UNITED NATIONS -- Never before has the United Nations' peacekeeping unit faced so many demands and had fewer resources to meet them.
With a reduced staff already scrambling to manage 16 peacekeeping operations around the world, the United Nations approved yet another new mission on Friday to war-torn Sierra Leone in West Africa. On Monday, the body will consider allocating more resources to the embattled Indonesian province of East Timor, where a U.N.-sanctioned force of some 6,000 troops already is in place.Since 1986, the United Nations has launched a record-setting 38 peacekeeping missions -- more than three-quarters of the 49 such missions deployed in the organization's 54-year history.
By the end of this year alone, the number of U.N. peacekeeping troops deployed around the globe is expected to double to about 28,000 from 14,000 at the start of the year. These troops, lent by member nations, work under the blue helmets and banner of the United Nations; other soldiers, such as
those now on duty in East Timor, are on U.N.-sanctioned missions but do not carry the organization's emblems.
But the United Nations' department of peacekeeping operations -- or DPKO -- has fewer people than ever to plan and implement these missions. During the past three years, staff cuts sliced the DPKO's work force by 27 percent to about 342 professionals and administrators.
The DPKO's strained financial situation partially arises from the fact that about 150 U.N. member nations are in arrears for a total of $1.83 billion in past peacekeeping charges. The United States, the largest debtor, owes 60 percent of that amount, followed by Ukraine, which owes 11 percent, and the Russian Federation, which accounts for 6 percent. Only three nations -- Singapore, Bangladesh and Colombia -- have paid their peacekeeping obligations in full this year.
The U.S. peacekeeping debt, which is in addition to its current $520 million in delinquent general dues, has triggered more than sour feelings between the most powerful member of the Security Council and the DPKO. If the United States fails to pay a portion of its debt by Jan. 1, 2000, it will lose its vote in the General Assembly, according to the U.N. Charter.
Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, has been lobbying in Washington for the passage of a bill introduced by Senators Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Joseph R. Biden, D-Del., that would pay the United Nations $819 million by the end of the year. In recent years, Congress blocked American payment of peacekeeping and other dues, making such payment contingent on U.N. action to make financial and administrative reforms.
Under these circumstances, Bernard Miyet, head of U.N. peacekeeping, faces one of the most challenging jobs at the world body. A career diplomat from France who took over the job in 1996 from current U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Miyet (pronounced mee-YAY) declined to be interviewed.
Many observers applaud Miyet's response to a continually burgeoning workload. "The peacekeeping unit is doing its work with enormous constraints on its resources," said Elizabeth Cousens, director of research and a U.N. specialist at the New York-based International Peace Academy, a nonprofit organization studying conflict management. "The cuts left them with a fairly skeleton staff for the job they have to do."
Another major frustration for Miyet's office is that it cannot launch a mission until it has the consent and approval of the 15-member U.N. Security Council. "We have to do business in ways that no national government would accept for itself," said Hedi Annabi, Miyet's deputy and an assistant secretary general for peacekeeping operations.
Even more challenging for the peacekeeping unit is a world of proliferating regional conflicts. They range from ethnic bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia to sporadic battles in the state of Kashmir between troops from nuclear powers India and Pakistan. In Africa alone, more than 20 of the continent's 45 nations experienced war or ethnic conflict in the past year, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
In coming years, the United Nations could launch more peacekeeping missions in Africa, diplomats say. "Angola's problems haven't gone away," said Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's U.N. envoy, referring to that African nation's 24-year-old civil war. "There are still problems in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And it's not impossible that we won't have to think about Eritrea and Ethiopia. So (the need for peacekeepers) is rushing upon us again."
However, even if it had more money and resources, the U.N. peacekeeping office still must improve its planning, monitoring and efficient handling of current and future missions, some observers assert.
Paul Diehl, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois and author of the book, "International Peacekeeping," said, "When I visited the peacekeeping office (in New York) four years ago, the method of monitoring peacekeeping was one of two telephones and a television tuned to CNN! . . . The U.N. doesn't have an early warning system to alert them to regional problems sometimes."
Indeed, the United Nations is still scarred by criticism of its failure to react quickly in 1994 to the situation in Central Africa's Rwanda, where Hutus massacred more than 500,000 Tutsis.
"The failure of the U.N. to respond in Rwanda reflects a kind of bureaucratic mind-set that doesn't want to know about problems it hopes it doesn't have to deal with," said Philip Gourevitch, author of 'We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families,' an award-winning book on the Rwanda massacre.
The failure to create a rapid-deployment force also has plagued the United Nations' ability to respond quickly to crises. Although talks began in 1994 to develop such a force, member nations haven't been able to come to terms on structure and funding, U.N. officials say.
Such a force might have resulted in a faster response to the situation in East Timor, critics say. Last August, when violence broke out in the province after it voted for independence from Indonesia, U.N. officials acknowledged that it would take months to mobilize a peacekeeping mission.
Instead, Australia, just across a strait from the destabilized province, swiftly stepped in to head a U.N.-sanctioned multinational force that deployed in a matter of days.