Jok Madut Jok
11 June 2014 - The Sudd Institute

South Sudanese have always referenced the United Nations, sometimes positively in terms of services it provides, especially in times of great need, when few other organizations are able to step forward, but in other times as a failed institution that has not lived up to its image. Ordinary folks cannot easily distinguish between the United Nations agencies that have always provided basic services, even during the times of war when only few others were able to, and the peace keeping mission (UNMISS), which was only instituted in 2011 when South Sudan gained independence and became a sovereign country and a member-state in the United Nations.

This has meant that any criticism a South Sudanese citizen might have about one UN agency is often applied to all the rest of the UN agencies, including United Nations Mission in South Sudan, a situation that reveals that the ordinary South Sudanese do not have a good understanding about UNMISS mandate.

The UN Security Council Resolution 1996 that created UNMISS on July 8^th 2011 provided the mandate to prevent a return to war between the Republic of South Sudan and the Republic of Sudan after the old Sudan split into two, and to protect civilians in imminent danger within South Sudan. It was also created to assist the new republic to sustain peace through the strengthening of security institutions and work toward justice and reconciliation among the various communities that were affected by the two-decade long north-south war in what used to be the Republic of Sudan. It was meant to support national authorities, to develop an early strategy in support of national peace-building priorities, including “establishment of core government functions, provision of basic services, establishment of the rule of law, respect for human rights, management of natural resources, development of the security sector, tackling youth unemployment, and revitalization of the economy” (United Nations S/RES/1996, 2011).

This mandate and its limits, however, seem to be poorly understood among government officials and people of South Sudan. The officials of the UN mission also seem unclear about peacekeeping as protection of civilians in clear conflicts and peacekeeping as maintenance of everyday security in the country. Peacekeepers come to South Sudan expecting to protect civilians against established warring parties, but what they find on the ground are drivers of violence that they can hardly predict or identify or without a clear mandate on such incidents of violence that happen to individual citizens. And when they end up unable to protect civilians against these complicated sources of violence, the UN is locally criticized as a failure.

What local people fail to realize is that a UN peacekeeping force is not a substitute for the host country’s security forces and its obligation to ensure safety of its own population. All that the UN can do is to assist the country in the development of its own security institutions. Few things have revealed this poor understanding of the role of the UN more prominently than the position of the world body in the on-going conflict that erupted in December 2013 between the government of the Republic of South Sudan and the armed rebellion lead by the former Vice President Riek Machar. This has increased the level of opacity among South Sudanese about what the UN actually does within its mandated responsibilities, and the result is that the world body has since found itself mired in a media spectacle that has shown it in a bad light within South Sudan.

It is not my intention here to defend the UN, but to describe what has happened since the fighting broke out in Juba on December 15^th, 2013, what the UN has done about it ever since and what the host government of South Sudan has said, leaving judgment to the reader.

There is no doubt that the government and people of South Sudan have always viewed the UN positively, judging by the euphoria expressed in such uncertain terms when the new country was admitted into the community of nations soon after it gained independence in 2011. But when the on-going conflict broke out, three things happened to set the host government and the UN mission on a collision course. The first was the flight of nearly 20,000 internally displaced persons of predominantly Nuer ethnic background into its two Juba-based camps seeking protection. The second was a host of rumors coming from the government quarters that senior members of the UN mission staff were supporting Riek Machar’s rebellion. The third was the early March 2013 revelation that the government security forces had seized a weapons cache in Lakes state, which the government declared was a supply to the rebel movement, saying that this had confirmed earlier suspicions about the conduct of some individual UN leaders, and which the mission said was a mistake in the labeling of weapons that were actually destined to its new Ghanian contingent in Unity state.

These issues rocked the relationship between UNMISS and the host government, as the government escalated the anti-UN rhetoric to a level of crisis. The government handled its suspicions toward the UN mission through the media, turning it into a spectacle, inciting the citizens against the UN and igniting protests that demanded the resignation of the UN Chief, instead of using the diplomatic channels to table its concerns to the UN authorities in New York. More South Sudanese than ever before begun to accuse the UN of supporting the rebels, harboring anti-government elements in its camps and working for the downfall of the current government, much of which were without evidence.

The UN on the other hand responded to these accusations in a dismissive manner that the government read as slighting its own integrity and legitimacy, while the apologies from senior UNMISS officials, including the Force Commander falling on deaf ears, at least in the case of the Minister of Information. On the issue of weapons delivery, for example, UNMISS spokesperson Ariane Quentier said it was “wrong labeling” that lead to the mistake, but the government did not buy it at first, insisting that some leaders within UNMISS were acting in bad faith. And although the investigation actually revealed that this was indeed a mistake, both in terms of the common understanding, which suggests that weapons going to the field be delivered by air, not by road, and the mislabeling of the containers as food and building materials, the government was outraged by what it saw as insufficient explanation.

Furthermore, the UN has also been accused of failure to provide adequate protection to civilians, both against violence during the fighting throughout the country and within its camps against disease and hunger. In view of the rapid spread of violence and the massive numbers seeking protection in camps, both of which unquestionably overwhelmed the UN, this is an accusation that is grossly unfair. And although many of these accusations and critiques have been contextualized and the government-UNMISS relationship relatively thawed, the popular image of the UN continues to suffer and will require gradual rebuilding of South Sudanese confidence in the world body.