First, I would like to clear up some of my ideas from my original post. I talked about individuals and states as international players as if they were the same thing. If I were talking just about America, this may be acceptable because it is the people that make up the states. However, in states that are still dictatorships or not yet fully developed democracies, such as Bosnia, the government is separate from the people. The Bosnian government does not necessarily care about the individuals. During the UN peacekeeping mission, the government may have seen the trafficked women as collateral damage. They could have believed that regardless of their subjects’ struggles, the government was still obtaining its end goal- peace. A rational Bosnian government may have argued that the atrocities the Bosnian people endured from UN peacekeepers were just a small cost that was worth the benefit of ultimate peace. A reflective Bosnian government may have also argued that it was not in Bosnian culture to respect the same human rights for women as the Western world did.
The problem in this case seems to be a difference between the state’s goals and the citizen’s desires. One solution could have been convincing the Bosnian government that in order to have met their goal of peace, they must have first met their citizens’ desires of human rights. The government of Bosnia saw the state as separate from the people. However it was the people of the state that created and continued the chaos. Peace for the individuals and for the state came hand in hand. The more the people’s human rights were infringed on and the more strife they faced, the least likely these people would be peaceful, thereby contributing an atmosphere of continued chaos to the country. Referring to another peace keeping mission, Zenon Mukonngo Ngay, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s UN representative, stated, “the United Nations mission in his country had so “excelled” in criminal activity that any benefits were wiped away”. Therefore it was in the state’s interest to create peace among its civilians, which means preventing peace keepers from rape, murder, and trafficking. Taking a rational approach to this argument, the costs of overlooking citizens’ human rights was a decrease in peace. Therefore, the Bosnian government should have worked with its people and with the UN mission to promote human decency.
The other side of the problem was the second player in the mission: the providing countries that sent peacekeepers over to Bosnia. These countries may have also taken a rational approach and viewed abuses of human rights as necessary to succeed at the main goal of peace. However, many different examples could have been shown to prove that it was rationally in the providing states’ interest to regulate corruption and trafficking. First, if officials and peace keepers were spending their time and energy on the sex trafficking industry, they weren’t spending time on finding solutions for peace. Also, the attitudes of the providing states in the mission could have influenced their reputation in the rest of the world. Though the Bosnian government may not have cared about how the providing states treated the civilians, perhaps other countries did. In the future, a state in chaos may not allow a UN peacekeeping mission on their soil because they do not trust the providing countries. Beijing may laugh at America’s critisisms of human rights abuses in China and point to the US peacekeepers roles in Bosnia. Disregarding sex trafficking is harmful because other states, especially democratic ones, may become disillusioned by the idea of liberalism and in the future may be unwilling to participate in institutions because they see the faults. Therefore, it is in providing states’ rational interests to maintain integrity among its employees. On a reflective level, some providing states such as Uruguay may not have culturally understood the need to protect these girls. In this case, there was no way to convince them that it was their responsibility to end sex trafficking. However, with a state like America it was in their reflective interest to respect human rights. That respect is a core value of the United States. If many citizens of the US find out about the atrocities in Bosnia, there could be a big uproar against the government. The government in America derives its power from the people, therefore it is in their interest to abide by the morals of the people. US citizens may in the future demand that the state department ends contracts with DynCorp or at least prosecutes US employees that committed crimes in Bosnia. In almost all peace keeping missions, with the exception of East Timor, the goal of peace failed. The end goal of peace was never met, and corruption had a big part in these failures. It was in providing states’ interests to end the promotion of the sex trafficking in Bosnia. Further, liberalism believes that institutions such as the UN can end/prevent war. One of the fundamental ideas of liberalism is also the respect of human rights. Therefore in order for a liberal act such as a peace keeping mission to be successful it must follow the liberal ideals it was based on.
