Norm Change in International Relations

Linked Ecologies in UN Peacekeeping Operations

John Karlsrud

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317374794
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Politics

In recent decades there have been several constructivist scholars who have looked at how norms change in international relations. However few have taken a closer look at the particular strategies that are employed to further change, or looked at the common factors that have been in play in these processes. This book seeks to further the debates by looking at both agency and structure in tandem.

It focuses on the practices of linked ecologies (formal or informal alliances), undertaken by individuals who are the constitutive parts of norm change processes and who have moved between international organizations, academic institutions, think tanks, NGOs and member states. The book sheds new light on how norm change comes about, focusing on the practices of individual actors as well as collective ones. The book draws attention to the role of practices in UN peacekeeping missions and how these may create a bottom–up influence on norm change in UN peacekeeping, and the complex interplay between government and UN officials, applied and academic researchers, and civil society activists forming linked ecologies in processes of norm change. With this contribution, the study further expands the understanding of which actors have agency and what sources of authority they draw on in norm change processes in international organizations.

A significant contribution to the study of international organizations and UN peacekeeping, as well as to the broader questions of global norms in IR, this work will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations alike.

3 SRSGs as norm arbitrators? Understanding bottom-up authority in UN peacekeeping

DOI: 10.4324/9781315672984-3

Of course I met Taliban leaders during the time I was in Afghanistan. Anything else for me would have been unthinkable, given the emphasis I was placing on it myself, and the mandate that we have.

Kai Eide, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Afghanistan (Borger 2010a, emphases added)

Introduction¹

On April 4 and 10, 2011, Choi Young-jin, SRSG² for the UN operation in Côte d’Ivoire (ONUCI), authorized airstrikes against the troops of President Gbagbo, using MI-24 attack helicopters to defend civilian populations from attacks with heavy weapons by Gbagbo forces (BBC World News 2011). Russia reacted with strong condemnation, immediately questioning the legality of the attack (Anishchuk 2011). One year earlier, Kai Eide had stepped down from his post as SRSG for the UN operation in Afghanistan, UNAMA, after admitting to having initiated contacts with the Taliban (Doucet 2010), challenging the US and UK policy of “sticks and carrots” (Lamb and Grey 2009).

Such controversial actions and the relationship between the basic norms they affect are pivotal to UN peacekeeping. In Afghanistan, what was at stake was the principle of impartiality and whether the UN should provide its good offices also to the Taliban, which the Security Council had designated as a terrorist organization. In Côte d’Ivoire, the tension was between the principles of impartiality and protection of civilians.

In both instances there was a clash between center and periphery, between UN headquarters and the field, with Security Council members showing diminishing support of the SRSGs involved. This chapter examines some potentially controversial actions of SRSGs, asking whether such actions or practices can reveal how authority is composed in the UN system and the roles of SRSGs in the norm change processes of that system. What can this indicate about norm change in UN peacekeeping operations and in international organizations more generally? How do new norms arise?

Rationalist theories stress the importance of interests of states, powerful ones in particular; constructivist theories have shown how the UN can act autonomously, even against the intent of its member states. The scholarly debate has focused on whether the UN can act autonomously against the intent of member states (Barnett and Finnemore 1999, 2004, Avant et al. 2010), the role of the Security Council in developing new norms (Johnstone 2008, 2010, Malone 2004), and whether the secretary-general can be considered a norm entrepreneur (Rivlin and Gordenker 1993, Chesterman 2007, Johnstone 2007). While these approaches have shed some light on norm change processes in the UN, they are marred by a top-down perspective that underestimates the role of the ‘field’ where actual operations unfold.

Some studies have examined bottom-up perspectives on norm change in international organizations (IOs) – for example, Finnemore and Sikkink’s seminal work on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as norm entrepreneurs (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) – and organizational learning literature has focused on the role that assembling best practices and lessons learned has had for the development of guidelines for action and new norms in peacekeeping (Benner and Rotmann 2008). Here I seek to bring in a bottom-up perspective from the field. In peacekeeping, decisions have to be made on a daily basis in politically charged and fluctuating situations. The SRSG operates under authority delegated by the UN Security Council and the secretary-general through a Security Council mandate and general guidelines for action, but there remains considerable room for discretion.³ Asking whether SRSGs can mediate between conflicting norms as norm arbitrators, I examine controversial decisions where there were no clear directions from UN HQ in New York or where several principles for peacekeeping clashed with each other or with instructions from headquarters.

Let us begin with two case studies from Afghanistan and Côte d’Ivoire, both involving situations where tensions between New York and the SRSG in the field were evident. In my view, SRSGs can operate as norm arbitrators in a field generally held to be dominated by member states, and their practices are an important source for norm change in the UN system, both historically and today. Arguing that SRSG practices cannot be deduced solely from their delegated authority from UN HQ and the UN Security Council, I will analyze the sources of SRSG authority, showing that SRSGs often move through ‘revolving doors’ with other ecologies and that this prior experience is being drawn upon in decision-making processes. SRSGs operate within a space where norms sometimes compete and where, also, other sources of authority have influence on their actions. Prior experience and personal prestige are important factors that should be taken into consideration. The experience from and interaction with other ecologies can have a decisive impact on SRSG actions. Finally, as normative closure and coherence between the various norms guiding peacekeeping is almost impossible, I argue that the generative ambiguity that SRSGs operate within can be of a positive nature.

Giving meaning to peacekeeping norms through actions: a bottom-up, practice-driven approach?

