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SPECIAL REPORT 21
Managing Communications
Lessons from Interventions in Africa
Executive Summary
On June 20, 1996, foreign affairs practitioners and representatives from the U.S. and UN militaries, U.S. government emergency agencies, and international and nongovernmental organizations met at the National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., for a one-day conference entitled "Managing Communications: Lessons from Interventions in Africa." The conference was jointly sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace and the National Defense University.
The conference examined the effectiveness of communications and information-sharing practices (including organizational structures and technologies) among humanitarian and peacekeeping organizations in recent complex emergency operations in Somalia, Rwanda, and Liberia.
The overall premise of the conference was that well-planned information sharing and communications systems linking humanitarian and military actors can enhance operational efficiency, thereby saving lives and resources and, arguably, laying the groundwork for faster regional recuperation and reconstruction. The conference drew lessons from past complex emergency operations, examined current "field" communications practices, considered how new technologies could improve practices, discussed what agreements need to be in place for improved practices to be routinely integrated into deployment preparedness, and explored how to prepare nationals for assuming communications practices.
Conference sessions featured principal actors from recent operations in Africa. Speakers represented the U.S. and UN peacekeeping forces, international and indigenous NGOs, and UN humanitarian agencies. Each speaker presented a synopsis of lessons learned, drawing from specific operations and field experiences, and reflected on what went right and what went wrong and why. At the conclusion of the sessions -- the military perspective was presented in the morning and the humanitarian perspective in the afternoon -- conference attendees divided into assigned breakout groups to discuss the significance of the day's lessons and to propose next steps for improving information sharing and communications practices among groups operating in complex emergency operations.
Table of Contents
Welcome and Introductions
Lt. Gen. Ervin Rokke, President, National Defense University
Amb. Richard H. Solomon, President, United States Institute of Peace
Setting the Scene
Organization of these proceedings
Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni, Commanding General, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force
Randolph Kent, United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs
Securing the Theater of Operations: Peacekeeping Communications
Moderator's Overview, Amb. Robert Oakley
Unified Task Force (Somalia), Lt. Gen. Robert Johnston
Operation United Shield (Somalia), Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni
United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, Maj. Gen. Romeo Dallaire
United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia, Col. Carlos Frachelle
Luncheon Presentations
Observations on Peacekeeping Operations in Africa, Sen. Paul Simon
Information Sharing Needs of Humanitarian Assistance Organizations and Peacekeeping Forces, Mark Stiffler
Improving Humanitarian Assistance Through Enhanced Communication
Moderator's Overview, H. Roy Williams
Joint Military/NGO Info. Center (Somalia-Unified Task Force), Robert MacPherson
UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda-NGO Coordination, Charles Petrie
Q&A on Hate Radio, Charles Petrie
U.S. Military Transport and Communications (Rwanda), Thomas Frey
Displaced Persons/Humanitarian Relief (Rwanda), Simon Gorman
Humanitarian Relief (Liberia), Elizabeth Mulba
Relief Web Project, Daniel Zelig
Conference Summary
Breakout Sessions
Overview
Common Themes
Forging a Culture of Information Sharing
Structuring the Dissemination of Information
Technical Standards for Information and Communication Systems
Conclusions
Next Steps
Appendix
Background Report
Lessons
Endnotes
Welcome and Introductions
Lt. Gen. Ervin Rokke
President, National Defense University
We are considering how to improve communications systems and procedures between military and civilian participants in joint humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. This conference demonstrates that good communication between civilian and military participants is possible.
The collapse of the Soviet Union had the positive effect of reducing the threat of nuclear holocaust, but the end of the Cold War has also introduced an era of global instability, increasing the need for U.S. involvement in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations.
These operations involve the U.S. defense establishments, civilian agencies of our government, and NGOs. They also require U.S. cooperation and coordination with other governments and their militaries, with regional organizations, and with international organizations.
The military and civilian personnel participating in these joint operations are highly dedicated to achieving common goals, but they come from different cultures. Lack of familiarity with each other's methods and imperfect communications in the field can lead to misunderstanding, thus hindering the operations.
