Essay

MEASURING UN SECURITY COUNCIL ACTION
AND INACTION IN THE 1990s
Lessons for Africa

---

Virgil Hawkins
Technical adviser with the Japanese NGO, Association of Medical Doctors of Asia (AMDA) International, and is based in Cambodia

Published in African Security Review Vol 12 No 2, 2003

Although Africa is host to the vast majority (and the most deadly) of conflicts in the world, it would appear that there is a distinct lack of genuine interest in African affairs shown by the UN Security Council and its key members. This paper proposes a 10-level scale of response system to measure the seriousness of the Council in dealing with conflicts. By comparing the Council response with the size and severity of each individual conflict, the scale attempts to assess the Council performance in the fulfilment of its duty to restore international peace and security. The results show that Africa has been (and remains) marginalized in the Council work.

Introduction

Conflict in Africa was responsible for approximately 90% of the total number of war deaths in the 1990s. Nine of the 10 bloodiest conflicts of the decade were African conflicts.¹ Death tolls in some of these conflicts were literally one thousand times those of minor, yet high profile conflicts in Haiti, Kosovo and Israel. Assertions that the UN Security Council is seriously engaged in African affairs are often supported by claims that 70% of the Council’s work is devoted to African affairs.² While this may indeed be the case, a cursory look at the end results, or output, of the Council’s work in the 1990s reveals that, on the contrary, Africa was largely marginalized by the Council and its members. To convincingly put a rest to this issue, some means of measuring and assessing the Council’s response to conflict needs to be developed.

This article proposes such a system. It sets out 4 indicators (complete with level settings) to measure the level of conflict, and 4 indicators to measure UNSC response. Comparing the level of conflict and response using this system (including the plotting of radar graphs based on these indicators), it goes on to demonstrate that, despite the immense needs of Africa in terms of conflict resolution, it has been the subject of disproportionately little attention in the Council. It concludes by outlining some lessons for Africa, and offering some recommendations.

This paper will not address the political factors behind the Council’s lack of interest in African conflicts. It is sufficient to note here that the most prominent factor is the lack of political will of its influential members, who have little economic or geopolitical interest in Africa, and whose apathetic constituencies are uninformed by a media industry that has cast a virtual news blackout over the continent.³

Levels of conflict

In measuring the seriousness of a conflict, the following factors might be considered: the number of conflict-related deaths, the number of refugees and internally-displaced persons, the level of humanitarian emergency, and the spillover of the conflict into neighbouring countries (threat to regional stability).⁴ For these factors, the following level settings (each on a scale of one to 10) might be considered appropriate.

Deaths

0 < 1,000
1 1,000 – 5,000
2 5,000 – 10,000
3 10,000 – 25,000
4 25,000 – 50,000
5 50,000 – 100,000
6 100,000 – 250,000
7 250,000 – 500,000
8 500,000 – 750,000
9 750,000 – 1,000,000
10 > 1,000,000

Refugees/IDPs

0 < 10,000
1 10,000 – 50,000
2 50,000 – 100,000
3 100,000 – 500,000
4 500,000 – 1,000,000
5 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
6 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
7 2,000,000 – 2,500,000
8 2,500,000 – 3,000,000
9 3,000,000 – 3,500,000
10 > 3,500,000

Humanitarian

0 Small number of refugees/IDPs
2 Moderate number of refugees/IDPs
4 Large number of refugees/IDPs (stable situation)
6 Large number of refugees/IDPs (unstable/ threat of humanitarian emergency)
8 Large number of refugees/IDPs (moderate level of humanitarian emergency)
10 Large number of refugees/IDPs
(massive starvation and/or disease)

Spillover

0 Small numbers of refugees
2 Moderate number of refugees
4 Large number of refugees (stable situation)
6 Large number of refugees (unstable situation/threat of conflict)
8 Small-scale conflict in (or involving) neighbouring state/s
10 Large-scale conflict in (or involving) neighbouring state/s

Levels of response

Scale of Response

When dealing with armed conflict, the Security Council generally has three forms of expression at its disposal: press statements, presidential statements and resolutions (in ascending order of importance).⁵ Considering the complexities of the Council’s decision-making process, and that Council resolutions can be used for a variety of purposes, ranging from the condemnation of conflict to the authorisation of the all-out use of force, the level of Council response can be broken down into the following levels:

