Protecting Civilians: The Obligations of Peacekeepers.

• Author: Zawati, Hilmi M.
• Position: Book review

Siobhan Wills, Protecting Civilians: The Obligations of Peacekeepers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp xxi, 296. ISBN 9780-19-953387-9.

The last two decades have witnessed the highest ever involvement of United Nations' blue helmets in peacekeeping missions throughout the world. These international missions, as Siobhan Wills observes, consist of different types of peace and enforcement operations, including conflict prevention, peacemaking, peace enforcement, peace building, and humanitarian operations. (1) The engagement of UN troops in civilian protection operations in the world's war-torn areas has resulted in several complications concerning their mandates to protect civilians from harm on the one hand, and their entanglement in human rights violations on the other. (2)

In light of these developments, a fresh look into the norms of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law is necessary to remind troops of their obligation to protect civilians from human rights abuses and, at the same time, hold members of these missions accountable for alleged crimes and violations. Thus, the purpose of Protecting Civilians, The Obligations of Peacekeepers is to examine in depth international humanitarian and human rights law instruments and demonstrate how these laws impose obligations on UN peacekeepers and other multinational forces to protect civilians in war-torn areas of the world, including intervention to prevent or stop human rights violations and restore law in UN-occupied areas.

Focusing on the challenges faced by peacekeeping missions in implementing their mandates, the author devotes the first chapter of her book to providing a historical review of peacekeepers' successes and failures in protecting civilians. She explores how these troops, on different occasions, did less than nothing when civilians were at risk of becoming victims of serious violations, such as the collective blood baths and mass rape campaigns in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, and other ravaged areas of the world. In spite of the fact that UN troops were authorized to take "all appropriate measures" (3) to protect civilians and to use force in case of "self-defense", (4) these troops repeatedly failed either to implement these mandates or to protect themselves, as when they were attacked in Kigali and lost ten of their members. (5) Moreover, it was reported that the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda and the UN Protection Force abandoned thousands of civilians in the Kigali Ecole Technique Officielle and in Srebrenica to be slaughtered by Hutu and Serb forces, respectively. (6)

Chapter 2 of this analysis examines the extent to which international humanitarian law obliges peacekeeping forces to protect civilians from human rights abuses. Relying on her extensive research, Wills explains that the ambiguity of obligations imposed on UN peacekeeping missions to protect civilians during armed conflict under IHL---particularly common article 1 to the 1949 Geneva Conventions (7)--has resulted in many incompatibilities in peacekeepers' mandates. This vagueness has encouraged the UN to treat the above laws as mere political perspective rather than as binding law. Finally, the author concludes by claiming that treating the norms of IHL--as they relate to UN troops--as moral standards rather than laws compelling obedience has undermined many peacekeeping missions and caused the failure of these operations in different regions of the world. (8)

By the same token, Wills tries, in chapter 3, to ascertain the applicability of international human rights law to UN peacekeeping missions and to determine whether these laws impose obligations on UN troops and multinational forces to protect civilians during armed conflict. The author relies on different perspectives--particularly that of IHL--to examine the applicability of human rights law to armed conflicts, and then reviews historical developments in IHL and international human rights law since the 1960s. Moreover, in examining different cases, she explores the relationship between international human rights law and other regimes, namely occupation law and IHL. Wills concludes by asserting that, despite the fact that many questions about peacekeepers' responsibilities in protecting civilian populations remain undetermined, human rights law is still applicable during armed conflict. This notion has been supported by the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, regional human rights courts, UN human rights bodies, and the reports of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In this respect, the Human Rights Committee has provided that the UN is bound by international human rights law in territories under its administration and that, accordingly, UN peacekeepers are not immune from its investigation. (9) However, this proclamation does not go so far as to say that UN troops may be held accountable for violations of their human rights obligations in international or national courts, except when they are deployed without a UN Security Council resolution.

Wills insists that, even though the UN is not a party to IHL treaties and consequently cannot be expected to carry out all obligations included in these treaties, it is widely accepted that UN troops must respect the "principles and spirit" of the laws of war. (10) However, this "respect" does not impose any obligation on UN peacekeepers to prevent violations of IHL or require that they be held responsible for their felonies in territories under their control. (11) On that basis, ruling on violations of IHL committed by UN troops in Somalia, both the Canadian court martials and the Belgian military court concluded that IHL did not apply to UN peacekeeping forces in Somalia, (12) decisions that enraged human rights groups and activists.

Nonetheless, the author examines in chapter 4 of her analysis the question of the applicability of occupation laws (13) to the UN forces involved in humanitarian intervention or peacekeeping operations, notwithstanding that the UN is not a state party to these conventions and that its troops are not considered to be belligerent occupation forces. After a considerable analysis of different cases--particularly the status of the United Nations Operation in Somalia, the Kosovo Force, the...