We will consider how communications systems and procedures used in interventions can be improved by examining three recent interventions in Africa. I cannot think of a more timely and challenging contribution to the success of future humanitarian and peacekeeping operations.
Amb. Richard H. Solomon
President, United States Institute of Peace
The U.S. Institute of Peace has highly valued the cooperation of the National Defense University in organizing this conference. Let me describe the intellectual perspective the Institute brings to this enterprise and to other activities.
The American West grew along the telegraph lines and the railroad tracks; the superhighway system that was built in this country during the 1950s was crucial in transforming the structure of our regional integration, expanding our economy, and transforming our cities (some would say hollowing out our cities). Thus, communication and transportation technologies have had a powerful effect on the way society has developed. We are now asking how international society will be transformed along the complex electronic pathways of the information superhighway, the World Wide Web, the Internet. This is the broader perspective the Institute is looking at: the impact of the information revolution on averting or managing complex emergencies and conflicts.
It normally takes about twenty years for a new technology to mature, that is, for scientific innovations to be adapted to commercially and socially useful applications. In just the last decade, we have seen the powerful effect of new communications technologies.
When I was director of policy planning at the State Department, then-Secretary of State George Shultz was working with people in the banking industry who could see that electronic communications had globalized the movement of capital around the world, downgrading the financial centers in London, New York, and Tokyo. Since that time -- and especially in the last two or three years -- the explosive impact of the World Wide Web has revealed the potential for new forms of communication that we are only beginning to recognize.
The Institute is concerned with these issues because patterns of communication among people and people's working relationships are central to issues of conflict and conflict resolution. The breakdown of communications is one sure sign that people are headed for overt conflict.
Similarly, if a conflict has been overt and violent, one of the major tasks in peacemaking is to reestablish communications. This is difficult, requiring third-party mediators to bridge the gap of broken communications. Thus, the issue of communications is central to our own purposes of understanding and developing mechanisms for managing conflict.
Furthermore, at the macro level, organizational patterns of communication are essential to social and governmental processes. Regular, reliable communications facilitate coordinated action. The end of the Cold War has revealed that the organizational structures -- the patterns of communication that were essential to our deterrent posture toward the Soviet Union -- are challenged by the new international conflicts we are trying to address.
There is a mismatch between the problems and the organizations, and this mismatch is our concern today. The new communications technologies have the potential of quickly establishing more efficient, cost-effective ways of enabling collaboration among the new participants in the international challenges we face. In particular, communications technologies can bring together the work of the U.S. government, our military organizations, and the humanitarian assistance organizations in the private sector, all of which are responding to today's humanitarian crises.
This conference reflects a basic commitment of the Institute to explore the impact and the possible benefits of these communications technologies, that is, the impact of the information age on preventing, managing, and promoting reconciliation of international conflict.
Today's effort -- "Managing Communications: Lessons from Interventions in Africa" -- builds upon discussions begun at the conference held in late 1994, "Managing Global Chaos," and a project we call "Virtual Diplomacy."
At the conference, analysts of international affairs discussed how chaotic the world seemed to have become with the end of the Cold War and with the end of the bipolar confrontation. Some questioned whether the world really was in a state of "global chaos." Nonetheless, this national debate examined whether the United States should get involved in Haiti and what role the United States should assume in Bosnia, particularly in the wake of the Somali intervention. These two situations (Haiti and Bosnia) are examples of violence that may not be a direct challenge to our own security, but that may -- in ways less clear than during the Cold War -- challenge other, less central national interests.
The 1994 conference recognized an emerging relationship between humanitarian assistance organizations and the work of the government. For the first time people who had never been in the same room with each other were brought together at a policy level to summarize their experiences in these humanitarian interventions. Today's conference will build on some of the lessons from "Managing Global Chaos."
We want to explore in some detail how global telecommunications
can improve the effectiveness of our working relationships, both within
this country and with other international partners in humanitarian assistance
organizations. Communications linkages are essential to this process,
and today they run the gamut from smoke signals to satellites, from
hand held radios and cellular phones to satellite connections and the
Internet. How can we integrate these new technologies to make our humanitarian
assistance operations more effective?
