UN Governance: Peace and Human Security in Cambodia and Timor-Leste [1st ed.] 9783030545710, 9783030545727

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xii
Global Governance Principles and UN Implementation (Brendan M. Howe, Sorpong Peou, Yuji Uesugi)....Pages 1-32
A Critical Reflection on UNTAC’s Contributions to Human Security in Cambodia (Brendan M. Howe, Sorpong Peou, Yuji Uesugi)....Pages 33-55
Post-UNTAC UN Peacebuilding and Human Security in Cambodia (Brendan M. Howe, Sorpong Peou, Yuji Uesugi)....Pages 57-81
A Critical Reflection on the UN Mission’s Contributions to Human Security in Timor-Leste (Brendan M. Howe, Sorpong Peou, Yuji Uesugi)....Pages 83-110
Post-UNMIT Peacebuilding and Human Security in Timor-Leste (Brendan M. Howe, Sorpong Peou, Yuji Uesugi)....Pages 111-134
Legacies and Futures (Brendan M. Howe, Sorpong Peou, Yuji Uesugi)....Pages 135-150
Back Matter ....Pages 151-156

Citation preview

SECURITY, DEVELOPMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN EAST ASIA

UN Governance Peace and Human Security in Cambodia and Timor-Leste Brendan M. Howe · Sorpong Peou · Yuji Uesugi

Security, Development and Human Rights in East Asia

Series Editor Brendan M. Howe Graduate School of International Studies Ewha Womans University, GSIS Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

This series focuses on the indissoluble links uniting security, development and human rights as the three pillars of the UN, and the foundation of global governance. It takes into account how rising Asia has dramatically impacted the three pillars at the national, international and global levels of governance, but redirects attention, in this most Westphalian of regions, to human-centered considerations. Projects submitted for inclusion in the series should therefore address the nexus or intersection of two or more of the pillars at the level of national or international governance, but with a focus on vulnerable individuals and groups. The series targets postgraduate students, lecturers, researchers and practitioners of development studies, international relations, Asian studies, human rights and international organizations.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14488

Brendan M. Howe · Sorpong Peou · Yuji Uesugi

UN Governance Peace and Human Security in Cambodia and Timor-Leste

Brendan M. Howe Graduate School of International Studies Ewha Womans University, GSIS Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

Sorpong Peou Department of Politics and Public Administration Ryerson University Toronto, ON, Canada

Yuji Uesugi Faculty of International Research and Education Waseda University Tokyo, Japan

Security, Development and Human Rights in East Asia ISBN 978-3-030-54571-0 ISBN 978-3-030-54572-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54572-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

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1

Global Governance Principles and UN Implementation

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A Critical Reflection on UNTAC’s Contributions to Human Security in Cambodia

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Post-UNTAC UN Peacebuilding and Human Security in Cambodia

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A Critical Reflection on the UN Mission’s Contributions to Human Security in Timor-Leste

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Post-UNMIT Peacebuilding and Human Security in Timor-Leste

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Legacies and Futures

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Index

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About the Authors

Brendan M. Howe is Professor of International Relations at the Graduate School of International Studies, Ewha Womans University, where he has worked since 2001. He researches on traditional and non-traditional security policymaking in East Asia; peacebuilding; human security; democratic governance; middle power diplomacy; and post-crisis development. Sorpong Peou is Professor of Global Peace and Security in the Department of Politics and Public Administration, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada. His fields of expertise and research interest include global governance, especially in the area of global peace and security, regional security in the Asia-Pacific, and democratisation in East Asia. He was a survivor of the Khmer Rouge killing fields and lost many of his family members. Yuji Uesugi is Professor of Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding at the School of International Liberal Studies and the Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. His fields of expertise and research interest include hybrid peacebuilding in Asia, UN peace operations, security sector reform, and regional security in the Asia-Pacific.

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Abbreviations

ASEAN AusAID BCTL BPA C34 CAAC CAQR CAVF CAVR

CCN CGDK CGG CHS CN CNRM CNRP CNRT CPP DPKO

Association of Southeast Asian Nations Australian Aid Banco Central de Timor-Leste Banking Payment Authority Special Committee on Peacekeeping Commission for Matters of Former Combatants (Comiss˜ao para os Assuntos dos Antigos Combatentes) Commission for Matters of Cadres of the Resistance (Comiss˜ao para os Assuntos dos Quadros da Resistencia) Commission for Matters of Veterans of Falintil (Comiss˜ao para os Assuntos dos Veteranos das FALINTIL) Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor Leste) National Consultation Council (Conselho Consultivo Nacional) Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea Commission on Global Governance Commission on Human Security National Council (Conselho Nacional) National Council of Maubere Resistance (Conselho Nacional da Resistˆencia Maubere) Cambodian National Rescue Party National Council for Timorese Resistance (Conselho Nacional da Resistˆencia Timorense) Cambodian People’s Party Department of Peacekeeping Operations ix

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ABBREVIATIONS

DWCP EBA ECCC ECOSOC ETTA EU FALINTIL FAO FDI F-FDTL FIB FRETILIN FUNCINPEC GNI GNR HDI HSU IAB ICC ICISS ICJ ICTR ICTY IDP IFAD ILO IMF INTERFET ISF JIM KPNLF LoCALL MDGs MOFA MSS NIC NRS ODA

Decent Work Country Programme Everything But Arms Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia Economic and Social Council East Timorese Transitional Administration European Union Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor (For¸cas Armadas de Liberata¸c˜ao National de Timor-Leste) Food and Agriculture Organization Foreign Direct Investment FALINTIL-Defence Forces of Timor-Leste (For¸cas Defesa de Timor-Leste) Force Intervention Brigade Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor (Frente Revolucionaria de Timor-Leste Independente) National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia Gross National Income National Republican Guard (Guarda Nacional Republicana) Human Development Index Human Security Unit Investment Advisory Board International Criminal Court International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty International Court of Justice International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Internally Displaced Person International Fund for Agricultural Development International Labour Organization International Monetary Fund International Force East Timor International Stabilisation Force Jakarta Informal Meeting Khmer National Liberation Front Local Climate Adaption Living Program Millennium Development Goals Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ministry of Social Solidarity Newly industrialized countries National Recovery Strategy Official Development Assistance

ABBREVIATIONS

OHCHR P5 PF PKO PMC PNTL POC POLRI PPAs PRK R2P SDGs SMEs SNC SOC SOFA SOMA SPSC SRSG SSR TAC TNI TSDA UN UNAIDS UNAKRT UNAMET UNAMIC UNCDF UNCTAD UNDP UNESCO UNFPA UNGA UNHRC UNICEF UNIDO UNMISET UNMIT

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Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights Five Permanent Members Petroleum Fund Peacekeeping Operations Private Military Companies National Police of Timor-Leste (Policia Nacional de TimorLeste) Protection of Civilians Indonesian National Police (Kepolisian Negara Republik Indonesia) Pairs Peace Agreements People’s Republic of Kampuchea Responsibility to Protect Sustainable Development Goals Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Supreme National Council State of Cambodia Status of Forces Agreements Status of Missions Agreements Special Panels for Serious Crimes Special Representative of the Secretary-General Security Sector Reform Treaty of Amity and Cooperation Indonesian National Armed Forces (Tentara Nasional Indonesia) Timor Sea Designated Authority United Nations United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS United Nations Assistance of the Khmer Rouge Trials United Nations Mission in East Timor United Nations Advance Mission in Cambodia United Nations Capital Development Fund United Nations Conference on Trade and Development United Nations Development Programme United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization United Nations Population Fund United Nations General Assembly United Nations Human Rights Council United Nations Children’s Fund United Nations Industrial Development Organization United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste

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ABBREVIATIONS

UNOHCFR UNOTIL UNPKO UNRC UNSC UNSCR UNSG UNTAC UNTAET UNTFHS US USAID USSC WFP WHO WTO

United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights United Nations Office in Timor-Leste United Nations Peacekeeping Operations UN Resident Coordinator United Nations Security Council United Nations Security Council Resolution United Nations Secretary-General United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security United States United States Agency for International Development United States Supreme Court World Food Program World Health Organization World Trade Organization

CHAPTER 1

Global Governance Principles and UN Implementation

Abstract This chapter explores the theoretical framework of global governance and UN implementation of related principles through the mediums of peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations. Measurements of the success of such operations introduced in this chapter include legality, legitimacy, and efficacy/effectiveness. Legality is presented from the perspective of both ‘positive’ international law, and the prescriptions of customary law. Legitimacy is examined in terms of international recognition, local ownership, and human-centred good governance. Efficacy is defined with regard to the stated goals of UN operations and how well they provide for the human security of all, but especially the most vulnerable. East Asian perspectives and conditions are also counterposed to the universal aspirations of the UN and liberal peacekeeping and peacebuilding. It concludes with a chapter overview. Keywords United Nations (UN) · Governance · Legality · Legitimacy · Efficacy · Human security

© The Author(s) 2021 B. M. Howe et al., UN Governance, Security, Development and Human Rights in East Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54572-7_1

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Introduction This volume evaluates the performance of the United Nations (UN) in ensuring good governance from a human-centred perspective, in Cambodia and Timor-Leste (formerly East Timor), the two most important and comprehensive cases of peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Both cases are situated in the Southeast Asian subregion of East Asia (which also includes Northeast Asia), and East Asian perspectives and conditions are counterposed to the universal aspirations of the UN and liberal peacekeeping and peacebuilding. The legality, legitimacy, and efficacy/effectiveness of UN operations in the two countries are considered. These three categories are, however, interrelated rather than exclusionary, reflecting the complex nature of contemporary governance prescription. Legality is presented from the perspective of both codified ‘positive’ international law, and the supplementary prescriptions of the “customs and usages of civilized nations of states” (United States Supreme Court [USSC] 1900), the “general principles of law recognized by civilized nations” (ICJ 1945, Article 38(c)), and “the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations” (ICJ 1945, Article 38(d)). Legitimacy is examined in terms of international recognition, local ownership, and human-centred good governance (Howe 2012). Efficacy is assessed with regard to the stated goals of UN peacekeeping and statebuilding missions in general and these two case studies in particular. As the stated goals increasingly reflect human-centred governance components, how well these UN missions provided for the human security of all, but especially the most vulnerable, can also be considered in terms of measurements of efficiency. The case studies will be assessed at three ‘moments’: the justifiability of intervening (peacekeeping/peacebuilding/responsibility to protect (R2P) authorisations); the justifiability of actions and policies implemented during the intervention (responsibilities while protecting and keeping the peace); and the justifiability of the situation after the interventions took place and UN forces were withdrawn (governance responsibilities after protection or after the initial construction of safe havens/building enduring and sustainable peace). We expect those who govern to do so in the interests of the governed, usefully providing services that can best or perhaps only be achieved through collective action. According to the Report of the Commission

