By Iona Mulder –
While UN peacekeeping missions have the intention and mandate to bring peace and stability, they come with a cost. Since the first mission in 1948, 3.599 UN-soldiers have died. Certain countries share the biggest losses in peacekeeping soldiers under UN flag: 137 soldiers from Ghana lost their life during a mission, 163 Indian nationals, 122 Canadian, 150 soldiers from Nigeria, 142 from Pakistan, 114 Ethiopian soldiers of which 29 in a relatively recent mission in Darfur, and this list is extensive. What motivates states to send their troops to foreign places to solve conflicts that are not their own? After the members of the Security Council decided to establish a peace mission, the challenge begins to bring together sufficient troops to enable the mission. As the UN does not have its own army, this responsibility falls on the shoulders of its member states. The question whether or not to contribute troops will lead its own political life in every member state country. A good example is the debate in the Netherlands in 2013 on the contribution to the UN mission in Mali. Some parties were against the mission; the SP and PvdSD were of the opinion that the aim of the mission was too ambitious, the PVV stated that it was the responsibility of ‘the Muslim countries’ to control the extremists in the north of Mali.
It seems to be expected that those states that are motivated to contribute troops are states that pioneer in the protection of human rights and who are not preoccupied with conflict within their own borders. However, over the last two decades, the opposite seems to be the case, as countries in Africa and Asia were the largest contributors of troops (more specifically Nigeria, Rwanda, and Ethiopia; Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan). These countries are not particularly known for their internal stability, now and in the past, or for their good human rights records. Why, then, do these nations make such effort to bring peace and stability elsewhere?
What these countries have in common is that they have little political power within the UN, which is mainly in the hands of the permanent members. Moreover, they share an ambition to expand their political influence in the UN and international politics in general. They believe that delivering troops to the peace keeping mission will develop their political network, creating a political credit that will result in more inclusive politics within the UN. Another motivation for these states to participate is that the UN provides a sum of money to cover the expenses of the missions, which will help to upgrade their army through the received training, the materials and salary. Besides these shared motivations, every government has its own incentive to contribute troops based on the political situation at national level.
Rwanda is one of the countries which in recent years contributed a relative amount of troops to UN missions. I will use Rwanda as an example to show how political situations at the national level can motivate the state to contribute to international peacekeeping missions. In 1994, Rwanda itself was subject of a peacekeeping mission to avoid escalation of violence between Hutu and Tutsi: the mission became one of the biggest failures in the history of UN peacekeeping operations. After the killing of ten Belgium blue helmets by Hutu militia, most of the contributing countries decided to withdraw their troops, leaving the Rwandan people to their fate. Between April and July 1994 an estimated of 800.000 people, mainly Tutsi, were killed. Finally, an army composed of Tutsi refugees, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), invaded Rwanda from Uganda, took over power and put a stop to the mass killing.
Since 2004 Rwanda has become one of biggest providers of troops to the UN and the AU (African Union). On their first mission, the 150 Rwandese soldiers received much respect as they were well trained, disciplined, and there is a broad inclusion of woman within their army. Within Rwanda, they are presented as national pride. During my research on how the current Rwandan government is legitimatizing its power, I found that the contribution of troops to the UN is an essential element of the government’s policy. The current government mainly consist of those associated with the RPF, its power in the country is legitimized by the effort to stop the genocide and create a climate of stability and security. At the international level, this legitimization is strengthened by the guilt of international failure to stop the genocide, which puts the RPF on a higher moral level than the international community. Many scholars have called this type of power legitimization “genocide credit”.
This “genocide credit” is essential for the Rwandan government for two reasons. First of all, it has made Rwanda a “donor darling”. The relatively rapid recovery of the country after the genocide and continuing economic growth has been made possible due to vast sums of donor money that were pumped in the reconstruction of the country. Now, twenty-two years after the genocide, around half of Rwanda’s national budget is still generated by donors. Much of Rwanda’s national stability is therefore dependent on the continuity of this flow of donor money. Secondly, another effect of this genocide credit is that for many years after the genocide, it was seen as politically incorrect to critically examine the Rwandan government’s policy. As a result, the international community has overlooked or ignored the fact that the Rwandan government’s policy is not as pretty as it seems at first sight.
A decade after the genocide the “genocide credit” started to crumble, making space for international criticism on the Rwandan government. More and more foreign countries were criticizing Rwanda for not respecting democratic values and human rights. Moreover, as many countries point out, is that the government’s reconciliation program is resulting in censorship and social inequality. It is here that the peacekeeping missions come into the picture. The Rwandan government needed to revitalize the “genocide credit” by reconfirming its high morale. The peace keeping missions provide the perfect opportunity to do so; contributing to peace and security in the rest of the world, stop genocide from happening in other countries, and help Africa to solve its own in problems. The contribution to the UN peacekeeping missions is thus a way to repaint a positive picture to the world and distract the international community from the negative elements of its national policy. It can be stated that the Rwandan government is abusing the peacekeeping mission to restore its power.
The question that remains: is practicing politics by means of UN peacekeeping missions by definition a bad thing? I am of the opinion it is not, only if the motivations of the contributing countries contradict the aims of the peacekeeping missions itself. More importantly, the contribution to peacekeeping missions by relatively smaller and less influential countries can provide a tool for nations to develop political power to oppose the power of the permanent member of the UN – making the UN more inclusive and democratic. The positive contribution of these countries should not be uncritically accepted as a reflection of their national politics, as there is more to it than good intentions. The case of Rwanda is the perfect example.