We hope to see consensus emerge in three areas. The first area is information sharing. The various organizations involved in interventions or in conflict management should share information for their mutual benefit. That sounds obvious, but as we have pursued our work, we have discovered tremendous resistance among organizations to cooperating and sharing information. Humanitarian assistance organizations compete for funding from both private and government agencies, so there is a tendency for the organizations to safeguard their turf, their area of operations; this obviously works against the effectiveness that would come with greater collaboration. Those problems are being addressed, and the issue of sharing information effectively is the first area where we hope to see consensus emerge.
A second area is common planning and training in pre-crisis environments, making responses to the crisis situation more effective. We need to develop protocols for training, and common standards for communications in working operations. The Institute, through its various training programs, can provide a bridge between the work of the private sector and that of various government agencies.
The third area is interoperability of the communications technologies as well as of the working procedures of these various institutions, just as there is interoperability with our military allies abroad. This step requires standardizing equipment and ways of using equipment as well as developing practical communications procedures to enable everyone to talk with everyone else in the field, to share information, and to make their interactions more synergistic.
Setting The Scene
Organization of these proceedings
Each of the following sets of remarks is preceded by a brief biographical sketch of the speaker (addressing principally how the speaker's experience relates to the day's event) and a summary of the main points of the speaker's remarks. Where necessary, the Institute has made minor editorial changes to make the reading easier for a broader audience that may not be well versed in these terms and issues.
Guidance for the speakers
Prior to the conference, the speakers were given a set of questions to use as guidance in preparing their presentations. The following guidelines were adapted from Antonia Handler Chayes and George T. Raach, Peace Operations: Developing an American Strategy, Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1995.
- As peacekeepers or humanitarian assistance providers, what was your communications system in the field (both technical and organizational)? How did you communicate with others in the field or at headquarters?
- What were the advantages and disadvantages of your communications system?
- What information regarding field operations did you prepare and transmit to, or receive from, others in the field or at headquarters on a regular basis?
- What mechanisms existed for communications between peacekeepers and humanitarian relief providers? With local authorities, institutions, and organizations?
- What information was shared? With whom? How? What effect did information sharing (or lack thereof) have on your operations? What problems existed in the exchange of information?
- Did you have sufficient communications resources available for your operations? How were they provided and funded?
- Was there a local technical or organizational infrastructure for communications, and how did it affect information flow and sharing?
- What past experiences were relevant to the establishment of your communications systems?
- What improvements in communications management would you recommend?
Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni
Commanding General, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force
Summary
Every operation is different, making it difficult to create a standardized formula for establishing coordination and communication. Creating cooperation requires creating a relationship and a means of communicating among groups with different cultures and with different views on how that cooperation should take place. The military has learned from experience the key lesson of involving all actors during the planning phase, prior to deployment. Following a crisis, it is essential that all players collaborate on performance evaluation.
Although communications tend to be evaluated in terms of technology, Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni maintains that the right personality is many times more valuable than the right system and mechanical or technological capability. He feels that liaison and personal contact are the best means of communication and are, in some cultures, the only real means of communication.
Biography
During early 1995, General Zinni served as commander of the combined task force for Operation United Shield protecting UN forces during withdrawal from Somalia. During 1992-93, he served as the director for operations for the unified task force Somalia for Operation Restore Hope. Also in 1993, he served as the assistant to the U.S. Special Envoy to Somalia during Operation Continue Hope.
I will offer some observations I hope will serve as a framework for thinking about managing communications in complex humanitarian interventions.
First, we must remember that every humanitarian intervention or operation is different; therefore, it is hard to create a formula or a prescriptive way for establishing coordination and communication. The degree of complexity, the nature of the missions that each participant might be required to undertake, the problems on the ground, the locations, the degree to which the local government is functioning or to which there are responsible agencies-all these factors are going to drive the requirements for coordination and communication.
We must also remember that we bring together the military and civilians to deal with these problems. There is a true clash of cultures, which has nothing to do with the culture you're involved with on the ground. The cultures of the soldier, the diplomat, and the relief worker could not be more diverse or more disparate. Creating cooperation requires creating a relationship and a means of communicating among groups that have different views on how that cooperation should take place.
