Everybody’s Business

The War in Sudan as a Threat to International Peace and Security

This article was published by Verfassungsblog on 21 December 2023.

War has devastated Sudan since it first broke out on 15 April 2023. What started as a power play between the country’s two most powerful armies, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has since metastasized into a major civil war. International actors have not paid this war the high-level attention it requires and deserves. On 1 December, the UN Security Council decided to terminate the mandate of the UN International Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), a political mission originally tasked with supporting Sudan’s transition to democracy. While the Council acted on a short-term request by the Sudanese authorities (controlled by SAF), it has not been able to agree on a substantive resolution since the war started. Driven by divisions, it has abdicated its responsibility under the UN Charter.

In this blog post, I explain why international actors need to pay more attention to what is happening in the strategically located country at the crossroads between the Red Sea and the Sahel, between the Arab and African worlds. The war threatens Sudan’s integrity as a state, displaces millions and draws in neighbouring and other regional countries, all in a region already in turmoil because of coups, insurgencies and violent extremism.

A War within the Security Sector

The conflict originates in a competition between the regular armed forces, the SAF, and the paramilitary force, RSF, for control over the security sector and ultimately the state as a whole. Having dislodged long-term ruler Omer al-Bashir from power in the face of broad public protests in April 2019, SAF and RSF agreed to share power with civilian parties a few months later. In October 2021, they felt the civilians were overreaching, arrested the civilian prime minister and declared a state of emergency. Since then, they have not been able to agree on forming a new government, trying instead to seize power yet again, this time from each other. This has led to the current hostilities.

While the conflict parties increasingly appeal to ethnic and racial identities to mobilize support, many Sudanese do not consider themselves truly represented by either armed force. The SAF, whose leadership comes from the riverine region of Central and Northern Sudan, are supported by elements of the former Islamist government as well as some armed groups. SAF generals look down on the RSF, whose commanders they consider uneducated. The RSF was created out of informal Arab militias, called “Janjaweed”, who embraced an ideology of Arab Supremacy already during the genocidal violence against non-Arab groups such as the Masalit and Zaghawa in Darfur in the West of Sudan twenty years ago. Since then, the RSF have recruited widely among Sudan’s peripheral communities, drawing on citizens of other Sahelian states (such as Chad) and co-opting units from SAF and other armed groups.

The Destruction of a Major African Capital

The war has wreaked havoc on Khartoum and the adjoining cities of Omdurman and Bahri. The RSF have captured most of the tri-state capital area, as they continue to engage in fierce artillery battles with the SAF. RSF troops occupy residential areas and loot vehicles and other valuables on a large scale. Around 37% of Khartoum state’s pre-war population of 9.4 million have left their homes. This will be the bulk of the country’s political and economic elite, its upper and middle class and others with means to make the journey. With records of their properties being deliberately destroyed, they will struggle to return. This is by design: Many RSF fighters, coming from the country’s poor peripheries, feel that the riverine elite that has dominated Sudan for decades has marginalized and instrumentalized them. Thus, while successive Sudanese governments have equipped and supported some Nomad communities, for example, to fight insurgencies for them, Nomad children go to primary school far less often than their peers from displaced communities. For those RSF fighters sensing a lack of respect, this is payback time. The result: a major African capital is falling apart in an effort to reshape the country. In time, this could lead to the split of Sudan into several territories, as the SAF-controlled ministries have already moved their administration to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.

The World’s Largest IDP Crisis

Sudan now also presents the world’s largest internal displacement crisis. Since the war started, out of a total population of around 49 million, 5.4 million people have been internally displaced, while more than 1.4 million have crossed into other countries (mainly Chad, Egypt and South Sudan). When fighting broke out, Sudan already had around 3.7 million IDPs, mainly in Darfur, and 800,000 Sudanese were already refugees in third countries. Sudan was also hosting more than a million refugees from other countries such as South Sudan. Many of the latter have now sought to return home (or make their way to third countries). All told, there are likely more than ten million Sudanese that have left their homes both before and after the war started. With every new offensive, there are going to be more people fleeing from one place to the next.

The Commission of International Crimes

What is more, the conflict parties are likely committing international crimes. SAF engages in indiscriminate bombing, killing civilians in the process. RSF fighters and allied Arab militias loot properties, engage in sexual and gender-based violence and kill members of non-Arab groups, in particular Masalit. 68 villages in the greater Darfur area showed signs of fire damage, some were burnt down almost completely.

Many of these atrocities have taken place in West Darfur, where most Masalit used to live. Now around half a million have fled over the border to Chad. A detailed Reuters investigation based on interviews with survivors and open-source information found that the SAF officers had deserted the base in Ardamata in early November when they could no longer defend it. The remaining SAF rank and file and members of an allied Masalit armed group negotiated a surrender with the dominant RSF troops and gave up their weapons in exchange for promises to be spared. Instead, the RSF ordered the men out of the houses and started shooting them, targeting mainly the Masalit. Perhaps 1300 people were killed within two or three days.

Several international actors have classified these and other acts by the belligerents as international crimes, i.e. as erga omnes violations of international law. This means that all states have an obligation to prevent them. On 6 December, the US State Department issued an “atrocity determination”, where it formally found that the SAF and the RSF had committed war crimes and the RSF had committed also crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing as laid out above. Previously, Alice Wairimi Nderitu, the UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, observed after a visit to refugee camps in Chad that many risk factors of genocide were in place. “In Darfur, innocent civilians are being targeted on the basis of race,” she said earlier.

Adding Fuel to Fire

Regional actors further fuel the conflict by delivering arms or allowing those deliveries to take place via their respective territories. The UAE supports the RSF with weapons and vehicles through Chad. Libya (under Haftar), Kenya, Uganda, the Central African Republic and more recently Ethiopia also seem to be involved in facilitating such shipments, as have been Russian mercenaries in Libya and CAR. In contrast, Egypt supports the SAF with weapons and other military support, including guns for tens of thousands of newly recruited SAF soldiers as well as Turkish Bayraktar drones. There have also been reports about Ukrainian drones and special forces supporting SAF, although the sourcing was relatively thin.

