The Need for Effective Early Warning Structures at the UN

In January 1994, the military commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, sent a fax to UN headquarters in New York, warning that genocide was being planned. That fax received no substantive response from the Secretariat, despite clear evidence that ethnic and political tensions were increasing. Only months later, the world watched in horror as Hutu extremists began killing an estimated 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu civilians. Many leaders claimed they had no idea that a genocide was occurring, and they thought it was just a renewal of the civil war between the Hutu Rwandan government and mostly Tutsi rebels. How was the Dallaire fax, and numerous other warnings from diplomats and NGOs that violence was being planned, ignored?

The Campaign to End Genocide believes that incidences of mass murder and genocide are fully preventable. There are clear indicators that a group is preparing to initiate some campaign against a rival. Violent conflict between groups arises most often when 1) the group identities are perceived to be incompatible (such as when recognizing another's identity can compromise one's own, or when granting rights to the other group is perceived to be giving up their own identity) and 2) the groups are under conditions of scarcity and must compete for resources. As such, in the extreme cases, one group feels that its continued existence depends upon eliminating the other group. Formal steps of dehumanizing the other group and coercing one's own group to cooperate must take place before any killing starts. At this point, alert international observers can intervene.

Part of the problem is that the United Nations has no systematic and accurate means to gather, analyze, and interpret the warning signs of violent conflict and genocide, and no established procedures for transferring this information to governments, especially those in the Security Council.

One approach to filling this gap would be to create an early warning and prevention center at the UN mandated with collecting and interpreting information and presenting reports of potential genocide and violent conflict directly to the Security Council. This center could be staffed not only with professional analysts of early warning data, but also with a corps of mediators and monitors who could be dispatched at the earliest signs of genocide and violent conflict. Another option would be to create a General Assembly Armed Conflict Prevention Committee of the whole, to put the spotlight of public scrutiny on specific situations and support early action. (These two options are detailed in the platform of Global Action to Prevent War, www.globalactionpw.org.)

In the book Preventive Diplomacy, Ted Robert Gurr from the University of Maryland describes a system of field monitoring for optimal warning. There would be standard protocols and an explicit model for data interpretation. The monitoring agency would be trained for close attention to conditions and devotion to signals so that no indicator could be overlooked.

Internationally, the Commission for Global Governance published Our Global Neighbourhood to detail the reforms necessary for sustainable peace. Among these recommendations were the integration of peacekeeping and intelligence gathering, allowing for the field monitoring system proposed by Gurr. The Center also suggested the reassertion of the Military Staff Committee to advise UN Security Council members on critical situations and the creation of a volunteer force for rapid deployment, so that warnings may be acted upon swiftly and effectively.

Likewise, in the Brahimi Report to the Secretary General of the United Nations, released in August 2000, the special investigative committee made recommendations to the UN and Security Council regarding reforms to the structure of intelligence gathering, conflict response, and accountability. With regards to early warning, the report made suggestions similar to those of CGG in the creation of integrated intelligence gathering, rapid response forces, and greater use of volunteer assistance. The Brahimi Report recommended that the Secretariat should be allowed to readily use fact-finding missions to evaluate developing conflict situations and to deploy a Rapid Response Force within 30 days of the initial resolution. A centralized intelligence and early warning system could be created with full cooperation of UN Member States.  On-call civilian and military specialists would provide the necessary analysis to allow maximum effectiveness in prevention and intervention. This report now guides current efforts at internal reform by the United Nations.