If you say "C-2," for example, a military officer thinks "command and control." A relief worker or diplomat would bristle at those terms, maybe preferring "cooperate and coordinate." From the start, you must appreciate the approach of the different participants; you must also identify an appropriate degree of communication as well as an appropriate degree of authority over that communication and who should have that authority.
When we think in terms of communication, we need to break any intervention down into phases. Of course, we military guys like to do that, to break things down into analyzable parts. The most critical phase is before the crisis erupts into violence. This phase involves organizations that know they will be committed to these interventions. I know, for example, that two of my commanders in chief (CINCs) require me to be prepared to conduct humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. Therefore I must be fully prepared to understand and to know if there is a requirement in their areas of operation.
Understanding and preparing for an intervention requires a lot of pre-crisis, day-to-day coordination and communication with NGOs, with the State Department, with the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), with all those agencies we will find alongside us in these crises. Our training must be formidable, and in that training we must establish formal relationships and understand the technical parts of the communication. Thus, when we enter a situation, we will have an initial framework to adapt to the mission and to the uniqueness of the situation. It is too late to begin this once the assignments have been made, once the crisis has begun, once we are all beginning to deploy in our various spheres.
The next phase is the planning phase. This is when we come together to decide how we are going to enter this fray and how we are going to parcel out the missions, tasks, assignments, and locations. This phase may range from very short, immediate responses to a crisis to long-term planning opportunities.
In Somalia, during the United Shield operation, we were able to look at the situation over the course of a few months before we actually had to deploy. This offered us a tremendous advantage in that we were able to plan effectively and to cooperate with all the other groups with which we were going to be involved.
I have also been involved in operations where we planned in a stovepipe manner, that is, we did the military planning very effectively, but we neglected to tie that into the humanitarian side, to the political side, and to the recovery efforts that would go on beyond our stay. We neglected to understand things like transition and how the transition would occur. These must be planned from the beginning. This is a key lesson the military has learned: Involve everyone at the planning stage and look at the long term.
The first to enter into the situation are usually the assessment teams. In the past, everyone has made assessments; therefore everyone has come back with a different view of the requirements. Disaster-assistance response teams from OFDA go in immediately. CINCs send in assessment teams; the joint task force may send in assessment teams. Relief workers engage in initial assessments. Other nations that may be involved in the various dimensions -- humanitarian, political, military -- are also making assessments.
Each of these assessments then "stovepipes" back. Judgments and decisions are made and tasks are assigned, and when we all arrive, we are in immediate conflict. Therefore, communication and coordination must take place among those who are making the initial evaluation on the ground, because those decisions and recommendations are going to drive the operation.
Obviously, once we are on the ground and are engaged, there must be coordination and communication among all the involved groups. At some point groups will leave. The military likes to go in and do its business when required and then, as the requirement for its services passes, transition out. Any transition -- whether incremental or sudden -- needs to be planned. Communication and coordination must involve those who follow, those who are going to take on the long-term recovery effort, and the communication and coordination must be undertaken from the beginning.
The military tends to treat the immediate problem with actions that sometimes have long-term adverse effects. We must understand that what we do for the emergency treatment of the patient has to be beneficial in the long-term recovery, and that isn't always the case.
This is another key lesson that the military has learned and, unfortunately in many cases, is still learning. We tend to come in very large, we tend to come in very suddenly, we tend to want to resolve the problem in the short term -- even if it is not a short-term problem -- and then we tend to do things that could be disruptive for those who have been there before and will be there long after in the recovery stage.
When operations conclude -- and this may be the greatest requirement, one we fail to do -- it is time to communicate in doing the assessments, to look back, to share the lessons learned. We wait too long to do that. Right after an operation has been completed or after the military or an agency has left, it is important to work with others to assess your performance, our performance. Continuing communication and evaluation are valuable.
Somalia was a good example of a place for learning lessons because it was such a complex operation. Each of us -- whether in the military, the humanitarian, or the political arenas -- had so much involvement that it was worth figuring out what went right and what went wrong. I am always pleased when conferences like this review that particular operation. It was the most complex we have ever dealt with -- more so than Bosnia, Haiti, or any others. It would serve us well to master the lessons of Somalia and identify which paths worked and which led to dead ends.