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on Global Governance, “governance is the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs” (CGG 1995, p. 2). It is an ongoing and evolutionary process which looks to reconcile conflicting interests in order to protect the weak, through the rule of law, from unjust exploitation, and introduce security for all. Governance is also a process through which collective good and goods are generated so that all are better off than they would be acting individually. Thus, governance implies a concern by those who govern with both the security and development, or provision of basic human needs, of those who are governed (Howe 2012, p. 346). This includes steps to eradicate poverty, particularly in conflict-affected areas, where insecurity and underdevelopment provide twin, mutually reinforcing threats to lives and livelihoods. ‘Safe havens’ can therefore be seen as those geographically bounded areas existing at either the state or substate level, where those who govern prioritise the interests of the most vulnerable of those governed, ensuring that they live free from fear and want to the greatest degree possible (ibid.). Domestically, governance is carried out primarily by instruments of the state—that is to say the government and related institutions. Internationally, governance implies not only global attempts to govern in the absence of world government, dealing with international conflicts of interests and those issues which transcend national boundaries, but also a concern with what can be done by international actors when domestic governance fails to provide safe havens. Peace and security have long constituted the central objectives of global governance and form an essential dimension of human well-being. Indeed, peace and security feature heavily in the preamble to the UN Charter and their maintenance is listed as the first purpose of the UN, the major manifestation of the global governance mission. Increasingly, however, the global governance agenda has evolved to include consideration of peace within states rather than exclusively focusing on the generation of peace between them. In doing so there has been movement from championing the interests and rights of states, towards championing those of vulnerable individuals and groups. Consequently, the new human-centred concerns of good global governance place the paradigm as much within the contemporary development agenda, as it was formerly within the peace and political stability agenda. Chiefly, at the level of academic discourse, as well as increasingly in the policy sphere, this humanising of measurements of governance success reflects what has come to be known as ‘human security’. Prescriptions

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made under the dictates of this concept reflect both normative concerns (that governing in the interests of the most vulnerable is fundamentally the ‘right’ thing to do) and those of efficacy (that other governance objectives are more achievable if individuals and groups are taken into account). Hence, of central concern to this volume is the idea that a broad interpretation of human security within governance, including elements of distributive justice, is necessary from the perspective of legitimacy, but also for the long-term construction of peace by transforming conflictual relationships. Human security is a multidisciplinary paradigm for understanding global vulnerabilities at the level of individual human beings. It incorporates methodologies and analysis from a number of research fields including strategic and security studies, development studies, human rights, international relations, and the study of international organisations. It exists at the point where these disciplines converge on the concept of protection. The UN Development Programme (UNDP)’s Human Development Report 1994: New Dimensions of Human Security is seen as the prime foundational document for the global governance mission with regard to human security. It noted that the objective of security has changed from states to human beings and commented on the importance of a more human-centric approach to security (UNDP 1994). The Report also recognised that freedom from want and freedom from fear constitute important perspectives on poverty and development. Indeed, there is a close relationship between human security envisioned as the protection of persons, and human development as the provision of basic human needs. Human security and human development are both people-centred (Peou 2014). They challenge the orthodox approach to security and development (i.e. state security and liberal economic growth, respectively). Both perspectives are multidimensional, and address people’s dignity as well as their material and physical concerns. Both impose duties on the wider global community. They can be seen as mutually reinforcing. A peaceful environment frees individuals and governments to move from a focus on mere survival to a position where they can consider improvement of their situations. Likewise, as a society develops, it is able to afford more doctors, hospitals, welfare networks, internal security operations, schools, and de-mining operations. Conversely, as former UN SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan observed in his UN Report In Larger Freedom, “we will not enjoy security without development, development without security, and neither without respect for human rights. Unless all these causes

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are advanced, none will succeed” (Annan 2005, p. 6). Conflict retards development, and underdevelopment can lead to conflict.

The Roles of the United Nations From League of Nations Mandates to the UN Trusteeship Council, a global obligation has been acknowledged that such territories were to be administered in the best interests of their inhabitants. The mandate system was established by Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, and referred to territories which after the war were no longer ruled by their previous sovereign (defeated powers in World War I), but their peoples were not considered “able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world”. The article called for such people’s tutelage to be “entrusted to advanced nations who by reason of their resources, their experience or their geographical position can best undertake this responsibility”. League of Nations Mandates were of the nature of both a treaty and a constitution, and they contained minority rights clauses that provided for the rights of petition and adjudication by the Permanent Court of International Justice (Wright 1930). Mandates were to be administered as a “sacred trust of civilisation” to develop the territory for the benefit of its native people (Matz 2005). With the dissolution of the League of Nations after World War II, it was stipulated at the Yalta Conference that the remaining Mandates should be placed under the trusteeship of the UN, under similar governance principles. Post-independence, in some cases however, promotion of the security and integrity of the newly independent entities came at the expense of ignoring the concerns of citizens who sought security in their daily lives. For these common citizens, security meant “protection from the threat of disease, hunger, unemployment, crime, social conflict, political repression and environmental hazards”, the very things that would grant their daily survival (UNDP 1994, p. 22). The international community has, therefore begun to address threats not only between, but also within states, and focus on the security of people in addition to that of states. It is in this context that the concept of human security has come to the fore and, as detailed below, the UN has taken leadership and coordination positions on human security in both theory and practice. This in turn amounts to a dilemma for UN governance and administration of territories. The organisation is dedicated to maintenance

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of the Westphalian system of states, and the principle of national selfdetermination. Such prioritisation is reiterated in a number of statutory defences of national sovereignty in the constitutive documents of international organisations under the UN system, in the prohibitions against intervention, and the prescription that, should it be required, sovereignty should be restored as soon as possible. Indeed, the organisation has been instrumental in bringing a number of states into legal existence through processes of national self-determination. Yet the UN is increasingly also dedicated to the demands of human-centric good governance, whereby safe havens are provided for the most vulnerable free from fear, want, and even indignity, not only during the involvement of the UN but also as part of its legacy. This dilemma becomes acute when the UN is forced to intervene in a ‘failed’ state, and temporarily take over its administration. The international legal demands of sovereignty require the minimal level of interference to prevent killings and other mass atrocities, with a swift withdrawal. The normative demands of good human-centred governance require a focus on well-being as much as safety, and a long-term commitment to ensure that such governance objectives remain a priority once the UN leaves. In short, global governance can be seen as a system designed to ensure effective collective action in addressing challenges to human security (Peou 2014). The fact that the UN has often conspicuously failed itself to provide such safe havens speaks to the efficacy evaluation component of governance. Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Peacekeeping has been the flagship operation of the UN, and its major contribution to global governance and the protection of vulnerable groups (Howe and Kondoch 2016, p. 1). Uniquely universal and legitimate, it has been seen as a “strong and effective tool that is protecting people, saving lives and helping countries to emerge from conflict” (Ban 2014). Since the earliest manifestations of UN peacekeeping operations (UNPKOs), legal and normative issues have been extensively discussed by policymakers and also scholars such as Derek W. Bowett (1964), Rosalynn Higgins (1969, 1970, 1980, 1981), and Finn Seyersted (1966). Traditionally, international lawyers have addressed the constitutionality of UN peacekeeping, the rule of law in the peacekeeping context, the legal status of UN peacekeepers, issues related to command and control, the legal

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constraints arising from the application of international humanitarian law, international human rights law and international criminal law, specific problems under the domestic law of the sending state, the protection of UN personnel serving in UNPKOs, as well as the responsibilities and liabilities of the UN, sending states, and individual peacekeeper under international law (Howe et al. 2015, p. 3). The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) published The United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines, which is also known as the Capstone Doctrine. In the Capstone Doctrine, the DPKO (2008, p. 18) outlines key principles and guidelines for UNPKOs and defines peacekeeping as an “action undertaken to preserve peace, however fragile, where fighting has been halted and to assist in implementing agreements achieved by the peacemakers”. Another oftenquoted definition can be found in the Agenda for Peace, “peacekeeping is the deployment of a United Nations presence in the field, hitherto with the consent of all parties concerned, normally involving United Nations military and/or police personnel and frequently civilians as well. Peacekeeping is a technique that expands the possibilities for both the prevention of conflict and making of peace” (Boutros-Ghali 1992, para. 20). Many authors also prefer the broader term “peace operations”, which may be defined as “field operations deployed to prevent, manage, and/or resolve violent conflicts or reduce the risk of their recurrence” (DPKO 2008, p. 98). Peace operations “entail three principal activities: conflict prevention and peacemaking; peacekeeping; and peace-building” (Brahimi 2000, para. 10, p. 2). Peacekeeping rather than peace operations is, however, the preferred term at the UN, as the latter “smelled too Western and interventionist” for member states from the South to endorse (Kuehne 2009, p. 7). Nevertheless, UN governance activities have seen a steady expansion in terms of interventionism, legal and normative competence, and obligations. New legal issues related to peacekeeping mandates which have been addressed include detentions by UN peacekeepers, international policing, the use of new weapons systems such as drones, the use of private military companies (PMCs), accountability for violations of human rights by peacekeepers, peace enforcement and the use of force (Howe et al. 2015, pp. 4–6). New normative areas of discussion and practical growth include the protection of civilians (POC) (Wills 2009; White 2009), the R2P (Barber 2009; Francis et al. 2012; Hassler 2010; Hunt and Bellamy 2011), responsibility while protecting (Kenkel and Stefan 2016), the

