CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Foreword

   James Gustave Speth

Preface

   Brenda G. McSweeney

Introduction

   Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss

1 Organizing Elections in a Mine Field:

The Cambodian Challenge

   Nandini Srinivasan

2 The Politics of Reassurance:

International Presence at the Local Level in South Africa

    Diane Conklin

3 Voting for Peace:

Preparing for Post-war Democracy in Mozambique

    Gláucia Vaz Yoshiura

Demobilization in Mozambique

   Henri Valot

5 Caught in the Crossfire:

Dilemmas of Human Rights Protection in Former Yugoslavia

   Benny Ben Otim

Confronting the Aftermath of Genocide

   Stephen P. Kinloch

Volunteerism under Challenge in Somalia

   Anthony C. Nweke

8 Part of the System:

Varieties of Volunteer Support Roles

   Masako Yonekawa

9 The Art of Building Peace:

Artisan Skills for Development and Peace in South Asia 198

    Shantum Seth

Conclusion:

UN Volunteers and the United Nations System

    Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss

Postscript

    Heitor Gurgulino de Sonza, Rector, UNU

List of Acronyms

INTRODUCTION

Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss*

WE ARE PLEASED to introduce Volunteers Against Conflict, the fruit of a productive collaboration between the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) Programme in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Humanitarianism and War Project of Brown University's Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies in Providence, Rhode Island.

This volume contains narratives by nine individuals who have worked in zones of armed conflict in the last few years. These chapters are valuable in their own right as accounts by ordinary people of extraordinary experiences on the front lines of history. In addition, they provide a glimpse of the dynamics of major UN initiatives in action and of the difference that concerned individuals can make.

As researchers who have spent the last five years studying the conflicts of the post-Cold War era with an eye to improving the performance of humanitarian organizations,¹ we take pleasure in placing this book before an international readership. Its contents help combat the fatigue and cynicism that often result from the ugly realities of complex emergencies in such places as Somalia, Rwanda, Chechnya, and Bosnia. One cannot fail to be touched by the vivid descriptions of the nine sets of experiences recounted here. In today's climate, the simple fact that the authors volunteered for tough UN missions is in many ways inspirational.

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This volume is not a systematic description of the experience of the United Nations Volunteers Programme or of the major conflicts in which volunteers have served. Nor is it an academic overview of recent crises, although several of the authors themselves have pursued or are pursuing such studies. Instead, the volume is a series of reflections from a group of international personnel who have shared common experiences on the front lines in zones of armed conflict. While the lens is personal, the experiences are similar to those of UN Volunteers in other operations. Taken together, they represent a composite snapshot of the view from the ground of UN Volunteers in wars and their aftermath.

The management of the United Nations Volunteers Programme is to be complimented for encouraging the publication of this book and for providing the requisite freedom for former and present staff members to express themselves frankly. We envision this volume, which emanates from a year-long process of dialogue between UNV personnel and ourselves, as useful for at least two reasons. First, its users will include persons across the globe considering careers in international service, organizations seeking to equip their personnel to deal with the everyday realities of work in war zones, academics who frequently lack a familiarity with the nitty-gritty of field activities, and the concerned international public upon whose support the United Nations ultimately depends. Second, the spirit of openness and self-criticism may stimulate other organizations struggling with the same issues to encourage a similar reflection process among their own staffs.

The widespread euphoria that accompanied the toppling of the Berlin Wall and the spread of democracy has given way to a more sober assessment of the likelihood of continuing and even rising levels of civil strife. Early optimism has been replaced by a sense of powerlessness generated by a seemingly endless stream of crises confronting an international community overextended by the scale and number of military and humanitarian operations. The need to respond to the multitude of tasks in what are now "multifunctional" operations–combining military, civil administration (including election and human rights monitoring and police support), and humanitarian expertise with an overlay of political negotiations and mediation–is one of the central challenges to the UN system as it begins its next half century.²

In the face of this "crisis of crises," it is useful to ponder the first-hand perspectives of this group of volunteers. They deserve to be heard, having devoted a period of their professional lives and applied their personal skills to UN operations. The fact that many are youthful–the average age of the contributors is 34–lends a certain freshness and enthusiasm

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to their comments. This is the first time that a group of UN Volunteers has written extensively about their experiences in the humanitarian arena. Their personal accounts follow a brief introduction of the UNV Programme, a summary of the chapters themselves, and a sketching out of the themes that emerge and form the basis for our own conclusions to this volume.

THE UN VOLUNTEERS PROGRAMME

The entire international system has been groping with the growing number of armed conflicts and the resulting civilian suffering. The last five years have witnessed a number of institutional experiments, including the widespread resort to using military force (soldiers are now sometimes called the "new humanitarians"); the increased use of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as subcontractors by governments and UN organizations; the creation of the UN's Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA); and debate and implementation of codes of conduct for humanitarian agencies. Even the most established of institutions dealing with internal armed conflicts, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), is rethinking its unique (that is, Swiss) character. At a time of growing pressure to coordinate activities among international actors more tightly, the ICRC is keeping its distance from the UN in the interests of protecting its neutrality while regularly informing the president of the Security Council about its humanitarian concerns.

As the international community celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations, the world organization and all of its components are receiving careful scrutiny. This is perhaps most visible in Washington, D.C., where the 104th Congress is very much on the attack, but it is also true in a more general and global sense as well. In this period of soul-searching, the United Nations Volunteers Programme has itself been involved in institutional adaptation and change. A revitalization is underway to meet the needs of the post-Cold War world. In fact, this volume itself is a healthy reflection of the programme's efforts to come to terms with the challenges of making a difference in complex emergencies.

