#396: Will anarchy reign: Malone comments

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: david malone <malone@ipacademy.org>

It is likely that a scaled-back UN police and civilian mission will remain on in Haiti, if the Haitian Government asks for one (which, on past experience, it will, late in the day).  This time around, the mission is unlikely to be mandated by the UN Security Council, which is suffering from Haiti fatigue and facing more urgent problems (e.g. in Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Congo and Eritrea/Ethiopia).  Furthermore, Russia and China, among others, view the Haiti operation as narrowly serving US national interests (driven by domestic political considerations) while their own concerns in the Council go unaddressed.  

Corridor discussions are unfolding on merging MIPONUH (focused mostly on police training and monitoring) and MICIVIH (the joint OAU-UN Civilian Mission mostly focused on human rights, which was depleted earlier this year when Congress withheld funding for the OAU portion of the mission), providing the new mission with a continuing mandate for institution-building (mainly the police, the judiciary and the prison system).  The future of the 70-strong Argentine contingent within MIPONUH providing some protection and some extraction capability is unclear.  The UN's political office and role in Haiti would remain a relatively high-profile one under a Representative of the Secretary-General.  (The office was down-graded some time ago from that of a Special Representative of the Secretary-General, for those interested in UN kremlinology.)

The mandate would fall under the General Assembly.  One corollary is that the US share of the budget of the successor mission will be lower than if it had remained a peacekeeping operation mandated by the Security Council.  

Elsewhere at the UN, in the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), quite a bit of attention has been devoted to crafting a more integrated approach to the UN's development activities in Haiti.  There had been some thought earlier on of bringing the successor mission to MIPONUH and MICIVIH under ECOSOC rather than the General Assembly, given the capacity-building and institutional mandate, but the notion has gone nowhere (yet).

There is still broad support at the UN for international assistance to Haiti, including through deployment of a smaller field mission as described above, but there is also a sense (more in sorrow than in anger) that the Haitian political leadership of various stripes has not met the international community half-way in efforts to consolidate democracy and re-launch the economy.  

International Peace Academy
New York, September 3.

>>> Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com> 09/03 6:29 PM >>>

From: Madison Bell <mbell@goucher.edu>

Do other list members have different scenarios from the one presented by Bob
Shacochis, and if so, what might they be?  How probable is his prediction of
anarchy and civil war?  What are the alternatives, and what might make them
happen?

Relatedly, what foreign military or police backing will remain in Haiti once
the U.S. Support Group pulls out?  The Canadians, for instance, had talked
of a continued presence....

msb