by Tanya (Toni) DeMello MPA ’08 and Nealin Parker MPA ’08

UN peace operations have made a marked difference in stabilizing countries and providing security when called to help. However, much debate surrounds the achievements of UN peacekeeping, its challenges and, at times, the very notion of an outside force intervening in a domestic conflict. Salman Ahmed, visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School’s Liechtenstein Institute of Self Determination, tasked his class of 10 graduate students to answer these questions by observing first-hand the activities of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). On leave from his position as chief of office and special assistant in the Office of the UN Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Ahmed challenged the class to examine, the current difficulties peacekeeping faces in the twenty-first century from an academic and practitioner’s perspective.

A Class with a Mission
Many countries that find themselves in crisis, incapable of maintaining security for their citizens, turn to the international community for support and assistance. The UN peacekeepers—in their distinctive blue helmets—are the front-line representatives of the international community’s commitment to help nations in conflict and to protect their citizens during the transition from crisis to the establishment of legitimate governance. Today, UN peace operations activity is at an all-time high, with over 100,000 troops, police, and civilians deployed in 20 operations from Afghanistan to the Sudan. UN peacekeeping has grown in number and in scope of missions, and concurrently the UN has become an increasingly prominent actor in post-conflict environments around the world.

Our class included students from four different continents, from both donor and recipient countries of UN peacekeeping. Some members of our class were from conflict regions, while many of the rest had lived in conflicted countries prior to working with NGOs or governments. For both the students and Professor Ahmed, the issues facing UN peacekeeping were of both professional and personal relevance.

To expose students to the complexity of peacekeeping operations and give us insight on the myriad of constraints faced by the UN, Professor Ahmed led his class in a weeklong trip to Haiti. Haiti had previously been host to six UN peacekeeping missions, but none resulted in a lasting peace. Professor Ahmed wanted his students to gain firsthand familiarity with a peacekeeping operation and, accordingly, generate an assessment of the main challenges facing the current MINUSTAH peacekeeping operation. 
 

While riding around in a large white UN vehicle, our class was keenly aware of the potentially intrusive presence we represented as outsiders—coming to Haiti to witness, but not stay. As one local official stated best, “We meet so many kind and caring people that come to Haiti and see the tragedy and the promise of this country. And the first thing we ask is: ‘What will you do now that you have seen it? You have come to Haiti—but how will you take Haiti back with you?’”

Our class met with senior UN peacekeeping staff, Haitian government officials, and representatives from civil society, spending the majority of our time in the capital, but also travelling to two towns: Gonaïves in the east and Cap Haitien in the north. The focus of our trip was on three fundamental elements of the stabilization response: stabilization and increased security, the rule of law, and development. Each of these elements is important on its own, but the effects of each are compounded by the interactions it has with the others.

As this mission was not the first time the UN had been in Haiti with the goal of ‘stabilizing the country’ and ‘strengthening its institutions,’ Professor Ahmed asked the class to center its analysis around a single, critical, and previously unanswered question: “What is different about the current UN mission such that it will be the last time the UN peacekeepers will be in Haiti?”

Arriving in Haiti
Just an hour flight from Miami, the landscape is very different. Haiti is a country that has struggled economically, politically, and socially for several hundred years. Its history is soaked in the blood of a noble and fierce people that have survived the most gruesome of civil conflicts, but continue to fight for a prosperous and thriving Haiti. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere; yet so many in the Americas know so very little about it. Many are surprised to learn, for example, that Haiti was the second independent state in the Western Hemisphere and the first free Black republic in the world.

Haiti was formerly a Spanish, and then a French, holding that was one of the most productive colonies. Former slave-turned-guerilla leader Toussaint Louverture conquered the country in 1801, emancipating the slaves. Three years later, Haiti declared independence, making it the first and only country in which a slave rebellion successfully overthrew its oppressor to establish a nation. Following this auspicious beginning, however, it was subjected to brutal leaders who significantly weakened its institutions. The UN’s six distinct, failed peacekeeping missions occurred in the last two decades. Despite international support—or perhaps because of its inefficacy—Haiti remains a country in crisis.

Today, Haiti faces dramatic unemployment upwards of 70 percent in some areas, stark health concerns including the highest child mortality and AIDS rates in the Western hemisphere, and a fractured government that lacks the capacity to provide for these basic human rights. Most of the population struggles to eat on a daily basis, and the country has been held hostage by gang violence manifesting in dozens of kidnappings every day.

Class Assessment: Successes and Continued Challenges
One of the positives to note is that both Haitians and internationals from across the political spectrum have lauded President René Préval’s ability to work with political rivals to build lasting government institutions that combat crime and corruption and maintain security. Though progress is slow, there have been clear advances in security, with massive training and build-up of the national police, and a focus on improving all areas of the justice sector.

UN peacekeeping efforts also have been successful in restoring security in the nation. Blue helmets have cleaned up Cité Soleil, known as one of the most dangerous gang areas in the country; as a result, the kidnapping pandemic appears to have been curbed, at least for the time being.

However, while these successes and much needed changes have been undertaken in the security and rule of law sectors, Haitians with whom we spoke lamented not seeing a change in their daily lives. Many Haitians still hunger for jobs, access to quality healthcare, education and, most importantly, food. One MINUSTAH official shared the concern for economic progress to come more quickly and be more visible, “Try telling the mother struggling to feed her six children in a filthy slum that she should be grateful for our security gains. She just wants rice and a chicken in her pot, and she doesn’t care if it comes from us or from the gangs.” This statement reflects the fragility many feel about the current situation in Haiti. There can be no gains in Haiti until security and rule of law are properly restored, but unless these gains are accompanied by visible gains in the daily lives of Haitian people—unless they can go to sleep on full stomachs or find gainful employment—the current stability of Haiti will face future threats.

The MINUSTAH operation must continue to work with government actors and civil society to maintain security and rule of law, but also must provide this “peace dividend” to the people in dire need. The UN must struggle to keep Haiti on the international community’s agenda so that we do not walk away and lose the gaines that have already been made. Economic conditions must improve in order to bolster and maintain security improvements. If this truly is to be the last UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti, the foundation of stable and lasting institutions must be laid and economic and social growth must be a key focus of the international community and the Haitian government. Only then will Haiti be able to grow and strengthen and govern in peace.

Epilogue
Our class left Haiti overwhelmed by all that we had seen and heard in such a short time. In the silence on the bus ride to Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince, we drove through a market bustling with women buying fruit and children playing on the sidewalks. While we knew that our time in Haiti would remain indelibly remain engraved in our minds, we wondered about the Haitian official’s earlier question. Now that we had come to witness Haiti’s struggle, what would we do now that we had seen it? As a beginning to what we hope will be a much larger effort “to take Haiti back with us,” we share this story with you, and with all those who will hear it.