There are more than 100,000 peacekeepers wearing the blue helmet in 16 missions across the world, from Kosovo in eastern Europe to western Sahara in north Africa. Faced by multiple crises across the world, the UN is predicted to spend in excess of US$8 billion on its peacekeeping missions this year, an increase of 17 percent on last year.
However, with criticism of operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) mounting and a sex abuse scandal dominating stories about the mission in the Central African Republic, UN peacekeeping faces a crisis of credibility. In light of this, we thought it was time we looked at where the money from peacekeeping goes. Here is what we found.
The first thing to note about the peacekeeping budget is how small it is, at least when compared with the defense budgets of national governments.
Illustration: Yusha
At US$8 billion, the entire peacekeeping budget is equivalent to one month of US military spending in Afghanistan at the height of the conflict in 2010, or just 1.4 percent of the current US defense budget, which stands at US$573 billion.
So what are the reasons for this disparity? For a start, the UN has far less manpower than the US. The US has 1.3 million military personnel worldwide and in 2014, despite significant cuts, it had 450,000 troops on active duty.
Today, the UN peacekeeping force stands at a little more than 100,000. That might sound like a lot, but the US currently has 40,000 troops in Germany, almost double the size of the UN peacekeeping force in the DR Congo — a country that has seen decades of continuous fighting.
However, the main reason for that disparity lies somewhere else, according to Alexandra Novosseloff, a senior visiting fellow at the Center on International Cooperation in New York.
“Historically, peacekeeping operations are not considered as purely military interventions,” she said. “The assessed contributions are paid through civilian budgets by each and every member state. These budgets are more limited.”
There are also differences in equipment. While the US was able to spend the equivalent of the entire peacekeeping budget on 34 F-35 joint strike fighters last year, the relative lack of funds at the UN has left some missions overstretched.
A review of peacekeeping by the high-level independent panel on UN peace operations, published in June last year, found that missions lacked “the specific equipment, intelligence, logistics, capabilities and specialized military preparation required” to engage in military counterterrorism operations.
Further questions have been raised about certain missions’ abilities to carry out their mandates. In December 2014, Reuters reported that due to a lack of funding and personnel, peacekeepers in the country were “struggling to contain a growing humanitarian disaster” in the DR Congo’s mining region. Relief eventually came in the form of more troops to bolster the 451 soldiers in the affected region, but the story gives an indication of how overstretched peacekeepers are.
In the last years of his presidency, US President Barack Obama has looked to bolster the UN’s force by pledging new equipment, including desperately needed attack helicopters and specialist troops, but for the time being shortfalls remain.
The budget for all medical care for the missions this year stands at a little more than US$47 million. To put that in context, a little known project known as “enterprise resource planning project” is budgeted for US$31 million this year, the equivalent of two-thirds of the medical budget. The project, which has proved controversial with UN officials due to delays and cost overruns in the buildup to its launch, has the stated aim to “streamline administrative practices and boost efficiency throughout the organization.”
Medics in peacekeeping missions have long found themselves overstretched and underfunded. A 2009 audit of the UN Mission in Liberia found inadequate training, no standard operating procedures and lack of quality drugs being provided.
Audits in 2009 and 2011 of the UN Operation in Ivory Coast also found a lack of basic training.
More recently, a report by the International Peace Institute entitled Healing or Harming? United Nations Peacekeeping and Health said there was a problem “of peacekeepers providing healthcare to the local population in situations where the quality of medical care provided to the mission’s own personnel is not always in accordance with WHO guidelines.”
The costliest UN mission is in the DR Congo, where thousands of uniformed personnel are facing off against numerous warring factions. It is a situation that has not changed much in the years since the mission — previously UN’s Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but known as the UN’s Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) — came to be.
MONUSCO has a budget of US$1.3 billion this year. This pays for the 19,784 UN peacekeepers who are currently stationed in the country, 18,232 of which are military personnel. These forces face a fight with dozens of armed groups, predominantly from the east of the country, and operate in a country the size of western Europe.
International Alert director Maria Lange said that recently security has deteriorated in the region.
“The current security context in the eastern part of the DRC [the DR Congo] is marked by a sharp rise in intercommunal violence and the proliferation of new, albeit small, armed groups,” she said.
However, with limited resources and a poor record of protecting civilians, criticism of MONUSCO has been frequent and vicious. On Twitter, the hashtag #MONUSELESS crops up whenever the mission hits the news, as it did earlier this when investigators found that UN peacekeepers had failed to prevent a recent massacre in the east of the country by Hutu rebels.
This year, the mission is predicted to spend US$1.3 million on consultants — outside groups, including non-governmental organizations, tasked with doing research and others tasks for the mission — and US$8 million on official travel. Medical expenditure counts for just under US$2.3 million.
While MONUSCO is the most expensive operation, the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), the mission in the Central African Republic, received the biggest increase in funding this year: rising 220 percent to more than US$800 million, amid an intensification of fighting in the country.
Military and police personnel costs have increased by more than 300 percent to more than US$350 million, while spending on consultants, has increased by more than 1,000 percent to US$462,600. Medical spending increase to US$9 million, up 712 percent on the previous year, but this is dwarfed by the US$20 million spent on communications, an increase of 37 percent on last year.
However, despite the increase in funds, the missions face numerous problems, not least the sex abuse scandal currently making headlines across the world. Since last year, stories have emerged of UN peacekeepers abusing women and children in the country, often in exchange for food and clothing. The latest development in the scandal came in January, the UN human rights office found six more cases of UN peacekeepers allegedly abusing children in the country, with a seven-year-old girl among the victims.
Last month, Amnesty International warned that, despite the increase in funding, the UN mission in the Central African Republic still had “severe weaknesses,” including a lack of training and equipment.
One senior MINUSCA official reportedly told Amnesty: “When there’s gunfire, we can only send the guys in armored vehicles. But several of these are currently out of service.”
Joe Sandler Clarke is a content coordinator on the Global Development Professionals Network and freelances for Vice and Times Higher Education.
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