Background Briefing

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Requirements for the Proposed U.N. force

The Mandate

Any U.N. operation in Darfur must have a clear mandate to proactively protect civilians whether or not a peace agreement is in place. Given the scale and gravity of the abuses that have taken place and continue to occur in the region, protection of civilians remains the highest priority.  Past experience in Darfur and lessons learned from U.N. operations in other countries have repeatedly demonstrated the importance of providing international forces with unambiguous guidance on this task. The Security Council must immediately secure the consent of the Sudanese government to the prompt and robust intervention of a U.N. force in Darfur no later than October 1, 2006 (when the A.U. mandate ends). The following elements should be included in any U.N. mandate:

  • The U.N. force should be authorized under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter and permitted to use “all necessary means to protect civilians, including humanitarian personnel. This formulation will allow U.N. forces to use deadly force to protect civilians under attack or threat of violence. It  would provide U.N. forces with flexibility to use a range of approaches to deter attacks.  For instance, forces must have the mandate to quickly deploy forces in volatile areas to prevent attacks against civilians.  The use of force to protect civilians must also be clearly articulated within the rules of engagement.
  • The U.N. mandate must include the promotion and protection of human rights, cooperation with efforts to end impunity, including the International Criminal Court, and public reporting on human rights developments. The U.N. operation in Darfur should have adequate numbers of human rights monitors and resources to allow them to widely monitor the situation in Darfur, including abuses by all the warring parties. Human rights specialists should be routinely included in military and police patrols, and forensics experts and others should be included in the mission to assist in securing evidence (including mass grave sites) and in protecting witnesses. Given the prevalence of rape and sexual violence in Darfur and the scale of attacks in and around displaced persons camps, the U.N. mission should include sufficient numbers of civilian police. Female police and civilian personnel with expertise in the investigation of sexual and gender based crimes and child protection should be recruited.
  • The U.N. mandate should include monitoring of the arms embargo imposed by the U.N. Security Council on Darfur under Resolution 1556 and elaborated upon under Resolution 1591. As described in the report of the U.N. Panel of Experts,5  the warring parties and probably neighboring countries continue to violate the arms embargo imposed on Darfur by the U.N. Security Council in July 2004 and March 2005.  In addition, the Sudanese government continues to use aircraft in offensive military operations, despite promising in January 2005 to refrain from doing so. U.N. forces should be authorized to inspect, as they deem necessary and without notice, all aircraft and vehicles anywhere in Darfur, including those in the airports, airfields, military bases and border crossings. U.N forces should be authorized to seize or collect arms and related material which violates the arms embargo and dispose of such material as appropriate.
  • The U.N. mandate should support efforts to demobilize and disarm abusive militia forces and to reform the security sector, including screening of military, militia, police, and internal security forces.  Given the pervasive involvement of members of the Sudanese military, political, police, internal security services and government-backed militias in war crimes, crimes against humanity and other abuses, concrete steps must be taken to screen all personnel, identify such individuals and remove them from participation, formal or informal, in government institutions.

Adequate Capacity and Resources

In addition to a clear and robust mandate to protect civilians, the U.N. force in Darfur must have adequate resources to implement its mandate. This means not only sufficient quantity and quality of military and civilian personnel — 20,000 has been suggested by U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General Jan Pronk as the minimum necessary to be effective — but the requisite technical and military capacity to deploy rapidly and in far greater numbers not only in key urban areas but also in Darfur’s violent rural zones. 

Much of the AMIS force of 6,898 personnel has been concentrated in the larger towns and around the sprawling camps for internally displaced persons. The dearth of international presence and security in the rural areas has had several negative results. One is that abusive militia and bandit groups continue to attack civilians scattered in rural areas, causing them to flee into towns and camps. As a result they are cut off from farming and economic independence and become dependent on international humanitarian relief.

A second consequence of minimal AMIS presence in rural areas is that travel between towns or to rural areas remains highly insecure, not only for civilians, but also for international humanitarian agencies. Civilians, aid workers, humanitarian convoys, and commercial vehicles have come under increasing attack in the past year, not only by the warring parties but also by armed bandits.

Securing Darfur’s main roads for civilian and humanitarian traffic and proactively patrolling the rural areas is therefore an important task for the U.N. force, and one which will require substantial human, logistical and technical capacity. Mobility and the ability to rapidly react to ambushes and reports of impending attacks are key to such protection.

Instead of continuing to place Sudanese government interests above the survival of more than 1.7 million displaced Sudanese, U.N. Security Council members and regional institutions must prioritize the well-being of Sudanese citizens and fully support the urgent deployment of a robust, adequately equipped U.N. force to protect the civilians of Darfur.





[5] United Nations Security Council, “Report of the Panel of Experts established pursuant to paragraph 3 of resolution 1591 (2005) concerning the Sudan,” S/2006/65, January 30, 2006, [online] http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/632/74/PDF/N0563274.pdf?OpenElement.


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