Insofar as they enter Darfur, many of those arms deliveries are a violation of the UN Security Council arms embargo on Darfur originally imposed in 2005. Even though it was never very effective as it only applied to one region within a larger country, it still provides ground for in-depth investigations by the UN Panel of Experts whose next report is due in early 2024.

The Threat of Spill Over

The war in Sudan is likely to spill over to neighbouring countries in various ways. Currently, the most-watched case is Chad. President Deby plays a risky balancing game by allowing the UAE to use Chadian territory for arms supplies to the RSF. The RSF have incorporated a significant number of Chadian Arabs and are increasingly getting into conflict with the Zaghawa in Darfur, the same ethnic group of Deby’s governmental elite. Unrest within the Chadian elite may lead to a military coup, or returning Chadian Arab fighters may strengthen armed opposition groups and ignite a civil war.

South Sudan’s transitional government may also feel the heat from the war in Sudan. Angelina Teny, South Sudan’s interior minister, confirmed that South Sudanese have joined both SAF and RSF. These might later return to their home country with their military equipment and join any number of armed opposition groups. Furthermore, small arms are flooding informal markets in Sudan at cheap prices.

Moreover, the hostilities threaten to disrupt the export of oil from the South to markets via the pipelines to Port Sudan. This might bankrupt South Sudan’s kleptocratic government at a time this money is needed to smooth over differences resulting from planned but likely flawed elections in December 2024.

Flawed Mediation Efforts

Mediation efforts by international and regional actors have not succeeded in halting the violence so far. Their response has been lacklustre, with no sustained high-level commitment. Mediators also continue to follow a deeply flawed approach. They focus excessively on SAF and RSF as well as their respective leaders, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, SAF’s commander-in-chief, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, called Hemedti, RSF’s commander.

For example, on 9 December, an extraordinary summit of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the regional organisation in the Horn of Africa, heard pledges from both Burhan and Hemedti for a personal one-on-one meeting as well as for an “unconditional ceasefire.” This ignores that neither of them appears capable of controlling the war on their own anymore, given the significant role of elements of the former regime, ethnic militias as well as other armed groups, some of which have increased the territory under their control in the Nuba mountains and in Central Darfur. Moreover, IGAD and AU member states lack leverage in holding the belligerents accountable. Within a week after these pledges, the SAF bombed Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, and the RSF started a major offensive in Al Jazeera state in central Sudan, a major humanitarian hub and breadbasket of the country. The RSF captured the state capital Wad Madani within four days.

What is urgently needed is a multi-stakeholder dialogue, something that a joint AU and IGAD team has been preparing for months. However, there are disagreements regarding the participation of the conflict parties as well as representatives of the former Bashir regime, which some civilian parties reject out of hand. It remains to be seen whether the Coordination of Civil Democratic Forces or “Taqaddum”, a new civilian coalition whose preparatory committee was founded in Addis Abba in October, can prove more effective. They are in touch with the conflict parties based on their own roadmap.

A Threat to International Peace and Security

The war in Sudan poses a threat to international peace and security, requiring European actors including Germany to engage more forcefully. Encouraging regional actors to convene a credible multi-stakeholder and potentially sequenced dialogue is one way. States such as the UAE and Egypt that are fuelling the war with arms deliveries should also be held accountable, at least by calling them out. The EU should also start adding names to the sanctions regime on Sudan that it created in October and ensure that companies active in its common market do not interact with the RSF, SAF and their respective economic entities.

Mobilising diplomatic and political capital to stop the war in Sudan is not just the right thing to do, it should be everybody’s business given the high stakes involved.

Die Folgen der Straflosigkeit im Sudan

Im Schatten des Kriegs zwischen den Sicherheitskräften im Sudan greifen die »Rapid Support Forces« (RSF) und verbündete Milizen immer wieder gezielt einzelne ethnische Gruppen an. Nun droht der Konflikt sich auf den Tschad auszuweiten.

Dieser Text erschien am 17.November 2023 bei Zenith Online.

In den vergangenen Wochen konnten die »Rapid Support Forces« (RSF) einige militärische Erfolge im Krieg gegen die Sudanesische Armee (SAF) erzielen. Sie eroberten Kasernen in drei Landeshauptstädten im westlichen Darfur: Nyala (Süd-Darfur), Zalingei (Zentral-Darfur) und El-Geneina (West-Darfur) sowie ein Ölfeld in West-Kordofan. Die paramilitärischen RSF kontrollieren mittlerweile weite Gebiete des Landes westlich des Nils sowie einen großen Teil von Khartum. Mehr als sieben Monate nach Beginn des Kriegs um die Vorherrschaft im Sicherheitssektor ist kein baldiges Ende in Sicht.

Die Gewalt beschränkt sich aber nicht auf Auseinandersetzungen zwischen den Hauptkonfliktparteien RSF und SAF. Beide Seiten nehmen keine Rücksicht auf die Zivilbevölkerung. Die RSF plündern und besetzen private Wohnhäuser, während die SAF mit wenig präziser Artillerie und Luftschlägen auf RSF-Positionen zivile Opfer in Kauf nehmen.

Insbesondere gegen die RSF werden jedoch weit schwerwiegendere Vorwürfe laut: Im August schlugen UN-Experten, die vom UN-Menschenrechtsrat eingesetzt wurden, Alarm, dass die RSF sexuelle Gewalt einsetzten, um die Zivilbevölkerung »zu bestrafen und zu terrorisieren«. Laut Zeugenaussagen entführen RSF-Angehörige Frauen und halten sie unter »Sklaverei-ähnlichen Bedingungen«.

Politische Führer der Masalit sowie Anwälte und Aktivisten wurden gezielt ermordet

Die RSF und verbündete arabische Milizen gehen teilweise gezielt gegen Angehörige einiger ethnischer Gruppen vor. Dies betrifft insbesondere die Masalit, eine nicht-arabische Gruppe, die hauptsächlich in West-Darfur beheimatet ist. Seit dem Beginn des Kriegs sind mehrere Vorfälle bekannt geworden, in denen RSF und verbündete arabische Milizen (die nicht immer klar voneinander zu unterscheiden sind) für Massentötungen von Masalit verantwortlich gemacht werden. Ein erster Höhepunkt dieser Art von massenhafter Gewalt gegen die Masalit war zwischen Ende April und Juni, der zweite Anfang November.