0 No discussion
1 Procedural discussion⁶
2 Discussion⁷
3 Press statement
4 Presidential statement
5 Resolution: Measures under Chapter VI of the Charter
6 Resolution: Provisional measures (determination of threat/breach of the peace)
7 Resolution: Sanctions (targeted at leadership)
8 Resolution: Sanctions (targeted at general population)
9 Resolution: Passive enforcement (primarily enforcing the status quo)
10 Resolution: Active enforcement (enforcing a major change in the status quo)⁸

Other response indicators

While this paper is primarily concerned with the overall level of Council response, the timeliness with which the Council responds is also an important indicator in determining how serious the Council views conflict resolution. Where the Council chooses to take action, force level and the timing of an exit should also be considered. Appropriate level settings for these factors might be as follows.

Timeliness

0 No resolution
2 Late resolution
4 Late determination of threat/breach of the peace
5 Acceptable determination of threat/ breach to the peace (no deployment)
6 Late deployment
8 Acceptable deployment
10 Rapid deployment

Force

0 No deployment
2 Post-conflict peacekeeping operation
4 Post-conflict peace enforcement operation
6 Weak deployment during conflict/continued deployment during relapse
8 Strong deployment during conflict
10 Enforcement action

Exit

0 No deployment
2 Rapid withdrawal under fire
4 Phased withdrawal under fire
6 Short-term deployment
8 Acceptable length of deployment
10 Long-term deployment and transition to peace building

A note on peacekeeping

Peacekeeping, taken literally to mean the upholding or maintaining of a peace that is already in existence, is excluded from this scale of Council responses to conflict, the reason being that the dispatching of a blue-helmet peacekeeping mission is, as a general rule, a response to a peace agreement rather than a response to ongoing conflict. The Council has, however, in the 1990s, approved enforcement mandates for blue-helmet ‘peacekeeping’ missions in conflict situations in Somalia, Bosnia and East Timor. The present scale does not discriminate between the actors involved in enforcement (multinational or blue-helmet).

A note on ‘grey area’ mandates

In the 1990s, the line between peacekeeping and passive enforcement (or peace enforcement) became increasingly blurred, and in a number of instances, the Council created mandates for peace operations under Chapter VII of the Charter, but did not clearly authorise passive enforcement measures.

Such ‘grey area’ mandates, while apparently demonstrating a firm intent to enforce a peace mission’s right of self-defence, do not explicitly authorise the use of force beyond this right. As such, for the purposes of this study, ‘grey area’ mandates will not be treated as passive enforcement measures on the present scale. When forces are deployed under such mandates in situations of ongoing conflict, however, they will be treated as exceptional cases—located at a level of eight and a half (after sanctions and before passive enforcement measures) on the scale of UNSC response.

Comparing levels of conflict and UNSC response

In order to evaluate the performance of the Security Council in the 1990s, it is important to compare the level of conflict with the level of Council response. Ideally, the Council would respond to a threat to the peace, or conflict situation, in an escalatory manner. Bearing in mind the world’s numerous conflicts and the physical inability of the Council to deal appropriately with all of them, the Council would ideally prioritise, devoting greater attention to the most serious conflicts.

Even an elementary examination of the Council’s response to conflicts, however, reveals massive imbalances between the level of conflict and the level of response. On the one hand, situations, where it was doubtful whether a threat to the peace ever existed, were met with a high level of Council response. On the other hand, the Council largely (and in some cases completely) ignored large-scale wars resulting in massive casualties. Discrepancies can be found in the number of presidential statements and resolutions; in the determination of a threat to the peace or breach of the peace; and in the overall level of response reached by the Council.

Number of presidential statements and resolutions

Assuming that the Council does indeed spend much of its time discussing African conflicts, then it can also be said that there is a considerable gap between the amount of discussion and the actual output of the Council. The relatively low number of presidential statements and resolutions that the Council produces based on such discussion does not reflect such an apparently high level of engagement.

In the 1990s, 32% of resolutions (and 25% of presidential statements) adopted by the Council dealt with African affairs, with 26% of resolutions pertaining to European conflicts, and 17% to conflict in the Middle East. Examining the number of resolutions dealing with individual conflicts (excluding those conflicts that the Council failed to engage itself in), the responses of the Council appear disproportionate to the level of the various conflicts.