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responsibility to rebuild (Fleck 2012; Pattison 2015), and, more broadly, human security (Benedek et al. 2010; Uesugi 2004; Peou 2014). Legality In general, the legal framework of UNPKOs can be derived from the UN Charter; the mandate provided by the UN Security Council (UNSC); mission-specific legal instruments including agreements with the troopcontributing States, Participation Agreements and with the host State, Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) or Status of Missions Agreements (SOMAs), rules of engagement, and UN regulations (Howe et al. 2015, p. 8). The mandate formulated in an enabling resolution by the UNSC or exceptionally in a UN General Assembly (GA) resolution contains the legal basis under international law for the deployment of a UNPKO (ibid.). As Michael Bothe (2003, p. 265) remarks, “(t)he mandate of a peace operation is the source of its powers and at the same time the limitation of its powers”. At its most fundamental PKOs are tools of conflict management, including those conflicts which are viewed as intractable, wherein the worst manifestations of conflict (interstate wars) are reduced by keeping combatants apart. Even though the UN Charter does not provide for an explicit authorisation of peacekeeping operations, there is agreement that the legal basis for consensual peacekeeping operations falls between Chapter VI (peaceful settlement of disputes) and Chapter VII (enforcement measures to maintain or restore international peace and security) (Howe et al. 2015, p. 10). UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld referred to the mythical “Chapter VI and a half” (Ramsbotham and Woodhouse 1999, p. xi). Yet there remains considerable debate over which Charter provisions are exactly the legal basis of international peacekeeping and how to allocate authority among the UNSC, the UNGA, and the Secretariat, represented by the Secretary-General. Under Article 24(1) of the UN Charter, the UNSC has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and in accordance with Article 29, has the power to create peacekeeping forces as its subsidiary organs. According to Article 98 of the UN Charter, the Council may entrust the Secretary-General with certain functions. A number of articles within Chapter VII have been championed as serving as the legal foundation, either alone or in conjunction with

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each other. These include: Article 39 “The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security;” Article 40: “the Security Council may, before making the recommendations or deciding upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable;” Article 41: “measures not including the use of armed force;” Article 42: “such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security;” and Article 48: “action required to carry out the decisions of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security shall be taken by all the Members of the United Nations or by some of them, as the Security Council may determine”. In 1957, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld laid down the three key principles of classical UNPKOs (as opposed to the more recent conceptualizations of peace enforcement for humanitarian reasons). First, they require the consent of the parties to the conflict. Second, they should be ‘neutral’ (impartial). Third, force should not be used except in self-defence. Even though these bedrock principles of international peacekeeping have been confirmed by the UN in policy documents and by member states in the annual meetings of the Special Committee on Peacekeeping (C34) ever since, peacekeeping has evolved over time, and practice has challenged these core principles repeatedly, especially regarding the use of force for humanitarian protection (see Peou 2003). From a contemporary legal perspective, one may distinguish between consensual and non-consensual PKOs based on Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Many contemporary PKOs are established under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and they do not in a strict sense require the consent of the parties to the conflict (Howe et al. 2015, p. 9). There are also authorisations to use of force for POC, and not just in self-defence. Furthermore, in 2013, the UNSC established a Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) within the UN Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The FIB has a mandate to use force preventively and to carry out offensive operations against spoilers (ibid.). Thus, in both 2013 and 2014, Russia warned that “what was once the exception now threatens to become unacknowledged standard practise” and “in some may even run counter

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to the fundamental principles of peacekeeping” (ibid., p. 10). Conceptual confusion and contestation, therefore, brings questions over the roles of the UN in promoting good international and domestic governance from the strictly legal into the realm of concepts of legitimacy (addressed below). Meanwhile, much of the legal literature emphasises the importance of peace through justice (Peou 2016). According to M. Cherif Bassiouni (1999, p. 808), retributive justice “will contribute to the reduction of social harm and to the preservation or restoration and maintenance of peace”. Other scholars make claims about the role of international criminal tribunals in ensuring international peace and security. Retributive justice in particular is regarded as an effective method for armed conflict or war termination (Shinoda 2002). Peace can be obtained when alleged criminals are charged, indicted, arrested, detained, tried, and sentenced to prison terms. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was meant to end a real war—a case of war termination (Feher 1999). If criminal leaders like Charles Taylor of Liberia could be put behind bars, the assumption is that peace would prevail, whereas doing otherwise would jeopardise peace (Lamin 2003, p. 315). Yet in practice, trying by force to jail a leader, who still possessed significant violent means and had public support, was unlikely to lead to peace. Threats of judicial punishment are also assumed to help rational perpetrators adopt policy measures that will help deescalate various forms of direct physical violence against individual humans, such as armed conflict and mass atrocity crime (Akhavan 2009, p. 636). Judicial punishment or its threat is effective in terms of ending atrocity crime (Helfer 2014; Shany 2014a, b; Tochilovsky 2003). The work of international tribunals can have a positive impact on national/domestic criminal proceedings (Shany 2014a, b) or judicial and legal institution building (Stromseth 2009), alter politics (Alter 2014), help move forward the political process of democratisation, and improve human rights situations in post-war societies (Kim and Sikkink 2012/2013). Thus, retributive justice aims for conflict resolution, in terms of a judicial settlement of conflicts, but, as detailed below, it does not necessarily equate to the transformation of conflictual relationships.

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Legitimacy The concept of legitimacy is a subject of great importance in the literature of international peace operations and can be regarded as a matter of degree. The degrees of UN peace operations’ legitimacy can be assessed at three levels: global, regional, and national/local. Global support for UN operations can be measured in terms of support given by UN member states. Most notably, and from a positive legal perspective, this support should be given by the five Permanent Members (P5) of the UNSC. Given the UNGA represents almost all recognised sovereign states and their populations, however, this body is also a good gauge of global support and legitimacy. Regional support for UN peace operations is no less important, especially given the constraints the UN has operated under since the end of the Cold War when faced with significant growth in demand for international intervention in civil conflicts. This led to the thinking of ‘sub-contracting;’ with the UN delegating some responsibilities to regional organisations (Knight 1996; Peou 1998). The question of legitimacy at the national/local level is raised by UN officials and peacekeeping practitioners, who find support from local elites and populations to be most fundamental to the success and failure of UN peace operations. In the Capstone Doctrine, the DPKO (2008, p. 36) notes: “The manner in which a United Nations peacekeeping operation conducts itself may have a profound impact on its perceived legitimacy on the ground”. On the one hand, the level of legitimacy depends on the performance of UN peacekeepers, which rests on their firmness and fairness, as well as the way they show respect to local populations. On the other hand, legitimacy is a matter of perception. The DPKO (2008, p. 36; italics added) writes: “The firmness and fairness with which a United Nations peacekeeping operation exercises its mandate, the circumspection with which it uses force, the discipline it imposes upon its personnel, the respect it shows to local customs, institutions and laws, and the decency with which it treats the local people all have a direct effect upon perceptions of its legitimacy”. While local perceptions of how UN peacekeeping personnel treat them are important, a major source of legitimacy often neglected in the academic literature is how secure local political elites and civilian populations feel during the peace process. After all, the success of peace operations depends much on the security interests of those involved in

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conflicts. Firmness and fairness are important in that UN peace operations are likely to enjoy support from warring factions if they do not come under threat, including the threat of marginalisation or punishment for whatever reason. The idea of fairness embedded in the peace and electoral process rests on the assumption that UN peacekeepers are able to create or establish a level playing field, in which no one party enjoys the upper hand and can take advantage of the political and security situation. Much of the academic literature on peace spoilers tends to take a legalistic approach, however, because not all warring factions are moral equals (Stedman 1997; Peou 1997). Some committed more atrocities than others and, thus, tend to feel insecure and unwilling to comply with peace agreements and cooperate with UN authorities. In other words, factions whose pasts have been called into question tend to perceive themselves to be primarily targeted and thus prone to taking action that makes others view them as ‘spoilers’ (Stedman 1997). Moreover, the question of UN legitimacy is not only a matter of local perceptions of UN peace operations but also a matter of how much credibility they have as perceived by local elites and populations. According to the UN, “The credibility of a United Nations peacekeeping operation is a direct reflection of the international and local communities’ belief in the mission’s ability to achieve its mandate” (DPKO 2008, p. 38). Getting local communities to view UN peace operations as credible is, however, no easy task in a political and security environment where the level of trust is low, and where former warring factions feel threatened. Once again the DPKO acknowledges this security challenge: “United Nations peacekeeping operations are frequently deployed in volatile, highly stressed environments characterized by the collapse or degradation of state structures, as well as enmity, violence, polarization and distress”. It goes on to add that, “Lawlessness and insecurity may still be prevalent at local levels, and opportunists will be present who are willing to exploit any political and security vacuum. In such environments, a United Nations peacekeeping operation is likely to be tested for weakness and division by those whose interests are threatened by its presence, particularly in the early stages of deployment” (ibid., p. 37). In short, the DPKO has come to acknowledge how important the question of perceived UN legitimacy and credibility when conducting peace operations. Liberal peacebuilding dynamics have come to dominate, with an emphasis on impacting international and domestic governance and

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conflict through the virtuous triangle of economic interdependence, international organisations, and the democratic peace, combined with a focus on the rule of law. Hence policy prescription in terms of peacebuilding and post-crisis reconstruction has tended to focus on the (re)establishment of law and order, good governance in terms of economic efficiency and transparency, and the spread of democracy, all supported by external agency in the form of UN bodies or authorised actors. This supposed consensus has, however, come under attack in both theory and practice. Social constructivists and critical theorists have critiqued the liberal peacebuilding paradigm on a variety of levels. At the same time, as addressed in the section below, East Asian actors and commentators hold differing interpretations of the implications of the turn towards human security and the R2P in global governance. Critics have three main issues with the liberal universalist approach. First, that liberal peacebuilding in practice does not match the universal principles to which it aspires and from which it claims legitimacy, with selectivity in selection of peacebuilding activities often dictated by the interests of intervening state(s) and often illiberal practices carried out during the intervention (Selby 2013, p. 57). Second, that liberal peacebuilding is hegemonic and hierarchical in terms of both actors and issues, prioritising what Western liberal societies think is good for those ‘benefitted’ (democracy, the organisation of elections, human rights and the rule of law, neoliberal development and the creation of an open market economy) rather than considering local circumstances and interests (Autesserre 2011, p. 4). Third, that liberal peacebuilding is essentially top-down in nature, rather than bottom-up, and that this is unsuited to transforming conflictual relationships or building resilient post-crisis societies (Lederach 1998, 1999). Instead, contemporary critical perspectives on peacebuilding and postcrisis reconstruction call for “positive, proactive programs that promote peace building, rather than negative, reactive programs intended to reduce violence” and a focus on “promoting harmony, understanding, and effective problem solving” (Kimmel 1992, p. 125). In other words, a focus on how to bring people constructively together to build a whole greater than the sum of the parts, rather than on how to keep them apart in order to mitigate against the worst manifestations of conflicts of interests. The logical implications of this broader, deeper, transformative approach to peacebuilding include a much greater focus on human security rather than the security of states.

