E-Kantipur

On Sept. 25, the Nepali media reported that the government of Nepal had lodged a complaint to the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping (DPKO) over alleged differing standards being applied by the UN in dealing with human rights violations in peacekeeping missions. On Sept. 29, the government denied the report. However, there is no doubt that the government has been repeatedly complaining to the UN, related (amongst others) to Army’s fury over the repatriation of Major Niranjan Basnet from the UN Peace Keeping Mission to Chad over charges of torture and murder in Nepal during the insurgency.

The government claims before the UN and diplomatic community in Kathmandu that it has a vetting mechanism to ensure that human rights violators are not selected for UN peacekeeping missions.  The claims of the Army are worth examining in the context of Major Basnet’s case. What the government failed to mention in its complaint was that Major Basnet was charged with illegal detention, torture, and murder of a 15-year-old girl, Maina Sunuwar, by the Kavre District Court in 2007, and an arrest warrant and summons were issued against him. They failed to mention that Basnet has neither been arrested nor has appeared before court.

The Army has explicitly and repeatedly defied both the court and requests by the police to hand over Major Basnet. Senior Generals have made it known to any diplomat who would listen that Basnet will never be handed over to the courts. And on July 14, the Army, after an internal inquiry, found Basnet to be “innocent,” a decision endorsed by the Defence Ministry. And in this regard it should be noted that the current Deputy Chief of the Army Staff General Toran Singh is himself accused of serious allegations of human rights violation. The rot runs very deep.

Nepal’s complaint is worrying. The country, as Basnet’s case makes clear, has no vetting system and yet the government appears ready to make unfounded claims about its existence.  In fact, Nepal Army appears to be running a system that seems to reward soldiers of Basnet’s ilk. Basnet’s case is not the only case. In numerous cases where evidence for criminal prosecution exists, the military has sought to avoid justice and undermine the authority of domestic courts to protect criminals; criminals who are subsequently rewarded with promotion, lucrative UN Peacekeeping missions and international training.

How the United Nations responds will be critical. The UN peacekeeping provides essential security and support to millions of people as well as fragile institutions emerging from conflict. There are almost 124,000 personnel serving in 16 peace operations led by DPKO in four continents. Often without a strong mandate, credibility for peacekeepers is everything.

The UN relies on key member states for troops for peacekeeping missions. The top six contributing countries (Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Egypt and Nepal) account for the overwhelming majority of peacekeeping forces. Together they represent nearly 46 percent (based on May 2010 figures). However, all six have, at best, poor human rights records. In all these countries human rights abuses appear to have a systematic character. At least three of the countries are engaged in significant counter-insurgency operations involving widespread abuses of human rights. All of the states can be characterised as offering very high levels of impunity to members of the security forces.

The human rights community has warned in the past that given the patterns of abuses and prevailing impunity it would appear inevitable that the UN is allowing significant numbers of individual members of security forces, who have committed very grave violations of human rights, to enter peacekeeping missions. Major Basnet’s case, among others, reveals the reality that serious criminals are being deployed in UN missions.  This challenges UN Peacekeeping operations’ claims to prioritise holding personnel accountable to the highest standards of behaviour during peacekeeping missions.

For its own missions the UN has developed a comprehensive strategy to address sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by UN personnel. It has established conduct and discipline units at Headquarters and in the field, and is working with its troop-contributing countries to ensure that the troops strictly abide by the Secretary-General’s zero tolerance policy against SEA.

Yet the UN has no established practice of examining human rights records of the security forces deployed for peacekeeping. There is, for example, no system for human rights vetting prior to selection for peacekeeping missions. There is no transparency or reporting requirements on how troop-contributing countries select the units to be deployed. If the UN has a policy against sexual exploitation surely it must have one for gross violations of human rights.

The Basnet case underlines that as a matter of urgency the UN itself must now consider a workable vetting system at least at the officer level. The failure to effectively vet peacekeeping participants means that the UN as the guardian of international human rights treaties is effectively flouting its own principles and, at times, undermining its own operations. 

With regard to the Nepal government, quiet diplomacy is not an option for Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

The attempt to push officers with outstanding criminal allegations into UN peacekeeping missions must be addressed with a formal and public response. This constitutes a direct public attack on the integrity of the United Nations. The UN cannot afford to be seen to be hand wringing; to do so would be to seriously threaten the effective functioning and credibility of UN peacekeeping missions.

(Chakma is Director, Asian Centre for Human Rights, New Delhi)

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