Peacekeeping operates according to three core traditional principles: impartiality, consent of the parties, and non-use of force. After the UN failures in Rwanda, Somalia, and Bosnia, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Protection of Civilians (PoC) have been advanced as important norms. While R2P is still in its infancy and has only recently been put into use in United Nations Security Council (UNSC) mandates,⁴ PoC has become a staple ingredient in most UNSC mandates today (Holt et al. 2009). However, all these principles or norms are rarely found coexisting harmoniously in a peacekeeping context. As illustrated in Figure 1.1, norms exist in a competitive arena; according to the context of the peacekeeping operation, the norm composition is rebalanced each time. Bellamy et al. argue that there is an ongoing norm battle about what peacekeeping ought to be and do (Bellamy et al. 2010). This indicates that practices, and the normative reasoning backing up these practices, are significant when tracing how norms for peacekeeping operations wax and wane.

Social practices accentuate the “performative character of power” (Guzzini 2005). In pressed situations, SRSGs must make decisions that have an impact on people’s lives as well as on the understanding of core norms guiding peacekeeping and must determine how these are weighed against each other. Individual action can form the foundation for norm change, as this chapter will show. It will show that there may be room for interpretation of norms between center and periphery and will expand our understanding of the role of practices in UN peacekeeping. The chapter studies the practices of SRSGs through “the observable ‘doings’ of physical bodies and entities” (Andersen 2010, 16), by the use of guidelines for peacekeeping, archive material, interviews with key actors, and other open sources. We then move on to an analysis of the sources of authority on which a SRSG draws, expanding on similar studies undertaken by Barnett and Finnemore (2004) and Avant et al. (2010).

Côte d'Ivoire – what does “robust peacekeeping” really mean?

In an unprecedented move on April 4 and 10, 2011, the UN peacekeeping operation in Côte d’Ivoire (ONUCI) carried out joint helicopter attacks on the residence of former president Gbagbo, together with French Licorne forces. SRSG Choi Young-jin was sharply criticized by Russian minister of foreign affairs Sergei Lavrov: “We are now looking into the legal side of the issue because peacekeepers had a mandate which requires them to be neutral and impartial” (BBC World News 2011). A few days later, Russian president Medvedev stated: “The United Nations cannot take sides, but that is de facto what happened” (Anishchuk 2011).

Only one month earlier, the UN had authorized the use of “all military means” to protect civilians in Libya, noting Libya’s responsibility to protect its civilian population in UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (UNSC 2011a, UNSC 2011b). This was the first time the concept of R2P had been directly cited in a UN Security Council Resolution on a situation in a country. In previous resolutions on, for example, the situation in Darfur, the Security Council did not use the term “responsibility to protect,” but reaffirmed “inter alia the provisions of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 United Nations World Summit outcome document” (UNSC 2006).⁵ The use of R2P in the mandates on Libya, and the subsequent authorizations to use all necessary means to protect civilians in Libya as well as in Côte d’Ivoire,⁶ seemed to set a new standard for mandates and the willingness of the Security Council to authorize robust action to protect civilians even against strategic-level actors.

In fact there have been historical precedents. In Haiti in 2005 the UN mission MINUSTAH engaged criminal gangs in Cité Soleil in direct confrontation, with civilian casualties, in Operation Iron Fist. In a matter of hours on August 15, Peruvian and Brazilian peacekeepers fired more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition, grenades, and mortar fire in a densely populated area, killing the gang leader Emmanuel “Dread” Wilme and many of his followers (Lynch 2005). Jean-Marie Guéhenno, UN under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations at the time, said:

it was necessary to stand up to armed groups that threaten to undermine peacekeeping missions. But he said U.N. commanders had to strike a balance between engaging in all-out warfare and resorting to the passive military posture that characterized U.N. operations in Srebrenica, where Dutch peacekeepers stood down as Bosnian Serb troops killed thousands of unarmed civilians.

(ibid.)

Another precedent was the robust action taken by the UN mission, MONUC, against rebel groups in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2006 (Terrie 2008). MONUC’s support of the national Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) resulted in MONUC being considered as a party to the conflict, even by some of its staff members (Holt et al. 2009, 168). Both these instances have since been cited as examples of robust action to protect civilians (New York University Center on International Cooperation [NYU CIC] 2009, 52; UN 2010, 2). Also, more recently, robust force has been used in DRC, with the use of helicopter gunships to stop the advancement of the M23 militia toward Goma in November 2012 and by the Force Intervention Brigade in 2013–14 (Kron 2012, Karlsrud 2015).

Back to Côte d’Ivoire: UN Security Council Resolution 1975, issued only a month after the historic resolutions for Libya, began by “reaffirming the primary responsibility of each State to protect civilians” (UNSC 2011c, 2) and then moved to consider the situation in Côte d’Ivoire, urging

all Ivorian State institutions, including the Defence and Security Forces of Côte d’Ivoire (FDSCI), to yield to the authority vested by the Ivorian people in President Alassane Dramane Ouattara, condemns the attacks, threats, acts of obstructions and violence perpetrated by FDSCI, militias and mercenaries against United Nations personnel, obstructing them from protecting civilians, monitoring and helping investigate human rights violations and abuses, stresses that those responsible for such crimes under international law must be held accountable and calls upon all parties, in particular Mr. Laurent Gbagbo’s supporters and forces, to fully cooperate with the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (ONUCI) and cease interfering with ONUCI’s activities in implementation of its mandate.

(ibid., 3)

In this very difficult situation, the SRSG was mandated to use all necessary means to protect civilians against the use of heavy weapons:

[The Security Council] [re]calls its authorization and stresses its full support given to the UNOCI [ONUCI], while impartially implementing its mandate, to use all necessary means to carry out its mandate to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence, within its capabilities and its areas of deployment, including to prevent the use of...