Established by General Assembly Resolution 2659 (XXV) on 7 December 1970, the United Nations Volunteers Programme was created to foster international development cooperation through the work of volunteers. A subsidiary organ of the United Nations, UNV functions under the overall administration of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). More than 70 volunteers are based in UNDP field offices to help admin-

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ister the United Nations Volunteers Programme under the guidance and supervision of UNDP Resident Representatives. They also recruit UN Volunteers to be fielded in their home countries or internationally.

Most UN Volunteers are provided to assist governments, UN agencies, international financial institutions, UN peacekeeping operations, nongovernmental and community-based organizations. Funding comes from a variety of sources. About half is from country and regional funds provided by UNDP. Other significant sources include the regular programme budgets of the UN system, contributions from host governments, special purpose grants by donor governments, and the UNV Special Voluntary Fund.

More than half of all UNV activities are carried out in Africa, a third in Asia and the Pacific, the remainder in the Arab states, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic nations and the Commonwealth of Independent States. About 4,000 men and women from more than 120 countries were posted in 1994. In the last quarter of a century, some 13,000 UN Volunteers have served.

UN Volunteers come from a variety of backgrounds–the recruitment roster includes 130 professional categories under 11 broader headings. They are serving in 125 different countries around the world in four main activities: technical cooperation; community-based initiatives; humanitarian relief and rehabilitation efforts within the UN; and UN operations for peace-building, human rights, and democracy.

Focused initially on development cooperation, the United Nations Volunteers Programme in the late l980s developed an emphasis on humanitarian assistance. By the early l990s, UN Volunteers were setting up peace corridors in Angola to allow for the passage of aid convoys. They were administering food assistance in Liberia. They accounted for more than half of the UN field presence in Afghanistan. The Humanitarian Relief Unit (HRU) was established in 1991 (simultaneously with the creation of the UN Department for Humanitarian Affairs) to recruit short-term volunteers. Since then the unit has maintained a roster of standby candidates to meet requests for rapid deployment and has helped to shape UNV policy on complex emergencies.

In recent years, the United Nations Volunteers Programme has become increasingly involved in United Nations peacekeeping operations–first in Cambodia, and later in Mozambique, South Africa, the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Rwanda. About 500 people are serving this year in humanitarian assistance efforts in Rwanda, Haiti, the former Yugoslavia, and Angola. Since 1992, more than 1,500 UN Volunteers have worked in emergency relief, reconstruction, rehabilitation, and disaster prepared-

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ness in Africa, Asia, and Central America, as well as in the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan. Today between 10 and 20 per cent of the 4,000 UN Volunteers fielded annually are helping in UN humanitarian relief operations and democratization efforts. A review of recent experience was the subject of a 1994 special consultation, "Between Crisis and Development."³

Who are these volunteers? Drawn mainly from the developing countries, they each bring with them on average 10 years of practical working experience. In the humanitarian arena, they are engaged in conflict resolution and prevention, confidence and capacity-building at the community level, rehabilitation of infrastructure, repatriation and reintegration of refugees, food aid monitoring, camp management, human rights promotion and protection, democratization, demobilization of soldiers and reintegration into civilian life, implementation of disaster prevention and preparedness programmes. The accounts in this volume provide a microcosm of such UNV activities.

As in many societies, volunteer contributions to the UN system are special, by virtue both of their modest costs and of their spirit of solidarity and partnership with those in distress. The average annual per capita cost of an international UN Volunteer is about $30,000. Moreover, the comparative advantage among international volunteer-sending agencies derives from the programme's identification with the United Nations and its multilateral character. UNV mobilizes resources from around the world. It benefits from UNDP and the UN system's institutional presence in the field in virtually all developing countries and many other countries in transition.

AN OVERVIEW OF THE CHAPTERS

The volume appropriately begins with Nandini Srinivasan's "Organizing Elections in a Mine Field: The Cambodian Challenge." The UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) represented in many ways the most ambitious UN undertaking since the UN's controversial efforts in the Congo in the early 1960s. A country traumatized by civil war and genocide, Cambodia was the setting for an influx of over 20,000 outside personnel–military, police, and civilian. Although UNTAC has been analyzed in detail,⁴ the story is less well known of how some 465 UN Volunteers serving as District Electoral Supervisors recruited and trained 50,000 Cambodians and how together they organized the registration and voting of millions of citizens. Srinivasan, an Indian national who now

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is a lecturer at the University of Malawi, helps readers to understand the delicate conditions resulting from insecurity–proven by the death of one Japanese UN Volunteer, to whom this book is dedicated–and the crucial contribution of UN Volunteers to a successful election in May 1993. Although the country has not definitively turned the corner on its conflict, Cambodians have begun a long and difficult road toward reconstruction and peace. The special representative of the Secretary-General in Cambodia, Yasushi Akashi, credited UN Volunteers with having been "the spearhead of consciousness-raising for democracy."

In Chapter 2, Diane Conklin presents "The Politics of Reassurance: International Presence at the Local Level in South Africa." A former journalist with a law degree with whom we worked to produce this volume, she examines efforts by some 200 UN Volunteers that helped to open the door to the first all-race elections in post-apartheid South Africa in April 1994. Deliberately recruited for this delicate assignment from 39 different countries, half of the volunteers were African. They joined observers from governments and NGOs to constitute a large international presence during the transition from white-minority to black-majority democracy. Confronting random violence, one of the major UNV contributions, according to Conklin, was the presence of multiracial teams of volunteers. Their personal witness demonstrated throughout South Africa that cooperation among races was not an abstraction but a reality.

Chapter 3 consists of Glaucia Vaz Yoshiura's "Voting for Peace: Preparing for Post-war Democracy in Mozambique." The author is a Brazilian national with a background in corporate law who is now pursuing doctoral studies after her UNV assignment. Unlike other recent civil wars in which the UN has been active, Mozambique has been the subject of few scholarly analyses.⁵ Thus, after 16 years and a million inhabitants displaced by a grisly guerrilla war, a presentation of the role of UN Volunteers in the UN Operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ) is welcome. The tasks accomplished ranged from voter registration to monitoring political campaigns, from staffing polling booths to counting the results. As elsewhere, UN efforts would have been considerably diminished without the presence of volunteers, especially in outlying areas away from the relative security and comfort of the cities.

UN Volunteers were active in other sectors, as detailed by Henri Valot's "End of the War Machinery: Demobilization in Mozambique." A French national who is also currently pursuing a doctorate, the author examines the contribution of UN Volunteers in assisting the UN military to establish and manage some 50 demobilization assembly areas for the two warring parties to lay down their arms. The transition involved a

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rough passage for the soldiers, personally and psychologically, as is described in moving personal images. Demobilization has been too often unsuccessful; one need only compare what happened on the other side of the continent in Angola, another former Portuguese colony, to gauge its importance. This chapter points to an ongoing role for UN Volunteers in future UN demobilization efforts.

No other recent humanitarian crisis has proved more unsettling to the international community than the one in the former Yugoslavia.⁶ Chapter 5 consists of Benny Ben Otim's "Caught in the Crossfire: Dilemmas of Human Rights Protection in Former Yugoslavia." A former refugee from the earlier wars in his own Uganda, the author, having completed his UNV assignment, continues to work in Zagreb as a staff member of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The size and complexity of the problem in the heart of Europe–four million persons depend on international succour for daily survival–present challenges that are not only logistical but substantive in nature.⁷ The author provides insights into the painful dilemma faced by UN Volunteers and others who may have helped to foster "ethnic cleansing" by moving refugees rather than leaving them exposed in unsafe "safe areas."

Chapter 6 is Stephen P. Kinloch's "Back from Rwanda: Confronting the Aftermath of Genocide." A dual French and British national also working on his doctorate, the author has served in four war zones as a UN Volunteer. The subject for his analysis is his last assignment as a volunteer in the south-western area of Rwanda initially stabilized by the French through Opération Turquoise. Lamenting the inability of the member states of the United Nations to stop the genocide,⁸ the author underscores the need to find ways to prevent such carnage in the first place and lends another voice to Sir Brian Urquhart's call for the establishment of a rapid deployment force.

Chapter 7 consists of Anthony C. Nweke's analysis of "Behind the Compound Wall: Volunteerism under Challenge in Somalia." The various military efforts by the international community, both under the auspices of the UN and of a U.S.-led coalition, have done little to overcome Somalia's tragedy.⁹ The determined efforts by humanitarians, including the UN Volunteers recounted in this chapter, have unfortunately done little to counteract the sentiment that has emerged since the UN's withdrawal in March 1995 that little can be done by outsiders to rebuild a "failed state."¹⁰ The issues at the interface between military actions and traditional principles of impartiality and neutrality present a conundrum for humanitarians. The UN's pullout from Somalia was an admission that outsiders had come to a dead end. This theme is graphically illustrated by

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Nweke in his discussion of the second UN Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II). Confined to the official compound, his situation was typical of the plight of the UN as a whole, its operation hostage to the raging clan warfare outside the walls.

Chapter ~ is Masako Yonekawa's "Part of the System: Varieties of Volunteer Support Roles." The author is a Japanese national and sociologist who is still serving as a UN Volunteer in Rwanda, her sixth such assignment. The subtitle of her essay emphasizes the diversity of her postings and the range of contributions by a single individual, and by volunteers more generally, to the work of the UN system in war zones. Whether dealing with insecurity in Cambodia, racial tensions in South Africa, the grinding madness of Liberia's civil war, the isolation of staff in Somalia or the aftermath of genocide in Tanzania and Rwanda, Yonekawa stresses what has been the key to UNV success and her own personal satisfaction: working with the grassroots and building local capacities.

The final essay is Shantum Seth's "The Art of Building Peace: Artisan Skills for Development and Peace in South Asia." A dual Indian-British national and a UN Volunteer Programme Manager, the author extols the virtues of UN Volunteers employed in what the Secretary-General in his Agenda for Peace has called "post-conflict peace-building.''¹¹ In light of the debris from the ongoing humanitarian crises detailed in previous essays and the accumulated costs of conflicts during the Cold War,¹² this essay summarizes positive learning experiences from a series of efforts by UN Volunteers in South Asia to provide an economic basis for communities to get back on their collective feet after bitter wars. It holds before us the continuing challenge of pursuing development in the midst of crises, precisely at the time when the immediacy of suffering seems to overshadow longer-term considerations. Seth's approach recalls the need to approach even emergency assistance from a development perspective.^l3 Since the roots of armed conflict often lie in economic inequalities, bringing people together across barriers of caste, religion, and national borders suggests an example of grassroots methods of preventing conflict in the first place.

SOME RECURRING ISSUES

The conflicts treated in this volume, and others raging across the world, vary enormously. The geopolitical context must be taken into account in interpreting the value and limitations of contributions by UN Volunteers and others in providing assistance. Some conflicts that raged during the

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Cold War have benefited from its passing–for example, the struggles in Central America, Cambodia, the Middle East, Mozambique, and South Africa. Yet in Afghanistan and Angola, conflicts fueled by superpower rivalry have taken on a life of their own. East-West rivalries dampened strife in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union for decades. More recently, however, shooting wars have erupted in nine of the 53 member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In some settings with virtually no direct links to earlier superpower rivalry–for example, in Liberia, the Sudan, and Sri Lanka–seething ethnic, political, and religious tensions continue to boil. While it is inappropriate to take refuge in the scholarly shelter that every conflict is unique and generalizations are impossible, it is important to be aware of the limits of analysis across the vastly differing terrains.

