‘A Unique U.N. Scandal’

The New York Sun article titled “A Unique U.N. Scandal” [Vance Serchuk, Opinion, August 26, 2005] suggests that U.N. police officers from developing countries such as Zimbabwe are somehow not fit to serve on U.N. peacekeeping missions. On the contrary, all U.N. police officers, no matter where they are from, play a vital role in assisting the United Nations to build institutional police capacity in post-conflict environments. In Kosovo for example, Zimbabweans are among more than 2,500 international police from more than 40 nations, including the U.S., helping to restore order and build a credible and multi-ethnic local police service to serve all the people of Kosovo.

The United Nations insists on the highest standards of professional and personal conduct from its police officers. Before deployment, the background of every officer is checked and certified by the contributing country. No officer guilty of or even being investigated for criminal or disciplinary offenses is accepted for service with the United Nations. Once on mission, the United Nations continues to train and evaluate its police. Since the beginning of the U.N. mission in Kosovo, 217 officers have been returned to their home countries for failing to meet U.N. standards. Others have been sent home or prosecuted for violations of U.N. standards or local laws.

There is no country across the world that can claim to be perfect in its policing. It is for this reason that all U.N. police officers are responsible for applying United Nations Criminal Justice Standards, particularly in respect of human rights, regardless of local laws including those in their home countries. The benefits of their service in mission also go beyond helping build institutional capacity in post conflict environments. The U.N. police return home to their own national police institutions having practiced and incorporated the highest standards of democratic policing into their work, which strengthens both the policing capacity of individual officers and the institutions in which they serve.

More than 6,000 U.N. police officers from more than 70 countries serve with distinction and courage all over the world in difficult and frequently dangerous situations. To suggest that only certain nations have the right to participate in this important endeavor in the cause of peace is not only unacceptable, but it is offensive to each and every police officer serving with the United Nations.

MARK KROEKER
Police adviser, Department of Peacekeeping Operations
The United Nations
Manhattan

Vance Serchuk Responds:

In insisting on the fundamental equivalence of all states, Mr. Kroeker inadvertently illustrates the very reason the U.N. has repeatedly failed to live up to the ideals it claims to represent. True, no country is perfect in its policing, but there is a profound difference between nations in which police uphold human rights and rule of law, and regimes that employ police as an instrument to subvert and batter their citizens. The dictatorship in Zimbabwe – as the U.N.’s own investigators have amply detailed – is in the latter camp. That Mr. Kroeker does not consider this distinction especially important in staffing U.N. peacekeeping operations speaks volumes about why such missions have so often gone awry. It also reveals, sadly, the immensity of the challenge confronting those who seek even the most elementary reforms at the U.N.