OI Policy Compendium Note on the role of United Nations Peacekeeping Missions in

the protection of civilians

Overview
Since 1999, United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions have been explicitly mandated to
protect civilians under threat in the countries where they are deployed. However, there
remains a significant degree of confusion amongst soldiers and civilians deployed in
peacekeeping missions about what exactly their civilian protection mandate entails.

Oxfam expects military and civilian staff deployed as part of a peacekeeping mission with a
protection mandate to respond as a matter of priority and urgency to any threat of violence,
coercion or deliberate deprivation to the civilian population.

Oxfam believes that the United Nations bodies and Member States must provide its
peacekeeping missions with better leadership and guidance to implement their protection
mandate. This should include the following:
• The UN Security Council must ensure that UN peacekeeping missions’ efforts to
protect civilians are supported by high-level political measures to prevent,
respond to and recover from violent conflict, including sustained and serious
diplomacy with host governments and mediation between warring factions.
• The UN Security Council must improve their monitoring and evaluation of any
peacekeeping mission’s performance on civilian protection.
• The UN Secretariat must prioritise the protection of civilians within ongoing
peacekeeping reform debates, and provide its peacekeeping missions with more
guidance and support on civilian protection responsibilities, at doctrinal as well
as strategic and operational levels.
• All UN bodies and Member States must directly and proactively engage conflict-
affected communities in the identification of and mitigation against protection
threats as well as the overall evaluation of mission effectiveness. .

1. Definitions
Oxfam broadly agrees with the common definition of the protection of civilians as
representing all activities aimed at obtaining full respect of the rights of the individual in
accordance with the letter and the spirit of international human rights law, international
humanitarian law and refugee law 1 . However, given the elasticity of this definition to
potentially include all programme and activities that aim to strengthen basic rights, Oxfam’s
simple working definition of civilian protection focuses on efforts that improve the
safety of civilians exposed to widespread threats of violence, coercion or deliberate
deprivation 2 . Oxfam believes that this can be done by reducing the threat itself, people’s
vulnerability to the threat, or the frequency of times that they are exposed.

Within the conflict scenarios where peacekeeping missions most commonly find themselves
deployed, these threats usually take on one of more of the following forms:

• Violence – generally includes deliberate killing, wounding, torture, cruel and

inhuman and degrading treatment, sexual violence including rape, and the threat of
any of the above;

1
Originally based on the ICRC definition, this is the text that was agreed in the Inter-Agency Standing
Committee Policy Paper on “Protection of Internally Displaced Persons”, New York, December 1999.
2
See for example Oxfam International Humanitarian Dossier (last updated January 2008), p.23, or
OGB Humanitarian Handbook, section 3.9.2.
 • Coercion – generally includes forced prostitution, sexual slavery, sexual exploitation,
forced or compulsory labour, forced displacement or return, forced recruitment into
armed forces, and being forced to commit acts of violence against others; and
• Deliberate deprivation – generally includes deliberately destroying civilian objects
such as homes, wells, crops and clinics; preventing the delivery of relief supplies or
access to land and jobs; demanding illegal ‘taxes’ or tolls.

Civilians have a right to be protected by their national governments and international duty-
bearer against all of the above threats under international humanitarian law and international
human rights law.

2. Background
Recent years have witnessed an unprecedented surge in the deployment of UN
peacekeeping missions as part of the international community’s efforts to resolve conflicts
and address threats to peace and security. Increasingly, these missions have begun to shift
away from the traditional structure of peacekeeping (the monitoring of a negotiated
agreement between two warring parties) and towards more complex ‘multi-dimensional’
missions whose broad list of tasks may include anything from the development of institutions
or holding elections to outright war fighting or the protection of civilians.

In 1999 – following the world’s failures to stop horrific violence and bloodshed in Rwanda,
Bosnia and Somalia – the UN Security Council for the first time included the protection of
the civilian population as an explicit task in a UN peacekeeping mission’s mandate 3 , and
acknowledged the importance of civilian protection in a dedicated UN Security Council
Resolution 4 . Today very few UN peacekeeping missions are deployed to the field without an
explicit mandate to protect civilians. Unfortunately, there remains a significant degree of
confusion amongst soldiers and civilians deployed in peacekeeping missions in the field
about what exactly their civilian protection mandate entails.

