UN AGREES TO $570 MILLION CUT IN PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS UNDER U.S. PRESSURE

UN AGREES TO $570 MILLION CUT IN PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS UNDER U.S. PRESSURE

The United Nations General Assembly on June 30 agreed to a nearly $600 million cut in the UN's budget for peacekeeping under pressure from the United States, which proposed to slash the program.

After days of negotiations, the assembly's powerful budget committee agreed to a $7.3 billion budget for 14 peacekeeping missions for the year starting July 1, a $570 million cut from the current budget of $7.87 billion.

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley hailed the decision as an achievement. "Just five months into our time here, we've already been able to cut over half a billion dollars from the UN peacekeeping budget, and we're only getting started," she said.

Washington pays 28.5 percent of the peacekeeping budget and 22 percent of the UN's core budget of $5.4 billion. The UN has about 95,000 peacekeepers serving in its missions worldwide.

The United States has been closely reviewing every peacekeeping mission as its mandate comes up for renewal with an eye toward pruning spending.

'Satisfactory Solution'

The UN has been carrying out its own reviews. Those led to the closing of the peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast on June 30, while the mission in Liberia is wrapping up its operations next year and the Haiti mission will come mostly to an end in October.

The UN is also slashing the number of peacekeepers in Darfur by 44 percent and the number of international police there by about 27 percent.

When negotiations over the peacekeeping budget began, the United Nations was seeking an increase to nearly $8 billion while the United States wanted to cut it to just below $7 billion.

Italy's UN ambassador, Sebastiano Cardi, said the $7.3 billion agreement ended up close to where the European Union said the budget should be.

"It's been a satisfactory solution," he said, adding that the cuts didn't jeopardize the operation of UN missions and are going "to make peacekeeping better."

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said "the overall level is meaningfully smaller than what we had last year, but we will make every effort to ensure that the mandates are implemented."

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres spent three days in Washington this week lobbying lawmakers to allocate more funding to the UN than President Donald Trump requested in his budget.

"We cannot overstate the value of peacekeeping to achieve peace and stability," Dujarric said. "It remains the most cost-effective instrument at the disposal of the international community to prevent conflicts and foster conditions for lasting peace."

DRASTIC CUTS TO DARFUR MISSION MISGUIDED SAYS UNITED NATIONS

DRASTIC CUTS TO DARFUR MISSION MISGUIDED SAYS UNITED NATIONS

New York — A planned reduction of peacekeeping troops in Darfur risks leaving civilians without much-needed protection in the face of continued violence, Human Rights Watch said today. The United Nations Security Council, which has to renew the mandate for the African Union/United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) before the end of June 2017, should ensure the mission continues to protect civilians from the full range of threats they face, including outside of the greater Jebel Marra area, where they intend to establish a presence.

When deciding how quickly to reduce the size of the force, the Security Council should leave flexibility for the mission to respond to evolving threats, and strengthen the mission's human rights monitoring and reporting capacities.

"The planned cuts reflect a false narrative about Darfur's war ending," said Daniel Bekele, senior director for Africa advocacy at Human Rights Watch. "There is no reason to believe that government attacks on civilians and other abuses have ended since the same security forces remain in place; they have never been prosecuted for their crimes and can't be relied on to protect civilians."

Sudan's forces have carried out fewer attacks on civilians in 2017, particularly since the United States announced it would lift economic sanctions on Sudan, but violence and abuses against civilians persist. The government routinely denies peacekeepers access on the ground and refuses to issue visas to mission personnel.

In late May and early June, Sudanese forces attacked villages in northern and eastern Darfur when rebels clashed with government forces, displacing thousands of people, credible sources reported. The AU-UN mission's report for the first quarter of 2017 found an increase in human rights violations and abuses compared with the same period in 2016, and confirmed that Sudanese government restrictions seriously hamper the peacekeepers from protecting civilians.

The envisioned cuts are part of a strategic review process that began in 2014, amid Sudanese government demands that the mission come up with an exit strategy. A joint AU-UN strategic review of the mission proposed a reduction of nearly half the troops within a year, the closure of 11 bases, and the withdrawal of military forces from 7, citing improvements to the security situation. The changes would cut the military component's physical presence from 36 team sites to 18.

The military component of the peacekeeping mission currently provides protection for civilian patrols more than 250 times a day and provides escorts to aid groups more than 20 times a week. The proposed reductions are likely to limit the ability to conduct patrols and escorts, and the areas where other aid groups can provide food, medical attention, and other essential aid.

The cuts would restrict traditional peacekeeping and emergency attention to the greater Jebel Marra area, despite clear signs that civilians in other parts of the region still need protection. In 2015 and 2016, Human Rights Watch and others documented large-scale attacks by the government's Rapid Support Forces on hundreds of villages. The same forces reportedly fought rebels and attacked villages in May 2017.

About 2.7 million people remain displaced across Darfur, with over 1.6 million living in 60 camps, and hundreds of thousands as refugees in Chad. The Darfur region remains under a state of emergency. The peacekeepers' own reporting describes how intercommunal conflicts and proliferation of militia groups and prevailing lawlessness all threaten civilians. The reduction of the peacekeepers' footprint across Darfur will most likely limit needy communities' access to life-saving aid as humanitarian groups won't be able to reach areas in need without the protective presence of the peacekeeping forces, Human Rights Watch said.

The Security Council should ensure that any cuts are sequenced appropriately and still allow the peacekeepers to serve Darfur's most vulnerable people. The Security Council should also make the mission's human rights component a priority. The unit has a 43 percent vacancy rate and no staff in Khartoum since 2014, due to the government's restrictions and refusal to grant visas.

The Security Council should urge the mission, which has not issued any public human rights reports in the last year and which has been accused of covering up abuses in the past, to resume public reporting so that council members have regular updates on the situation on the ground. It should also insist that the Sudanese government expedite the visas and access it has systematically denied the peacekeepers for years.

"It's too early to talk about moving from peacekeeping to peace-building across Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of civilians confront the threat of violence every day," Bekele said. "As the recent bloodshed and displacement of civilians shows, the UN needs to recognize that a temporary lull does not signal an end of the conflict or risk to civilians."