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Earl Conteh-Morgan (2005, p. 69) further notes that human security at the personal, institutional and structural-cultural levels can be more effectively realised in the process of peacebuilding if “culture and identity and an interpretive bottom-up approach to peacebuilding are taken into account when addressing the problems of marginalized individuals, groups, and communities”; and both material as well as socio-cultural contexts are considered critical factors. These understandings, therefore, have serious implications for the legitimacy and efficacy of UN governance, intervention, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. Essentially good governance can now be reconstructed in terms of the extent to which UN policies and initiatives promote the human security of the most vulnerable, providing safe havens free from fear, want, and, (more controversially) indignity. This is important not only because, from a normative humanitarian perspective, the lives and interests of human beings must be foremost in the minds of those who govern, but also because only by taking these elements into account will an enduring peace be built. Indeed, there is something of a virtuous cycle here, with peacekeeping and peacebuilding constituting the policy tools with which human security can be protected and promoted, but good governance reflecting the demands of human security making peace more likely to be built and kept. Efficacy: Promoting Human Security Empirical evidence suggests the liberal assumption that international criminal tribunals and courts contribute to international and human security is far from conclusive. Neither the ICTY nor the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) did much to end war (Roberts 1998). Gary Bass argues that the ICTY did not stop the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 (Bass 2000, pp. 290–295). The worst massacre in Srebrenica in 1995 and the deaths of 7500 Muslim men and boys go to show that the ICTY had no positive impact or may have exacerbated the security situation. Until the end of 1999, more than 230,000 Croatians, Serbians, and Albanians had perished and nearly four million people had become refugees. The ICTY did not deter the slaughtering of close to one million Tutsis that took place in Rwanda between April and July 1994, nor did the ICTR stop the killing of approximately 100,000 Hutus and the displacement of two million Hutus after Tutsi military retaliation (Barria and Roper 2005).

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Established in 2002, the International Criminal Court looks pathetically powerless in the midst a brutal and bloody civil war in Syria that has left almost 500,000 Syrians dead, six million internally displaced refugees, and five million people seeking refuge abroad (Human Rights Watch 2018). When still in power, even alleged criminal leaders in institutionally weak or fragile states have no reason to fear the threat of retributive justice (Kaye 2011). They refuse to cooperate with international courts (Michaeli 2011), challenge their legitimacy (Madsen 2014; Stephen 2012; Cryer 2005; Broomhall 2003), and limit the courts’ ability to affect local norms and actors (Koh 1996). Formal trials may even subvert the process of democratisation or “may run directly counter to the development of a democratic legal order” (Kritz 1995, p. xxxii). Snyder and Vinjamuri (2003/2004, p.43) argue that, “Trials…are not highly correlated with the consolidation of peaceful democracy”. On legal and judicial institution building, they also argue that “When a country’s political institutions are weak, when forces of reform have not won a decisive victory, and when peace spoilers are strong, attempts to put perpetrators of atrocities on trial are likely to increase the risk of violent conflict and further abuses, and therefore hinder the institutionalization of the rule of law” (Snyder and Vinjamuri 2003/2004, p. 15). Conflictual relationships can only be transformed if there is a shared perception of the legitimacy of governance structures and policies among all those impacted by them. When it comes to the promotion of human-centred good governance, which does aim at a more transformative approach to conflictual relationships, the UN has acted as a norm entrepreneur in both theory and practice (Howe and Jang 2013, p. 65). The idea of a human-centred perspective on security is in fact rooted in the ideals and history of the UN. In 1945, the US Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius Jr., reported to his government the conclusions from the San Francisco meeting that led to the establishment of the UN: The battle of peace has to be fought on two fronts. The first is the security front where victory spells freedom from fear. The second is the economic and social front where victory means freedom from want. Only victory on both fronts can assure the world of an enduring peace … No provisions that can be written into the Charter will enable the Security Council to make the world secure from war if men and women have no security in their homes and their jobs.

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UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali made the first explicit policy reference to human security in his Agenda for Peace, wherein the concept was used in relation to preventative diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and post-conflict peacebuilding (Boutros-Ghali 1992). In essence, the report adopted a narrow definition of human security, focusing on physical threats to lives and well-being. Thus, the UNDP’s Human Development Report 1994 which explored both ‘freedom from fear’ and ‘freedom from want’ is generally seen as the seminal text. Here, human security means “safety from chronic threats such as hunger, disease, and repression as well as protection from sudden and harmful disruptions in the patterns of daily life—whether in homes, in jobs or in communities” (UNDP 1994, p. 24). The concept was broadened still further by the Commission on Human Security (CHS). Established in 2001 under Japanese leadership, the goal of the CHS was “to promote public understanding of human security”, to develop the concept “as an operational tool for policy formulation and implementation”, and “to propose a concrete program of action” (MOFA Japan 2001). The 2003 final report, Human Security Now, included related conceptual elements of human dignity, means for financing human security in post-conflict situations, and linkages between the issues of human security and fair trade, minimum living standards, access to education, and respect for diversity (CHS 2003, p. 4). Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed additional policy prioritisation institutional reforms (2005). Furthermore, at a practical level, the UN has implemented hundreds of human security projects worldwide (MOFA Japan 2010). The Peacebuilding Commission, established in 2005, has provided advice and recommendations on a relatively narrow concept of human security by focusing on countries emerging from conflict. The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) has provided a resolution on strengthening the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance, urging members to continue to take the necessary actions to ensure and enhance the safety and security of humanitarian personnel. Meanwhile, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) focuses on children’s security, such as child survival and development, education, protection from violence and abuse, and the UN World Food Programme (UNWFP) provides food to where it is needed to secure people’s daily lives. The Third Committee, one of the main committees of the UNGA, has worked with agenda items relating to the broad concept of human security, such as social, humanitarian, and human rights issues. Although not

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legally binding, the Committee’s resolutions and discussions have raised the profile of human security issues and served their propagation (Howe and Jang 2013, p. 68). In particular, at the 64th session of the Third Committee, the member states articulated that “no state is free from human rights violations” and states should make an effort to improve the life and security of all (UNGA, 2009). In 2008, for the first time, the UNGA itself held thematic debates on human security, championing the paradigm as a ‘useful vehicle’ to achieve the fundamental goals of the UN—security, development, and human rights (UNGA 2008). While human security issues are mainly dealt with by subsidiary organisations of the UNGA and Secretariat, the Human Security Unit (HSU) is the main organisation integrating human security in all UN activities (Howe and Jang 2013, p. 69). Under the management of the HSU, the projects cover a wide range of issues including “protection and reintegration of refugees, post-conflict peacebuilding, prevention of human trafficking, women’s empowerment, food and health security, socio-economic security for vulnerable communities as well as activities to further promote the concept of human security” (UNTFHS 2009, p. 58). Thus, the UN has contributed to raising consciousness of human security as well as questioning the normative and governance primacy of the state. By providing a number of agencies for states and non-state actors to act as fora for debating, articulating, and adopting the new concept of human security and coordinating foci for humanitarian efforts, the UN has propagated and embedded the concept in international security norms and practices (Howe and Jang 2013, p. 69). Championing of the concept by the world body has also impacted on state practice. The UN acknowledges that states remain the primary actors responsible for the security of their populations. Yet should national governance bodies prove unable, through insufficient resources, or unwilling to protect vulnerable individuals or groups, this responsibility can transfer to other members of the international community. Meanwhile, although the concept of human security has, over the last two and a half decades, become widely recognised at the theoretical level, the twin concepts of freedom from fear and freedom from want that remain central to human security discourse are at the basis of a schism within the practitioner community. Proponents of a ‘narrow’ concept focus on violent threats to individuals, while recognising that these threats are strongly associated with poverty, lack of state capacity, and various

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forms of socio-economic and political inequity. Proponents of the ‘broad’ freedom from want concept of human security such as that articulated in the UNDP’s Human Development Report 1994, and the CHS’s 2003 report, Human Security Now, argue that the threat agenda should be broadened to include hunger, disease and natural disasters because these kill far more people than war, genocide and terrorism combined. Non-Western practitioners worry that the humanitarian turn taken by global governance at the UN serves as justification for interventionary practices (whether humanitarian or otherwise) by Western actors, in particular when linked with the doctrine of R2P. Essentially many actors and commentators in the ‘West’ appear to adhere to a narrow view of human security, but an interventionary interpretation of R2P, with the two being closely linked; whereas in Asia (in particular East Asia) and other regions of the world, the linkage between the two is often rejected, and a broad conceptualisation of human security, along with a non-interventionary understanding of the R2P dominates (Howe 2018, p. 80). Along with the conceptualisation of individual human beings as rights bearers, the very idea of human security has been regarded by some as a Western legacy, stemming from liberalism (Rothschild 1995, pp. 60– 61); and is thereby challenged by claims of cultural specificity (Acharya 2001, p. 1). Although perhaps no other region on earth is as culturally and socio-economically diverse, opposition to Western liberal or universal cosmopolitan values emanating from East Asia has tended to be identified collectively as the challenge of ‘Asian values’. The East Asian challenge to universalism can be seen in cultural, economic, and political terms. Culturally, it asserts that the Western liberal or universalist approach ignores the specific cultural traditions and historical circumstances of East Asian societies, whose interpretations of human rights are different from those in the West. Economically, it maintains that the priority of developing East Asian societies has to be the eradication of poverty. Politically it calls into question the motives of the West accusing them of using human rights merely as an instrument for advancing Western economic or security interests—“power politics in disguise” and a shallow pretence for the use of force against regimes which stand up to Western neo-imperialism (Thompson 2004, p. 1085). A broad resistance to encroachment upon state prerogatives is also reflected in the day-to-day diplomacy of the East Asian region. In December 1990 when the UN decided to convene a World Conference