Oxfam expects any peacekeeping missions deployed with a civilian protection mandate to
respond to protection threats with civilian, police and military means as a matter of priority
and urgency. Peacekeeping missions should not view the protection of civilians as a narrow
field of activity focused solely around the use of force to prevent the commission of
atrocities. Rather, protection of civilians has a number of complementary strands, some of
which will be the exclusive concern of the civil side of the mission, others which will
necessitate a closely coordinated joint civil-military approach and a third category embracing
the application of force, or the threat of force, which is of direct concern to the military.

3. Oxfam International’s position on the role of UN peacekeeping missions in the

protection of civilians
The successful implementation of a protection approach within peacekeeping operations
requires political will and concerted action at various levels – from the United Nations
Security Council to individual member states, and from the UN Secretariat down to each
individual field mission and also regional organisations. Oxfam believes that these
institutions must act in concert to increase peacekeeping missions’ capacities for civilian
protection:

The United Nations Security Council must provide clear leadership in protecting civilians
caught up in conflict, as per UN Security Council Resolution 1265, by:
• Expressly acknowledging that national governments bear primary
responsibility for protecting their civilians and publicly calling on them to assume
these functions wherever possible.
• Engaging in more forceful and courageous diplomacy with national governments
as well as, where possible and appropriate, non-state armed groups to prevent,
mitigate the impacts of and help countries recover from violent conflict.

3
S/RES/1270 (22 October 1999).
4
S/RES/1265 (17 September 1999).
 • Increasing the UN Secretariat’s as well as their own national capacities for
mediation during political crises.
• Ensuring that peacekeeping missions deployed into situations where ceasefires or
peace agreements are not fully respected or implemented are either equipped with a
clear mandate to accompany the political process or are working alongside an
agreed and viable third-party mechanism that is empowered to work with warring
parties on finding sustainable and inclusive political solutions.
• Refraining from sending peacekeeping missions into conflict zones where
their presence might further destabilise the situation for civilians.
• Ensuring that peacekeeping missions more serve the interests of their intended
beneficiaries by explicitly mandating them to work more directly and proactively
with conflict-affected communities to identify and mitigate against protection
threats.
• Directly involve conflict-affected communities in monitoring and evaluation of
any mission’s performance.
• Publicly and systematically condemning all actors (be they state or non-state
groups) who are evidently breaching international humanitarian and human
rights law; and investing into better international analysis and monitoring of such
abuses through increased use of fact-finding missions, commissions of inquiry and
deployments of independent human rights officers to conflict zones, with the end
goal being to enforce accountability measures and end impunity
• As a matter of procedure and regular practice, clearly conditioning support to
national protection actors on actual adherence to international humanitarian
and human rights law.
• Supporting regional actors and institutions (including the African Union) to carry
out diplomacy to prevent, mitigate and resolve conflict and deploy peacekeeping
missions that are capable of implementing their protection of civilians mandates.
• Working more closely with troop and police-contributing countries to learn from
their experiences on civilian protection and ensure that PoC principles and
approaches are integrated into national military doctrines and training materials.

The UN Secretariat, including the UN Secretary General, Department for Peacekeeping

Operations and Department for Field Support must support their peacekeeping missions in
carrying out mandates protection responsibilities by:
• Prioritising the protection of civilians as part of ongoing peacekeeping reform
debates, and ensuring that long-standing weaknesses within the area of resourcing,
training, and ability for rapid deployments of capable military, police and civilian staff
are addressed as a matter of urgency under current reform initiatives.
• Providing its peacekeeping missions with more guidance and support on
civilian protection responsibilities, at doctrinal as well as strategic and
operational levels.
• Ensure that guidance on Quick Impact Projects (QIPs) corresponds to agreed
Inter-Agency Standing Committee Guidelines 5 , and ensure that all peacekeeping
personnel receive more systematic training on the appropriate management of civil-
military relations.
• Commit to working more directly and proactively with conflict-affected communities,
and making consultations with the intended beneficiaries of the peacekeeping
mission’s deployment a requirement for all technical and strategic assessment
missions.
• Require all peacekeeping missions to include conflict-affected communities in
the monitoring and evaluation of their performance (including impact of initial
deployment, discussions around major mandate revisions, and benchmarks for
mission drawdown).

