PEACEKEEPERS:THE HAITIAN earthquake caused potentially the United Nations' worst human loss in a single day, as its soldiers and civilians in Haiti were caught up in the tragedy. At least 36 UN peacekeepers have been confirmed dead and some 150 personnel are missing, including its two top officials.
An Estonian security officer was rescued from the rubble of the UN’s peacekeeping headquarters yesterday, more than 36 hours after the earthquake. “It was a small miracle,” said UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon.
“This is a tragedy for the United Nations as well as the Haitian people,”said Elisabeth Byrs, Geneva spokeswoman of the UN humanitarian affairs office.
“The priority is to save lives, get people out of the rubble and treat the wounded. Every hour counts.”
The Haiti disaster comes after a tough year for the UN, with losses in Afghanistan, Sudan and elsewhere, and concerns among staff, officials and member states that the UN is increasingly becoming a direct target in modern conflicts.
US president Barack Obama said yesterday: “Our hearts go out to the people at the UN who have suffered the gravest losses in their history.”
The UN community in Haiti includes a 9,000-strong military and police force, Minustah, and staff from a range of UN development agencies who are already staffing the front line in the relief effort. It was the Brazilian-led peace force that was hardest hit in the quake when its hotel headquarters collapsed.
Minustah was dispatched to Haiti in 2004 after US marines took former president Bertrand Aristide into exile. In recent months, members of the UN Security Council that mandates the force began to look to Haiti as a potential success story among peacekeeping operations.
On the development front, international donors increased their funding of Haiti in April by $350 million (€241 million) over two years. In a September report on Haiti, Mr Ban recommended a progressive reconfiguration of the peace force – some military personnel would be replaced by police units as local authorities were trained to take over more security functions in what he acknowledged was still a fragile security situation.
The earthquake threatens to push the situation back to square one, creating a challenge that will require a new sustained effort by the international community to rebuild the shattered state.
– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)