For example, 19% of all the Council resolutions in the 1990s were adopted in response to a single conflict: 124 resolutions in relation to the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. On the situation between Iraq and Kuwait, the Council adopted 52 resolutions. Angola was the subject of the most resolutions of any African conflict: 46, approximately half of which were essentially mandate extensions for missions in that country. The number of resolutions for some other major African conflicts are as follows: Rwanda, 29, Liberia, 17, Somalia, 17, Sierra Leone, 10, DRC, 6, Burundi, 4, and Ethiopia–Eritrea, 3.



The number of presidential statements and resolutions that the Council adopts in response to conflicts does provide, to some extent, an indication of how seriously the Council is engaged in dealing with a particular conflict. Such numbers, however, can be somewhat misleading. The Council may use the adoption of presidential statements or resolutions to provide the appearance that it is interested and engaged overing its lack of willingness to become seriously involved in finding a solution. In other cases the final version of statements or resolutions may have been watered down as a result of a compromise. Furthermore, many resolutions are adopted for the sole purpose of extending previously created mandates for peacekeeping or peace enforcement missions, and do not necessarily demonstrate serious Council engagement. Here, Angola is a case in point.

In short, the content and strength of resolutions are not equal. Resolutions can range from a call for parties to a conflict to refrain from violence to the authorisation of full-scale enforcement action. As such, when evaluating the response of the Council to conflict, it is also vital to examine the content of its decisions. This is what the following sections attempt to do.

Entering chapter VII

As already mentioned, the finding of a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace, or an act of aggression (in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter of the United Nations) is the gateway to enforcement measures under Chapter VII of the Charter, and is therefore a very important step for the Council to make. A review of the Council practice in the 1990s, however, reveals a decision-making process ssentially defined by narrow national interests hat has resulted in major inconsistencies in the Council determination of a threat to the peace. In a number of cases, the Council found the existence of a threat to the peace in cases in which it was questionable whether or not such a threat actually existed. In other cases, the Council was unable to find the existence of a threat to the peace, despite the continuation of full-scale war.

The practice of the Council in the 1990s shows a significant broadening of the range within which a threat to the peace could be found, and Chapter VII invoked. Not only did the Council find the existence of a threat to the peace in the cases of international conflicts, but it also found threats to the peace in almost entirely internal conflicts and situations any of which were relatively minor in terms of the level of human suffering. Furthermore, the Council also broadened its interpretation of a threat to the peace to include acts of terrorism; the failure to hand over suspects in terrorist acts to certain countries for trial; and the failure to restore democracy in accordance with an international agreement.

The fact that the Council has broadened its interpretation of what constitutes a threat to the peace to include the above situations is not necessarily a problem.⁹ It is also true that, more often than not, the flow of refugees from an internal dispute does have a destabilising effect on neighbouring countries. Furthermore, in many of these situations, the Council was able to play a positive role in alleviating suffering and bringing conflict to a halt. However, with tens of conflicts ongoing simultaneously throughout the world, the Council should show some consistency when determining what constitutes a threat to the peace.

The Council’s inability to find the existence of a threat to the peace in many of the world’s major conflicts—even in the euphoric early 1990s— contrasts starkly with its attempts to become engaged in small-scale conflicts and non-conflict situations. For example, while the Council had found the existence of a threat to the peace in the failure of the Sudanese government to hand over suspects in an assassination attempt, it was unable to find such a threat in the civil war in that country; probably the second bloodiest conflict in the world in the 1990s.

The timeliness in the Council’s determination of a threat to the peace also needs to be considered. In many cases, the Council was able to find a threat to the peace, but the finding was not always a prompt one. Despite the fact that civil war was waged in Sierra Leone since 1991, for example, it was not until October 1997 that the Council found the existence of a threat to the peace in that country.¹⁰ In the case of the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Council first found a threat to the peace nine months after the outbreak of hostilities.¹¹ The above examples demonstrate a clear lack of consistency in the Council’s practice with regards to the finding of a threat to the peace.

