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UN peace operations taking a hit as coronavirus spreads

The pace at which peace operations have had to make significant changes to the way they work has been unprecedented

A few weeks ago, peace operations across the world began swiftly adapting to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 disease. Missions have been forced to take unprecedented steps to cope with the coronavirus pandemic. These efforts may be just the beginning, and much more significant reductions and changes in the way these operations function may be needed over the coming months.
Today, more than 50 missions are all in full crisis management mode and are adapting to a radical new situation while ensuring the safety of approximately 160,000 civilian, police, and military peacekeepers. Most of the countries where these missions are deployed have closed their borders and have imposed social distancing measures. Countries like South Sudan have asked the United Nations not to rotate new troops into their countries, especially from countries that are seen as high risk like China, Italy, South Korea, and Spain.
In response to the pandemic, peace operations are assessing which functions and operational activities are critical and need to continue as normal or be adapted, which are important but not critical, and which can be paused until the crisis is over. Essential functions across missions include patrols and activities related to protection of civilians, convoy escorts and other forms of support to humanitarian assistance, force protection, protecting key infrastructure, and support to host state institutions and local authorities. Some missions have suspended their quick-impact project plans and are now reallocating these funds to support the efforts of local and national institutions to contain the spread of Covid-19. Limiting operations to the essentials will help to prevent and contain the virus, but in the medium to long term the ability of missions to achieve their mandated benchmarks and objectives will be impacted.
Peace operations have also introduced their own social distancing policies, both to avoid spreading the disease to local communities and to protect staff. After the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti, UN missions are acutely aware of the danger they may pose to host populations. For example, in the AU mission in Somalia (AMISOM), all movement of personnel has been limited to that which is essential, all rotations and new deployments have been suspended, and civilian staff outside Somalia are working from home and non-critical staff were moved out of Mogadishu.
In the UN mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL), a whole battalion that recently rotated into the country is under 14-day quarantine. In the UN mission in Mali (MINUSMA), staff have been further identified not only as non-essential or critical, but also location-based versus non-location based to adapt to COVID-19 restrictions.
Most national and international staff in all peace operations either work from home or their accommodations. In some locations, working from home may mean no or poor internet connection and frequent electricity cuts. In many missions, non-essential staff or those with medical conditions were given the option to leave, but by now most borders have closed and staff are locked in place. This means that staff can no longer go on leave, including for medical reasons.
Missions are contingency planning for the possibility of large-scale evacuation, should the situation require it, but in this global emergency, the question is where can mission staff be evacuated to? Where will it be safer and who would be willing to accept several hundred or thousand evacuees?
Peace operations are, of course, no strangers to crisis management, and there are staff that have experience managing public health emergencies, including especially the 2014-2016 Ebola virus outbreak in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and the 2018-2019 Ebola virus outbreak in the DRC. Still, the pace at which peace operations have had to make significant changes to the way they work over the last two weeks has been unprecedented.
The sacrifices civilian, police, and military peacekeepers have to make should also be recognised. For example, some units may have already been deployed for almost a year, and staying in the mission longer means that they cannot be reunited with their families for several more months. Missions have to make difficult choices to balance their duty of care to staff and their obligations to implement their mandates. The global reach of the pandemic, which means that all the missions have to manage this crisis simultaneously, is also placing enormous strain on headquarters. However, the recent UN reforms, especially the delegation of authority to heads of mission, have enabled UN missions to make these kinds of adaptations much more rapidly than would have been the case in the past.
At this stage, most of the countries where peace operations are deployed are on the periphery of the pandemic. However, this is likely to change as the virus continues to spread, and peace operations will most likely have to make further changes to the way they work, both to protect their staff and to be able to continue carrying out critical functions.
The outlook for the near future requires missions to consider many complex, interlinked dynamics. In the context of the impending global recession, peace operation budgets will shrink. Troop- and police-contributing countries may prioritize domestic operations. Host populations may become more hostile to foreigners. Some host governments may use Covid-19 as a pretext to limit a mission's freedom of movement. Missions will not be able to support, supply, and care for the same number of staff that was possible before Covid-19. Mandates will need to be adapted to the new reality, with new risks and new needs. No doubt, headquarter staff and missions are now starting to plan for these eventualities. -IPI Global Observatory
Cedric de Coning is a senior research fellow with the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, senior advisor for ACCORD, and the coordinator of the Effectiveness of Peace Operations Network.