Africa: Police for Peace
By Steve Mbogo for ISN
On average, some 40 women are raped every day in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, external pageaccording to data from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In the first quarter of this year some 463 women were raped there, more than half of the total number of violations registered for the whole of last year.
Another recent external pagestudy by Physicians for Human Rights also found extensive rape of women committed by militias in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.
These are horrifying statistics that only worsen as conflicts on the African continent spread and civilians become prime targets.
With the collapse of the criminal justice system during times of conflict, some experts believe that local police, if properly trained, could be a key factor in reestablishing law and order. Indeed, increasingly, local police are even engaging in direct combat where the lives of civilians are concerned.
By 2004, there were fewer than 1,000 African police officers charged with peacekeeping duties within and outside the continent. Today, that number has grown more than ten-fold and looks set to rise exponentially.
Experts link the growing demand for local police officers to work in peacekeeping missions to a trend that has seen conflicts on the continent become more internal in nature, with increasingly civilian casualties.
More often than not, these conflicts are fueled by ethnic differences, ethnic-based power struggles and unbalanced sharing of national resources. And civilians are increasingly playing a central role and are thus targeted by opposition militias.
While armies are useful in pacifying conflict areas, the calm they leave behind is usually short-lived and degenerates into human rights abuses such as rape and theft. Police, experts say, could serve as peacekeepers preventing these ‘aftermath’ atrocities and helping to rebuild the institutions of law and order.
“This concept, where the police peacekeepers take over as soon as the army peacekeepers pacify an area was first successfully used in Monrovia, Liberia. Since then, the army has demanded the police should take over where missions succeed in stabilizing,” Dr Steven Kasiima, who heads the police training and development wing of the Africa Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), told ISN Security Watch.
Scrounging for more police
In Sudan’s troubled western region of Darfur, the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation there (UNAMID), is running short of police peacekeepers. Out of the target of 2,660 officers, only 700 are available. A similar shortage is facing the African Union mission in Somalia.
Despite this shortage, statistics from the United Nations Police department website shows the number of police officers from Africa servicing its peacekeeping missions around the world has increased by 930 percent, from 348 officers in 2003 to 3,587 by June 2009.
Countries like South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco are still contributing dismal numbers - a trend analysts here say could dramatically change with the implementation of the Africa Standby Force, a robust peacekeeping mission, which is expected to be operational by 2010.
And the need for more police in peacekeeping missions will only rise as Africa moves to lessen its dependence on international troops.
Xavier Ejoyi, a peacekeeping researcher with the pan-African human security think tank Institute of Security Studies (ISS), attributes the growing demand for police peacekeepers to an equally increasing need to reconstruct criminal justice systems, which are the first casualties in Africa’s internal conflicts.
“The Cold War changed the dynamics of conflict in the continent such that instead of conflicts being between the armies, they have become intra-state. States facilities which include criminal justice systems are some of the first casualties,” he said.
Militias opposing the state typically target for destruction anything associated with the state, and when the criminal justice systems break down, they are able to commit atrocities with impunity, without fear of prosecution.
And it is no easy task rebuilding these institutions, even once countries are stabilized.
“Before, peacekeeping was more of [a case of] monitoring ceasefire between the armies. Today, it is about protecting civilians, establishing law and order and institutions which go with that. This is the only way to make the society start functioning again,” Ejoyi told ISN Security Watch.
The practice of cleaning up after the army, however, is only applicable where stability exists, Kasiima of AMISOM said.
“In countries like Somalia, it is currently difficult to use this practice. We are only using police peacekeepers at the government police headquarters,” he said. However, this is complimented by the ongoing training of 500 Somalia police officers in Puntland, a semi-autonomous break-away region of Somalia, which is peaceful.
Additional police officers and Somalia military officers are being trained in Kenya, Djibouti, Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria.
When relative stability is established in Somalia, these police officers are expected to begin working with their foreign counterparts to reconstruct criminal justice systems that have been destroyed in the country and protect civilians at the grassroots level.
In pursuing this option, the police peacekeepers are playing the role of mentors and trainers – which will be critical to ensure that when peace is finally established, the host affected county has adequate police officers to take up law and order maintenance and prevent resurgence of conflicts.
Serious engagement
However, it is not all about waiting for “stable heavens” for the police before they engage in conflict zones. A new concept in which crack units known as Formed Police Units (FPUs), is now operational in Africa.
FPUs comprise 140 heavily armed officers with special training, who can engage in combat situations to help the local police force or are called upon to protect civilians in case of hostile armed attacks.
A half a dozen such units are already operational in Darfur, compared to the target of 19 such units, and a similar arrangement is being planned for Somalia.
But even with this rapid response capacity, peacekeeping experts like Andrews Atta-Asamoah at the ISS, said their services are required a few weeks after the army mission settles in, and peaks when relative stability is established. Their withdrawal is also gradual, dependent on the improving police capacity to meet local needs.
“In some nations, which have characteristics of failed states, police peacekeepers may be given executive powers to take up the roles of national police,” Atta-Asamoah told ISN Security Watch.
Capacity challenge
Research published by the Henry L Stimson Center on the capacity of Africa police forces to take over international peacekeeping operations shows that African nations’ ability to contribute is limited by the need for police at home.
Data available shows that most African countries fall short of meeting the UN’s recommended police-to-civilian ratio of one police officer for every 400 civilians.
Ghana’s ratio for instance is 1 police officer to 1,200 civilians; Kenya’s is 1 to 1,150; and Tanzania’s is 1 to 1,400. These countries, like many of their counterparts on the continent, are overstretched by local police needs and find it hard to contribute.
Forming the special crack police units is also expensive, and most of the cash-strapped African governments find it hard to finance them. As of 2007, it cost $6 million to set up one FPU.
In the meantime, the situation - especially for civilian women and girls who appear to bear the brunt of human rights atrocities - remains dismal.