Augenzeugen sprachen davon, dass Menschen in El-Geneina aufgrund ihrer Hautfarbe angegriffen wurden. Männer im wehrfähigen Alter wurden getötet, Frauen vergewaltigt, zivile Einrichtungen geplündert. Politische Führer der Masalit sowie Anwälte und Aktivisten wurden gezielt ermordet. Als Khamis Abdullah Abkar, der Gouverneur von West-Darfur und Führer der »Sudanese Alliance«, am 14. Juni in einem Interview davon sprach, dass die RSF für die massenhafte Gewalt der letzten Wochen verantwortlich sei, während die SAF tatenlos in ihrer Kaserne sitze, wurde er kurz darauf umgebracht. Eine unabhängige Konfliktbeobachtungsplattform, die vom US-Außenministerium unterstützt wird, stufte diese Tat als extralegale Tötung ein.

Angaben über die genauen Opferzahlen sind schwierig wegen des begrenzten Zugangs unabhängiger Akteure. Menschen, die mit den Vereinten Nationen kurz nach ihrer Ankunft in Tschad sprachen, berichteten jedoch übereinstimmend von verwesenden Leichen in den Straßen und am Wegesrand. Allein auf einem Friedhof in El-Geinena sollen mehr als 1.000 Tote bis Mitte Juni begraben worden sein. Die Analyse von Satellitenbildern zeigt, dass zwischen April und Mitte Oktober 68 Orte in der Region Darfur Feuerschäden aufweisen. Einige, die vor allem von nicht-arabischen Minderheiten bewohnt wurden, wurden fast vollständig niedergebrannt.

Ardamata wäre mit bis zu 1.300 Toten das größte Einzelmassaker seit Beginn des Kriegs im April

Hundertausende entflohen dieser Gewalt, mittlerweile über eine halbe Million über die nahe Grenze nach Tschad. Einige Masalit wagten nicht die gefährliche Reise über die Grenze, sondern flohen in die SAF-Basis in Adarmata, einem Vorort von El-Geneina. Als die RSF die Kaserne der SAF dort schließlich am 4. November 2023 einnahmen, verübten sie innerhalb weniger Tage ein erneutes Massaker an den Masalit. Das Un-Flüchtlingshilfswerk UNHCR sprach von mehr als 800 Opfern, eine lokale NGO von 1.300 Menschen, deren Namen sie erfasst habe. Ardamata wäre damit das größte Einzelmassaker seit Beginn des Kriegs im April.

Diese identitätsbasierte Gewalt steht einerseits in einem engen Zusammenhang zum Krieg zwischen RSF und SAF, andererseits hat sie deutlich längere und tiefere Wurzeln. Beide Episoden massenhafter Gewalt ereigneten sich im Zusammenhang mit Kämpfen zwischen RSF und SAF in West-Darfur. Kämpfer der »Sudanese Alliance«, einer bewaffneten Gruppe, die Teil des Juba-Friedensabkommens (JPA) von 2020 ist, verstärkten nach der gezielten Gewalt gegen die Masalit im Frühjahr die Verteidigung der Kaserne, in die sich auch viele Zivilisten geflüchtet hatten.

Die UN wollen Vorwürfen nachgehen, nachdem es auch Angriffe von Masalit-Milizen auf arabische Personen in den letzten Wochen in Ardamata gegeben habe. Dies scheint aber wenig an der Überlegenheit der RSF und arabischen Milizen sowie an der Einseitigkeit der Gewalt gegen die Masalit zu ändern, wie es sie in West-Darfur seit 2019 episodenhaft mehrfach gegeben hat.

Die Gräueltaten der RSF und der mit ihnen verbündeten arabischen Milizen in Darfur verkomplizieren die Vermittlungsbemühungen. Mittlerweile gibt es zwar eindeutige Äußerungen internationaler Akteure, doch diesen Worten Nachdruck zu verleihen, erweist sich als schwieriger: »Was dort geschieht, grenzt an das pure Böse« (Clementine Nkweta-Salami, Stellvertretende Leiterin der UN-Mission in Sudan), » alle Kennzeichen ethnischer Säuberung« (Andrew Mitchell, britischer Staatssekretär für Afrika), »Die internationale Gemeinschaft kann nicht die Augen vor den Geschehnissen in Darfur verschließen und einen weiteren Völkermord in dieser Region zulassen.« (Josep Borell, Hoher Repräsentant der EU).

Der Internationale Strafgerichtshof sieht die derzeitigen Vorfälle als Teil seines 2005 für Darfur erteilten Mandats

Im Oktober setzte der UN-Menschenrechtsrat eine internationale Untersuchungsmission ein, die Beweise für Menschenrechtsverletzungen sammeln soll, die in zukünftigen Gerichtsprozessen genutzt werden könnten. Der Internationale Strafgerichtshof gab im Juli bekannt, dass er die derzeitigen Vorfälle als Teil seines 2005 für Darfur erteilten Mandats sieht. Dass diese Mechanismen abschreckend auf die RSF wirken könnten, ist bisher nicht abzusehen.

Internationale Vermittlungsbemühungen für den Krieg in Sudan haben bisher kein separates Augenmerk auf die besondere Art der Gewalt in Darfur gelegt. Die RSF scheinen sich ohnehin um ihre Versprechen wenig zu scheren. Währen ihre Delegierten in Dschidda sich zur Verbesserung des humanitären Zugangs bekannten, begingen die RSF-Milizen das Massaker von Ardamata. Abdelrahim Dagalo, der Stellvertretende Kommandeur der RSF, der bei den jüngsten militärischen Erfolgen in Darfur zugegen war, sprach kurz danach davon, die »Kriminellen«, die das Land für dreißig Jahre regiert hätten, »endgültig zu eliminieren«.

Derweil kündigt sich eine weitere Eskalation der Gewalt im Kampf um El-Fasher an, die Hauptstadt Nord-Darfurs und letzte Hochburg der SAF in der Region. Am 16. November verkündeten bewaffnete Gruppen aus Darfur, die um El-Fasher Tausende Kämpfer kontrollieren, dass sie ihre bisherige Neutralität aufgeben und auf der Seite der SAF in den Krieg einsteigen wollten. El-Fasher hat über eine Million Einwohner, davon eine halbe Million Binnenvertriebene. Die RSF könnten den Einstieg der bewaffneten Gruppen als Grund nehmen, auch gegen andere nicht-arabische Bevölkerungsgruppen wie die Zaghawa und Fur gezielt vorzugehen, wie bereits vor zwanzig Jahren.

Dies könnte nicht zuletzt die Regierung von Tschad vor weitere Herausforderungen stellen, da ihre Regierungselite aus Zaghawa besteht, aber gleichzeitig den Vereinigten Arabischen Emiraten erlaubt, über Amdjarass im Nordosten Tschads Waffen an die RSF zu liefern. Eine weitere regionale Eskalation des Kriegs in Sudan wird damit wahrscheinlicher.

Independent inquiry fails to answer important questions on the UN’s role in Myanmar

An independent inquiry into the UN system’s response to the mass violence against the Rohingya population in Myanmar found “systemic and structural failures”, echoing an earlier finding of a similar investigation on Sri Lanka. At the same time, the inquiry conducted by former Guatemalan diplomat Gert Rosenthal leaves important questions unexplored. Crucially, Rosenthal did not explore allegations that the UN Country Team in Myanmar was complicit in the regime’s discrimination against the Rohingya population. For the UN to learn from the past, it needs to have a more detailed record of the decisions taken.

This text first appeared on medium.com on 15 September 2019.

Learning lessons from past mistakes is important. That is true both on an individual level as well at the level of the United Nations. Rwanda, Srebrenica, Sri Lanka, Haiti, South Sudan: there have been many independent inquiries into the UN’s actions in a situation where serious human rights violations took place. They have spurred influential, albeit imperfect reform processes of the organization’s institutional architecture, processes and policies. Unfortunately, the latest such report, into the UN system’s response to the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar between 2010 and 2018, is too shallow and generic to allow for substantial learning to take place how the UN system could have used potential leverage to prevent the atrocities. It also fails to investigate allegations of the UN’s complicity in the systemic discrimination of the Rohingya population that are already part of the public record.

The Rohingya people have suffered from systemic discrimination by the Myanmar government for decades. In a Buddhist-dominated country, the government and many Buddhist citizens regard the Rohingya as foreign, rejecting even their name and calling them “Bengali”, i.e. belonging to neighboring Bangladesh. The Rohingya have lacked citizenship and associated rights since the 1982 nationality law. Amid the democratic reform process in Myanmar since 2012, discrimination against the Rohingya has increased, including restrictions on their freedom of movement. In reaction to an attack on police stations by a Rohingya armed group in August 2017, the Myanmar security forces engaged in indiscriminate violence against the civilian population, killing thousands and driving around 700,000 people across the border into Bangladesh. Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein described these attacks as “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. A fact-finding mission recommended that senior military commanders should be investigated for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It found six indicators of “genocidal intent”, including in its most recent report evidence of sexual violence by the security forces, with hundreds of women and girls gang-raped.

Existing allegations: timidity or even complicity?

For several years, there have been serious allegations of misconduct by the UN Country Team based in Myanmar and senior UN officials elsewhere, including through leaked internal reports, statements by former employees, and investigative reporting. These allegations are complex, but essentially fall into either of two main points. The first concerns a lack of coherence both within the UN presence in Myanmar and among the UN leadership in New York. Even though the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his deputy Jan Eliasson had spearheaded a reform to improve the UN system’s processes and internal mechanisms in the wake of the Sri Lanka inquiry, these reforms were not effective in Myanmar. Specifically, public reports charged that the Resident Coordinator, the highest UN official in the country, excluded critical voices from meetings and suppressed a report warning of a deterioration of the situation in early 2017. Mirroring differences between public advocacy and quiet dialogue at the country level, senior UN officials disagreed on the organization’s overall approach, with Eliasson and al-Hussein on one side, and the head of the UN Development Programme, Helen Clark, and Vijay Nambiar, special advisor for Myanmar, on the other side. Limited public or private criticism by the UN after an earlier massacre, “proved to the Myanmar government that it could manipulate the U.N.’s self-inflicted paralysis in Rakhine”, a UN official told the journalist Column Lynch. In other words, the activists allege that contradictory messages from different parts of the UN system and relative muteness on major human rights issues signaled to Myanmar’s security forces that it could get away with them.

The second point that those reports make goes even further. They allege that the UN Country Team was complicit in the discriminatory policies of the Myanmar government towards the Rohingya people. The UN and its international partners sustained displaced Rohingyas in internment camps, which the government did not allow them to leave, and collaborated with the government in the so-called Rakhine Action Plan. The plan, supposedly aimed at improving the humanitarian situation, included the registration of Rohingya as “Bengalis”, thus erasing their identity. Liam Mahony, an international consultant, spoke with representatives of the humanitarian community in Myanmar and observed in a critical report in 2015: “The State benefits not only from having the cost of minimally sustaining the population carried by others, it also gets a legitimacy benefit from having all these international organizations present (and better yet, present and quiet.)”

Explaining “systemic failure”

In his report, Gert Rosenthal largely confirms the first allegation, and ignores the second one. He identifies the tension between quiet diplomacy and public advocacy as the core challenge for the UN in dealing with the situation in Rakhine state, and “systemic and structural failures” in resolving them. In a chapter of just six pages, Rosenthal describes five reasons for these failures: lack of support from member states; the absence of a common strategy by the UN leadership; too many points of coordination; a dysfunctional country team led by a Resident Coordinator out of her depth but unable to receive more expert support from headquarters because of government opposition; and competing lines of reporting from the field, muddling information and analysis available in New York. Because the problems were systemic, no single entity or individual should be singled out, he concludes, pointing to the “shared responsibility on the part of all parties involved”.

