EU Presidency Statement - Role of the Security Council in Humanitarian Crises

I have the honour also to be speaking in this debate on behalf of the European Union. The Acceding Countries Bulgaria and Romania, the Candidate Country Croatia*, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, EFTA countries Iceland and Liechtenstein, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, align themselves with this statement.

I would like to thank you, Mr President, for the opportunity to discuss this important subject. Preventing and alleviating humanitarian suffering caused by conflict was one of the key aims of the founders of the United Nations. It should be one of the fundamental principles that guide our work here in the Security Council. I would also like to thank The Secretary-General and Under-Secretary General Guehenno for their pertinent remarks.

The Security Council is, of course, only one actor in the international response to humanitarian crises, so I would like to begin with some reflections on what contribution it can make.

First, the Council should have an important political role in conflict prevention and dealing with the early stages of an emerging humanitarian crisis.

The UN as a whole and the Security Council in particular should therefore be alert to signs of an imminent breakdown in international peace and security, in particular those situations which threaten widespread humanitarian consequences. The Council should be prepared from the earliest stage to make a leading contribution to international efforts to avert a descent into conflict and humanitarian suffering.

This means being prepared to give attention to new and neglected crises, without waiting for the level of humanitarian suffering to rise to unacceptable levels.

It means reminding governments of their primary responsibility to assure the security, safety and humanitarian needs of their own people. And reminding them too that the international community has a legitimate interest if they are unable or unwilling to do this. In this regard, the European Union welcomes the debate on the important concept of "Responsibility to Protect".

Prevention is obviously better than having to pick up the pieces of broken lives and humanitarian suffering after conflict has broken out. The Security Council needs to give effect to this. No one can doubt that the Council was right to support the African Union in Darfur. How much better it would have been, though, if we could have reached agreement to act before the crisis reached such levels of suffering?

We need to ensure that the Security Council is properly informed of possible threats, including through early warning by the Secretary-General. We need to be prepared to listen to a wider range of sources to bring potential conflicts to our attention. One positive development in this regard has been the introduction of regular briefings of the Council by Jan Egeland, the Humanitarian Coordinator. We should continue and extend this practice, including with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

We also need to work more closely with the Secretary-General and his representatives to support and reinforce their good offices and mediation functions. This would represent a more effective discharge of the Council's responsibilities in the Charter to facilitate the peaceful resolution of disputes.

The second key role for the Council is its primary responsibility for taking action where international peace and security have broken down, where we must take full account of the humanitarian requirements of a crisis.

It is not, of course, the Council's role to coordinate or direct humanitarian action. This is the responsibility of national governments, which in some cases may fall to OCHA and existing donor mechanisms. The European Union, which through the Community and Member States contributes 55% of all international humanitarian assistance, has an important role to play. But the Council can do more to galvanise international humanitarian efforts and to lend political weight to them.

In considering our political response to a crisis, we should always give due priority to humanitarian considerations. The Council and its individual members should lend their weight to efforts to ensure that political leaders on both sides of a conflict ensure access by humanitarian agencies to affected populations.

A major Security Council responsibility will be to establish UN multidimensional Peace Support Operations that ensure that humanitarian considerations and activities are fully taken into account.

In part, this means ensuring proper coordination on the ground between humanitarian, political and military activities - not only on the ground, but also from the beginning of the mission planning phase. It means safeguarding the ability of UN humanitarian actors, working within and alongside a multidimensional mission, to act in accordance with the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, humanity and independence.

We also need to promote, in accordance with relevant Security Council resolutions, the role that peacekeepers play in protecting civilians, particularly for vulnerable groups such as IDPs, women and children. The Security Council should continue to give priority to this in defining the mandate of Peace Support Operations.

The Security Council also has a role in ensuring that where humanitarian suffering is a result of deliberate human rights abuses or war crimes, that those responsible are brought to justice. The European Union strongly supports efforts to end impunity for such crimes, in particular through the effective functioning of the International Criminal Court. As we have seen recently in the case of Darfur, the Security Council can play an important role by referring such situations to the Court.