Overall Council response

The Council’s response to conflict cannot, however, be judged entirely by the number of presidential statements or resolutions it adopts, or by whether or not it was able to find the existence of threat to the peace. To provide a more in-depth assessment of the Council’s response, it is necessary to examine, and compare, the overall level at which the UNSC dealt with individual conflicts throughout the 1990s.

The Council responded at a high level to certain select situations that were unrelated to actual armed conflict—for example, situations concerned with the possible involvement of certain governments in single acts of terrorism. In the cases of Libya, the Sudan and Afghanistan, the Council applied sanctions on the leadership for their failure to hand over those who were allegedly involved in acts of terrorism.¹² The Council was also quite responsive in a number of cases in which there was armed conflict, but on a relatively minor scale. It responded at levels between seven and 10, in response to minor conflicts in Haiti,_¹³ Albania, the Central African Republic, Kosovo, and East Timor—all with death tolls less than 3,000.

On the other hand, all too often in the 1990s, the Council was unable—or unwilling—to respond to large-scale conflicts, and as a result, a large number of major conflicts, particularly those in Africa, were the object of a disproportionately low-level of engagement by the Council. One of the most glaring examples of this is the Council’s handling (or mishandling) of the conflict in the Sudan. The Council’s response did not exceed level one, as attempts in procedural discussions to include the issue on the Council’s agenda failed.¹⁴ The Council also responded at either level zero or level one to a number of other large-scale conflicts in Africa in the 1990s, including Algeria, and Ethiopia.¹⁵ In effect, the Council did not even discuss these conflicts. In response to conflict in the Republic of the Congo, the Council adopted two presidential statements (level four).¹⁶

For the other major African conflicts of the 1990s, the Council was at least able to adopt resolutions. The war in the DRC—probably the bloodiest war of the 1990s—raged over an area the size of Western Europe, drawing in the direct military involvement of as many as eight other African countries, and resulting in well over one million deaths in its first year alone. The Council handled it at level six: adopting a number of presidential statements, and finally a resolution (eight months after the outbreak of hostilities).¹⁷ The Council recognised the existence of a threat to peace and security, but the demands it made—for a ceasefire, and the withdrawal of foreign forces, were not made under Chapter VII of the Charter. With the exception of the adoption of a presidential statement in June 1999,¹⁸ the Council took no further action until a peace agreement was signed in August, one year after the outbreak of hostilities. Throughout the war, the Council made it clear that it would not become involved until after peace had been achieved. Peacekeepers would not begin arriving in the DRC until 2001.

The Council’s first resolution on Burundi, which had cost more than 200,000 lives, was in 1995—almost two years after the conflict began.¹⁹ Council response to the conflict did not exceed level six. Similarly, in response to the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Council adopted a total of three resolutions in the 1990s (none of which contained any measures under Chapter VII).²⁰ The Council finally adopted a resolution, under Chapter VII, banning the sale or supply of arms to the two countries in May 2000, as the conflict was coming to a close.²¹ Even in conflicts in which the Council did eventually respond at a relatively high level, such as in Angola (level eight) and Rwanda (level nine), the timeliness of response and force level did not reflect any sense of urgency in their resolution, and actions were largely ineffective.

It is not the purpose of this discussion to advocate a military response by the Council in dealing with major conflict. A military response is often less than effective, and at times counterproductive to the solution of conflict. Since it is an attempt to overcome violence with violence, a military response should be considered only as a last resort. Particularly in conflicts where there is equilibrium between the warring factions, attempts to bring the conflict to a halt (even by force) can prove fruitless. In such cases, sometimes the best option is to let the conflict play itself out.²² By the same token, there were numerous situations in the 1990s in which some form of military response could have saved a considerable number of lives and/or contributed to the early cessation of hostilities.

Military response is not, however, the only form of action at the disposal of the Council. Sanctions and embargoes are another possible response, and while the Council still has a great deal to learn from its experimentation with sanctions in the 1990s,²³ they have proven to be effective in a number of cases, as those applied against the UNITA rebels in Angola demonstrated. Whether it chooses to intervene or not, the Council should become engaged in some form in finding a solution, or at least alleviating the suffering of civilians in the combat zone.

