Security Council
6987th Meeting (AM)
The expanded use of new technologies — including unarmed drones — in United Nations peacekeeping operations could bolster both military and political intelligence and help save lives, the Security Council heard today during briefings by force commanders of a number of missions.
“Information is the base of our success,” said Lieutenant General Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz, Force Commander of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO). Indeed, while it faced some “sensitivities and limitations”, the arrival of the Mission’s first drones — formally known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs — in July could bolster its operations, helping to identify armed groups, track their movements and even monitor the safety of internally displaced persons. In addition, “enabling peacekeepers to stay one step ahead […] would help to mitigate the risks to the people and to United Nations personnel”, while supporting peaceful political solutions to crises by providing real evidence of events on the ground.
Also briefing members this morning were Major General Leonard Ngondi, Force Commander of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), and Major General Muhammad Iqbal Asi, Force Commander of the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI). Also participating were Hervé Ladsous, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, and Babacar Gaye, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in the Central African Republic (BINUCA).
Major General Ngondi, briefing on the importance of pre-deployment training, said it served to re-orient the operational capacity of troops and to equip them in line with agreed operational requirements. What was lacking was an in-house mission assessment of pre-deployment training and the troop-contributing countries’ capability to “self-sustain”. Training should be validated on arrival in mission areas to ensure operational readiness, he said, emphasizing, however, that field headquarters currently lacked the capacity to conduct validation, which led to capacity gaps. He strongly recommended the creation of an inspection team at field headquarters that would help operational leadership sustain mission-capable troops and functional headquarters.
Major General Asi, for his part, stressed the growing need for cooperation between missions operating in geographic proximity, particularly in the current difficult economic environment. It could include joint border surveillance, intelligence-sharing and even troop and resource redeployment, he said. The temporary re-deployment of three infantry companies from UNMIL to UNOCI in late 2010 had helped the latter fill a critical shortage of personnel needed to protect Abidjan, he said. Similarly, the shifting of three armed and two military utility helicopters from UNMIL to UNOCI for the 2010 presidential elections and the December 2011 legislative elections had given UNOCI the mobility required to better monitor sensitive border areas and quickly respond to cross-border violence.
Following the briefings, all 15 Council members expressed support for the men and women who risked their lives in United Nations peacekeeping missions. Many noted the rapidly evolving nature of peacekeeping operations, their expanding mandates and the increasingly complex environments in which they now operated. The also posed questions to the force commanders and raised various concerns.
Pakistan’s representative, for one, referred to two “momentous” recent decisions by the Security Council, the first being its authorization of “targeted offensive operations […] in a robust, highly mobile and versatile manner […] with the aim of neutralizing armed groups” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the second entailing the use of drones to support peacekeepers. Both arrangements needed close monitoring to ascertain their utility and effectiveness, he stressed.
Echoing that sentiment, the representative of the Russian Federation emphasized that the use of drones in MONUSCO was an experimental process that would require careful analysis. Their deployment should not be seen as “carte blanche” for their use in other peacekeeping operations.
On the importance of training, the representative of the United States noted that there was currently no mechanism in place to assess how well troops were prepared during pre-deployment training. Expressing support for the creation of a position at the level of director general, with a mandate to help troop-contributing countries evaluate their pre-deployment training programmes, he said the United States was working to improve the standards of its own training, and urged others to do the same.
Many speakers welcomed inter-mission cooperation in cases of immediate need, saying the strategy had proven flexible and effective, citing the example of troop redeployment between UNMIL and UNOCI. However, a number of others stressed that inter-mission cooperation could not supplant permanent, well-resourced missions with sufficient troops of their own. In that vein, Rwanda’s representative underlined that “inter-mission cooperation is just a temporary, short-term solution which should not replace permanent solutions”.
Finally, several speakers expressed concern about the expanding mandates of peacekeeping operations. They included Guatemala’s representative, who stressed that mandates must be clear, verifiable and factual. Like a number of other delegates, he expressed reservations about resolution 2098 (2013), which authorized a specialized “intervention brigade”, significantly expanding MONUSCO’s mandate.
Also speaking today were representatives of Australia, France, Argentina, Togo, Luxembourg, Azerbaijan, Republic of Korea, China, Morocco and the United Kingdom.
The meeting began at 10:03 a.m. and ended at 12:46 p.m.
Background
Meeting this morning to consider issues relating to United Nations peacekeeping operations, the Security Council was expected to hear briefings from a number of force commanders.
HERVÉ LADSOUS, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, introduced the commanders of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) and the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI).