The Six Elements of Effective Peacekeeping

ENOUGH's policy team recently came out with six prerequisites of an effective peacekeeping force for Darfur.

1. A strong mandate to protect civilians.
2. Management of the mission by the United Nations.
3. A sufficient level of troops and police drawn from around the world.
4. Mobile resources and equipment needed for quick response across Darfur's challenging terrain.
5. A strong emphasis on civilian and humanitarian needs.
6. Sufficient funding from the international community.

Perhaps the most important thing here is that there is nothing particularly innovative or suprising here- and yet proposals for peackeeping forces in Darfur and elsewhere lack many or most of these elements. Peacekeeping forces are one of the most important- and under-resourced- instruments of the international community. If given the troops, capacity, and funds to be effective, these forces can play a big role in establishing basic security and assisting in humanitarian and capacity-building efforts.

So: read ENOUGH's full report here and sign a petition here

The spread of genocide in Africa

Buried underneath the now-familiar headlines of brewing crises in the Middle East is one that deserves front-page attention: the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has warned that spillover from the violence in Darfur threatens to recreate the 1994 Rwandan genocide in eastern Chad. More than 200,000 Darfuris have fled conflict by crossing the border into neighboring Chad, and the Sudanese government-backed Janjaweed militia has followed them, killing hundreds and leaving up to 110,000 homeless, according to the BBC. The familiar pattern of violence in Darfur, in which government-backed militias attack villages, often inspiring copycat killings, seems to becoming replicated in Chad. A UNHCR representative chillingly reported that "We are seeing elements that closely resemble what we saw in Rwanda in the genocide in 1994." Similar conflict threatens to spread into the Central African Republic (see map), threatening to raise the specter of a genocidal, regional conflagration. This prospect makes it all the more imperative that the Sudanese government be forced to accept a UN peacekeeping force to suplement the weak AU force currently in operation in Sudan. Click here to sign a petition urging President Bush to take firm action to compel Sudan to accept a UN force.