Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS) President Maj Gen (retd) ANM Muniruzzaman on Thursday said the UN Peacekeeping operations are evolving and they have entered the 4th generation of peacekeeping.
The 4th generation operations are technologically advanced, he said, adding that these operations will increasingly involve drones, UAV, AI, etc.
"This will create new challenges for third world countries including Bangladesh," said ANM Muniruzzaman while moderating a roundtable held in a Dhaka hotel.
He highlighted the importance of the United Nations (UN) Peacekeeping operations to mitigate conflicts over 75 years due to its unique characteristics like the legitimacy, burden sharing and the ability to deploy troops from all around the world.
Multidimensional mandates have been a focal point of the UN Peacekeeping missions all these years and the four generations of these missions have their own separate dimensions.
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Bangladesh is currently the largest contributor of troops in the Peacekeeping missions with more than seven and a half thousand peacekeepers actively participating in the mitigation of conflicts and playing a significant role in the UN to ensure peace and stability in the world, said Maj Gen Muniruzzaman.
Peacekeeping operations along with its multidimensional challenges and the future implications of the missions were the focal point of the roundtable conference arranged by BIPSS.
The title of the roundtable was “UN Peacekeeping Operation @75: The Road Ahead.”
Panelist Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, former foreign advisor to the Government of Bangladesh, with his personal experience of the UN Peacekeeping missions discussed the evolving nature of the missions and distinguished the nature of the missions between before and after the Cold War.
The increasing complexities of the conflicts have forced the UN to focus more on the non-military aspects along with the military ones.
Focus on disarmament, demobilization, reintegration, confidence-building measures, electoral support, establishing rule of law are examples of it. On one hand, there are success stories like Cambodia, Mozambique, El Salvador; there are cases like Bosnia and Rwanda on the other hand.
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Dr Iftekhar emphasized on the peacebuilding process which assists the countries in their transition from war to peace and focuses on strengthening the national capacity.
It is an important process as it ensures the discontinuation of any conflict rising in the country, he said.
Although the complexities with these missions have been on the rise, Dr Iftekhar claimed that with agile, flexible and fast moving responses, these can be mitigated.
He hoped that if peacekeeping and peacebuilding can be done together, only then positive impacts can be expected.
Lt Gen Abdul Hafiz, former Chief of General Staff of Bangladesh Army and former Force Commander in UN Operations in Ivory Coast and Western Sahara, analyzed how the UN Peacekeeping missions are under great pressure and the three operations in Africa are facing great difficulties.
The difficulties are on the rise for several reasons.
Firstly, Hafiz said, as the blue helmets are getting targeted systematically, the missions are becoming deadlier and casualties are increasing.
Secondly, he said, the conflicts have become deeply estranged.
The peacekeepers get engaged in missions to keep peace but there is no peace to keep in some of those regions.
Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Central African Republic are examples.
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Thirdly, Hafiz said, a number of parties are using terror as a tool and attacking the civilians.
All these dimensions have turned the missions into more complex ones.
The consent of the government to get engaged in peacekeeping missions also remains a challenging aspect and many of the missions including the missions in Darfur, DRC, Mali have been closed down or have been asked for withdrawal.
In such a scenario, the world may see an end to the era of large scale peacekeeping missions, or the UN would go big.
The speaker discouraged overly militarized operations, as in the future, they may not ensure stabilization.
Rather, the focus should be on whether there is a viable peace project in place in the country.
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Monitoring cease fire, providing support to a peace process and drawing a clear roadmap are the essentials that should be the key focus of the operations.
Also, the inclusivity of these projects will be an important aspect.
“In the coming days, we are going to see special political missions with lighter footprints as we are seeing in Yemen, Columbia and Sudan.”
Lastly, the speaker expressed the importance of these missions as he would like to believe that the UN remains the best actor to maintain peace and security.
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Dr. Niloy Ranjan Biswas, Associate Professor, University of Dhaka, first, stated the significance of the UN missions for the developing countries as their troops get the opportunity to experience various missions all around the globe and can adopt the global norms.
The issues of taking consent and maintaining neutrality remain the hotspot in the complexity of these missions.
The issue of countering terrorism is not in the mandate of the peacekeepers but still they face that which poses another challenge.
Dr. Niloy stated that the future challenge will be how the UN deals with the fundamental and conceptual issues.
The transformation of these missions is resulting in increasing challenges and as a result, the mandates have been expanded for robust missions.
The shift of burden from North to South is another key issue here and a dilemma has given rise about the formulation and implementation of the mandate.
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Dr Niloy correlated the UN Peacekeeping operations and the UN Security Council and highlighted some of the challenges like the big power politics, veto system.
The reason there has been no new missions since 2014 is because the big powers are quite indecisive among them about the missions and this lack of consensus can prove to be a significant challenge in the upcoming days too.
The speaker ended his speech on a positive role and stated that the peacekeeping missions have to be successful, otherwise there will be more cases like Afghanistan and Iraq.
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The discussion was followed by a vibrant interactive session where the audience pointed out some key issues on peacekeeping, for instance, budgetary constraints in peacekeeping, gender in peacekeeping, interface between diplomacy and peacekeeping among many.
The event was attended by ambassadors and diplomats based in Dhaka, government officials, defence personnel, academics, editors, journalists and scholars.