There is also a fundamental difficulty in evaluating recent UN operations. In examining the UN Volunteers Programme and other such international efforts, we confront the ambiguity of "success" and "failure." Have efforts in the former Yugoslavia been successful because they saved lives and avoided a wider conflict in Europe, or a failure because the international community has not stood up to aggression, genocide, and the forced movement of peoples? Were short-term efforts in Somalia successful because death rates dropped in 1993, or a failure because the billions spent did not prevent a reversion to banditry and chaos in 1995? Were efforts in Cambodia a short-term success because Cambodians went to the polls and permitted the return of King Norodom Sihanouk, or a long-term failure because the Khmer Rouge remain poised to return to civil war? Were efforts in El Salvador successful because peace was negotiated and elections held, or a failure because the root causes of the civil war remain in the form of unequal land distribution and limited participation in decision-making? Without greater precision about the expectations of comprehensive operations, analysts can agree on the facts and differ in their evaluations about the utility of a particular operation.

Whatever the differences among conflicts and the difficulties in establishing criteria for success and failure, the volunteer experiences recounted in these pages illustrate the struggle of UN Volunteers with the same fundamental issues of policy and practice which currently preoccupy the broader international community. They have encountered in microcosm the practical dilemmas which have given the broader humanitarian effort pause. Their reflections constitute a rich vein of experience that should be mined for answers to general policy queries such as the following:

1. What types of outside assistance and involvement are the most effec-

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tive–or the least effective–in international responses to humanitarian emergencies?

2. What is the proper balance between and among humanitarian, political/diplomatic, and military interventions in responding to conflicts?

3. In crisis situations in which states and governments have failed to meet human needs and protect human rights, should the international community be prepared to step in on a temporary basis?

4. Without significant disarmament of belligerents and enhanced measures to slow the international arms trade, is the world simply on a treadmill in assistance efforts in war zones?

5. With dwindling resources and growing crises, what should be the relative priority of responding to "loud" emergencies (such as wars) as against "silent" emergencies (chronic impoverishment or disenfranchisement)? Should belligerents be left alone to slug it out until a situation is "ripe" for outside mediation and assistance?

The answers to these questions–"dilemmas" would be a better description since the choices are rarely clear or easy–vary from person to person and from country to country. However, many of the perspectives offered in this volume about humanitarian initiatives and the roles of the United Nations are remarkably similar to those formulated over the years by other analysts as well.¹⁴

Emerging from these chapters are also a number of more specific questions as UN Volunteers seek to interpret their own experiences. These include the following:

1. What types of professionals and personalities are best suited to work in complex emergencies? What types of briefings are necessary before posting such international personnel? How may their experiences help to shape future programme planning? How may a cadre of professionals with multiple country experience be developed and utilized?

2. How much bureaucratic inertia is "normal" and "inevitable" in massive international responses to major emergencies? How much of the impatience with UN procedures and administration is justifiable, and how much is simply the idealistic reaction of newcomers to international humanitarian action?

3. How important are links to community groups? To what extent are such connections feasible for outsiders not steeped in local cultures?

4. What is the value of personal witness and lifestyle in a war zone?

5. What is "volunteerism?" What types of differences, if any, in salaries, benefits, and responsibilities are justifiable for different types of assignments in war zones? Should differences between UN Volunteers and regular UN staff be based on productivity, experience, results, or job titles?

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In the light of the nine accounts that follow, we will examine some of these and related issues in the concluding chapter.

NOTES

* Codirectors of the Humanitarianism and War Project at Brown University's Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies. Larry Minear has worked on humanitarian and development issues since 1972 on behalf of non-governmental agencies and has served as a consultant to UN and U.S. government organizations. Thomas G. Weiss has written extensively about international security and organizations in addition to having held a number of UN posts. He is now associate director of the Watson Institute and executive director of the Academic Council on the UN System.

1. For an overview of some of our findings and recommendations, see Mercy Under Fire: War and the Global Humanitarian Community. Boulder: Westview, 1995.

See Weiss, Thomas G., ed. The United Nations and Civil Wars. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995.

For a summary of the discussions, see "'Between Crisis and Development': Volunteer Roles and UNV's Contribution," Summary of Discussions, 4th UNV Special Consultation, October 20-21, 1994.

4. See, for example, Ratner, Steven R. The New UN Peacekeeping. New York: St. Martin's, 1995; Findlay, Trevor. Cambodia: The Legacy and Lesson of UNTAC. SIPRI Research Report No. 9. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; Heininger, Janet E. Peacekeeping in Transition: The United Nations in Cambodia. New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1994; and Chopra, Jarat. UN Transition in Cambodia. Occasional Paper # 15. Providence: Watson Institute, 1993.

5. One exception is Hume, Cameron. Ending Mozambique's War. Washington: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1994.

6. See, for example, Minear, Larry (team leader), Jeffrey Clark, Roberta Cohen, Dennis Gallagher, Iain Guest, and Thomas G. Weiss. Humanitarian Action in the Former Yugoslavia: The UN's Role, 1991-1993. Occasional Paper # 18. Providence: Watson Institute, 1994; Rieff, David. Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995; Ullman, Richard H., ed. The World and Yugoslavia's Wars. New York: 1996 forthcoming; and Woodward, Susan L. Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War. Washington: Brookings Institution, 1995.

7. For an elaboration of the problems of protecting the human rights of refugees and the internally displaced, see Human Rights Watch. Lost Agenda: Human Rights and U.N. Field Operations. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993; and Human Rights Watch World Report 1995. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1994.

8. See, for example, Destexhe, Alain. Rwanda: Essai sur le génocide. Brussels: Editions Complexe, 1994; Brauman, Rony. Devant le Mal: Rwanda, un génocide en direct. Paris: Arlea, 1994; Minear, Larry and Philippe Guillot. Soldiers to the Rescue: Humanitarian Lessons from Rwanda. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1995 forthcoming; and Omaar, Rakiya and Alex de Waal. Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance. London: African Rights, 1994.