5
As outlined in key IASC documents (including IASC Reference paper on Civil-Military Relationship
in Complex Emergencies, http://ochaonline.un.org/DocView.asp?DocID=1219 and Guidelines on the
Use Of Military and Civil Defence Assets to Support United Nations Humanitarian Activities in
Complex Emergencies (MCDA Guidelines), http://ochaonline.un.org/GetBin.asp?DocID=426.
Military, police and civilian staff working for DPKO missions in the field - and in particular
all senior management (Special Representative of the Secretary General-SRSG, Deputy
SRSGs, Resident Coordinators/Humanitarian Coordinators, Force Commander and Police
Commander), Political Affairs, Military officers, Police officers, Civil Affairs, Human Rights,
Child Protection, Public Information, and the UN Department for Safety & Security – must
work together closely on:
• Pressing national governments to assume their responsibility for protecting civilians
under threat as soon as and wherever possible, and where relevant supporting
national institutions (particularly army, police and justice officials) on their protection
responsibilities through training, capacity-building and resources.
• Prioritising the protection of civilians within the mission implementation
strategy and providing clear guidance and strategies to each section on what
actions and activities are expected of them to contribute to civilian protection
• Ensuring that all relevant military, police and civilian staff receive pre-deployment
and mission-specific training on their specific protection responsibilities.
• Working closely with Military officers to prepare and design contextually
appropriate military responses to common civilian protection threats, such as
patrolling where community prioritises safe passage -as in the case of Darfur and
DRC where firewood patrols and farm patrols were instituted.
• Working closely with Police officers to design contextually appropriate training and
mentoring activities or executive law enforcement tasks around common civilian
protection threats, such as crowd and riot control, crisis management, and
countering small-scale instances of vandalism, looting or banditry.
• Ensuring that civilian units within the mission are fully empowered to carry out
their specific protection responsibilities and working closely with senior mission
management to inform the prevention and response activities implemented by
military and police officers.
• Regularly discussing the mission’s mandate and capacities, communities’
protection needs, and protection threats, with the conflict-affected communities.
• Directly involving conflict-affected communities in the monitoring and evaluating the
mission’s performance and regularly measuring public perceptions of the
mission.
• Ensuring that agreed global civil-military principles and policies 6 are translated into
context-specific civil-military guidance and respected by all mission personnel.
• Consulting with local organisations and humanitarian agencies to improve the
mission’s analysis of existing protection threats and discuss appropriate mission
responses with other mandated protection actors. The Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the protection cluster can offer an entry point for
establishing communication with independent humanitarian actors in the most
appropriate manner.

4. What Oxfam will do

• On the basis of our field operations and analysis, engage with the UN Security
Council, UN General Assembly and UN Secretariat to share experiences and
lessons learnt on the implementation of UN peacekeeping missions’ protection
mandates. This includes closely following mandate development and renewals; the
work of UN Security Council’s informal working groups on peacekeeping and the
protection of civilians; UNSC field visits; and DPKO-led technical or strategic
assessment missions.
• Constructively engage with UN peacekeeping missions, at appropriate levels
and in a manner that does not undermine our independence and impartiality, on the
implementation of their civilian protection mandate. Oxfam’s engagement with UN
peacekeeping missions should not be seen as an endorsement of the mission’s
actions or presence.

6
As outlined in key IASC documents (including IASC Reference paper on Civil-Military Relationship
in Complex Emergencies, http://ochaonline.un.org/DocView.asp?DocID=1219)
 • Participate in relevant humanitarian fora, including general coordination meetings
and protection clusters, to identify and analyse civilian protection threats and where
appropriate work with others to bring these to the attention of UN peacekeeping
missions.
• Support efforts to assess the performance of UN peacekeeping missions in
protection civilians, and wherever possible provide feedback on the perceptions
of the mission amongst its beneficiary population.
• Support pre-deployment and mission-specific training on civilian protection
for all of the mission’s military, police and civilian staff, and where requested
take part or contribute to civilian protection trainings. This includes ssupporting
efforts to build awareness of civilian protection mandates in troop-contributing
countries.
• Conduct its operations in accordance with internationally accepted
humanitarian principles, and guidelines on interaction between humanitarian
agencies and military forces as outlined in the OI Policy Note on The Provision of
Aid by Military Forces.
• Oppose the use of Quick Impact projects that are similar to the work
undertaken by humanitarian agencies and may confuse the respective role and
remit of the humanitarian agencies and militaries in the minds of beneficiaries and
other observers. Force protection and stabilisation is better achieved by military
actors abiding by international humanitarian law (IHL) and protecting civilians.

Published by Oxfam International November 2007

Published by Oxfam GB for Oxfam International under ISBN 978-1-84814-593-1