At USIP, U.N.’s Hilde Johnson Details South Sudan Peacekeeping Mission
Though protection of civilians is primarily the responsibility of South Sudan’s young government, United Nations peacekeepers, often outnumbered by armed groups, have been executing quick deployments to security hot spots in order to deter or stop violent attacks, Hilde Johnson, special representative of the U.N. secretary-general and head of the U.N. Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS), told an audience at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) on March 8.
Though protection of civilians is primarily the responsibility of South Sudan’s young government, United Nations peacekeepers, often outnumbered by armed groups, have been executing quick deployments to security hot spots in order to deter or stop violent attacks, Hilde Johnson, special representative of the U.N. secretary-general and head of the U.N. Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS), told an audience at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) on March 8.
“The flash points are in virtually all states of the country,” Johnson said, and UNMISS peacekeepers “need to be present at the local level…to prevent those hot spots from erupting into major incidents of violence.” She said that South Sudan, an impoverished and vast nation that formally split from Sudan and became independent in July 2011, poses “a very challenging environment.” The event was webcast live on www.usip.org.
Johnson described difficult logistical issues facing peacekeepers in South Sudan. A wet season, rendering dirt roads into channels of soft mud, covers eight months of the year throughout most of the country, and the U.N. mission currently lacks boats to transport troops and materiel on the nation’s rivers and has to rely on modest air services. For more than a year, she said, it lacked military helicopters.
Despite those problems, UNMISS has a presence in all ten of South Sudan’s states and in a growing number of locations, she said. The mission currently has 4,931 peacekeepers in the country, with an authorized ceiling of 7,000 troops. The logistical constraints mean that UNMISS cannot deploy to two major, simultaneous crises, said Johnson, meaning that “we have to make very difficult choices.” And given “the tough fiscal environment” facing U.N. peacekeeping operations, she noted, it is difficult to receive an increase in funding and more military assets.
One part of UNMISS’s work is to help South Sudan—in particular its Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)--develop the capacity to protect its own citizens. “We cannot replace or compensate for the lack of government intervention,” she added, saying there is “a balancing act between government responsibilities and the [U.N.] mission.”
UNMISS has a mandate that extends beyond the protection of civilians to the support of state-building in a country where “core” state capacities are not yet in place, said Johnson, a former minister in the Norwegian government who played a role in the negotiations between Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement that led to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
UNMISS has established early-warning and early-response capabilities to the threats of significant violence from armed groups within the country, Johnson said, and it is helping South Sudan to build similar capabilities. UNMISS is not authorized to provide border security or to protect South Sudan’s sovereignty from military actions by Sudan, which is locked in tense disputes with South Sudan over oil, territory and security questions. Yet the U.N. mission is frequently misunderstood and blamed by some South Sudanese for not taking on that role, she said.
With tribally-based rebel groups in conflict with the SPLA, particularly in Jonglei state, Johnson said that UNMISS’s presence alone has been a key factor in averting more widespread violence. “We are outnumbered in many of these situations,” she said.
One such incident happened during fighting in and near the Jonglei town of Pibor in December 2011 and January 2012. Johnson said a force of some 8,000 Lou Nuer fighters moving on the town were repulsed by SPLA troops, backed by UNMISS peacekeepers. Possibly thousands of lives were saved, though 612 people were killed in the fighting, she said. Tribes in the area have been fighting over grazing and water rights.
Johnson was introduced by Jon Temin, director of USIP’s Sudan and South Sudan Program. In response to a question by Temin, Johnson said that in two recent cases, “we’ve seen an increased commitment” by the SPLA to stand up to armed groups and protect civilians, though government action on internal security dangers is “a matter of a case-to-case assessment.”
Temin also asked Johnson about South Sudanese actions that “are not living up to some of the expectations” of the international community that the new nation would respect democratic norms, including mistreatment of some journalists who have written critically about the new government. Johnson noted that one U.N. staff member had been expelled from South Sudan and that two others had been detained for several hours and interrogated in connection with U.N. human rights reporting. She called for stronger accountability on allegations of government misconduct, including the completion of investigations. “That’s what we expect,” she said.