9. See, for example, Herbst, Jeffrey and Walter Clarke, eds. Revisiting Somalia: The Lessons of U.S./U.N. Intervention. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1996 forthcoming; Sommer, John G. Hope Restored? Humanitarian Aid in Somalia 1990-1994. Washington: Refugee Policy Group, 1994; Allard, Kenneth. Somalia Operations: Lessons Learned Washington: National Defense University, 1995; Sahnoun, Mohamed. Somalia: Missed Opportunities. Washington: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1994; and Chopra, Jarat, Åge Eknes, and Toralv NordbØ. Fighting for Hope in Somalia. Peacekeeping and Multinational Operations Paper No. 6. Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 1995).

10. Helman Gerald B. and Steven R. Ratner. "Saving Failed States." Foreign Policy 89 (winter 1992-93): pp. 3-20.

11. Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. An Agenda for Peace. New York: United Nations, 1992.

12. For a discussion and cost estimate, see Lake, Anthony E., ed. After the Wars: Reconstruction in Afghanistan, Indochina, Central America, Southern Africa, and the Horn of Africa. Washington: Overseas Development Council, 1990.

13. See Anderson Mary B., and Peter J. Woodrow. Rising from Ashes: Development Strategies at Times of Disaster. Boulder: Westview, 1989; Anderson, Mary B. "Development and Prevention of Humanitarian Emergencies." In: Weiss Thomas G., and Larry Minear, eds. Humanitarianism Across Borders: Sustaining Civilians in Times of War. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993, pp. 23-38; and Stiefel, Matthias. UNDP in Conflicts and Disasters: An Overview Report of the "Continuum Project. " Geneva: Graduate Institute of International Studies, May 1994.

14. See Weiss, Thomas G., and Leon Gordenker, eds. NGOs, the UN, and Global Governance. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1996 forthcoming.

CONCLUSION

UN VOLUNTEERS AND THE

UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM

Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss

THE ACCOUNTS BY UN Volunteers of their experiences in recent assignments on the front lines of armed conflicts provide glimpses of the United Nations system responding to complex emergencies and of the contributions made by committed individuals to that response. Just as the UN Volunteers Programme provided a point of entry for these nine individuals into the global effort to meet urgent human needs, so, too, the experiences described here bring alive for readers the challenges faced by the international community as it confronts civil strife, ethnic tension, and endemic poverty and powerlessness.

At a time of growing doubt that an "international community" really exists, these UN Volunteers and other concerned individuals like them within and outside the United Nations system affirm by their activities that a caring community remains within reach. They also validate the important roles that outsiders may play in expressing solidarity and providing assistance and protection to imperiled populations. Accomplishments of UN Volunteers–and their frustrations as well–illuminate the problems confronted by the UN system–and suggest some creative solutions.

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THREE PROBLEMS

Three problems faced by the United Nations system in this first decade of the post-Cold War era are evident from these first-person accounts. Varying a bit from country to country and conflict to conflict, the problems form something of a leitmotiv throughout. The first tension is between humanitarian activities and the political-military side of the United Nations. The second is between the grassroots orientation of assistance and the headquarters orientation of the UN bureaucracy. The third is between the UN system that frequently takes the lead in complex emergencies and those outside of it with skills and energy to contribute. Each of these problems deserves examination.

Tensions at the Political-Military Interface

As noted in the Introduction, the complex emergencies that increasingly provide the setting for UNV work involve almost inevitably the political-military side of the United Nations. UN Volunteers and UN staff with mandates in the humanitarian, human rights, and development arenas share the terrain with personnel having mandates in conflict resolution, consensual peacekeeping, and more coercive peace-enforcement duties.

The identification of UN Volunteers and their activities with the UN system has proved a great asset for many volunteers. In places like Cambodia, Mozambique, and South Africa, it was the United Nations that had helped set the stage for the resolution of the conflicts and for the reconciliation and reconstruction of which the volunteers would be a part. UN and associated diplomatic efforts had drawn down the curtain on past armed conflicts and opened up new vistas.

For certain other volunteers, the UN connection has been a definite liability. The UN Volunteers were fully integrated into the second UN Operation in Somalia, with three-quarters of the volunteers assigned–in effect, confined–to UNOSOM headquarters, as Anthony Nweke notes in "Behind the Compound Wall." The observations by other UN Volunteers confirm that their association with UNOSOM II created problems in terms of local perception and access. Similarly, in the former Yugoslavia. Benny Ben Otim found that the "lack of a coherent political strategy" complicated and ultimately undercut the best efforts of UN and other humanitarian organizations.

The interface between the "sides" of the UN was on occasion more ambiguous than positive or negative. In Cambodia, association with the United Nations Transitional Authority, initially an asset, became less so

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as UNTAC's authority was undermined by the country's political factions and by the behaviour of some UN troops. "The same staff who at one time had taken so much pride in being part of UNTAC," writes Nandini Srinivasan, later "had to conceal their identity cards." UN soldiers would do well to take seriously the observation of one UN Volunteer that "[O]ur own conduct was as important as the duties we were assigned."

The accounts highlight the struggle of individual volunteers with how the interface between their work and that of the political-military UN should be managed. For Stephen Kinloch, the credibility of the United Nations as a humanitarian agent suffered from its ineffectual response to Rwanda's genocide, leading him to recommend the creation of a permanent UN ready-response force. His view is echoed by his counterpart in the former Yugoslavia, who calls for greater UN military muscle and a clearer distinction between humanitarian and political-military roles on the one hand and a more determined search for lasting political solutions to conflicts on the other.