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on Human rights, several East Asian states questioned the applicability of universal human rights in different cultural, economic, and social settings. The Asian regional preparatory meeting which took place in Bangkok between 29 March and 2 April 1993 provided an opportunity for governments to put forward their definition of human rights on the global agenda. The ‘Bangkok Declaration’, signed by over forty Asian governments, did not reject universal human rights, but the declaration suggested that universality should be considered “in the context of a dynamic and evolving process of international norm-setting, bearing in mind the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds” (Final Declaration 1993). East Asian states also sought to link development issues with human rights questions and emphasise the importance of non-interference (ibid.). Furthermore, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the most comprehensive international organisation in the region, adheres to the ‘ASEAN Way’ by which is meant: “a. Mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and national identity of all nations; b. The right of every State to lead its national existence free from external interference, subversion or coercion; c. Non-interference in the internal affairs of one another” (TAC 1976). East Asia, therefore, has been dominated by the national security paradigm, the principles of absolute sovereignty, and non-interference in domestic affairs. In this sense, countries in the region can regard humanitarian assistance or intervention as, potentially, illegitimate interference (Acharya 2002, p. 377). Yet, for some Western powers, humanitarian intervention can be seen as the logical extension of the human security discourse on global governance as demonstrated by the ‘aid invasion’ interventionary calls by Western statesmen during the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008, and other global humanitarian crises in the near two decades since the emergence of the R2P (Howe 2018, pp. 90–91). This divergence can also be seen to play out in the evolution of the R2P paradigm, interpretations of its implications, and perceptions of the relationship (or lack thereof) with human security. The Canadian-led International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) included in its final report a willingness “to take timely and decisive collective action for this purpose, through the UNSC, when peaceful means prove inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to do it” (ICISS 2001). According to Ramesh Thakur (2019b, p. 95), one of the authors of the report, “R2P was formulated by

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ICISS in 2001 as answer to reconciling the neuralgic rejection of ‘humanitarian intervention’ by the global South with the determination by the North to end atrocities”. Indeed, one of the objectives of framers of the paradigm was, apparently, to kill off the objectionable term ‘humanitarian intervention;’ yet as demonstrated by its ongoing usage by Western policy elites mentioned above, and its prevalence in the academic literature as acknowledged by Thakur himself, this objective has yet to be achieved, even if R2P has garnered more attention in the contemporary discourse (ibid.). Those who criticise the final report (Sunga 2006) for not putting enough clear distance between R2P and the interventionary use of force have highlighted how it even includes a section (6.28–6.40) on what can be done “When the Security Council Fails to Act”—although, again according to Thakur (2019a), this section was written with the understanding that multilateral action through the UN was the preferred course, and that other UN channels were anticipated as being the alternative conduits for action beyond the UNSC. As far as Sunga (2006, p. 77) is concerned, the Commission Report then gave the impression it had accorded scant regard for the basic principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention as it “proceeded to classify and characterize various sorts of deployment of armed force”. Thus, despite the intentions of the framers, and their extensive subsequent writings attempting to distance the paradigm from humanitarian intervention, the declaration of an R2P, from a Western perspective, could still be interpreted it seems as duty to use force to intervene humanitarianly. In the intervening years, the R2P paradigm has gained momentum and garnered further international recognition. At the High-Level Plenary Meeting for the 2005 World Summit (14–16 September) the world’s leaders at the UNGA agreed on an R2P which included a “clear and unambiguous acceptance by all governments of the collective international responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”. Resolution 1674, adopted by the UNSC on 28 April 2006, “Reaffirm[ed] the provisions of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document regarding the R2P populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” and commits the UNSC to action to protect civilians in armed conflict. Yet despite endorsing the R2P, East Asian actors and commentators maintain a distinct understanding of what it implies, and its relationship

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with human security. The Permanent Representative of South Korea to the UN, stressed that “the primary responsibility lies in the individual Government while the international community bears the secondary responsibility”, that R2P “distinctly different from humanitarian intervention since it is based on collective actions, in accordance with UN Charter”, and that “not all humanitarian tragedies or human rights violations can or should activate R2P” (Park 2009). For Japan, “while R2P recognizes the necessity for enforcement in certain circumstances, human security rules it out in every occasion”, therefore the focus is one of prevention reducing the need for intervention (Bellamy and Davies 2009, p. 552). Nevertheless, the evolution of the R2P doctrine itself is reflective of increased engagement between East Asian states and the wider international community. As discussed above, the initial ICISS report seemed, it has been claimed, permissive of humanitarian intervention whether or not authorised by the UNSC. This report was drafted by an independent body of experts serving in an advisory capacity to the UN, and Asia was underrepresented on the panel given that the only members from the region were former President Fidel Ramos of the Philippines and Ramesh Thakur of India. The World Summit document was more binding in terms of both legality and, given the near universal representation at the UNGA, in terms of legitimacy, but it was more restrictive in terms of the use of force. Indeed, it appears to reaffirm the traditional pre-eminence of the UNSC, and the restrictions imposed on the UN and other international actions by international law. UNSC Resolution 1674 takes a similarly restrictive line. As such, the whole paradigm has been made more palatable to East Asian states. On 14 September 2009, the UNGA adopted resolution A/63/L80 Rev.1 entitled “The Responsibility to Protect” which had been co-sponsored by 67 member states from every region in the world, including a number of states from Asia. Only seven states sought to play down the importance of the document, stressing that in their opinion the resolution was strictly procedural, and none of these came from the region. Hence East Asia is vital for understanding the dynamics of UN global governance not only because it has witnessed some of the greatest challenges and triumphs of the UN, including the two most comprehensive state-building projects, Cambodia and Timor-Leste; and the Korean War, the largest enforcement action ever undertaken; but also because of the alternative governance perspectives emanating from the region. Thus this

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volume analyses both cases from the perspectives of legality—whether the UN was entitled to take control of the administration of each country to the extent they did; legitimacy—whether the UN administrations acted in accordance with the dictates of international, regional, and local norms, fulfilling their own initial good governance objectives, with a particular emphasis on human security, as well as taking into account local and regional socio-cultural perspectives while building from the bottom up; and efficacy or effectiveness—how well the UN administrations performed in terms of ensuring human-centred good governance, conflict transformation, and positive peacebuilding when addressing the problems of marginalised individuals, groups, and communities, as well as the legacies they left in place upon the withdrawal of UN personnel.

Chapter Overview Chapter 2 assesses the role of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) across the first two ‘moments’ described above, encompassing the decision to intervene, the mandate given to the UN mission, and the implementation of the state-building endeavours from the perspective of international and domestic legal endorsement, multifaceted legitimacy, and the effectiveness of the mission from the perspective of human-centred governance, peacebuilding, and conflict resolution. “The Agreements on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodian Conflict” signed in Paris on 23 October 1991, which became known as the Paris Peace Agreements, invited the UNSC to establish the UNTAC and provided it with the mandate. In February 1992, through Resolution 745, the UNSC created the UNTAC, with a mandate to help this Southeast Asian country undergo a triple transition from war to peace, from socialist authoritarianism to liberal democracy, and from poverty to prosperity through market-based economic reconstruction (Peou 2000). This chapter shows that despite substantial international backing and legal support, UNTAC was at best a qualified success with a number of limitations. In war-torn countries, no amount of legality that peace operations enjoy is a sufficient condition for success and the questions of legitimacy and effectiveness are always most critical. Legitimacy depends on not only international support but more importantly local compliance and cooperation. In spite of the UN-organised national election in 1993 and the subsequent establishment of a coalition government, the

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war continued until the end of 1998. Without the ability to gain the trust of conflictual parties, or to build it between them, the UN administration fell short of even establishing a limited ‘negative peace’, whereby armed conflict was ended, as the Khmer Rouge pulled out of the process. Any hope for securing a more ‘positive peace’ through the transformation of conflictual relationships was therefore even further from being realised. Chapter 3 picks up the story of the legacy of UN involvement in Cambodia. Although the mission ended in July 1993, UN agencies continued to be heavily engaged in the country. Yet the period from this date to the present represents the third ‘moment’ of UN governance evaluation, that of post-intervention consequences of policies carried out by the world body. There have been considerable successes on the socio-economic front associated with freedom from want, with the UN contributing greatly in terms of economic growth, health, education, and public safety, while more Cambodians have become more socially and economically secure. Yet political gains and the transformation of conflictual relationships have been much more limited. The chapter argues that despite the status of the UN as a major legitimate actor, and the legality of its operations, the long-term effectiveness of its administration has been uneven and mostly limited by the politico-security dynamics that unfolded after the UNTAC departure. Chapter 4 introduces the second major case study of UN peacebuilding, state-building and governance, that of Timor-Leste. This chapter starts with the UN Administration in East Timor (UNAMET: June–September 1999). It then considers in detail, the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), which had a PKO mandate, and ran from 1999 until 2002, with the aim of administering the territory, exercising legislative and executive authority during the transition period until independence, and supporting capacity-building for selfgovernment. At the end of this period, with Timor-Leste celebrating the recovery of its independence not only from Indonesia, but also from the UN administration which followed, the UN felt able to laud its own achievements (UN Foundation 2002). On the day when Timor-Leste restored its independence, UNTAET was replaced by the UN Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET: May 2002–May 2005), which, as the name suggests, was to play a more supportive role to the national government state-building and consolidation processes. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNMIT May 2006–December 2012).

