Statement by H.E. Mr Gary Quinlan, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Australia to the United Nations Security Council regarding the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, delivered on 11 November 2009.
(as delivered)
I thank you, Sir, for convening this very important debate today.
Today, of course, is Remembrance Day, when many of our countries honour those who fought in the wars of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, including those who fought in United Nations and other peacekeeping missions.
On this date, 11 November, in 1918 the First World War ended. Almost 20 million people died in that war, 7 million of them civilians. The seeds of that war bred a second, far worse conflict. At least 70 million people died in the Second World War — the deadliest war ever — and at least 50 million of those were civilians.
It is right and responsible that we should meet to debate the protection of civilians on this particular day.
We commend the Council for its hard work on resolution 1894 (2009), which has been adopted today, and we are grateful for that work. The protection of civilians is, of course, a broad topic, so I will focus my statement today on improving the implementation of protection mandates by peacekeeping missions.
As we know, it has been 10 years since the Security Council first mandated the protection of civilians in a peacekeeping operation, the United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone. We are pleased to see that this imperative is being considered systematically and routinely by the Security Council when mandating peacekeeping missions today. However, as acknowledged in the New Horizon non-paper and elsewhere, there still exists a significant gap between what the Security Council is mandating and what peacekeepers are able to do and capable of doing.
To address this gap, military and police personnel tasked to protect civilians clearly need appropriate guidance in order to implement protection mandates effectively. Appropriate guidelines that explain to peacekeepers what is expected of them in the field will obviously assist in identifying the resources and training required by peacekeepers, aid the formulation of and planning for a more effective and clearer mission mandate, and provide a framework against which mission success can be measured more accurately in the field and learned from. Guidelines will assist peacekeepers in the field by articulating a range of possible protection of civilians operationalisation strategies that can be utilised.
The development of guidelines is even more critical for Member States that are in the process of developing their capacity to support their own regional peacekeeping operations. Australia is working with the African Union (AU) to strengthen African peacekeeping capacity through the development of such guidelines. The AU Commission, together with Australia, will host a symposium in Addis Ababa in March next year to assist with the AU’s groundbreaking work on this issue. We hope that the symposium will not only be a valuable exercise for the African Union itself and my own country in improving understanding of how to implement these mandates, but that it will also contribute to broader dialogue amongst Member States.
Ensuring that peacekeepers in the field have the resources they need to fulfil protection mandates is critical. Without adequate resources, equipment and training to implement a mandate through the life cycle of a mission, the safety and security of the deployed peacekeepers, as well as the civilians they are tasked to protect, are obviously put at risk. The former force commander of UNAMID, General Agwai, addressed this issue here in August, and identified the critical need for troops to have the right tools and to be well trained. The development of guidelines on the protection of civilians will provide a framework for determining the resources and the level of training required to implement that mandate successfully.
Finally, I would like to refer to the need to ensure that the lessons being learned in the field are captured and utilised to improve the implementation of protection of civilians mandates. The study independently commissioned and recently released by the DPKO-OCHA is an important step towards drawing together lessons being learned in the field. We hope that the study will serve as the beginning of a serious conversation on the protection of civilians that needs to be carried out between the Secretariat, the Security Council, and troop- and police-contributing countries.
To help further that dialogue, on 8 December, Australia and Uruguay will host here in New York a second workshop — following a first held in January — on the protection of civilians in peacekeeping operations. The workshop, we hope, will provide an opportunity for the stakeholders involved in peacekeeping operations, particularly the troop- and police-contributing countries, to provide their thoughts on the recommendations in the independent study, based, of course, on their practical experience in the field.
In order for United Nations peacekeeping to better protect civilians, clearly we must develop a common and better understanding of what we expect United Nations peacekeepers to do when they are required to implement these difficult mandates. Australia looks forward to participating in a much more substantial and serious dialogue on this imperative with other Member States.