While some volunteers view the tension between political-military strategies and their own work in terms of philosophy and values, others take a more pragmatic approach. For them, the issue seems to be not the appropriateness or legitimacy of peacekeeping or peace-enforcement but the professionalism with which these undertakings are implemented.

One of the specific areas in which tensions come to a head concerns the different timetables for action. A recurring theme is the sense among the UN Volunteers that their activities were concluded too soon–and, in some cases, initiated too late–to accomplish durable results. Had they been able to remain longer in Mozambique and Cambodia, they say, the durability of the political as well as the humanitarian accomplishments of the UN would have been consolidated. This plea represents not simply the logical and laudable desire of committed professionals to see a job through but also the underlying need for more continuity of international presence and resources than is typically provided by the political-military side of the United Nations. The composite picture that emerges is of the UN tackling the essential tasks, but failing to be provided with adequate resources and appropriate time frames to succeed.¹

As of mid-1995, the proper balance has yet to be struck. Finding the proper balance preoccupies Under-Secretaries-General at the United Nations in New York, who are seeking ways to achieve more coherence between and among their respective duties in humanitarian affairs, political affairs, and peacekeeping operations. It also concerns Governments– Australia and the Netherlands have recently done major studies on the subject. It animates discussions among non-governmental organizations

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(NGOs). Some private relief groups have emerged from the latest round of complex emergencies more committed to cooperate closely with the political-military UN, while others are convinced that independent rather than integrated activities are more likely to be effective.

The international community is seeking ways to conceptualize and capture the potential synergism between political-military and humanitarian, human rights, and development concerns.² Particularly noteworthy are the benefits to political-military interests of well-managed humanitarian activities. Thus, the work of UN Volunteers in Mozambique in the areas of demobilization made a positive contribution to what UNOMOZ was able to accomplish in a broad range of sectors. The need flagged by UN Volunteers for increased security in Cambodia brought overdue attention to the electoral component by the larger UN peacekeeping operation and augmented UNTAC's broader chances of success.

UN Volunteers also sought, and brought about, institutional changes in the ways that humanitarian organizations themselves functioned, as the account of protection activities by UNHCR in the former Yugoslavia illustrates. Institutional change is envisioned by the suggestion from Rwanda that, in order to avoid some of the dependency-producing effects of emergency assistance, UN Volunteers be deployed "to encourage community-based activities and to facilitate the recruitment and training of local volunteers." The experiences of UN Volunteers related in this volume thus deserve examination as the UN system in all of its facets seeks to enhance its effectiveness in war zones.

Tensions between Grassroots and Headquarters

A consistent theme throughout this volume has been the tensions arising from the grassroots orientation of UN Volunteers. In Cambodia, South Africa, Mozambique, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and South Asia, the volunteers were working in their assigned tasks in local communities. Conspicuous by its exceptional nature was Somalia, where, we are told, "Most of the UN Volunteers were deployed to administrative and technical support units, where their responsibilities did not make use of the professionalism for which the UN Volunteers are known." In what clearly was an aberration, three-quarters of the UNV complement worked at UNOSOM headquarters.

By and large, UN Volunteers bring a critical dimension to the field presence of the UN system. In some instances, they join with personnel from other Agencies such as UNHCR and UNICEF posted in the hinterlands. At the same time, UN Volunteers greatly augment the

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human resources that other organizations, including NGOs, are able to post. In fact, the numbers of UN Volunteers mentioned in this volume–465 in Cambodia, 200 in South Africa, 120 in Somalia–are unusual in their magnitude. Even where UNV complements were more modest in size– initially 32 in Liberia, 26 in Rwanda, 18 in former Yugoslavia–those numbers frequently overshadowed the international personnel resources available to other Agencies. Taking into account national staffs trained by UN Volunteers, the extent of UNV presence in the countryside becomes more impressive still. Deployment in the hundreds rather than the dozens offers leveraging and outreach possibilities that often elude other Agencies, even those that pride themselves on maintaining grassroots profiles.

The importance of a genuine UN presence throughout a country in conflict can hardly be overstated. In the words of one volunteer, "The contribution that UN Volunteers bring to UN efforts may be squandered if this resource is not recognized for what it is: a powerful alliance at the grassroots by and for people of the country with the United Nations." The observation made in Cambodia has been equally true in other settings: "[W]hat made UN Volunteers different was our daily contact with the population, which was our own distinct advantage."

Without UN Volunteers, the United Nations in these various settings would have been far too thinly represented on the front lines, if represented there at all. The 465 volunteers who functioned as election supervisors, two in each of the country's districts, where few of UNTAC's 20,000 personnel were in evidence, made a demonstrable contribution to the successful conduct of the elections. Without the 49 technical unit camp officers, one for each of Mozambique's assembly areas, the UN would have been hard-pressed to carry out the demobilization of soldiers, on which its other many activities depended.

The frustration of volunteers with the lack of adequate support for their efforts from the UN system is apparent throughout, although it is balanced by their appreciation for the difficulties the system itself is facing. Examples abound of the creaking and groaning of the UN system in the face of the needs of those staff working in isolated areas at the community level.

The idea that what happens at the grassroots level is important–often even decisive–comes as no secret to the managers of the UN system and its various component parts. The make-or-break aspect of what happens in local communities is acknowledged in UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-keeping. Unveiled in early 1992, the Agenda staked out what the Secretary-General envisioned as the future directions of the world

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body. Drawing linkages between high-level political-military activities and the reinforcing changes needed at the local level, he observed that "The focus of the United Nations should be on the 'field', the locations where economic, social and political decisions take effect."³ This theme has been reiterated and emphasized more recently in An Agenda for Development.⁴

The UN system has yet to take up the Secretary-General's challenge. Doing so would require a fundamental reconfiguring of the system and of the interrelationships of its component parts. In fact, one of the currently unresolved policy issues pertains to which actors have a comparative advantage in particular areas–for example, at the grassroots–and at particular points in the spectrum of violence and armed conflicts. The experience recounted here suggests that UN Volunteers have the community-level contacts and expertise normally associated with NGOs but with greater national and local outreach than most NGOs can muster. With respect to the effectiveness of various actors at different points in the conflict spectrum–pre-conflict, active conflict, post-conflict–the experience narrated here is too limited and too particularistic for much generalization.