Nor is it the purpose of the above discussion to advocate that conflicts should not be dealt with in the Council until they cross the threshold of 10,000 conflict-related deaths. The Council should seize the opportunity to deal with conflicts, both major and minor, wherever possible, and any lives saved should be welcomed. There is, however, a need for the Council—even if only for its own credibility—to respect, to some extent, proportionality and consistency, and the Council’s “reckless application of chapter VII” in the 1990s was a far cry from these principles.²⁴ There is certainly a problem in this sense, when the Council is able to authorise full-scale enforcement measures in response to an internal disturbance with under 3,000 deaths (Haiti), but is unable to even discuss a massive war (with international implications) resulting in over one million deaths (Sudan).

Plotting the level of conflict and response onto separate radar graphs (using the indicators and level settings proposed above) makes for a useful comparison.²⁵ The Council’s response, relative to the scale of the conflict in minor conflicts in Haiti and Kosovo, for example, could be assessed as follows:

Haiti, 1991–1995

Conflict

Deaths: (1) 3,000
Refugees (IDPs): (3) 100,000 (300,000)
Humanitarian: (4) While the humanitarian situation in Haiti was problematic, the risk of a humanitarian crisis was not great.
Spillover: (2) The number of refugees in the Dominican Republic was moderate and the probability of a spillover of the conflict not considerable.

Response

SC Response: (10) The Council authorised the forcible removal from power of the military junta.
Timeliness: (6) The Council adopted its first resolution more than one and a half years after the coup that brought the junta to power. One year later it authorised military intervention.
Force: (8) Although the junta departed peacefully, a strong peace enforcement force was deployed.
Exit: (10) Subsequent UN operations saw the creation of numerous peace building projects, including the professionalization of the Haitian police force.

Yugoslavia (Kosovo), 1997–1999

Conflict (prior to NATO bombing)

Deaths: (1) 2,000
Refugees (IDPs): (3) 145,000 (315,000)
Humanitarian: (2) Although homes and means of livelihood were destroyed, the humanitarian situation was relatively stable.
Spillover: (2) The majority of refugees were spread out across Europe, with approximately 30,000 in neighbouring Albania and Macedonia.

Response

SC Response: (9) After NATO’s bombing campaign the Council authorised a peace enforcement operation (KFOR) and a UN presence (S/RES/1244).
Timeliness: (6) NATO’s bombing began almost two years after the outbreak of low-intensity conflict.
Force: (10) Referring to NATO’s unilateral bombing, rather than a Council-sanctioned response. The Council-sanctioned KFOR is a strong peace enforcement operation.
Exit: (10) The UN created an interim
administration and numerous peace-building programs have been put in place.
On the other hand, graphs plotted using the same indicators for the world’s largest two conflicts of the 1990s (in the Sudan and the DRC) would appear quite differently.

Sudan, 1983–present

Conflict

Deaths: (10) 1,100,000
Refugees (IDPs): (10) 460,000 (4,000,000)
Humanitarian: (10) War-induced famine has been responsible for a large proportion of the war dead. Chronic food/water shortages and disease are also widespread among the displaced population.
Spillover: (10) The conflict contributed to border conflicts between Sudan and Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Response

SC Response: (1) The Council discussed whether or not to include the item on its agenda.
Timeliness: (0)
Force: (0)
Exit: (0)

Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1998–present

Conflict response

Conflict

Deaths: (10) 1,300,000
Refugees (IDPs): (5) 240,000 (960,000). (very conservative estimates)
Humanitarian: (10) Conflict-related starvation and disease contributed to the deaths of over one million people in the first year of the conflict (and in excess of three million after more than three years of conflict). Chronic food/water shortages and disease are also widespread among the displaced population.
Spillover: (10) The conflict has drawn in as many as eight neighbouring countries that have directly participated in the conflict (for or against the government and against each other).

Response

SC Response: (6) The Council determined the existence of a threat to the peace (S/RES/1234), and established an observer mission (MONUC).
Timeliness: (2) The Council did not adopt a resolution until approximately eight months after the outbreak of fighting.
Force: (2) In 2000, MONUC was expanded into a peacekeeping operation (S/RES/1291), to be deployed in a post-conflict capacity.
Exit: (0) The force has yet to be fully deployed.
These scales (and examples) should serve as a useful means of evaluating past, current and future Council performance in the restoration and maintenance of international peace and security.