We establish coordination mechanisms when we go in. I think we must ensure that those mechanisms are designed to play the right roles and that they are not overburdened with too many tasks. For example, when we were in the hills of northern Iraq with the Kurds, we adapted a military agency called the Civil Military Operation Center (CMOC) to provide coordination with the UN agencies and the NGOs working in the area. The CMOC is a civil affairs operation center; it was designed as a means for our civil affairs workers in the military to help the traumatized civilian population, both during and after a conflict.
CMOC was meant to be an operations center, as its name states, that operated in coordination with our combat operations center. It fit nicely in that situation; its organization, its membership from the military side, its capabilities in terms of communications and the skills of the members all formed a nice interface with the NGOs. Although it worked fairly well, it unfortunately was seen as a panacea for resolving all communications and coordination problems.
By the time we ended up in Somalia many operations later, everything was dumped into the CMOC, with the result that the CMOC was attempting to make policy and to coordinate a humanitarian relief convoy from Point A to Point B and was attempting to determine how much security was necessary and how many trucks were needed to supply relief. But you cannot lump strategic policy concerns in with simple tactical and coordination requirements. We have learned that you need to separate these at one level, perhaps the senior leadership level in the area of concern. An executive steering group should address policy issues, with the participation of the senior military, the senior diplomats in the area, and senior representatives of the NGOs and relief agencies involved. With the policy issues being addressed by an executive steering group, the CMOC can focus on the operational functions, coordinating the tasks the military takes on, complementing and supporting NGO efforts, understanding both the NGO and the political dimensions, and ensuring that we agree on the mechanics of the ground operation.
On the civil-military operation team level, we need connection in the local sectors. A small military unit in a given sector should be in direct contact with the NGOs addressing particular problems in that area, such as medicine, shelter, and food.
In the military, we like to think in terms of three levels: the strategic or high operational level, the operational level on the ground, and the tactical level. That structure should have a parallel coordination mechanism so that we do not try to load too many things onto agencies that are not equipped to handle them.
We should remember that the mission drives relationships. There is no single role for the military in every operation. Consider the military missions and tasks in Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, and northern Iraq. Each time, the military had a different mission. Thus, a general expectation may not be fulfilled if we fail to study the missions and responsibilities.
I have also been involved in operations where the military has provided humanitarian relief. This is not always a good thing. It may be required in emergency situations, but the military often does not understand the requirements or how to handle those requirements as well as do NGOs. I can airdrop tons of meals ready-to-eat (MREs) on top of desperate refugees, and they will probably become more desperate as a result.
I have also been involved in operations where the military did not perform any humanitarian relief tasks. The military was present simply to provide security or to promote and support the relief effort that was being conducted by other agencies (governmental or nongovernmental). Each time, we must study the mission and task to decide how to set up the coordination and communications mechanisms.
This is not just a communications problem between the military and the humanitarian side. We also have a problem in communicating with one another in the military. In Somalia, twenty-six nations provided military forces; these ranged from Third World military organizations to NATO countries. They spanned a broad spectrum, creating problems for us in interoperability.
We have to make sure that we are culturally compatible, that we are politically compatible in our purposes on the ground and also compatible in terms of technology, procedures, and doctrine. We have a tremendous internal communications problem. We had almost forty-four nations participating in Somalia when the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) ended. Imagine coordinating a military operation where the membership involved forces from forty-four nations -- twenty-six was bad enough. And each of these operations brings together that kind of disparate grouping.
We must also interface with the political element, the humanitarian side, and the local officials in the region. We have to understand how to build that system as well. The worldwide connectivity made possible by today's technologies both enables -- and requires -- the ability to create and tap into a "virtual staff" to support you on the ground. In the event that we ever perform these operations again, my organization has made a connection with the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia, to provide that virtual support staff on the ground.
I want somebody who understands the culture, who can give me advice, who can help me evaluate what is happening, who can predict what sort of reaction I might get from a particular action I might take. Appreciating a different culture is very important. How do I connect to it? I don't have the built-in cultural cell on my staff that I need; where can I get one? With today's technology, I can reach someone (on my staff, at the Foreign Service Institute, or at a university) who specializes in cultural studies, who is an expert in the particular area of the world I happen to be in.
