Pierre Schori Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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You have personally been involved in some of the operations of supervision of elections, for example, in Zimbabwe. Talk a little about that, and how your role as a Swede and your role as an emissary of the UN interface to contribute to working towards resolution. In some cases, like Zimbabwe, the issues are not resolved.
I was chosen as the head of the EU election observation mission when I was in the European Parliament. This was in 2000. These were for parliamentary elections. This was based upon, as it always is with such observation missions, [obtaining] the consent of the government there. What they hadn't figured on is that we would come in with such a great number. We came in with over two hundred people, and we came in early and we stayed on. We were serious, and we had a good operation. I felt that it was almost a military political operation, because we had security people, we had logistics, and so on. We did a good job.
There were a lot of other observation missions there. Carter was there, and the Commonwealth, and Southern Africa Development Corporation was there. I think we made a difference, because we were out all over, and linked up with 13,000 national observers. We delivered our final evaluation, that these had not been free elections, and now it's important how the president with all his power deals with this.
Mugabe.
Yes. I was chosen, also, I think, because I knew Mugabe, and Sweden had cooperated with his liberation struggle, and so on. But they didn't like what we said, of course, at all. And we demanded changes for the elections coming up in 2002, which were presidential elections, much more important for Mugabe. The electoral college and things like that, they had to change and democratize and demilitarize, and [have] more observers.
So when I was sent back again by the EU in 2004, there was a lot of resistance. They didn't say no, but they didn't say yes. But we used that non-answer, and going there, we used the cooperation agreement between the European Union and over seventy countries in Africa, Caribbean, and the Pacific, which has a partnership deal, the so-called Cotonou Agreement, which says, "Yes, we are a provider of solidarity, of support to build up your societies, but you also have to develop [elements of] good governance." Among those [elements] was accepting observation missions from other countries at election time. So we used that.
But I spent a very tough week there with my colleagues, and they did everything to sabotage. In the end, they pulled back my visa and put another visa in, which expired the day before, so I had to leave after a week. They were afraid that we would redo the 2000, be very efficient and see all the violence which was there, and that we would condemn it and so on.
But we were not intrusive. This is what Mugabe tried to sell to the African countries, that, "The EU, the white man, came in there, and [dictated that] this is the way you should do democracy." No, we were using this partnership contract which we have. "We cannot go on providing support and solidarity if you violate the contract when it comes to human rights, democratization and so on."
This raises an interesting problem, which is the timing of the UN interventions. One has the sense that there is an opportunity before everything falls apart, before things have collapsed into a disaster. It seems to be more difficult in the period of monitoring, where there isn't, say, a military force to make things go the right way, or in the case of Zimbabwe, there isn't cooperation on the other side. So the opportunity for intervention seems less. But then when everything falls apart -- there's a disaster or a tragedy -- then the UN seems to be able to offer appropriate intervention. The Congo may be an example of the sequence. Is that a fair analysis or not?
Yes, it is. In 1999, Kofi Annan drew the conclusions from the UN and the world community's failure in Rwanda, where 800,000 people were massacred in 100 days, and of Srebrenica in Kosovo, that there is something wrong with a system which says that you see a genocide coming, or a massive ethnic cleansing, but you cannot do [anything about] it because you are not allowed to interfere in other countries' internal affairs according to the UN Charter. So you need to adopt that, because you cannot stand by watching this anymore. No more Rwandas. He got a lot of negative reaction to that from several members at the UN, because they feel this is, again, a white man's intrusion into internal affairs just to set the standards and impose things. So you need to find a different way of doing this, because you need to prevent genocide.
What has happened is that after the conference in Stockholm last January on prevention of genocide organized by the Swedish government of Prime Minister Persson, Kofi Annan delivered a speech where he said, "We have to deal with this, and I'm now going to nominate a special advisor to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing, who will work with me and the Security Council." Because the resistance has been great, also, in the General Assembly, and the Security Council, of course, too, where we couldn't intervene in Rwanda. But this special advisor and Kofi Annan will add more strength, and more accent, with the support of many member states now.
We have to do this. In the Congo, it's a different problem, because when the UN intervened a couple years ago, three years ago, it was a Chapter 6 mandate, which means they can intervene to keep the peace, but not to shoot at people who are attacking civilians or protect civilians more robustly. And that didn't hold. So, finally, last summer the UN Security Council took a new resolution, Chapter 7, where you now also can do that: you can protect the civilians, you can work for human rights, for gender issues, you can help to develop the local society, you get the UN family in with the UNDP, aid money, donors, and so on.
That is very important, because it's not only peacekeeping anymore. You cannot have just the peacekeeping thing. It won't hold. You must have peacekeeping and post-conflict reconstruction, which, in fact, turns out to be nation building, if you so want, to support nation building. You must have a much wider perspective on peacekeeping. Otherwise, you just go in, keep the peace, and then after a while leave, it will come back again, like in Haiti, where you left the whole thing unfinished.
This has been difficult for certain Security Council members to accept, in the sense that they think it's too much a long-term commitment, and "do we really like these people," and "do we want to put money into it," and "should we be global social workers," or whatever.
What is your answer to that? Do you believe that these multilateral, multinational ways of responding are the best way, or do you believe that particular designated states can do the best job?
Designated states, no way. That's the Roman Empire. We don't want that. We need to engage as many as possible to get legitimacy. There is a formula for that; that is, the Security Council is there to handle peace and security issues. You can also, which is more and more the case, engage regional organizations, like ECOWAS in Western Africa, where local assets, national assets, together with the support of the UN, keep the peace and develop nations. And this is the only way of doing it.
Haiti is a very interesting case, because it happened quickly after "hands off," and then all of a sudden you were there, and Aristide was out. The local regional organization, who was engaged, was totally ignored. That's not a way of doing it for a sustainable solution. Hopefully, we can get it all together again, but that was a quick fix, and I don't know why it happened. Well, I think I know, but it was not the right way of doing it. Let's hope we can do it [the right way].
You need to have legitimacy. Only the Security Council can authorize the use of force in order to keep the peace.
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