Lessons for Africa

Discussion, academic or otherwise, on the performance of the UN Security Council tends to focus solely on how effective it has been in what it sets out to accomplish, but ignores what it fails to attempt at all. In the 1990s, assessment of the Council appeared to be based largely on how effective it had been in handling conflicts in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda. The other major indicator used by those judging Council performance seemed to be its unwillingness to authorise the use of force in response to select minor conflicts (or non-conflict situations) that involved major power interest and/or saturated media coverage—Kosovo being the prime example. This has been seized upon more recently over the issue of Iraq—a high profile yet non-conflict situation and essentially an artificial crisis—as those pushing for war found themselves unable to attract the necessary support for authorisation in the Council.

The two indicators noted above are used highly selectively, are hardly convincing, and—more importantly—they miss the point. The Council’s lack of support for the use of force against Yugoslavia over Kosovo is quite understandable. Massive aerial bombardment was hardly a proportionate or effective response to such a conflict. Likewise in Iraq, the case for the US-led full-scale invasion of that country (both in terms of its justification and its consequences) remains highly questionable at best. That the Council did not approve the use of force in either case should not be interpreted as a sign of Council impotence or irrelevance, but rather as recognition, by the Council, that such massive force was inappropriate, and that diplomatic options remained available. The Council treated the use of force as a last resort.

The Security Council faces irrelevance not in Iraq, but in Africa. This is a glaring reality that has been all but ignored during discussions on the performance of the Council. Massive wars, resulting in the death of millions, rage unchecked, sometimes with little more than a mild expression of concern by the Council, and with next to no serious pressure by its members to bring a halt to the hostilities. In the few instances where the Council did attempt intervention in the 1990s, the casualty tolerance of those contributing forces proved to be far too low for the operations to be seen through, and intervention in African conflicts was abandoned.

The apparent resurgence of Council interest in Africa in the late 1990s—in Sierra Leone, the DRC and Ethiopia and Eritrea—is a sign of improvement. This can be seen, however, partly as a reaction to criticisms of ‘selective indignation’ following interventions in Kosovo and East Timor, and, more importantly, has been limited primarily to post-conflict peacekeeping. The willingness of the Council to fulfil its duty in the restoration of peace, rather than simply in the maintenance of peace, in Africa remains (and can be expected to remain) extremely low.

Council involvement in peace restoration is usually only possible with the leadership and sponsorship of a state (or group of states) that possesses sufficient military capability for such an endeavour; read Western states. In the absence of such sponsors, and Council interest, two strategies present themselves for consideration: developing African peace enforcement capacity and using the Peace and Security Council of the African Union.

Firstly, in order for Western countries to avoid intervening themselves, it is in their interests to work to develop the peace enforcement capabilities of other countries and/or organisations (including logistics) to a certain level. Current efforts at supporting African peacekeeping are being conducted on a very small scale, and are of little use in situations where peace enforcement is required. Investing in the development of credible local peace enforcement capabilities would be a practical and cost-effective method of improving peace and stability in Africa.²⁶ The key here, lies in convincing these countries (in the absence of any significant economic or strategic interests or media coverage) that this is indeed in their interests, and in ensuring that the process is not derailed and converted into an anti-terrorist strategy, away from the more pressing need for African conflict resolution.²⁷

The second strategy is to use the African Union’s infant Peace and Security Council (PSC) as a forum to create a unified ‘made in Africa’ intervention plan that can be presented to the UN Security Council for approval. This would give such a plan considerable legitimacy, and would make it difficult for the Council to ignore. The challenge here, would be in garnering the support of the Council members who would be asked to pay for, support, and/or take some form of responsibility for such intervention, and in ensuring that the PSC perseveres in seeking Council approval, without proceeding to intervene unilaterally.

In the final analysis, there is little doubt that the future of African conflict resolution has been left almost entirely in African hands, and that little support from the UN Security Council, or its powerful members can be expected in the near future. While diplomatic power does not have the same clout as economic or military power, it is inexpensive and, if used skilfully, can be quite effective.²⁸ It is imperative that African leaders pool their diplomatic power together and shame the Council and its powerful members into lending more meaningful support to African efforts to facilitate conflict resolution.

Notes