Death of a peace-maker

The former secretary-general of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, died on February 16, 2016 at the age of 93 in his hometown near Cairo in Egypt. Mr Boutros-Ghali was the sixth secretary-general of the UN. He served the office of the UN secretary-general from January 1992 to December 1996.

Peace is fragile. When he ascended the office of the UN, perhaps peace was the most fragile thing in the world to achieve, protect, and restore. The end of the Cold War in 1990 and in the aftermath breakdown of former Yugoslavia, the outbreak of genocide in Rwanda, civil wars in Sierra Leone, Somalia, Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and Mozambique, brought two fundamental realities in front of the international community to deal with: Peace and security in the future.

Firstly, the range of potential and active actors of conflicts has expanded from state to non-state actors, including ethnic tensions, organised criminal and violent networks, and warlords. Therefore, the threat to peace is not only the military one outside the border, rather peace is more susceptible to threats emanated within the country.

The world witnessed the outbreak of ethnic war, internecine/civil war and prolonged warfare, dirty warfare tactics — including the policy of scorched land, ethnic cleansing, and mass genocide instead of regular warfare between countries.

Secondly, the concept of securing peace in post-conflict countries was no longer based on the military solution. Instead, it emerged as a critical issue, and requires political, social, and economic solutions to deal with numerous threats to peace, to protect recurrence of conflicts, and ensure lasting peace.

Boutros-Ghali in this turbulent and gruesome time came up with a historic “Agenda for Peace” to restore peace. The issue of international peace and security is the cornerstone of the UN. The preamble of the UN commits the international community “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” With that commitment, his “Agenda for Peace” brought forth some important guidelines and issues for future UN peace missions.

What should the UN do for restoring peace?

The UN Security Council in 1992 was concerned about strengthening peace-making and peace-keeping activities. In response to that, newly appointed Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali prepared a report called “An agenda for peace: Preventive diplomacy, peace-making, and peace-keeping.” In his report, he observed that, although the concept of peace is easy to grasp, it is more complex to secure.

To deal with this situation, he proposed wider peace support activities at four levels. He proposed “preventive diplomacy,” which can be initiated to prevent existing disputes from escalating into conflicts. Secondly, he proposed “peace-making,” to initiate the peaceful settlement of international disputes by bringing together hostile parties for peace agreement.

Thirdly, he proposed for deployment of more robust and multi-dimensional peace-keeping forces in the conflict zones. And finally, he proposed to the international community to adopt post-conflict “peace-building” mission to identify and support structures to strengthen lasting peace in order to avoid a recurrence of conflict in war-torn societies.

Why is the Agenda for Peace important?

The four recommendations of the Agenda for Peace by Boutros-Ghali are still relevant even after 26 years since its inception. Since then the UN has been committed to moving from a policy of “reaction” to the policy of “prevention.”

The UN secretary-general provides his “good office,” ie his personal intervention of sending diplomatic envoys to the parties in conflicted areas to prevent escalation of disputes into war. As of now, the UN’s preventive diplomacy has been performing responsibilities in Afghanistan, Nepal, Lebanon, Somalia, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, and the Central African Republic.

Preventive diplomacy also helps war-torn societies navigate through the difficult path of reconciliation and peace-building. The major contribution of Agenda for Peace was to redefine the role of peace-keeping operations. He proposed for new departures in peace-keeping, which would be different from traditional peace-keeping operations. Traditional peace-keepers were deployed between warring parties, which are already abiding by a ceasefire. He proposed for moving to the second-generation multi-dimensional peace-keeping operations.

Boutros-Ghali also tried to redefine the role of blue beret soldiers on ground in the middle of conflicts. He also proposed that if peaceful means fail, UN peace-keeping operations should use Chapter VII of the UN charter to maintain or restore international peace and security. Under Article 42 of the charter, the UN Security Council itself had the authority to take military action for that purpose.

Since then, the world has witnessed the unprecedented scales of UN peace-keeping operations all over the world. In the beginning of 1992, there were 12,000 military and police personnel working as peace-keepers, which rose to 80,000 by the end of 1994. Also, the number of peace-keeping missions increased. In the 40 years of the Cold War, 13 UN peace-keeping operations were launched. But from 1988 to 1994, there have been a total of 21 UN peace-keeping operations.

As of 2015, the UN has conducted 71 peace-keeping operations all over the world. Currently the UN is conducting 16 multi-dimensional and hybrid peace-keeping operations. At present, a total of 106,245 UN peace-keepers are deployed. Among them, 90,889 are troops, 13,550 are police personnel, and 1,806 are military observers.

The multi-dimensional peace-keeping operations are now working for peace-building as well. They now work for preventive deployment, interposition, surveillance and early warning, guarantee and denial of movement by enforcing no-fly zones, restoration of law and order, the custody and possible destruction of deadly weapons, repatriating refugees, advisory and training support for security personnel, monitoring elections, and advancing efforts to protect human rights. Therefore, they have a mandate to consolidate peace, and advance a sense of confidence among people living in conflict zones.

Although Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace faced several limitations at the practical level, it is the first road-map for peace of its kind that the UN and the international community have been trying to follow since its inception. In fact, his report was the beginning of adoption of humanised and context-specific actions for restoring peace by implementing preventive diplomacy, peace-making, and peace-building in conflicted zones around the world.

Boutros-Ghali died at the age of 93. The world community still has a lot to do to make his dream come true. Rest in peace, Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922-2016), a great peace-maker.