Nepal Army : Contributions To UN Peacekeeping

Hira Bahadur Thapa

UN Peacekeeping Operations (PKOs) date back to the 1950s. It is an innovation of the United Nations to secure peace in conflict-ridden parts of the world. In the beginning, such PKOs were established with limited mandates. The peacekeepers then were asked to help keep peace agreements intact by preventing the parties to the conflict from violating them. Therefore, blue helmeted soldiers then were deployed to achieve the sole objective of securing peace agreements, and in that sense, their participation in the PKOs was not that vulnerable.

Transformation

The premier UN Peacekeeping Mission is the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) based in the Middle East. This mission was set up to secure peace in the Middle East following the Arab-Israeli war. Three Nepal Army personnel are serving with the UNTSO. This is also the mission in which Nepal Army observers had, at the UN's request, provided their services for the first time in its history of UN peacekeeping. Given the growing complexity in international affairs and changing scenario in various troubled regions of the globe, the UN's deployment of peacekeepers had to undergo a major transformation. This change has occurred both in the diversity of nationalities to which the UN peacekeepers belong and the responsibilities they are asked to shoulder. Today's peacekeepers are not confined to keep peace by helping to maintain the Peace Agreements. Additionally, they are now deployed to undertake a number of other activities like organising and observing elections, training the security forces on human rights and even taking charge of an interim administration. The UN makes every effort to ensure that its peacekeepers do not infringe upon the human rights of the people they are supposed to protect. The UN is currently involved in monitoring the ongoing peace process and observing the Constituent Assembly elections in Nepal. Following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Government of Nepal and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), a UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) has been deployed. Its fundamental role here is to monitor the armies of both the Government and the Maoists along with their arms. There are cantonments in various parts of Nepal where members of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of the CPN-M are kept with their arms.

As Nepal is heading towards restructuring the country through the Constituent Assembly elections, the role of UNMIN is crucial in making the current peace process a success. It is interesting to note that Nepal has been hosting UNMIN as per the requirements of the country although it is now the fourth largest troop and police contributor in the world to the UNPKOs. At present, Nepal has sent 3,670 personnel from the Nepal Army, Nepal Police and Armed Police Force to various UNPKOs. They are now serving with various missions like United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), UN Organisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) and United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) I & II, among others. Of these, the largest contingent from the Nepal Army is deployed with UNIFIL where 859 personnel serve with that mission alone. This is the mission where Nepal has sent its peacekeepers since it started in 1978. With a very short interruption in the 1980s, Nepal has been providing its Army personnel to Lebanon on a continuous basis. This proves that Nepal's participation in UNIFIL is highly acclaimed.Continued participation of Nepal in UN Peacekeeping notwithstanding, the Nepal Army is facing tough competition mostly from its South Asian counterparts. The largest army and police contributors to the UNPKOs are from our region. Moreover, Nepal has its own painful history of an armed insurgency that has sometimes dragged our professional army into controversy as a few human rights organisations have been found criticising it. At some juncture when the country was in the midst of the internal conflict, a few human rights activists even lobbied against Nepal's participation in the UNPKOs. Due to persevering efforts of the government to counter the logic of the activists, the embarrassing situation of non-deployment of Nepali security personnel in the UN Peacekeeping Operations has not occurred as yet.

We need to be very alert in ensuring that such campaigning against Nepal's interests does not gain momentum. For this, the Nepal Army has to be cautious as well as responsive to accusations relating to its human rights records. Interestingly, people from Amnesty International were capitalising on the opportunity when our Chief of the Army Staff was having an interaction in London recently at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. They had questioned him about the progress made in the investigations concerning the death of Maina Sunuwar and the Doramba incident in which 18 unarmed Maoists were killed. There is no doubt that Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, had raised these issues very seriously during her last visit to Nepal. The Nepal Army has a crucial role to play in reassuring the international community about its current efforts to bring about convincing results of the said investigations, which have attracted significant attention internationally.The Nepal Army has pledged time and again that it will abide by the instructions of the civilian government. It has also given assurances that it will be very sensitive to upholding the human rights commitments made by the Nepal Government. It might be worth mentioning the remarks made by the prime minister, who also is the defense minister, in a message to the participants of the Nepal Army Officers' Cadet Training held at Kharipati a few days earlier. In his message, he emphasised that the Nepal Army should uphold democratic norms and values while accommodating the popular opinion of the Nepali people in the changed context.

Gender

Against the background of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which envisages the integration of the PLA of the Maoists with the Nepal Army, the country has to be seriously involved in the preparations for achieving this goal. Once the democratic transition in Nepal comes to its logical end, with the completion of Security Sector Reform, there is no reason why Nepal cannot one day send even a female battalion at the call of the UN, especially now that it has been putting emphasis on gender equality in its peacekeeping operations for long.