Conflict Resolution Mechanisms
Do Not Match Today’s Conflicts

In the kind of conflicts that we face today, conflict resolution mechanisms (and the military measures to back them up) don’t match conflicts. Interstate conflicts are rare. The wars of today are usually of an internal nature, often involving ethnic motives or sometimes scarce resources. They are not fought among soldiers, but among civilians, and so civilian victim rates are very high. It is more difficult to convince warring factions to abide by humanitarian law and humanitarian principles. This kind of conflict very seldom leads to clear peace agreements. Dayton might be an exception, but even there it is not conclusive.

Kosovo
What we are facing in Kosovo is a very clear example of the kind of conflict that existing mechanisms cannot address. This situation exposes humanitarian agencies to situations that they cannot resolve, but which they are left to deal with. Yesterday, Count Lambsdorff said that humanitarian action is always necessary to solve these conflict situations. This is very true. My unarmed civilian colleagues have to be exposed to dangerous conflict situations, and there is nobody else to come in. In Kosovo, as in Bosnia, there was no ready-made conflict resolution mechanism. For the first time, the OSCE was called upon to mobilize security forces, a Contact Group established during the Bosnian war handled political negotiations, the UN Security Council was given a kind of authorization role, UN peacekeeping was not brought in, and the UN role was largely humanitarian.

At least the Kosovo situation attracts a lot of attention because the Balkans are very much a European strategic area. During the course of the summer and fall of last year there were about two hundred thousand people displaced within Kosovo; about fifty thousand of them were out in the woods. We knew that the Balkan winter was coming and that they could not be left alone. So there was a lot of interest in avoiding a humanitarian catastrophe. That is exactly what Dick Holbrooke was able to do in negotiations with Milosevic, but there was no political solution. I went there too and said, &3147;We’ll have to do something to bring these people back.” A civilian mission was deployed in Kosovo that included over a thousand people from OSCE countries, but no military ground forces. We hoped this mechanism would work and, in fact, many people went back. By Christmas time, there was nobody out in the open.

But low-intensity conflict continued and in January or February fighting started again requiring a very serious response by NATO and OSCE. A political solution may now be in the offing, but it is not conclusive. I would say there are three possible scenarios:

• Best scenario. A peace agreement will be adopted and NATO ground forces will go in quickly.
• Next best scenario. NATO will bomb and then a ground force will be deployed. On a humanitarian basis, I would be very much concerned by a period of bombing and the deployment of ground forces.
• But the worst scenario is that nothing happens. Political negotiations will drag on and the fighting will continue. My colleagues will try to carry on, but KVM [Kosovo Verification Mission] might be withdrawn.

I think there is a chance for any of the three.

The mechanisms that were set up—the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission, the possibility of NATO bombing and the deployment of ground forces—are all new types of mechanisms. They are being improvised. Despite all the attention that Kosovo is receiving there are no ready-made mechanisms, no ready-made security forces

Africa
The state of affairs is even worse in Africa. The OAU (Organization of African Unity) has a conflict resolution mechanism in West Africa, but it is not very effective. The Sierra Leone situation is very bad. Four hundred and fifty thousand people from Sierra Leone are in neighboring countries, mostly Guinea and Liberia. There is a sub-regional force—ECOMOG, mostly Nigerian—that has maintained some peace. However, the new Nigerian government has in the course of the election campaign said that they want to withdraw the Nigerian forces because of the very heavy economic burden. If that happens, the region will go back to war. When you look into Central Africa there is nothing—no conflict resolution mechanisms, no peacekeeping forces. The war and the refugee outflow from Rwanda to Tanzania and Zaire—almost two million—are the result of that lack of conflict resolution mechanisms in Central Africa. Eight or nine countries are now involved in the internal wars of the Democratic Republic of Congo. I don’t think there has ever been a regional conflict this large. The presence of defeated armies, flows of small arms, and conflicting economic interests in mineral resources all complicate the situation, but there are no conflict resolution mechanisms nor the necessary political will to create them.

Usable Instruments to Deal with Human Insecurity
We have a desperate need for better conflict resolution mechanisms in the world as well as effective forces that would back up conflict resolution. Every conflict has to be in the end solved politically unless you are going to go through all-out war, which I cannot advocate. Carl Bildt said yesterday that in ethnic conflicts what you need is not so much high-precision military equipment, but maybe crowd-control measures. Maybe a little bit more than crowd control is needed, I think; a military presence is also very important. But there is a mismatch between Tomahawk missiles and the need to settle ethnic conflicts.

We have tried to work something out between the United Nations Peacekeeping Department and ourselves. We developed a “ladder of options” for security, especially in conflicts related to humanitarian operations. The “soft” option would be to strengthen the local judiciary and local police capacity, etc. In some of the refugee camps, in fact, my office has given equipment and training to local police so that they can keep law and order in the camps as well as in neighboring areas. These soft options should be examined. The “medium” option would be sub-regional or regional peacekeeping operations, like ECOMOG. In fact, there are initiatives from the United States, Britain, and France to train African peacekeepers. I think this should be very much supported. The “hard” option, traditional international peacekeeping forces, may be necessary, but I think the chances to use these forces are getting smaller.

So, on paper we have a range of options, but I would like to see them realized and usable. These measures would address, at least a little, the total lack of mechanisms and instruments to deal with human insecurity. I think it is a tall order to talk about human security as a global goal. I like that idea, but there is a long way to go before that. If we could contain human insecurity with a little more structured approaches, and with big countries and leaders who are in the position to do something about it, I think we may go a long way. But for this to work, we need much more cooperation at the global, regional, and national levels. We have to do something that deals with internal wars that exist today rather than big interstate wars. There has to be much greater attention given to these “unwinnable” wars. This is the kind of war and security issues that should be examined.

Containing or lessening human insecurity and establishing human security on a wide scale requires the kind of comprehensive approach that Minister Scharping described, including development assistance and an emphasis on human and democratic values. I welcome this very much. But there is a gap. Most development assistance systems today do not deal with immediate post-conflict situations. Aid donors wait until the governments become more stabilized for their own development efforts to be more certain to yield results. But the post-conflict situation can easily go back to a conflict situation unless much greater inputs and measures are taken. Not only should economic development be supported, but the judicial system has to be strengthened and human rights commissions set up. We have to help people govern themselves. Post-conflict programs are something to which I would like you to pay attention because they may be the best conflict prevention measures.