The report’s observations are pertinent, and in mentioning the lack of executive decision-making by the Secretary-General go beyond the findings of the Sri Lanka inquiry that was published in 2012. As a new generation of UN Country Teams has started to deploy since the start of the year, extracting lessons for their engagement would be important. Rosenthal acknowledges that pushing for change in the government of Myanmar’s behavior towards the Rohingya while simultaneously working with it on humanitarian and development issues as well as supporting the democratic transition process was “a difficult balancing act”.

Diplomacy on human rights issues often involves such balancing acts for the UN. The restrictions present in Myanmar – a repressive government, divided member states, and lack of dedicated UN capacities on political and human rights issues – were not unheard of. The Resident Coordinator was in a very difficult position to engage in advocacy, as Mahony had already concluded in 2015: humanitarian organizations were “expecting UNHCR and the Resident Coordinator to do it all for them.” Yet it is difficult to conclude from Rosenthal’s synoptic account which kind of advocacy and at what points in time could have been successful in dissuading the security forces from their attacks.

Lack of detail, counterfactuals and potential leverage

A detailed narrative investigating incidents where the UN was faced with a concrete incident and needed to make a choice between advocacy and diplomacy would have been helpful. Which information did which UN entity have, how was it handled within the system, and who used it in which form in any engagement with the government? In which ways did the actions of the government, member states and the UN entities interact to inform decision-making in the UN Country Team and at UN headquarters? For example, the journalist and Myanmar expert Francis Wade writes about the way in which an incident in the village of Du Chee Yar Tan had instilled greater caution in the UN’s advocacy. Based on initial reports of a massacre, the UN had raised the issue with the government authorities, only to be rebuked and find out later from further sources that the alleged incident was apparently not as serious as initially assumed.

Closer attention to such incidents would have been important. But Rosenthal had very limited capacity, having to work on its own without support staff or colleagues. He did not travel to Myanmar. Investigating inflection points would have helped to persuade the reader of his conclusions. It would have also allowed to point out more counterfactual decisions, or the consequences of the choices that were made for the calculus of the security forces and for how events unfolded on the ground. The only benchmark that Rosenthal mentions is an observer mission in Rakhine state that could have monitored the actions of armed groups and the military. Such a mission could have investigated incidents such as the attacks on police stations in 2016 and 2017 that provided the excuse for the security services’ “clearance operations”. But, as he himself acknowledges, such a mission was impossible without the agreement of the government.

Lastly, Rosenthal hardly enquires into the potential leverage of the UN system, or any other actor to change the government’s behavior. He briefly mentions China, India, Indonesia and ASEAN as “privileged” partners of the UN, but does not discuss any specific efforts UN officials made to convince them to put pressure on the government, including for the failed upgrade of the UN presence in the country. Nor does he inquire whether the US gave in too quickly to Chinese opposition to dealing with Myanmar in the UN Security Council earlier on. Rosenthal observes that even when Guterres wrote a stern letter to the Security Council in early September 2017 after the start of the ethnic cleansing campaign, it did not lead the council “to respond in either a forceful or a timely manner.”

In contrast, Mahony’s 2015 assessment talks of the “uniquely privileged position” of the UN and member states in relation to a government that desperately sought international legitimacy for its democratic reform process and the “huge financial rewards that this new leadership brings”. It would have been essential to learn if UN actors felt the same and in what ways they used such leverage.

Why accountability matters

The shortcomings of such an internal review matter. Not only does the UN owe greater accountability to the Rohingya victims of the systemic discrimination, forced displacement, and indiscriminate killings, but also to its own staff, and to the wider public. The Secretary General’s Office is currently leading a follow-up process to the Rosenthal report. Its first task will need to be to expand on Rosenthal’s very short recommendations.

Even though Rosenthal does not say so explicitly, some commentators have drawn the conclusion that his report “assigns collective responsibility for the atrocities committed during the 2017 Rohingya crisis to both the UN civil service and UN member states.“ That is misleading – there is nothing in the report to suggest how a more coherent UN system supported by member states could have prevented the atrocities. Maybe more pressure could have emboldened the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi to try and stand up to the military, or earlier and more widespread targeted sanctions could have influenced the military leadership. Without a more thorough analysis of international engagement, we can only guess.

In the meantime, the UN’s reputation further deteriorates, potentially undermining its work elsewhere as well as the reform of the country team system. No official, diplomat, or government representative has been held accountable for a responsibility that is shared collectively. More than one million Rohingya refugees continue to live in horrid conditions in Bangladeshi refugee camps.

A Question of Leadership: Lessons from the UN’s Actions in Myanmar

The UN’s inquiry into its own actions in Myanmar since 2012 draws significant parallels with a similar exercise that focused on the UN’s role during the end of the war in Sri Lanka. Once again, the UN found itself in a situation where a government was committing atrocities, but the UN showed an incoherent, ineffective response. Without clear leadership adjudicating differences among key stakeholders in the UN system, the principled engagement to which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had committed himself remained elusive.

This text first appeared on Strife Blog hosted at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.

Engaging with severe human rights violations requires courage and coherence, setting clear principles and the readiness to stand by them if they are under pressure. An independent inquiry on the UN’s action during the Rakhine crisis in Myanmar, which came out in June, observed that the international organisation showed a “systemic failure” in dealing with the state’s repression of the Rohingya people between 2010 and 2018. Choosing his words carefully, its author, the former Guatemalan foreign minister Gert Rosenthal, echoed a similar exercise on the UN’s behaviour during the end of the war in Sri Lanka in 2008/09. Importantly, the UN system’s shortcomings were not a simple matter of failing to speak out, but of incoherence across the system, exacerbated by the lack of executive decision-making in Myanmar and at headquarters level. The lack of leadership by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, despite his strong rhetorical commitment to human rights and atrocity prevention, deserves further attention.

