ADF STAFF
The United Nations recently marked an important anniversary on the continent — 25 years of actively protecting civilians with its peacekeeping missions.
On October 22, 1999, the U.N. Security Council ended its observer mission in Sierra Leone and established a new mission, UNAMSIL, with a new mandate permitting its troops to use force. It represented a major shift in the U.N.’s approach to peacekeeping.
The Security Council in 1999 outlined how UNAMSIL troops were mandated to “take the necessary action in the discharge of its mandate to ensure the security and freedom of movement of its personnel and, within its capabilities and areas of deployment, to afford protection to civilians under imminent threat of physical violence.”
Before UNAMSIL, peacekeeping missions were not authorized to intervene with force. They helped protect populations through disarming combatants, monitoring ceasefires and supporting peace negotiations, according to the U.N. Peacekeeping’s Protection of Civilians (POC) team.
“This was a groundbreaking step, establishing the protection of civilians as a core responsibility for U.N. peacekeeping missions operating in conflict zones,” the POC team wrote in an October 21, 2024 article.
During 10 years of civil war, more than 70,000 Sierra Leoneans were killed, at least 27,000 children were forced into becoming combatants, and 20,000 people were mutilated in deliberate acts of amputation meant to terrorize civilians. The U.N. estimated that 2.5 million people fled their homes.
UNAMSIL was a large mission with 6,000 military personnel, including 260 military observers. Its mandate was to assist Sierra Leone’s new government and disarmed combatants in carrying out provisions of the Lomé Peace Agreement, which had been brokered in the summer of 1999.
In 2001, the U.N. increased the size of the mission to 17,500 military personnel, allowing UNAMSIL to gradually establish authority in diamond-mining areas that had been a key source of financing for rebel forces during the war.
After several deadly post-war skirmishes, UNAMSIL created buffer zones to separate former combatants in the mining district of Kono and finally brought law and order to what had been an ongoing conflict zone of illicit smuggling and trafficking.
Approved by the U.N. in 2002, the Kimberley Process curbed the flow of blood diamonds mined in African war zones. After UNAMSIL’s mission ended in December 2005, $125 million in diamonds were legally exported in 2006, compared to the beginning of the mission in 1999, when almost no diamonds were legally exported from Sierra Leone.
By early 2002, UNAMSIL had disarmed and demobilized more than 75,000 ex-fighters, including child combatants. The government declared an official end to the Sierra Leonean civil war, and UNAMSIL helped organize the country’s first free presidential and parliamentary elections.
After concluding UNAMSIL, the U.N. transitioned its operations to the Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL), which closed with great fanfare and acclaim in 2014.
Today, the POC mandate is a cornerstone of U.N. peacekeeping operations. It has shaped how missions prevent and respond to violence against civilians.
“This role remains critical, as conflicts have surged globally, with catastrophic effects on civilian populations, including an alarming 72% rise in civilian deaths in 2023 alone,” the POC team wrote.
The U.N. has mandated 16 peacekeeping missions to explicitly protect civilians since the POC mandate began with UNAMSIL, including four now deployed on the continent: the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), South Sudan (UNMISS) and the disputed Abyei area between Sudan and South Sudan (UNISFA).
The template was cast in Sierra Leone, where the peacekeeping force helped guide a war-ravaged country toward a hopeful future.
“Sierra Leone represents one of the world’s most successful cases of post-conflict recovery, peacekeeping and peacebuilding,” then-U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at UNIPSIL’s closing ceremony in Freetown on March 5, 2014. “Sierra Leone has taught the world many lessons, but none more important than the power of people to shape the future.”
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