Tensions between the UN System and Those Outside

Given the demonstrable contributions by UN Volunteers to the UN system, the recurrent tensions between volunteers in the field and various responses from the UN bureaucracy are troubling. In several conflict zones, UN Volunteers describe frictions between themselves and UN colleagues, on both the political-military and the humanitarian sides. While some of the tensions are natural products of normal interactions in tense and even life-threatening circumstances, structural issues are also involved.

The identification as "volunteers," reports Masako Yonekawa after four back-to-back UNV assignments, "unfortunately leads some people to consider us second-class workers." The fact that the cost of a UN Volunteer was about one-quarter of the cost of a regular staff member or consultant led to the perception that UN Volunteers were "cheap labour." One setting in which serious frictions did not seem to develop was South Africa, where UN Volunteers, perhaps because the UNOMSA operation itself was new, were "on equal ground with the international UN staff." Even there, however, the distinction that those who were paid more did the more valuable work proved divisive.

Some of the tension is understandable since many UN Volunteers are new to the UN system. Many are initially unfamiliar with the policies

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and procedures of the particular organization to which they are assigned or with the culture of the international civil service more generally. Yet that is hardly a satisfactory explanation for what is clearly a more generic problem. In the words of one, "Though UN Volunteers often had little or no previous UNHCR experience, they brought with them maturity and flexibility, in addition to their own specialized experience in their respective fields."

The need for ensuring fuller and more creative use of volunteer resources is self-evident. The UN system is overwhelmed by the current spate of conflicts and desperately in need of help from the outside. UN Volunteers themselves represent an enormous reservoir of skills, experience, and energy. Not only can they extend the effectiveness of the UN system; they can also help to offset some of its acknowledged shortcomings. "Volunteers can help improve the image of the UN, which is too often perceived as a stiff bureaucracy perpetuating the interests of a few civil servants pursuing career strategies," says a volunteer in Rwanda.

An underlying policy issue involved concerns the need for a fundamental rethinking of the meaning of the term "volunteer." The UN Volunteers provide their own understandings and personifications of that concept. Anthony Nweke is quite typical of his colleagues in identifying motivation, commitment, and dedication as "the basic elements of volunteerism." In a larger sense, however, these are also the desirable characteristics of international civil servants with whom UN Volunteers work on a daily basis. Nor is the distinguishing factor that one group is "professional" or "more professional" than the other. Perhaps the difference lies not in motivation or skills but rather in relationship to the UN system itself.

The broader issue for the international community concerns how to structure institutions in ways that take fuller advantage of the resources coming from outside the UN system proper.

UNV CONTRIBUTIONS

In addition to their grassroots connections and their critical mass, UN Volunteers bring five special, if not altogether unique, attributes to the work of the United Nations system and of the international community in conflict settings.

First, volunteers address some of the root causes of conflict. In chapter after chapter, UN Volunteers attempt to tackle problems at their source. In South Asia, nurturing the skills of artisans is approached as an exercise

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in bridge-building across divided communities. In Mozambique, the target of demobilization programmes is the social alienation that had contributed to the conflict and the reincorporation of people into productive roles. The UNV approach provides an instructive contrast to much humanitarian action, which is frequently–and often rightly–criticized for attending to immediate and urgent needs while leaving root causes unaddressed.

Second, UN Volunteers support change rather than leading or coercing it. The UNV approach is suggested in microcosm by an incident at an organizational meeting of a peace committee in South Africa in which local leaders turned to the UN Volunteers and UNOMSA staff for actual decisions. "While we were there to support the process, we were not there to lead it," Diane Conklin recalled in passing the baton deftly back to the group. The emphasis on enabling rather than doing was appropriate in view of the fact that UN Volunteers were on hand for the final phase in a complex transformation and would leave before the transformation process was completed. The narratives in this volume provide countless other vignettes of international personnel facilitating rather than manipulating. While conflict resolution may be encouraged from outside, the process to be sustainable and effective must be led by local people themselves.

In this context, one of the attributes cultivated by UN Volunteers is what Shantum Seth calls "to listen deeply." Many volunteers convey their sense that as outsiders they must work long and hard at understanding the complex processes of social change. Seeking to direct or orchestrate such change would be risky and ultimately counterproductive. The value of listening to local voices, even when doing so requires sitting patiently through endless diatribes, is dramatized in the former Yugoslavia. There, trust built up over time by UN Volunteers enabled the successful negotiation with local authorities of safe passage for minority populations.

Third, the composition, skills, and training of UNV contingents is distinctive. A recurring theme throughout the accounts has been the multinational and multiethnic makeup of UNV country teams. The UNVolunteers in Cambodia were drawn from 65 countries. Half of the UN Volunteers in Liberia were African, with Kenya, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda represented. The fact that UNV Observation Support Oflicers in South Africa came from 39 countries, with more than half of the volunteers of African origin, had far more than cosmetic value. It affected the perceptions not only of local communities but also of the non-African UN Volunteers themselves. A larger cross-section of

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UNV experience than recounted here might even establish a positive correlation between the inclusiveness of UNV teams and their successes.

The skills that the volunteers brought with them were impressive. Descriptions of tasks–from demobilizing soldiers to setting up electoral processes to training artisans–provide fascinating glimpses of the demands of their jobs. What emerges from these various accounts is a picture of an organization that provides a point of entry into the UN system for skilled professionals from around the world. Moreover, at a time when the humanitarian enterprise has primarily a Western and developed country flavour, the inclusiveness of the UNV Programme is noteworthy.