Activities to bring an end the immediate circumstances that have led to a humanitarian crisis are therefore at the heart of the Security Council's role. But equally important is a third area of the Council's activity: building the conditions of lasting peace and stability, to prevent the recurrence of conflict and humanitarian suffering.

I would like to highlight three key areas of peacebuilding: rule of law, DDR and SSR.

Strengthening the rule of law and good governance is essential to building societies which protect and improve the lives of all their citizens.

The Secretary-General's excellent report on the subject last August and the subsequent Security Council discussion in October showed consensus on the need to treat the justice sector as a key element in building sustainable peace. An independent judiciary, humane and secure prisons and an effective and accountable police force are necessities. Without them, we risk anarchy and impunity; we undermine not only stability and security, but also democracy, refugee return and economic recovery.

We are pleased to see this recognition increasingly translated into Security Council mandates, and rule of law components seen as a core part of peace operations.

But we have not yet done enough. The UN is still a long way from being able to effectively promote the rule of law and an end to impunity in the post-conflict situations it is engaged in. The UN still lacks adequate central capacity to develop that thinking, to co-ordinate the work being done by various agencies, and to find and to manage the field personnel now underway.

For this reason, we welcome the Secretary-General's decision, contained in his "In Larger Freedom" report to create a Rule of Law Assistance Unit, to deal specifically with post-conflict situations. We look forward to seeing early progress on its establishment. We also call on the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the progress made in implementing the recommendations from his August 2004 report.

The second important area of peacebuilding that we need to improve is our approach to disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR).

We need to draw together past experience, both good and bad, to ensure we understand what works and why. We welcome the UN inter-agency process to develop guidelines on DDR. The challenge will be to implement these guidelines in a practical way that lifts our collective performance.

Some of the particular challenges that we must tackle are how DDR programmes can effectively address the different needs of women and of child combatants, and of the families of combatants. We also need to ensure that reintegration plans are well coordinated with broader development programmes, and that combatants are not rewarded at the expense of those who have suffered in combat. Finally, we need to improve the assured flow of donor funding to DDR programmes to ensure they can be properly sequenced and sustained.

The third priority area, closely linked to the other two, is Security Sector Reform. Democratically-controlled security services can only be developed in the context of establishing effective governance structures and the rule of law. And DDR programmes can only succeed as part of a broader reform effort to deliver security services that guarantee rather than threaten the people they are meant to serve.

Again there are many national and international actors involved in SSR, not always working in close coordination. It may be worth considering development of multi-agency guidelines for SSR, as well as DDR.

In all of the three areas that I have described above, the Security Council and the missions that it mandates are usually only one of a number of international players. Successful peacebuilding activities rely on a process that is owned and led by national governments, with donors, UN bodies and regional organisations well coordinated behind shared objectives. And within the UN system, we must make sure that, even as we create new capacities, we don't create new divisions. Policing; rule of law; transitional justice; security sector reform; DDR; human rights; protection of civilians. These are all closely interconnected elements of one picture. We must ensure that we develop a coherent, over-arching vision in this wider justice and security field, and that this is matched organisationally both in headquarters and in the field.

That is why the European Union strongly supports the proposed establishment of a Peacebuilding Commission to oversee the provisions of coherent security, political, economic and other assistance to countries emerging from conflict, and to advise on and promote comprehensive strategies for peacebuilding. We also back the proposal for a Peacebuilding Support Office to bring more direction to the UN system's strategy and planning in this area. And we agree that a new Peacebuilding Fund could provide an effective way of ensuring a rapid start to essential peacebuilding activities in some of the areas I described earlier.

In closing, Mr President, I would like to thank you once again for organising a debate on this important topic and we look forward to future productive discussions in the Council on these issues, including as they pertain to specific country circumstances. And finally, we warmly welcome the proposed Presidential Statement.

* Croatia continues to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.

| Top |

• EU Presidency Statement - Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (9/12/2005)
• EU Presidency Statement - Peacebuilding (26/5/2005)