There are many other examples of creative uses of communications technology. We are going to talk about information, about information sharing, and about information management, which is of interest because we have a problem in the way we are perceived in the media.
The military has run newspapers as well as radio stations and television stations. We drop leaflets, we have loudspeaker broadcasts; at times, we become the sole provider of information. How do we coordinate all this and ensure that we live up to the responsibility that comes with providing the sole source of information in an environment?
The last point I would like to make is the value of personalities. We think in terms of technology, but the right personality is ten times more valuable than the right system and ten tons of mechanical or technological capability. Liaison and personal contact become the best means of communication -- in some cultures, they are the only real means of communication -- and we should not become so fixated on technology as an answer.
Let me summarize six points we should remember:
- We must be adaptable; we cannot be rigid or prescriptive. We should set up the communications required by the situation, by the mission dictates, and by the environment.
- The military side must be prepared to provide the means and structure for communication. We bring more resources than any other organization. We cannot expect others to provide the same kind of capability or to match it.
- We provide people to operate CMOCs and other agencies and to do some of the administrative and other support tasks because NGOs and governmental agencies may not have that kind of structure or the wherewithal to support it. The military should expect to assume these roles when it is involved.
- We must understand that we have an obligation to share information. We have run into certain problems about sharing intelligence, but we need to find ways to ensure that information is shared and that the mechanism for doing so is established. I could never in good conscience withhold information in a situation where I know about something that presents a danger or a problem, about something that may hinder or help an operation.
- We must find a means of ensuring that we understand we are all in this together and we are helping one another resolve a situation. The military has made great strides in getting to that point, in not making it more difficult, in breaking down some barriers, and in taking care of its own internal needs for security while still managing to share the information that is required.
- The military must understand that its role is to complement, support, and coordinate the operation, not to control and command it. There is no single authority on the ground when all the dimensions come together. However, that is not the way we are structured. We have to take a long-term view of the operation. What went on before we got there? What will go on after we have arrived? How do we complement that and support it?
- Finally, when the military leaves a situation, we have to be sure that what we leave behind is usable. If we extract all the military capability, if we have not provided the kind of capability that is maintainable and sustainable by those who come after us, then our presence will be more disruptive in the long run.
Randolph Kent
United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs
Summary
According to Randolph Kent, the communications problem can be traced to two issues: the communication-implementation gap and the perceptual pitfalls in the relationship between peacekeepers and the humanitarian community.
On the communication side of the communication-implementation gap, there is a good "early warning detection" system. However, there is failure on the implementation side. Policymakers generally fail to implement decisions in a timely, effective, and committed way. The perceptual pitfalls issue has to do with how little peacekeepers know about the humanitarian agencies -- not only about what they do, but also about how they operate and about their strengths and weaknesses.
Kent makes the case for beginning any discussion of a humanitarian crisis with the needs of those being assisted -- the people in conflict-affected countries. He maintains that if their needs and coping mechanisms are not taken into account, then all the military and nongovernmental organization personnel will have done is to satisfy their own institutional needs, at the expense of the people who are really in need.
Biography
From October 1994 to December 1995, Kent was UN humanitarian coordinator for Rwanda. He has also served as coordinator of the Inter-Agency Support Unit of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee since its inception n 1992.
This conference highlights the critical issue that communications does indeed play a fundamental role in the humanitarian assistance response. Based on my own experience in Africa and elsewhere, I will cover two themes and suggest solutions or recommendations.
The first theme, the communication-implementation gap issue, is very simple. Over the past two years, much attention has been paid to the whole question of early-warning systems -- a fundamental communications issue -- and far less attention has been paid to early implementation. In a sense the bottom line is that we really do know what is going on; we do have early-warning systems that work, but we fail time after time to realize that what we know needs to be implemented in a timely, effective, and committed way.
The situation we now face in Burundi is a very good example. Does anybody need more early warning? Don't we know there is a crisis looming there? But where is the early implementation? Where is the sense of cost-effectiveness? Did we forget that, with all the signals we had received about Rwanda in 1994, we should have been able to intervene in a timely fashion and to save millions of lives and billions of dollars? We had the early-warning system, but we utterly failed in terms of early implementation.