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UN operations in Timor-Leste in fact, out of necessity, went far beyond peacekeeping. The UN was blind to existing local structures and mechanisms, which were alien to the typical Western model of state-building. This inability of the UN to identify and work with local mechanisms and customs has undermined the legitimacy of the UN in the eyes of the local population. Regardless of the necessity of such far-reaching usurpation of sovereignty and imposition of governance structures (at least at the level of national government), it is questionable whether the UN and members of the international community acting under the auspices of the UN, were legally empowered to carry them out. But perhaps an even larger question mark hangs over their efficacy. Despite claims to the contrary, the evidence of the 2006 upheavals suggested that initial state-building operations carried out under first UNTAET and then UNMISET were a failure from the perceptive of transforming conflictual relations. Chapter 5 focuses on the legacy of the UN administration and missions in Timor-Leste from the perspective of efficient and long-term provision for the human security of the inhabitants of the territory, in terms of both freedom from want and freedom from fear. It would seem that by 2012, UN operations in Timor-Leste and their indigenous counterparts had at least overcome the majority of the shortcomings of the earlier PKOs in terms of providing national stability and physical peace and security. This had been achieved through a number of initiatives aimed at garnering the support of key stakeholders who might otherwise have had an interest in perpetuating instability. And while the UN cannot claim direct credit for the ‘buying peace’ solution, it can be said that the UN contributed indirectly to creating a conducive environment for such a solution to be effective. Yet the UN operations in Timor-Leste were often at odds with their indigenous counterparts, failed to come to terms with some aspects of freedom from want and distributive injustice, and contributed to a culture of impunity among ruling elites. Thus, despite the peaceful 2012 elections, and the withdrawal of external mission personnel, the underlying foundations for long-term peace, stability, and development, may yet to have been fully laid. Nevertheless, democratic platforms established by the UN provided an arena for the Timorese political elite to compete in a legal and peaceful manner including further critical elections in 2017 (presidential) and 2018 (parliament). The UN has planted several key seeds for promoting human security in Timor-Leste. But there have been limits on its performance effectiveness and legacy in particular in the areas

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of distributive justice (benefit to the least well off) and retributive justice, with reconciliation preferred to punishment. Chapter 6 compares the two cases, attempts to draw shared lessons from these two Southeast Asian UN interventions and administrations, and also addresses the operational and theoretical implications of the broader East Asian operating environment. Governance by the UN administrations in Cambodia and Timor-Leste achieved a great deal but was not the unqualified success in either case that the organisation itself, and its chief supporters would have the world believe. Certainly, in both cases, the immediate threat to life and limb declined dramatically following the UN’s involvement, thus by at least one narrow definition of human security (freedom from fear) they could be viewed as governance success stories. Also, what were essentially failed states were reconstructed (or in the case of Timor-Leste constructed) through a functionally impressive state-building project leaving a relatively stable domestic governance apparatus in place when the UN withdrew. The major difference between the two cases in this area was that the UN governance-building was grafted upon pre-existing infrastructure in Cambodia over a relatively short 18-month timeframe, whereas 12 years of effort were invested in essentially building a new state in Timor-Leste. That the efforts appear ultimately (despite numerous setbacks) to have been relatively successful in the latter, whereas the former has reverted to state authoritarianism, reveals the importance of long-term vision, commitment, and legacy or just post-intervention. The period of UN governance, in both cases, incubated other sources of conflictual relations and insecurity, although perhaps for different reasons. Likewise, the legacy of the UN administrations in each case leaves a lot to be desired in terms of broader definitions of human security (which have tended to emphasise freedom from want). In Cambodia, efforts by the UN to be as inclusive as possible left conflictual forces overly empowered, and the UN administration itself under-resourced and under-equipped to deal with them all. In Timor-Leste, by contrast, failure to include all the rebel forces stored up resentment and paved the way for the 2006 crisis. Timor-Leste does appear to have been able to weather the internal turmoil and consolidate democratic governance to a reasonable degree, whereas Cambodia has laboured under the authoritarian shadow of an emerging one-party state since the UN withdrawal. Both countries have experienced significant economic growth when measured at an

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aggregate national level since the UN departed; yet division of the benefits of the growth has not been equitable in either case, often the most vulnerable groups are no better off and are even endangered by the forces of development, and in both cases much of the development is a result of the plundering of natural resources rather than sustainable growth.

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CHAPTER 2

A Critical Reflection on UNTAC’s Contributions to Human Security in Cambodia

Abstract UNTAC was a limited success when assessed in terms of legality, legitimacy, and effectiveness. This operation would not have been launched had the UN Security Council, especially the five Permanent Members, not reached an agreement and would not have enjoyed as much legitimacy as it did if foreign governments (especially the nineteen foreign signatories) and the Cambodian people, especially the four armed factions, had objected to the proposed course of action. Comparatively, however, the degree of legality was far higher than that of legitimacy. The mission succeeded in organising and holding a national election but fell short of ensuring a fully free and fair election. The disarmament process was the greatest failure. Overall, the Cambodians enjoyed more freedom from fear and freedom from want than any time since the mid-1970s. Keywords Cambodia · Political factions · Paris Peace Agreements · UNTAC · Peacekeeping · Legality · Legitimacy and effectiveness

Introduction Although the concept of human security was formalised in 1994 by the UN Development Programme, what the UN had done in Cambodia between 1992 and 1993 can be characterised as an important © The Author(s) 2021 B. M. Howe et al., UN Governance, Security, Development and Human Rights in East Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54572-7_2

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case study for a critical reflection on its contributions to human security in this war-torn country. As noted in Chapter 1, human security has two dimensions: freedom from fear and freedom from want. From this perspective, the UN mission in the form of UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) provides a useful case study for understanding and explaining the way in which the UN mission contributed to human security in Cambodia and the extent to which it succeeded in making its contributions. It is worth emphasising that the Cambodian people had suffered much from a bloody civil war from 1970 to 1975, followed by mass atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1978) and the Vietnamese invasion and occupation in the 1980s. Millions of lives were lost and most of those who survived were left vulnerable to various forms of threat such as political violence, landmines, and poverty. UNTAC was widely known as the UN’s unprecedented multifaceted mission to help Cambodia undergo a triple transition from war to peace, from socialist authoritarianism to liberal democracy, and from poverty to prosperity through market-based economic reconstruction (Peou 1997, 2000). The mission was deployed after four armed Cambodian factions and nineteen foreign governments had signed on 23 October 1991 a historic document known as Paris Peace Agreements (PPAs) (UN 1991). One of the critical questions raised in this chapter is the extent to which the UN intervention achieved its objectives in terms of putting an end to the war, turning the battlefield into a ballot box, and getting Cambodia back on its path towards peace. This chapter only focuses its analysis on UNTAC’s role. Analysis of UNTAC legacies will be offered in the next chapter. Overall, UNTAC was a limited success when assessed in terms of legality, legitimacy, and effectiveness. This operation would not have been launched had the UN Security Council (SC), especially the five Permanent Members (P5), not reached an agreement and would not have enjoyed as much legitimacy as it did if foreign governments (especially the nineteen foreign signatories) and the Cambodian people, especially the four armed factions, had objected to the proposed course of action. Comparatively, however, the degree of legality was far higher than that of legitimacy: the four factions did not comply with the PPAs and cooperated with UNTAC to the fullest extent. The Khmer Rouge in particular refused to disarm, violated the ceasefire and stayed out of the electoral process, thus leaving the peace process marred by political violence and

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intimidation, leaving the other factions unable to disarm and unwilling to cooperate fully with the mission. The mission succeeded in organising and holding a national election but fell short of ensuring a fully free and fair election—free from political violence and intimidation and fair in terms of levelling the political playing field. Overall, the Cambodians enjoyed more freedom from fear and than any time since at least the mid-1970s.

The UN Intervention and Its Legality The level of legality involving the role of UNTAC was extremely high. The international community took collective action to establish this peace mission. The UN Security Council (UNSC) acted in concert when its fifteen members voted in favour of this operation based on the PPAs. This section shows that the SC’s P5 in particular had a change of heart in the wake of the Cold War when they agreed on the need to put an end to the Cambodia war. Throughout the 1980s, members of the UNSC were divided over Cambodia as the war in this country raged on. On one side, the Soviet Union (a permanent member of the UNSC) lent support to the Cambodian regime known as the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK)/State of Cambodia (SOC) led by a group of former Khmer Rouge leaders, who rebelled against the Khmer Rouge regime (led by Prime Minister Pol Pot), then defected to Vietnam, and were put in power by Hanoi after its invasion of Cambodia late in 1978. Until the end of the 1980s, Moscow remained the PRK/SOC’s major ally within the UNSC. Soon after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, it met on 16 January 1979 for four days to debate a resolution calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Cambodia, but only to meet with resistance from Moscow. Only thirteen of the fifteen UNSC members voted in favour of the resolution. The Soviet Union and its ally, Czechoslovakia, voted against it. The other P5 countries (China, France, the UK, and the US) voted in favour of the resolution. These four anti-Soviet and anti-Vietnamese P5 countries recognised Cambodia as a sovereign state and a member of the UN, but they did so by lending support to Democratic Kampuchea (led by the Khmer Rouge) and later extended their official support for the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) represented by the Khmer Rouge faction and two other armed resistance factions fighting the PRK/SOC: the National United Front for an Independent, Neutral,

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Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC, led by the royalists) and the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front (KPNLF, led by those who regarded themselves as republicans). Three P5 (France, the UK, and the US) took a position similar to that of China but did not provide any material support to the Khmer Rouge. Their main argument in defence of the CGDK was advanced on the grounds based on the UN concept of collective security, which its proponents used to contend that Vietnam committed an act of aggression by illegally invading and occupying another sovereign state. The US and its allies, such as Japan, did not consider as legal the Vietnamese use of military force to invade and occupy another sovereign state. US Secretary of State Edmund S. Muskie, for instance, announced on 15 September 1980 that his government would support the seating of Democratic Kampuchea at the UN, despite its human rights violations. In other words, the illegal Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia outweighed the Khmer Rouge’s abhorrent human rights record (Oberdorfer 1980). Disagreement among the P5 over Cambodia during the last decade of the Cold War made it impossible for them to support any peace agreements in this war-torn country. The US did not support the Khmer Rouge in material terms but was accused of providing indirect support for the faction. China emerged and remained as the principal supporter of the Khmer Rouge faction, giving the latter around $100 million per years in its war efforts against the PRK/SOC. The anti-Soviet China-US alliance was based on geopolitics and not simply on any shared ideology (China was a socialist state and the US was a capitalist state). Their shared interest in pushing back the Soviet Union through punishing its Vietnamese proxy was driven by its geopolitical factors. Neither China nor the US wanted to see Vietnam help the Soviet Union expand its political influence in Southeast Asia. China’s policy objectives included the reduction of Soviet influence in Southeast Asia, the prevention of Vietnam from dominating Cambodia and forming alliances with other powers that would threaten China, and the dissolution of the pro-Vietnam, pro-Soviet government in Phnom Penh (Ross 1991). Throughout the 1980s, Moscow remained a staunch defender of the regime in Phnom Penh (Ogden 1992), extending its support for the latter by providing it with material assistance such as military equipment. Although the war continued throughout the 1980s, a peace process began to develop in the second half of the decade. Much has been written about the difficult road to the peace process; thus, there is no