From the UN’s perspective, the situation in Sri Lanka and Myanmar showed uncanny parallels, despite all objective differences. In Sri Lanka, the armed forces pursued a relentless final assault on the Tamil Tigers’ last hold-outs in Sri Lanka in 2008-2009. In Myanmar, the security forces attacked Rohingya civilians repeatedly, culminating in full-scale ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya population in 2017. In both countries, governments were the major perpetrators of violence, the presence of armed groups notwithstanding. Both governments were opposed to a strong human rights presence by the UN, and frustrated efforts by the UN Secretariat to increase its relevant capacity.

Myanmar and Sri Lanka, though both at the time host to significant armed violence, had successfully objected to any political or peacekeeping presence. The Resident Coordinators (RC), the head of the UN Country Team, in both countries had been chosen at a time of relative peace and with a strong development focus, not a profile in international humanitarian and human rights law. There were even some personal overlaps: Vijay Nambiar, the special advisor on Myanmar between 2012 and 2016, had been one of the most important UN officials during the Sri Lanka crisis, as Ban’s chef de cabinet. Lastly, there were strong geopolitical divisions that manifested themselves in a reluctance of the UN Security Council to discuss the situation as an official agenda item. In short, they were among the most difficult situations for the UN to work in.

The central challenge, as identified by Rosenthal, is a familiar and highly pertinent one: “how the United Nations can maintain some type of constructive engagement with individual member states where human rights abuses are systematically taking place, while at the same time pressing for those states to uphold their international commitments.” In other words, the UN needs to find an adequate mix of “quiet diplomacy” and “outspoken advocacy”, approaches that are associated with different parts of the UN system. For such a mix, the UN needs an inclusive organisational structure to produce a coherent policy, communicated across the system, owned by the leadership, and based on current, on-the-ground information and analysis.

The failure in Myanmar, according to Rosenthal, was that none of those prerequisites were present. Both at country and at HQ level, there were stark differences of opinion regarding the most adequate modus operandi. These manifested themselves in an increasingly polarised working environment, as a function of the high stakes involved in the crisis in Rakhine state. Both sides of the argument thought that the other approach was not only wrong-headed, but potentially dangerous and counterproductive to de-escalate the violence and reduce discrimination. The emotionally charged atmosphere explains the reports about critical individuals being excluded from key meetings by Renata Lok Dessalien. The UN also had difficulty accessing the most volatile areas of Rakhine state and providing independent monitoring after alleged incidents.

Perhaps most importantly, there was a lack of strategic leadership, not just at the country level, but also at the highest level of the UN system. Differences between Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, who pressed for advocacy, and Special Envoy Vijay Nambiar and UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, who stressed quiet diplomacy and development efforts, respectively, were never resolved by Secretary-General Ban. Rosenthal writes, “even at the highest level of the Organization there was no common strategy.”

These shortcomings are particularly salient because Ban and Eliasson had vowed to turn a page after the damning findings of the Sri Lanka inquiry. They launched the “Human Rights up Front” initiative in late 2013 with the aim to improve coordination, information management, engagement with member states, and the UN’s organisational culture. One of the new mechanisms established as part of the initiative was the so-called Senior Action Group (SAG). The SAG brought together the system’s most important parts at the top leadership level, including the UNDP Administrator, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Emergency Relief Coordinator, and other high-level officials. It was chaired by Deputy Secretary General Eliasson.

In the SAG’s discussion of the crisis in Rakhine state, Helen Clark, then UNDP administrator, protected UNDP and her RC, insisting that investing in development would also benefit the Rohingya, which should not be jeopardised by an overly focus on human rights advocacy. Allegations of specific incidents required more investigation, she often insisted. According to a UN official familiar with these discussions that I interviewed, “any time there was a contentious issue, a dilemma between quiet diplomacy, public diplomacy and so on, the differences were simply discussed, and no executive decision was taken.”

While the UNDP administrator is appointed by the Secretary General, he or she also reports to the UNDP Executive Board. At the time, Clark had the final say on appointing or replacing RCs. The UN official that I interviewed described her behaviour as “territorial.” In any case, Ban could have insisted on a common position on the Rakhine crisis, not the least since Helen Clark had officially signed up to Human Rights up Front. Eliasson, who knew the destitute situation of the Rohingya from his time as Emergency Relief Coordinator in the early 1990s, had pressed for the replacement of the RC as early as 2015. Still, Ban did not overrule Clark nor did he “arbitrate a common stance between these two competing perspectives,” as Rosenthal writes.

The lack of leadership was highly problematic: the whole purpose of such high-level meetings as the SAG was to deal with questions that UN officials at the country level had not been able to agree on, and to create a common analysis and joint ownership of decisions. The different perspectives are ingrained in the distinct mandates and ways of working of the parts of the UN system; it falls to the collective leadership of the UN system to resolve tensions arising from the operational work. “Systemic failure” sounds like the reasons for incoherence lie mainly in structural differences. While these are important, ultimately responsibility for ensuring that the whole UN system works falls to its leadership, including the Secretary General and member states.

Clearly, the UN system is subject to the same cleavages and divisions that characterise the international system as a whole. As Renata Lok Dessalien herself points out in a paper written after her assignment in Myanmar, conceptual differences regarding the meaning and interpretation of basic principles are ingrained in the UN Charter, for example between the promotion of human rights and the respect for national sovereignty. No internal UN reform such as Human Rights up Front can do away with those tensions, or abolish geopolitical differences. What it can do, and it has done with some mixed success, is change the way the organisation works, improving communication, analysis and decision-making procedures.

If the UN can hope to influence events in situations like those in Rakhine state in Myanmar at all, a coherent and coordinated policy across the whole system is a prerequisite. Otherwise both governments and critical member states are always able to play different parts of the system against each other, muting their respective effectiveness.