The accounts provide a picture of volunteers who have received careful training for their tasks, although it is clear from other settings that tradeoffs exist between posting personnel on short notice and providing the requisite orientation. As one of the volunteers involved with training notes, placing large groups of people "with different backgrounds, experiences, and assignment expectations" into insecure settings on difficult missions requires the best possible training. Quality briefing and support services are needed to avoid the ravages of "depression, burnout, and high turnover of staff."

Fourth, UN Volunteers focus on the pragmatic. A recurrent theme throughout is their results-oriented approach. Among the accomplishments described in this volume were the conduct of elections in which more than four million Cambodians voted in 1,400 polling stations; the demobilization of some 78,000 government and insurgent soldiers in Mozambique; the facilitation of talks among faction leaders in Somalia; the negotiation of safe passage for Muslims from Banja Luka; the arranging of trucks in Tanzania for use by relief organizations in Rwanda; and problem-solving and the building of solidarity among artisans in South Asia.

Finally, UN Volunteers put people at the centre of their work. "People and their well-being are what really matter," noted Glaucia Vaz Yoshiura from her Mozambique experience. While the comment seems axiomatic for humanitarian professionals, the international machinery for responding to armed conflicts is often less focused and more cumbersome. Putting human well-being at the centre sometimes requires playing an advocacy role on their behalf within the UN system, with other international actors, and with host political-military authorities. Examples recur through/ out this volume of UN Volunteers pressuring their own Agencies to meet their responsibilities more adequately.

Keeping the needs of people first and foremost also involves taking personal and professional risks. The work of most volunteers meant physical

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hardship, personal inconvenience, and, in some cases, insecurity and risk. In Cambodia, one UN Volunteer, to whom this volume is dedicated, was killed in the line of duty; two other UN Volunteer electoral supervisors were wounded; and three national staff were killed. As the insecurity increased with the approach of the elections, the wonder is not that 60 UN Volunteers opted not to return to their districts but that 405 went back to their posts.

The picture that emerges is of volunteers who "care passionately," to use the words of one, "about the welfare of people." In fact, two mention additional activities undertaken on their own time to extend what they could accomplish as UN Volunteers. Yet their idealism is not starry-eyed. Their accounts are characterized by a sense of tough-mindedness balancing what volunteers would like to do against what can reasonably be accomplished in the circumstances.

PARTICIPATION IN "HISTORY IN THE MAKING"

The UN Volunteers Programme has given persons outside the United Nations system a point of entry onto the front lines in major international crises. "From my deployment in the Far Northern Transvaal," recalls one, "I was able to witness and to be part of this truly extraordinary historical event." Other volunteers communicate that same sense of excitement from their own geographic locations. "It was clear," recalls one from Mozambique, "that we were witnessing the birth of a unified effort by people of different political convictions to attain a common goal."

The history into which this volume provides a glimpse is chaotic and the experience of the UN Volunteers contains contradictions. Many obstacles are encountered and few of the initiatives–the South African and South Asian experiences are perhaps exceptions–are unalloyed successes. In places such as Cambodia, Mozambique, the former Yugoslavia Rwanda, and Somalia, talk of enduring success is premature, notwithstanding the real contribution by UN Volunteers and others to reducing life-threatening suffering, and setting the stage for a fresh start.

It is almost a truism of volunteer activity that volunteers benefit as much as, and frequently more than, those assisted. Volunteers come to their task with what one calls "curiosity mixed with compassion" and often come away with a satisfying sense of what they have learned along the way. It may be unusual to have direct displays of gratitude, such as the weaving of the UNV logo into rugs made in South Asia. However, all of the volunteers reflect a positive sense of purposefulness and accomplish-

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ment. At the same time, they carry with them sharp and sometimes painful images of injustices and unaddressed business. Their own sense of values and their own professional goals and directions have also been affected.

Emerging from the volume is also the sense that international activity undertaken in a spirit of solidarity is rewarded less by the success of specific activities by outsiders than by what people are able to accomplish for themselves. This insight is particularly helpful at a time when the international community is suffering from a failure of nerve. The UNV experience reminds us that what is needed is not first and foremost a global bureaucracy to mitigate human suffering and manage social change. The future demands instead a more creative, extensive, and inclusive network of relationships and resources geared towards facilitating and enabling the efforts of people and societies themselves to shape their own futures. This insight from the UNV experience deserves a more prominent place among recommendations being made for fundamental changes in the UN system.

In that broader context, the experience of these volunteers takes on additional importance. As one of them points out, the determination and resilience of countries and communities that have been assisted should now provide reassurance to those on the outside who question the value and the urgency of international humanitarian action and development cooperation. The challenge of the United Nations is to find ways of making even better use of UN Volunteers and their efforts.

NOTES

1. For an elaboration of the issue of the differential timetables of political-military and humanitarian action, see Donini, Antonio. UN Coordination in Complex Emergencies: Lessons from Afghanistan, Mozambique, and Rwanda. Occasional Paper #22. Providence, R.I.: Watson Institute, forthcoming; and Equizábal, Cristina, David Lewis, Larry Minear, Peter Sollis, and Thomas G. Weiss. Humanitarian Challenges in Central America: Lessons from Recent Armed Conflicts. Occasional Paper #13. Providence, R.I.: Watson Institute, 1993.

2. For one recent elaboration of the issue and of three approaches to resolving interface tensions, see Minear, Larry and Thomas G. Weiss. Humanitarian Politics. New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1995.

3. Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. An Agenda for Peace 1992. New York: United Nations, 1992, pare. 81.

4. Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. An Agenda for Development 1995. New York: United Nations, 1995.