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need to repeat it here, but it is helpful to highlight the major events relevant to how the process unfolded. International efforts to bring peace to Cambodia began 1981 when the International Conference on Kampuchea was held in New York from 13 to 17 July but failed because the Soviet Union and its allies, especially Vietnam refused to participate. In 1985, France made an effort to bring the royalists and the Phnom Penh government together, but nothing materialised. In January of that year, the PRK’s Prime Minister Hun Sen said he would negotiate with the royalists and the KPNLF if they would disassociate themselves from the Khmer Rouge. The first unofficial meeting between Prince Norodom Sihanouk of the CGDK (Cambodia’s leader who was ousted by his defence minister in 1970 and joined the Khmer Rouge during the civil war but was put under house arrest after the Khmer Rouge won the war in 1975) and Hun Sen was held in France from 2 to 4 December 1987. The high level of international support for a comprehensive peace agreement can be traced back to at least 1989 when the Paris Peace Conference on Cambodia took place in France from 30 July to 30 August, but this international conference did not lead to any resolution (Acharya et al. 1991; Koh 1990). The PRK faction led by Hun Sen rejected the CGDK factions’ demand for any quadripartite power-sharing arrangement that included the Khmer Rouge (Suon 1998, p. 5). Japan made the next big move by convening a major international conference on 4– 5 June 1990, but again failed to produce any substantial results, mainly due to the Khmer Rouge’s boycott and other factors such as the fact that Japan was not a permanent member of the UN Security Council and did not have much influence on Thailand’s pro-Khmer Rouge military leadership (Lam 2012, pp. 112–113). It then became clear that any exclusion of the Khmer Rouge from a peace deal was doomed to fail, largely because the faction was still well-armed and China would not support any peace deal without it. Until the signing of the Peace Agreements, concerns about the potential return of the Khmer Rouge remained the main sticking point. Despite improvements in Sino-Soviet relations and the Chinese pledge that Beijing would no longer offer military support to the Khmer Rouge, Moscow remained suspicious. In late 1989, the SOC reportedly still received military aid from Moscow. In fact, according to The New York Times, Moscow roughly doubled its military aid to Phnom Penh, compared to its deliveries of arms and ammunition in 1988. This aid

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came about in the midst of Vietnam’s official declaration that it was withdrawing its troops from Cambodia and its concerns about the Khmer Rouge’s potential return to power (Lewis 1989). A final breakthrough took place after the UNSC had reached agreement on the need to find a comprehensive solution. The Cambodian factions met again in Jakarta on 10 September 1990, where they reached an agreement on the need to form a Supreme National Council (SNC) that would represent Cambodia as a national authority. On September 11, the representatives of France and Indonesia issued a joint statement confirming that the Cambodian factions accepted a framework document that the P5 had formulated. The year 1990 marked the beginning of a UN SC Security Council willing to put aside its members’ differences over Cambodia when they unanimously adopted Resolution 668 on September 20, which endorses the framework for a comprehensive political settlement of the Cambodia conflict and encourages the continuing efforts of China, France, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the US in this regard. Subsequently, the UNSC unanimously passed several other resolutions in support of a peace mission in Cambodia: UN SC Resolutions 717 (1991); 718 (1991); 728 (1992); 745 (1992); 766 (1992); 783 (1992), and 792 of November (1992). Resolution 717 in particular was adopted unanimously and approved the UN Secretary-General to establish a UN Advance Mission in Cambodia (UNAMIC) immediately after the warring factions signed their peace agreement on 23 October 1991. Resolution 718, adopted to welcome the PPAs, urges “the Secretary-General to submit to the Security Council…a report containing his implementation plan, including in particular a detailed estimate of the cost of …[UNTAC] on the understanding that this report would be the basis on which the Council would authorize the establishment of the Authority…”. Also adopted were Resolution 728, which approves the Secretary-General’s report on 5 and 7 January 1992, and Resolution 745, which authorises the establishment of UNTAC. What all these resolutions suggest is that the UNSC authorised the UN mission, and this provided the legal basis for UN intervention. As Cambodia’s transitional authority, UNTAC was given the mandate to make sure the Cambodian parties would comply with the PPAs by agreeing to respect the ceasefire, disarm, and demobilise their troops, and ultimately participate in the electoral process. UNTAC would be deployed as the legal operation authorised by the UNSC whose permanent members, especially China, the Soviet Union and the US, settled

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their differences. The UNSC Resolution 745 spells out some specific steps for action. UNTAC would be established under the UNSC’s authority for a period not to exceed eighteen months, deployed as rapidly as possible. Elections would be held by May 1993 at the latest. The Cambodian signatories were expected to comply with the PPAs and the Supreme National Council (SNC) was called upon to provide UNTAC with all necessary assistance and facilities. More specifically, they were expected to complete the disarmament process prior to the end of registration for the election. Viewed in light of the UNSC’s unanimous resolutions on Cambodia, UNTAC was a perfectly legal operation. During this transitional period, UNTAC was also to work with Cambodia’s SNC, which according to the PPAs’ Section III, Article 3, was “the unique legitimate body and source of authority in which, throughout the transitional period, the sovereignty, independence and unity of Cambodia are enshrined”. The SNC was not equipped with the mandate to implement the PPAs on its own. Article 6 makes clear that this Cambodian source of authority hereby delegates to the UN all powers necessary to ensure the implementation of this Agreement. UNTAC would function more or less as a ‘trustee’ whose authority was derived from the SNC, based on the agreement that the mission would be there for a limited period of time and work within the framework of Cambodian sovereignty and for the benefit of the Cambodian people by turning the battlefield into a ballot box (Peou 1997). The legality of UNTAC was largely the by-product of changes in global geopolitics. During the first half of the 1980s, Cambodia was caught in the ‘little Cold War’ (as the détente between the US and the Soviet Union, which began in 1963, was grinding to a halt in 1978). The second half of the 1980s, however, saw a clear parallel between the Soviet Union’s new diplomacy and peace negotiations in Cambodia that led to the signing of the PPAs. After he came to power in 1985, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev adopted new policies, the most important of which were known as ‘perestroika’ (restructuring) and ‘glasnost’ (open discussion and democratisation). These new policies gave rise to the Soviet Union’s decision to end its geopolitical adventure in Southeast Asia. Although he first did not set out to replace communism (whose legitimacy had been eroding because of the Lenin–Stalin regime’s brutal state security system) with liberal ideas, Gorbachev did not seem to have any other viable options. His country’s internal strength was sapped by “imperial overstretch” involving high spending on defence and foreign

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affairs (Kennedy 1989). Moscow had engaged in an expensive arms race with the US. Soviet support for client states in the Third World (most notably Angola, Cuba, Ethiopia, Libya, Syria, and Vietnam) was costly (Duncan and Ekedahl 2018). Soviet support for the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia at the end of 1978 and the subsequent Vietnamese occupation of this country throughout the 1980s (as well as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan late in 1979) in particular resulted in a loose anti-Soviet alliance among China, the US, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and much of the Islamic world. But financially, economically, socially, and technologically, the Soviet Union subsequently began to fall into a deep hole. Two months after assuming power, for instance, Gorbachev delivered a speech critical of the Soviet economic policy which he considered to be inefficient. The Soviet Union was then willing to improve its relations with ASEAN member states and this development made the Cambodian peace negotiation process possible (Teng 2017). In fact, Gorbachev’s new policy began to have a powerful effect on Vietnamese strategic thinking during the second half of the 1980s. As Alexander Vuving (2006, p. 811) puts it, “In the mid-1980s, New Thinking in the Soviet Union and radical changes in Soviet foreign policy under Gorbachev triggered a change in worldview and a transformation of national ambition within some Vietnamese ruling circles”. The year 1987 further saw a flurry of Soviet diplomatic activities in Asia, aimed at improving relations with China and ASEAN. The Cambodia situation was a major area of contention, and Moscow saw the need to remove it as a way to improve relations with these Asian states. Thailand in particular, whose military-dominated government was anti-communist, had been alarmed by the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, its next-door neighbour. In March 1987, Soviet Foreign Minister Edward Shevardnadze paid a visit to Thailand and his Thai counterpart visited Moscow in May of that year. Moscow put pressure on Vietnam to withdraw its troops from Cambodia. Towards the end of the 1980s, the high level of economic aid being extended to countries such as Vietnam also came under criticism from the Soviets. Hit hard by the decline of Soviet foreign aid (which was about $10 billion between 1986 and 1990 and virtually non-existent in 1991), Vietnam could no longer count on Moscow’s support for its occupation of Cambodia. After its economic reform, based on the new policy of Doi Moi adopted in 1986 and inspired by the economic successes of newly industrialised countries (NICs) in East Asia, Vietnam was also in desperate need of international