Luckily and despite significant opposition from key member states, the UN has started to improve its coherence in dealing with the crisis in Myanmar. Shortly after he came into office, Secretary General António Guterres appointed a permanent monitoring group within the UN, and prioritised strategic dialogue with Myanmar’s government, including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. He also championed a reform of the RC system. When Myanmar’s armed forces began their military offensive that included ethnic cleansing in Rakhine state in August 2017, Guterres resorted to public diplomacy. In a rare step, he wrote to the UN Security Council, urging its members to take action. Also in 2017, Renata Lok Dessalien finished her position as RC in Myanmar. Her successor, the Norwegian Knut Ostby, emphasized communication and principled engagement, for example threatening to reduce all but essential aid to IDP camps in Rakhine state if the government did not improve the Rohingyas’ freedom of movement. At the same time, renewed fighting between the ethnic Rakhine Arakan armed group and the government as well as continued denial of citizenship have left around a million Rohingya refugees stranded in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

UN diplomacy consists of difficult balancing acts, in particular in dealing with unrepentant governments committing atrocities against their own population. Faced with an increasing emphasis of state sovereignty, including by the United States, Guterres has, at times, appeared to waver on human rights. If his prevention agenda is to succeed, he needs to mobilise all pillars of the UN to support each other, not just in Myanmar.

Ein Besuch in Auschwitz

Rampe und Tor vom Lager Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Ein dunkles Augenpaar von einer alten Schwarzweißaufnahme blickt mich direkt an. Es ist Teil des Aufklebers, den jeder Besucher und jede Besucherin der Gedenkstätte von Auschwitz trägt. Mein Aufkleber ist hellblau. Oben steht groß „Deutsch“ drauf. Ich klebe ihn mir aufs Hemd an die Brust, gehe durch die Sicherheitsschranke und stehe in einem weiten Hof mit vielen anderen Menschen. Hinter einem Baum am anderen Ende des Hofs sehe ich bereits den Eingang mit den berüchtigten Worten: Arbeit macht frei.

Nacheinander kommen Menschen mit Namensschildern, halten Schilder hoch und sammeln so ihre jeweilige Gruppe um sich. „Wo kommen Sie her?“ fragt die Führerin, „Sind Leute aus Österreich, der Schweiz oder Holland dabei?“ Ich komme aus Deutschland, aus Berlin noch dazu. Dem Ort, an dem der Plan zur Vernichtung der europäischen Juden entworfen wurde.

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Zuerst wollte ich gar nicht viel über meinen Besuch in Auschwitz sagen. Beiträge auf sozialen Medien wie Instagram, Facebook und Twitter, die ich sonst regelmäßig nutze, schienen mir nicht angemessen zu sein. Bilder von dem Tor und der Rampe des Lagers zwischen Reiseeindrücken und Schnappschüssen – ein Besuch in Auschwitz passt schlecht zur schnellen, oberflächigen Kultur des Likens und Teilens. Unsere Profile dort dienen zu einem erheblichen Teil unserer eigenen Selbstdarstellung, unsere Timelines der ständigen Zerstreuung. Auschwitz verlangt Konzentration und tiefste Demut, erst recht für einen Deutschen.

Aber wir müssen darüber reden, was in Auschwitz geschehen ist, immer und immer wieder. 2,1 Millionen Menschen besuchten die Gedenkstätte letztes Jahr, die meisten von ihnen Jugendgruppen. 76.000 Besucherinnen und Besucher kamen aus Deutschland. Jeder sollte diesen Ort einmal im Leben gesehen haben, höre ich hier mehrfach. Allein schon aus logistischen Gründen ist das kaum möglich – im Sommer gibt es jetzt schon Engen wegen der vielen Besuchergruppen. Umso wichtiger ist es, dass wir, die wir diesen Ort gesehen haben, davon erzählen, so gut wir können.

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Ich besteige am Busbahnhof von Kraków einen Kleinbus nach Oświęcim, das die Nazis bei ihrer Ankunft in Auschwitz umbenannten. So viele Leute drängen sich in den Bus, dass die letzten im Gang stehen müssen. Ich bin der einzige mit einem Koffer. Der Bus hält an kleinen Orten und fährt durch dunkle Wälder und an weiten Wiesen vorbei. Welche Taten verübten Wehrmacht, SS und Einsatzgruppen in dieser Gegend? Von der ehemaligen Königsstadt Kraków beherrschte, plünderte und drangsalierte NS-Gouverneur Hans Frank das besetzte Polen.

In Oświęcim angekommen laufe ich noch ein Stück von der Haltestelle zu meinem Hotel. Dazu muss ich das abgesperrte Gelände des Stammlagers umrunden. Die SS räumte die gesamte Stadt und die Umgebung, die sie zum sogenannten Interessengebiet erklärte. Erst nach dem Krieg konnten die Bewohner zurückkommen. Auf der abgewandten Seite des Eingangs stehen Mietshäuser. In den Vordergärten spielen Kinder auf Gerüsten. Wie muss es wohl sein, hier zu wohnen? In der Ferne höre ich das Quietschen von Containerzügen.

Wir haben die Studientour gebucht, insgesamt sechs Stunden für das Stammlager und das ein paar Kilometer entfernte Lager Auschwitz-Birkenau, auch Auschwitz II genannt. Die Führerin erklärt, wo das Lagerorchester spielte, zu dessen Märschen die Gefangenen im Rhythmus laufen mussten. Wo der Appellplatz war, zu dem selbst während der Arbeit am Tag gestorbene Menschen gebracht werden mussten. Die Zahlen mussten stimmen, sonst gab es Strafen: stundenlanges Stehen in sommerlicher Hitze oder winterlicher Kälte. Die Stehbunker, in denen mehrere Gefangen in völliger Dunkelheit mit nur kleinen Luftschlitzen für kleinere Vergehen geschickt wurden. Die doppelten Stacheldrahtzäune, die Wachtürme in schwarz gestrichenem Holz und die Stoppschilder zeigen, dass es aus dem Lager kein Entrinnen gab.

Das Stammlager, das früher als Kaserne der polnischen Armee diente, ist praktisch komplett erhalten. Die roten Backsteinhäuser stehen in geraden Reihen, die Wege sind von erst in den letzten Jahrzehnten gepflanzten Bäumen gesäumt, wie schmale Alleen. Es ist herrliches Sommerwetter, nur wenige Wolken verdecken den blauen Himmel und die warme Sonne. Besuchergruppen drängen sich durch die Ausstellungen in den Baracken, und mehrfach müssen wir warten, bevor wir in den nächsten Raum gehen können.

