties increased 14 percent in his first year on the job. As for his predecessors, there seems to be little pressure on him to make any changes. 

The U.N. commission’s latest report, which places the blame for failing to prevent atrocities entirely on the South Sudanese government rather than also calling out UNMISS, is a perfect example of this lack of pressure. Indeed, since 2016, the commission has published seven such reports, all of which have ended with detailed recommendations for what the South Sudanese government and opposition forces should do to improve protection of civilians. Not one has recommended that UNMISS improve its dismal performance in protecting civilians from the armed actors targeting them.

Such recommendations might force the Security Council, the U.N. secretary-general and the U.N. Department of Peace Operations to take action. In the meantime, the lack of political pressure is perhaps the best explanation for the U.N. peacekeepers’ willingness to sit by while civilians are burned alive in huts^[9]: There is currently no political cost for not intervening. 

Without such costs, the risks of intervening—the most obvious being Blue Helmet casualties^[10]—create disincentives against taking decisive action. But arguably, U.N. peacekeepers are in South Sudan precisely to take that risk on behalf of civilians. And research shows that armed U.N. peacekeepers are highly effective^[11] in using compellent force when needed. In fact, research shows^[12] that the mere presence of armed U.N. military peacekeepers is often enough to deter attacks against civilians without battles, or to win battles at minimal cost when attacks aren’t deterred. 

For all these reasons, allowing UNMISS to stand idly by while the civilians they are mandated to protect are killed, tortured and raped is ethically unacceptable. The U.N. member states and the human rights community should be openly saying so. Unfortunately for the civilian victims who are killed and raped in the vicinity of its bases in South Sudan, the U.N. will not be required to defend itself in court, as in the recent case brought by the “Mothers of Srebrenica,” the U.N. was found^[13] to enjoy absolute immunity from civil claims. That means that if there is to be accountability, it must come from the U.N. and its member states themselves. 

To be fair, the perpetrators deserve justice too. But while the international community should heed the U.N. commission’s words and take steps to bring Gatwech, Reat, Koang and the other 11 named perpetrators to justice, that alone is not enough. They must also bring all pressure to bear, immediately, on the senior civilian and military leadership of the UNMISS to undertake all means necessary to protect civilians in South Sudan from further loss of life and dignity. 

Edward Carpenter is a retired U.S. Marine who previously served as the chief of policy and plans for the U.N. Mission in South Sudan. His forthcoming book addresses the challenges of peacekeeping in the current political climate. He can be found on Twitter at @E_H_Carpenter^[14].

Charli Carpenter is a professor of political science and legal studies at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, specializing in human security and international law. She tweets at @charlicarpenter^[15].

The post The U.N. Can Do More to Protect Civilians in South Sudan^[16] appeared first on World Politics Review^[17].

References

1. ^{^} thousands of refugees (twitter.com)
2. ^{^} documented cases (foreignpolicy.com)
3. ^{^} showed (www.amazon.com)
4. ^{^} robust civilian protection mandates (www.jstor.org)
5. ^{^} current UNMISS mandate (undocs.org)
6. ^{^} did not receive (www.jstor.org)
7. ^{^} appropriate levels (peacekeeping.un.org)
8. ^{^} lack of preparedness (documents-dds-ny.un.org)
9. ^{^} burned alive in huts (www.phnompenhpost.com)
10. ^{^} casualties (foreignpolicy.com)
11. ^{^} highly effective (www.amazon.com)
12. ^{^} research shows (www.jstor.org)
13. ^{^} U.N. was found (hudoc.echr.coe.int)
14. ^{^} @E_H_Carpenter (twitter.com)
15. ^{^} @charlicarpenter (twitter.com)
16. ^{^} The U.N. Can Do More to Protect Civilians in South Sudan (www.worldpoliticsreview.com)
17. ^{^} World Politics Review (www.worldpoliticsreview.com)