Canada & the UN >  Canada on the Security Council (1999-2000)

Canada and the Security Council: Options and Opportunities

Dealing with Intra-state Conflicts
Presentation: Mr. Robin Hay, Global Affairs Research Partners

While the UN Charter has remained unchanged for the past 50 years, the way that Charter has been interpreted has changed markedly. In his opening comments, Mr. Hay noted that not only has the past decade seen a rapid increase in Security Council activity, it has also seen a heightened willingness on the part of the Council to intervene in the internal affairs of member states, despite the fact that the Charter still prohibits intervention in matters of essentially "domestic jurisdiction". The turning point, Hay suggested, was Security Council Resolution 688 of 1991, which authorized international intervention to provide humanitarian relief to the Kurdish population in Iraq. Between 1989-97, in fact, the Security Council authorized 36 missions, most of which addressed specifically intra-state conflicts.

The balloon of UN interventionism, Hay suggested, had been popped by the mid-1990s following high-profile failures of UN peace missions in Angola, Rwanda, and Somalia. The lesson of such failures, he argued, is that peace can rarely be imposed unless outsiders are willing to use significant force, and that most UN member states are neither willing nor able to participate in such risky and dangerous interventions. Thus, the last few years have seen the Security Council reluctant to authorise new missions unless the risks are low and the chances of success high.

It is within this context that Canada joins the Security Council and seeks to promote an agenda of human security. Given the inherent intrusiveness of such an agenda, and the current non-intrusive mind-set of the Security Council, Hay suggested that the idealism of human security must be tempered with a strong dose of realism. In promoting human security, Canada should focus on what is achievable and seek incremental advances. At the same time, he noted that if Canada is serious about human security it should demonstrate its own political will by devoting more human, financial and material resources to the service of human security objectives.

Echoing the tone of the previous session, much of the discussion that followed Mr. Hay’s presentation focused on the theory versus the practice of human security. On the one hand, it was noted that abstract concepts aren’t always very helpful at the UN, and that implementing a human security agenda will require concrete efforts to place human security concerns at the heart of UN procedures and institutions. On the other hand, however, it was also noted that the Security Council, and particularly its permanent members, is notoriously resistant to precedents and operational guidelines, and that members prefer informalism as a means of avoiding limitations imposed by procedure and precedent. Given this state of affairs, one speaker suggested that the key for Canadian efforts to push human security concerns up the Security Council agenda would be to take advantage of "operational entry points". In other words, Canada should make use of every practical opportunity, such as the renewal of Security Council mandates, to place human security concerns on the Council agenda. This step-by-step approach was applauded by another speaker, who noted that while the general idea of human security has no clear enemies, on a practical level it could not be implemented all at once without significant resistance from key member states.

Following some discussion on the nature and definition of human security, one speaker pointed out that it was not essential to define the term precisely, since most people have an innate sense of what human security is. The more pressing and practical question, he argued, is not how to define human security but how to achieve it. He suggested that what progress has been made in the past on similar issues has been the result of ‘achievement by erosion’, such as the lengthy process which culminated in the creation of the post of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. At the same time, others warned against creating unrealistic expectations about the extent to which Canada could further the human security agenda. This echoed the comments of earlier speakers, who warned of the dangers of disenchantment and disappointment should Canada set its sights too high.

A related theme concerned the relationship between UN involvement in intra-state conflict and broader considerations of peace-building, another growing area of multilateral action. One speaker identified as problematic the fact that Security Council mandates tend to be short, while peace-building is itself necessarily a long-term undertaking. Canada, he suggested, should be pushing to ensure that mandates are commensurate with the tasks of peace-building, while at the same time working to overcome the tendency within the Council to push for early closure of peace support missions. On a similar note, another speaker pointed to the possibility of the Security Council transferring peace-building responsibilities to other UN bodies, such as the Economic and Social Council, once a peace-keeping mission is wound down. It was also noted that this issue highlights an unresolved tension between the Security Council and the General Assembly over which body has ultimate responsibility for peace-building tasks. On the issue of peace-building in general, one speaker struck a cautionary note in warning against viewing such operations through the lens of Western moral superiority. Not only is it dangerous, he suggested, to see peace-building as a version of the ‘white man’s burden’, but it should also be kept in mind that peace-building successes to date have been few and far between. In pursuing future operations in this area, multilateral actors must pay close attention to the lessons of what has and has not worked in the past.

The issues of intra-state conflict and human security also raised a number of broader questions regarding structures and rules. One speaker pointed to the obsolescence of the UN Charter on key points, not least in its failure to consider intra-state conflicts, and raised the possibility of revisiting and revising the Charter to reflect new realities. Similarly, the question of enlarging and revising the permanent membership of the Security Council was also raised, although given the resistance of the Council’s current permanent members to change, or a general lack of consensus on some issues, few believe such reforms are possible in the short term. At the same time, the question of adequate international responses to the crises of ‘failed states’ also emerged, with one speaker forwarding the possibility of resurrecting the moribund UN Trusteeship Council as one potential response to the complete collapse of state authority.

On another level, several speakers addressed the need to confront more directly the issues of arms flows and mercenary forces in dealing with intra-state conflicts. An initial step in this direction could be made by improving the quality of information available to the Security Council on these questions. More careful monitoring of arms flows, for example, through mechanisms such as a Yearbook on Small Arms Flows, could help at least to clarify the scope of the problem. One potential drawback to such an approach is that, because of pressures on the UN Secretariat from individual member states, the objectivity of the analysis produced by the Secretariat is often open to challenge, raising the question of whether such a task could be better performed by governments or NGOs. On the issue of mercenary forces, the increasing professionalization of such activities and the growing importance of such forces in civil conflicts is a cause for concern. The question was raised as to whether this trend could be countered by shaming states which support or harbour such mercenary forces. As another speaker noted, this issue is complicated by the fact that even UN agencies such as UNHCR increasingly employ such forces in environments in which multilateral peacekeeping forces are not present.

While not of exclusive relevance to intra-state conflicts, the issue of the legitimate uses of force also generated considerable discussion in this session. One speaker pointed to an apparent inconsistency between Canada’s historic support for the UN and Canada’s quick endorsement, in the absence of explicit Security Council authorization, of U.S. attacks against Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq and possible NATO air-strikes against Yugoslavia. He suggested that since the Security Council is the only body with the legitimacy to authorize such actions, Canada should reconsider its support for enforcement actions not directly backed by Council resolutions. Others suggested that there often exists a tension between Canada’s support for often unwieldy multilateral processes and the often overwhelming pressure to ‘do something’, and that Canada takes very seriously the need to balance these considerations. A number of speakers suggested that only in ‘extreme cases’ should the use of force in the absence of explicit Security Council authorization be condoned.

Finally, one speaker warned against a single-minded focus on UN involvement in intra-state conflicts. While there are indications that both intra-state and inter-state conflict have been in decline in recent years, it must not be forgotten that the world still faces grave risks from potential inter-state conflict. Ongoing tensions such as on the Korean peninsula or between India and Pakistan show all too clearly, he suggested, that conflict between states is not yet a phenomenon of the past.