Let me suggest some basic recommendations for closing the gap between communications and implementation.
First, the implementation gap forces us to examine communications at a different level. It is vital that we learn how to communicate with political leaders who can make the decisions that are needed for us to intervene in a timely way.
Second, as an international community, we have to think more effectively about the intervention tools we have at hand. For example, in Burundi, there is a particular group of peoples who really did control the fate of the country as a whole. Many of these forty or fifty people, called the Sans Échec, have children who are going to school in developed countries. Many of these people have bank accounts outside Bujumbura. Many of these people undertake actions that violate basic human rights standards, but we tolerate it. We allow their children to take advantage of schools outside their own country. We allow these bank accounts to continue. Why? We knew what to do 18 months ago, but now, the obvious solution has perhaps bypassed us.
The second theme is that of perceptual pitfalls in the relationship between what might be called the peacekeepers and the humanitarian community.
We have a perceptual problem in the way the peacekeepers regard the nongovernmental organization (NGO) community. We have to learn to work far more effectively and closely in the field with NGOs. We must remember that we are working with professionals in the NGO community who have a valuable role to play.
We need the NGOs to follow the codes of practice that have been established through major NGO consortia, the International Federation of the Red Cross, and the International Committee of the Red Cross and to practice self-regulation. It did not help to have 150 NGOs in Rwanda in 1994. We need the NGOs to self-regulate, to follow the codes of practice, and to give us their professional expertise.
The United Nations is here to help the NGOs, and vice versa, but we cannot regulate the NGOs. Donor governments have the means of regulating the NGOs if they fail to regulate themselves. I urge donor governments to work more closely with the NGO community so that we do not have the chaos, the siege, of NGOs hitting the beaches every time there is a humanitarian crisis.
The last point I would like to make regarding perceptual pitfalls concerns our relationship with and the way we view the disaster-affected, the vulnerable, those in need. This constant reference to the "hapless victims" is a problem of perception that affects our communication. We must understand that those in need are human beings who understand how to deal with their own problems. All too often, we fail to listen to them. We must learn to listen to those in need so that we will be able to communicate more effectively.
In terms of addressing fundamental misperceptions, we have made progress (certainly from the point of view of the United Nations) in closing the gap between the peacekeepers and the humanitarian assistance personnel. The United Nations now has something called the "Framework," in which the Department of Humanitarian Affairs, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and the Department of Political Affairs all exchange information. It is difficult to get organizations to share information, but there is growing momentum to do so, and the Framework provides one way in which information is shared. It was a difficult, painful process at first, but the increasing exchange of information will affect the way we look at assessments jointly and the way we operate jointly.
One thing that struck me in Rwanda is how little the peacekeepers knew about the humanitarian agencies -- not only about what they did, but also about how they operated and about their strengths and weaknesses. There was no single manual at a senior level containing this information, and the troops certainly had no such knowledge. In Rwanda, a card was published to give some explanation, but indoctrination is essential; in-field training, with an emphasis on what the troops need to know is essential.
Another point concerning the perception issue is that UN Security Council mandates or proposals should explicitly state that the humanitarian community and the peacekeepers must work together. The humanitarian community must have access to the same assessed contributions as the peacekeepers. That access would emphasize that the peacekeepers are there to support the humanitarian function and not the other way around.
The multilateral agencies, the UN specialized agencies, are not merely protecting turf but are trying to ensure continuing resources. The different mandates of each of these agencies creates a certain protectiveness within each. We must look far more carefully at ways to integrate our operations.
Finally, I have a personal and a far more subjective and emotional plea: When we talk about humanitarian crises, let us begin with the needs of those whom we are trying to help -- the people in conflict-affected countries. We must learn to listen to and understand these people. Ultimately, these people are why we are there. If we fail to listen to them, if we fail to understand their coping mechanisms, all we will do is satisfy our own communications needs and our own institutional needs at the expense of the people who are really in need.
Part II
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See the complete list of Institute reports. The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Institute of Peace, which does not advocate specific policies.
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