Viele Besucherinnen und Besucher halten ihre Handys und Tablets beständig hoch, um Fotos zu schießen. Mehrmals muss unsere Führerin Leute ermahnen, auf dem Gelände des Konzentrationslagers nichts zu essen. Auch zwei Deutsche aus unserer Gruppe packen ihr Brot in einer Pause aus. „Menschen sind hier massenweise verhungert, wir müssen den Respekt waren,“ sagt sie. Auschwitz ist keine Touristenattraktion wie jede andere.

Von Station zu Station und von Ausstellung zu Ausstellung hören wir von den Verbrechen, welche die Nazis hier begingen. Von Zahlen, die wir längst kennen, und die dennoch unfassbar bleiben. 1,3 Millionen Menschen waren im Lagerkomplex bis 1945, etwa 1,1 Millionen von ihnen wurden ermordet, an einem einzigen Ort. Über 90% der Opfer waren Juden. Die Menschen litten unter den Unterbringungsbedingungen, der harten körperlichen Arbeit, dem Mangel an Nahrungsmitteln und Hygiene. Die kargen Rationen reichten nicht zum Überleben aus. Auch das Arbeitslager Auschwitz diente letztlich der Vernichtung.

Die wahrscheinlich wirkungsvollste Ausstellung im Stammlager kommt ohne viele Worte aus. Sie zeigt den industriellen Charakter der Todesmaschine Auschwitz. Ankommende Menschen mussten ihr Gepäck zurücklassen, das sie im Glauben, umgesiedelt zu werden, mit vielen Gegenständen des täglichen Bedarfs mitgenommen hatten. Ihr Haar wurde rasiert. Alles verwerteten die Nazis weiter. Mäntel schickten sie an die Ostfront für Soldaten, Haushaltsgegenstände zur Verteilung ins Reich, und aus Haaren ließen sie Matratzen anfertigen.

Große Glasvitrinen zeigen Berge von menschlichem Haar, links und rechts eines Ganges. Andere Vitrinen zeigen die Lederkoffer, die noch die Beschriftungen ihrer Eigentümer tragen, wieder andere Haufen von Schuhen, Brillen, Schuhbürsten und Emailletöpfe. Jeder Gegenstand steht für einen Haushalt und für Menschen mit Persönlichkeit, Erfahrung und Charakter. „Es sind nicht nur Zahlen“, betont die Führerin, die uns auch immer wieder Geschichten von einzelnen Gefangenen aus Auschwitz erzählt.

Hinter einer Glasscheibe liegen Dutzende leere Blechbüchsen. Sie enthielten Zyklon-B, das Gift der Gaskammern. Während die SS die Gaskammern und Krematorien in Auschwitz-Birkenau vor dem Verlassen des Lagers sprengte, ist die erste experimentelle Gaskammer im Stammlager erhalten bzw. rekonstruiert. Das frühere Munitionslager der Kaserne erhielt Öffnungen im Dach, durch die das Gift geschüttet wurde, und direkt daneben, Krematorien. Die Führung geht durch diesen Bau. Innen ist es dunkel, die Menschen drängen sich durch die Räume mit den bloßen Wänden. Nur fünfzig Meter weiter, in Sichtweite, wohnte Lagerkommandant Rudolf Höß mit Frau und Kindern.

Ein Shuttlebus bringt die Gruppen in das wenige Kilometer entfernte Lager Auschwitz-Birkenau. Um ein Vielfaches größer als das Stammlager, vermittelt der Ort einen Eindruck des Ausmaßes der Vernichtung. Schienen führen bis in die Mitte des Lagers, zwischen Baracken, die hier meist aus Holz waren. Ich muss an Fotos denken, die wir in einer Ausstellung gesehen hatten. Man sieht ankommende Juden nach oft tagelanger Fahrt in Viehwaggons mit schwerem Gepäck, das sie noch auf der Rampe zurück lassen mussten. Im Hintergrund zeigen zwei hohe Schornsteine, was sie hier erwartete. Ein anderes zeigt die Selektion noch auf der Rampe. Korrekt gekleidete Offiziere und Ärzte sortieren die Menschen innerhalb von Sekunden. Alte, Kinder, Schwangere, Kranke wurden sofort zu den Gaskammern geschickt.

Die Gaskammern mit angeschlossenen Krematorien hier in Birkenau waren nach dem neusten Stand der Technik mit Lastenaufzügen ausgestattet. Ofen grenzte an Ofen. Sie hatten eine deutlich größere Kapazität als das Krematorium im Stammlager. Es sollten so viele Menschen wie möglich getötet werden.

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Wir sehen und hören viel, was hier geschehen ist. Und doch bleibt es unvorstellbar. Wir sehen die Rampe, die Barracken und die Öfen. Doch das Leid, das hier herrschte, sehen wir nicht. Wir hören von der Konstruktion der Gaskammern, aber die Schreie der Menschen hören wir nicht. Wie riechen auch nicht den Gestank der menschlichen Ausdünstungen in den Unterkünften. Wir fühlen nicht die Schläge der Aufseher und die Enge der hölzernen Pritschen.

Sich vorzustellen, was in Auschwitz passierte, geht gegen jede menschliche Vernunft. Wir kennen Rache oder Neid als Motive für Gewalttaten, auch Abschreckung und Kriegführung. Doch die Shoa lässt sich damit nicht erfassen. Die Shoa war nicht spontan oder aus dem individuellen Hass Einzelner geboren, sondern ein strategisch angelegter Plan zur Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, der auf der ganzen Macht des Staates und tausender von Tätern beruhte.

Das Verbrechen lässt sich nicht aufs Pathologische schieben. Das ist der ganze Abgrund von Auschwitz: dass Menschen dazu fähig sind, Morden zum System zu machen. Was bedeutet angesichts dieser Fähigkeit noch Menschlichkeit?

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Am Ende der Tour zeigt uns die Führerin ein Foto mit zwei Kindern, beide Opfer von Auschwitz. Sie hatten ihr Leben noch vor sich, hatten Träume, Wünsche, Hoffnungen. Das Augenpaar auf dem blauen Aufkleber gehört einem von ihnen.