peace agreement;
- Help in the implementation of comprehensive peace agreements;
- Assist States in the transition to a government based on democracy, good governance and economic development.
The resurgence started after the Brahimi Report (RAM, Sunil. The History of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations from Retrenchment to Resurgence, pg. 131), in August 2000. It recommended restructuring the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), an analysis unit to assist in information concerning peace and security to all UN departments, and an integrated task force in New York to plan and support a peace operation from its birth.
The Brahimi Report also listed some conditions for a successful peace operation:
- Create strategies to prevent conflicts;
- Have a clear and specific mandate;
- Rules of engagement adequate to the situation;
- The parties to the conflict agree to the operation;
- Adequate human resources, as well as equipment and financial support;
- When the UN is given temporary executive powers, an interim criminal code;
- Traditional peacekeeping should be deployed within 30 days;
- For complex peacekeeping, the deployment should occur within 90 days.
As a result of the Brahimi Report, since 2006 the DPKO has a situation centre, which works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and a Military Division was created and well staffed. Also, the DPKO has been staffed with more military and police advisers, and the UNHQ has more personnel to support peace operation.
In a fragile State, rebuilding national capacities take time. However, Member States want quick solutions, and Troop Contributing Countries want to see their troops back home as fast as possible. This is the dichotomy that Peace Operations face today.
In the 1990’s decade, UN troops were mainly sent by developed countries. However, after September 11th, 2001, many troop contributing countries shifted their resources (human, equipment and funds) to the War on Terror. Thus, the industrialized countries gave space for the developing nations to share an increased contribution to international peace and security.
Instead of a problem, this responsibility gave more fuel to peacekeeping missions, concerning the funding capability and the credibility of the mission, as follows:
- The exchange rate for the developing countries is favorable for UN payments. Since the UN pays in US dollars, the TCC sees this money multiplied when it is converted to its internal currency. The UN pays the same, but the country has more funds available.
- Developed countries are sometimes accused of imperialism, and of interfering in the internal issues of other countries for their benefit. So, the population may see UN troops as intruders. On the other hand, developing countries have, or had in their recent history, the same institutional problems the population of the host country is suffering. It makes a natural empathy between the UN troops and the population concerned, because the UN soldier, in this case, has seen this unfortunate scenario in his home country, and knows how to deal with it.
In brief, peace operations were created to deal with tensions between states, and were also successfully used in internal conflicts within feeble states, in an effort to mediate a solution, implement the dialogue between warring parties and protecting the civilian population. These field experiences are closely linked with the counterterrorism effort studied in this paper, and will be resumed further.
3. INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS LAW
The international legal framework in which the Peace Operations work, mainly International Humanitarian Law, needs attentive study in order to understand the modern challenges that Terrorism, and the War on Terror, are imposing on it.
Each civilization has created “humanity clusters”, making a set or rules to limit the use of violence and also encouraging solidarity to the victims of a conflict. Often these rules were only applicable to the same members of the group or civilization. For example, Plato wrote that certain limitations must be observed in the wars between Greek cities, but these limits were not applicable to the fight against the Persians (VEUTHEY, Michel. Droit International Humanitaire).
These rules were intended to guarantee the survival of the population. Warriors should not attack women and children, destroy crop fields or trees, poison water sources or destroy sacred places and buildings, because these actions might endanger the survival of the population.
The simplest and plus common definition of IHL is the “Golden Rule”, defined as Do not do to others what you don’t want others do to you. This demand of reciprocity in the limitation on the use of force and in solidarity concerning humanitarian action is present in most religious traditions, like Hinduism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianism and Islamism.
In Asian countries, Buddhism, Hinduism and also Taoism, Confucionism and Shintoism, list principles of Humanity for the treatment of the enemy during an Armed Conflict. Example: Japanese Bushido (Bushi = Samurai, and Do = Way).
Buddhism has two fundamental principles: maitri (benevolence) and karuna (mercy, compassion), very close to the meaning of humanity (MILLET-DEVALLE, Anne-Sophie. Religions et Droit International Humanitaire).
Hinduism has rules about the humane treatment of defeated enemies, as well as loyalty in combat, and the use of weapons that cause superfluous injury. The Laws of Manou (a code of laws with moral and religious norms) prescribe that a warrior must never use against its enemies treacherous weapons like sticks with blades, poisoned arrows or leather in fire (MILLET-DEVALLE, Anne-Sophie. Religions et Droit International Humanitaire).
Manou Laws also prohibit to attack an enemy: on foot (when the attacker is in a vehicle), who acts femininely, that joins his hands begging for mercy, scalped, seated, or sleeping, or is not wearing armor, completely naked, disarmed, observing the combat or fighting with another enemy, or whose weapon is broken, or laid on the floor, or seriously injured, or a coward or when he is running away.
Two Indian sacred books, Ramayana and Mahabhata, forbid the use of weapons of mass destruction, which do not permit to distinguish combatants from non-combatants. In Mahabharata, “Arjuna (religious Indian character), abiding to the laws of war, abstained from using pasupathastra, an hyper destructive weapon, because the combat demanded ordinary classical weapons only, so the use of extraordinary or non classic weapons would be not only contrary to the religion or the known laws of war, but also immoral.” (Apud BALMOND, Louis. Droit du recours à la force).
Judge Weeramantry, from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) used this passage as an argument in his dissident opinion about the Consultative Advice of ICJ about the legality of the Threat or the Use of Nuclear Weapons, arguing that the Court shall guarantee, in its whole, the representation of the different forms of civilization and the main legal systems in the world.
The judge also quoted the passage in Deuteronomy (fifth book of the Pentateuch, Old Testament) that prohibited the chop of fruit trees (Deuteronomy 20, 19 “When you lay siege to a city for a long time, in making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them : for you may eat of them, and you shall not cut them down (for the trees of the field is man’s life), to employ them in the siege”), the African tribal habits, the prohibition of the weapon called crossbow by the Latran Council of 1139, as well as the very well detailed doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas, about, among other subjects, the protection of non-combatants.
The Western Christianity tried to create limits through the traditions of Cavalry and proclaim, in Centuries X and XI, the Treuga Dei (Truce of God) and Pax Dei (Peace of God), an initiative of the church. According to these proclaims, it was prohibited all hostilities in certain periods of the liturgical calendar (from the first Sunday of the Advent to the Epiphany, from Ash Wednesday to the Ascension) and in certain days of the week (from Wednesday afternoon to Sunday morning, in memory of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ).
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The first defenders of International Humanitarian Law, not by coincidence, were religious, that recognized the inherent dignity of every human being, created by the image of God, as Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 a 1274), the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546), Baltazar Ayala (1548-1584), the jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) and the Swiss protestant Emmerich de Vattel (1714-1767).
The codification of the Law of Armed Conflict (LoAC) has begun by the initiative of Tzar Alexander II, of Russia, where delegates of 15 European States held a meeting in Brussels in July 27th, 1874, to study the project of an international agreement about the laws and practices of war. The initial text was adopted with a few changes. However, many States hadn’t wanted to accept a mandatory agreement, so this text wasn’t ratified. Anyway, this was the first important step for the codification of the Laws of War (VEUTHEY, Michel. Droit International Humanitaire).
The Institute of International Law, during a session in Geneva, nominated a Committee to examine the Declaration of Brussels and submit to the Institute its opinion and complementary propositions. The efforts of the Institute led to the adoption, in 1880, of the Oxford Manual about the Law of Land Warfare. The Declaration of Brussels and the Oxford Manual was the base for two Hague Conventions, concerning land warfare and related