To answer problems of political
immunity, we must narrow down on the individuals while keeping in mind the
fundamental system of UN peace keeping missions. The very environment of a
lawless arena may have been the main cause of the abuses committed on the
girls. Perhaps in a community where there was no accountability, true human
nature of corruption and cruelty came out. This is a rather cynical approach to
the individual. Another possibility was that such an environment attracted
inherently bad people that came in to the missions because they had heard of
easy access to money and girls. Another theory is that the lack of a common
identity promoted the idea of “every man for himself”, which contributed to the
corruption. 45 countries provide peace keepers to various missions. Each of
these countries has different laws dictating human rights and different
cultures about what essential human rights are. These peacekeepers in Bosnia did
not share common values, which created a distrusting workplace. Also because of
this, the employees may have not felt a strong sense of moral accountability to
one another. Whatever the case, it was apparent that the system did not work.
There are a variety of proposed
solutions to the problem of political immunity, however there are also faults
to most of these ideas. If the UN were to subject peace keepers to the
jurisdiction of the host country, there is the problem that due process rights
are different in various host countries than the providing countries. Therefore,
that solution may ironically impede on the human rights of those prosecuted. Another
approach is to make providing countries prosecute their own peacekeepers that
are accused of human rights violations. The problem is that each providing
country has different laws on human rights and therefore this system would not
be reliable. Also, the UN itself could hold jurisdiction over its officials and
peacekeepers. It could create a general court encompassing all UN employees’ actions,
much like tribunal courts, and prosecute each case. However, all of these
options could be seen as taking sovereignty away from states. Many providing states
may oppose this and refuse to send peacekeepers to future missions.
Despite the various problematic
approaches possible to peacekeeping missions, there are also solutions that
could be successful in promoting peace and human rights. Most all peace keeping
missions have failed to actually create peace in the troubled region, except
the mission in East Timor. The mission in East Timor was special in the fact
that one country, Australia, led the mission. Many peacekeepers were Australian
and the efforts in East Timor were executed by Australia. This led to a mission
where the peace keepers had a common identity. They were morally obliged to
each other, worked better together, and trusted one another. There was better
organization in the mission because the employees were getting most orders from
one country. In the mission in Sierra Leone, peace keepers were from Sub-
saharant Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. They did not work well
together and were not well organized or trained. If one country leads a mission
in the future, there would be more individual accountability even without having
to take away political immunity. Cases of sex trafficking and rape would no
longer be referred to as “that one corrupt peace keeper from one of those
corrupt providing countries” but rather “that peace keeper from the US that
participated in trafficking”. There would be more transparency in this
situation, and the individuals as well as the state would be held accountable
by the international community. It would be at the interest of the one
providing country to fight against corruption and promote the respect of human
rights among their employees.
I’d like to answer some questions that I may not have covered in
the response above:
Nick-
Sex trafficking is illegal in Bosnia. Rape is illegal as well, but
is not generally enforced and there is a high stigma around it. If you are
interested more about this I’d recommend looking into this website under the
tab “Restricted Physical Integrity”: http://genderindex.org/country/bosnia-and-herzegovina
Val-
As far as UN peacekeeping missions go, I would agree with you that
they are doing more harm than good. I cannot speak to other UN efforts. Here is
a pretty reveling record of UN peacekeeping: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/892592.stm
Also, to add to your comments about how Ben Johnston was dealt
with, here is more information that you might find disconcerting: In 2012 DynCorp
paid him off and by accepting this money Johnston signed a gagging order so
that he could not speak against DynCorp in court. DynCorp admitted to firing
five other employees on the same basis for firing Johnston, for “discredit to
the company and the U.S. Army”.- http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11119
Joe-
Here is the UN’s page about their new mission to recruit more
female UN peacekeepers: http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/sites/police/initiatives/globaleffort.shtml
This is also an interesting article about the effects of female peacekeepers
in the UN: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/06/world/africa/06iht-ffpeace.html?pagewanted=all
Daniella-
To my knowledge, little has been done since the release of the
film. There is the effort to recruit more female UN peacekeepers, which is important.
The UN officials and employees who committed crimes in Bosnia have still not
been prosecuted.
Here are some links for further
information about the topic of political immunity:
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