Peacekeeping versus humanitarianism.

• Author: Moon, Paul
• Position: United Nations in the former Yugoslavia

Paul Moon discusses the conflicting role of the United Nations in the former Yugoslavia.

The deterioration of relations between the states of the former Yugoslavia (particularly Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia) culminated in a series of armed clashes in early 1991 which subsequently evolved into a full-scale military conflict. Fifty years of firm communist rule had suppressed but failed to extinguish the ethnic bitterness that had been present for centuries in the region, and which had exploded during the Second World War.

The role of the United Nations as both peacekeeper and humanitarian agent in the conflict which developed into a civil war in the early 1990s, and the perceptions of these roles held by the various sides embroiled in the Yugoslav war, impacted on the ability of the United Nations to fulfil an impartial function in the region. The United Nations' eventual failure to distance itself from regional and international political pressures only compounded the apparent inability it had in fulfilling its anticipated traditional peacekeeping role.

On 25 September 1991 the UN Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 713 which called for a weapons embargo on Yugoslavia following small-scale guerrilla-type confrontations between Serbs and Croats It was assumed that this level of reprimand would be sufficient to cause the political leaders in the region to pause and reflect on where their aggressive stances were leading them. However, this revealed more about the extent to which the Security Council under-estimated the tensions in the Yugoslav federation, and had virtually no effect on the supply of weapons to those who wanted them.

Thereafter, a staggering succession of failed peace proposals and cease-fire agreements led to the establishment of a United Nations protection force (UNPROFOR) as a peacekeeping operation in the region. Allied to this was the formation of UN Protected Areas, which were intended to be demilitarised `safe areas' but which did not always manage to fulfil that objective. It became evident within around eight months that the UN initiatives were a case of too little too late, and that the well-being of the civilian populations was at risk as the country slid rapidly towards war.

Major offensive

On 22 January 1993, the Croatian Army launched a major offensive against the Serb-controlled Yugoslav Army, and in the process a number of safe areas, which were supposedly protected by UNPROFOR, were overrun with virtually no resistance. The message being sent to the warring factions in the region was that the international community was reluctant to become too involved in a 'foreign' war.

In May, the United Nations responded to the serious Croatian breaches of the safe areas by issuing resolution 827, which merely expressed `grave alarm at continuing reports of widespread and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law', but which stopped well short of taking the level of measures needed to secure the remaining safe areas.

The ensuing escalation in conflict reduced the UN peacekeeping forces initially to protecting aid convoys as they waited for a firmer military response by the West. As peace negotiations persisted, in the foreground the foreign military presence in the region began to increase. By December 1994, the UNPROFOR presence in the former Yugoslavia had risen to almost 40,000 personnel, had cost the United Nations $1.6 billion, and had suffered 131 fatalities.(1)

Biggest movement

As the war progressed, the former Yugoslavia became the location of the biggest refugee movement in Europe since the Second World War. This put pressure particularly on those nations which had contributed to UNPROFOR to tackle the humanitarian needs that had arisen partly as a result of the political and military positions adopted by those countries towards the Yugoslav crisis. However, because of the scale and intensity of the fighting, there was a requirement that the United Nations adopt a more assertive, even aggressive, stance in order to pursue its humanitarian ends. The extent to which these two functions collided raises fundamental questions about the whole purpose and nature of what has sometimes erroneously been described as `peacekeeping'.

In March 1993, the chairperson of the Working Group on Humanitarian Issues of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia convened a high-level...