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assistance for its economic development (Yamamoto 2015, pp. 386–387) and integration into the world economy. Soviet diplomacy under the leadership of Gorbachev further helped pave the way for the normalisation of Sino-Soviet relations in 1989 (when the Chinese and the Soviet leaders held their first summit after some 30 years of hostility) and for the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia. Improved relations between China and the Soviet Union sent Vietnam an additional signal that the latter could no longer afford to maintain hostile relations with China (Ang 1998). For its part, Beijing saw a declining threat from the Soviet Union as well as a more desperate Vietnam and was thus more willing to work with Hanoi to improve their bilateral relations. Following the collapse of regimes in Eastern Europe, top Vietnamese leaders even “sought an ideological alliance with China” (Vuving 2006, p. 812), fearing that the US and the West were trying to eliminate communism from the world (ibid., p. 811). The year 1989 was also evidently difficult for Beijing after its violent crackdowns on student protesters in the Tiananmen Square, which led to an international condemnation and economic sanctions. Afterwards, the Chinese leadership saw the need to restore its international image by, among other things, supporting the Cambodian peace process but still insisting that the Khmer Rouge be included in it. Overall, the PPAs settled the differences among China, the Soviet Union, and the US, as well as the warring Cambodian factions. Although the Khmer Rouge was a signatory, the Agreements make clear that its reign of terror would not be allowed to return. Part III: Human Rights, Article 15 (2.a), for instance, states that “Cambodia undertakes…to take effective measures to ensure that the policies and practices of the past shall never be allowed to return; to adhere to relevant international human rights instruments”. Foreign powers also would not be permitted to interfere in Cambodian affairs. Annex II of the Agreements aimed at making sure that no foreign forces, other than UNTAC military personnel, would be allowed to remain. Article VI focuses on “Verification of withdrawal from Cambodia and non-return of all categories of foreign forces” and Article VII on “Cessation of outside military assistance to all Cambodian Parties”. On International Guarantees, Part IV, Article 18 makes clear that “Cambodia undertakes to maintain, preserve and defend, and the other Signatories undertake to recognise and respect, the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and inviolability, neutrality and national unity of Cambodia”. Thus, the Agreements reflected the settlement of

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major differences among foreign powers, most notably China and the Soviet Union. In short, the UN intervention in Cambodia was perfectly legal to the extent that not a single member of the UNSC objected to the establishment of UNTAC. The transformation of great-power politics as evidenced by the Soviet Union’s new policies beginning in the mid-1980s made it possible for the Cambodian peace process to proceed and the thawing of the Cold War made it possible for the UNSC to authorise the establishment and deployment of the mission. Seen in this context, the legality of UNTAC’s role can only be put in the light of changing geopolitics and the great powers’ interests, rather than in the force of international law.

The Limits of UNTAC’s Legitimacy Although the UNSC’s resolutions provided the legal basis for the UN intervention in Cambodia, UNTAC as the country’s transitional authority enjoyed a lesser degree of legitimacy. Legality is a matter of international law, but legitimacy is the question of authority based on consent. When on the ground, the mission did not receive all the support it needed to make its operation fully effective. At the international level, as will be seen, the level of UNTAC’s legitimacy was high. At the national level, UNTAC received much less than full support. While the Cambodian population overwhelmingly supported the mission, the four Cambodian signatories failed to comply fully with the PPAs or offer UNTAC their full support. The concept of legitimacy is a subject of great importance in the literature of international peace operations and can be regarded as a matter of degree. The degrees of UN missions’ legitimacy can be assessed at three levels: global, regional, and national/local. Global support for UN can be measured in terms of support given by UN member states, most notably the P5. Regional support for UN missions is no less important, given the constraints the UN was under at the end of the Cold War when demand more UN intervention in civil conflicts grew significantly. As noted in Chapter 1, this led to the thinking of subcontracting, generally meaning that the UN delegated some responsibilities to regional organisations. The question of legitimacy at the local level is raised by UN officials and peacekeeping practitioners, who find support from local elites and populations to be most fundamental to the success and failure of UN missions. While local perceptions of how UN peacekeeping personnel

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treat them are important, a major source of legitimacy often neglected in the academic literature is how secure local political elites and civilian populations feel during the peace process. After all, the success of peace operations depends much on the security interests of those involved in conflicts. Firmness and fairness are important in that UN missions are likely to enjoy support from warring factions if they do not come under threat, including the threat of marginalisation or punishment for whatever reason. The idea of fairness embedded in the peace and electoral process rests on the assumption that UN peacekeepers are able to create or establish a level playing field, in which no one party enjoys the upper hand and can take advantage of the political and security situation. Much of the academic literature on peace spoilers tends to take a legalistic approach, however, because not all warring factions are moral equals. Some committed more violence than others and, thus, tend to feel insecure and unwilling to comply with peace agreements and cooperate with UN authorities. Factions whose pasts are called into question tend to perceive themselves to be primarily targeted. Moreover, the question of UN legitimacy is not only a matter of local perceptions of UN peace operations but also a matter of how much credibility they have as perceived by local elites and populations. Recently, the UN acknowledged how important the question of perceived UN legitimacy and credibility when conducting peace operations (see Chapter 1). If international support that UNTAC received is measured in terms of UN members’ support for the mission, it is clear that the level of legitimacy it enjoyed was unquestionably high from the beginning. As mentioned earlier, the UNSC’s resolutions were adopted unanimously. Nineteen foreign states were signatories of the PPAs. These foreign signatories included the P5, Australia, Canada, India, Japan, and Yugoslavia. China had been perceived in a negative light when the question of international contributions to world peace, but its peacekeeping role in Cambodia helped transform its image as playing a positive role (Hirono 2011). China’s contributions to UNTAC set a new precedent for its involvement in international peacekeeping. Prior to its participation in UNTAC’s peacekeeping forces, China had engaged in UN peacekeeping operations (PKO). The country joined the UN Special Committee on Peace Operations in 1988 and dispatched its military observers to the Middle East in 1990. But China’s participation in UNTAC set a new foreign policy shift. From 1992 to 1994, China contributed 49 military observers to accompany its 800 engineering military personnel to

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Cambodia. According to Jerker Hellström (2009, p. 26), “This was the first time China sent formed military units to a UNPKO and the only time it did so during the entire 1990s”. Thus, UNTAC enjoyed an unprecedented support from China with a previous history of little action in peace operations. Japan’s support for UNTAC was also significant in terms of enhancing the UN mission’s international legitimacy. Not only did Tokyo lend full support to the peace process but also played a major role to the extent that the head of UNTAC was Akashi Yasushi, a Japanese citizen, and that it was the first time since World War II that Tokyo dispatched 600 ground troops (an engineering contingent of the Japanese Self-Defence Force) to a foreign country. As the disarmament process went nowhere because of the Khmer Rouge’s refusal to join and the ceasefire was violated, Japan worked with Thailand to persuade the faction to stay engaged in the peace process but failed (Yamamoto 2015, pp. 392–394). At the regional level, the six ASEAN member states were signatories of the PPAs: Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand. Some ASEAN countries played a major role in facilitating peace negotiations. Chief among them was Indonesia whose foreign minister, Ali Alatas, who was instrumental in moving the peace process forward. Under the leadership of Indonesia, Cambodian peace negotiators met twice in Jakarta (known as JIM I and JIM II). The first meeting in Jakarta was held in 1988 and the second one in February 1989. The Indonesialed meetings showed the limits of ASEAN because of the poor results evidenced by Prince Sihanouk’s dissatisfaction and subsequent call for an international conference, which was then held in Paris and co-chaired by France and Indonesia. Indonesia remained supportive of the negotiation process and held another informal meeting on 10 September 1990, where the Cambodian factions attended. As the frontline state confronting the Vietnamese military occupation of Cambodia, Thailand was not only a signatory of the PPAs, but also took steps to provide support to UNTAC. Thailand was one of the 45 countries that contributed military and civilian personnel and one of the five ASEAN member states (the other being Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines). At the local level, UNTAC enjoyed a high degree of support from the Cambodian people, who hungered for peace and democracy. According to Jeni Whalan (2014), local legitimacy is essential to the success of UN peace operations because it encourages compliance and cooperation with UN authorities. Most ordinary Cambodians, if not everyone, welcomed

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UNTAC and participated in the electoral process. More than 50,000 Cambodians served on electoral staff. UNTAC established a registration process aimed at getting as many Cambodians eligible to vote to make their voices heard. The Cambodian voters showed their hunger for peace and democracy, as measured by more than 4,267,000 of the 4,764,618 registered voters (representing 96% of the eligible voters from a total population of about 10 million) went to the polls and the majority of voters cast their ballots in favour of the main opposition party: FUNCINPEC received 45.5% of the votes (1,824,188), compared to 38.2% (1,533,471 votes) the CPP received. In short, these election results showed a high degree of local support for UNTAC—a hunger for peace, security, and democracy on the part of the Cambodian population. Unfortunately, UNTAC did not enjoy the level of legitimacy from the elites as may have been expected and one of the consequences was that the mission failed to put an end to violence and the armed conflict. UNTAC established a Mixed Military Working Group whose members were official representatives of the four Cambodian parties, but the limits of elite support for UNTAC can be assessed in terms of the SOC/CPP’s and the Khmer Rouge’s unwillingness to comply with the UN mission, beginning with ceasefire violations. The failure of UNTAC’s peacekeeping component has been explained in a number of ways. One popular explanation is that the Khmer Rouge had never intended to disarm and join the electoral process. The faction was a perfect example of a ‘peace spoiler’ simply because of what it had done in the past, having committed mass atrocities, most notably genocide, and started a war with Vietnam. This approach to understanding the failure of UNTAC’s peacekeeping role is based on the idea that the faction was made up of the remnants from the genocidal regime led by Pol Pot. According to this perspective, including the Khmer Rouge was not only immoral but also detrimental to the peace process. After all, the Khmer Rouge faction had a bloody history and would pursue nothing less than a strategy to fight its way back to power. The Khmer Rouge leadership should be brought to justice instead of being allowed to participate in the peace and electoral process. In fact, the deputy commander of UNAMIC even entertained the idea that a few hundreds of his UN troops should be sacrificed in a war against the Khmer Rouge (Akashi 2012, p. 157). One could further argue that including the Khmer Rouge in the peace process made it illegitimate in the first place, but this argument overlooks the fact that without its inclusion there might have been no peace

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deal. That the Khmer Rouge was included and allowed to participate in the peace process was not about morality or legality based on international human rights or criminal law but more about political pragmatism. The question for those who considered the inclusion of the faction in the peace and democratic process had much to do with the political reality on the ground. Sorpong Peou (1997) makes the case that the faction was the strongest of the three resistance factions and could not be quickly eliminated by force and sacrificing a few hundred UN troops would run the risk of ruining the entire peace process. The UN peacekeepers made up of troops from different UN member states were no match for the battlehardened Khmer Rouge forces. Ken Berry (2012, pp. 173, 181), who was a legal advisor to the Australian Task Force on Cambodia from 1990 to 1993, wrote the following: “it was simply never realistic to contemplate that 15,000 widely-scattered international troops could, if the need arose, defeat the Khmer Rouge militarily, when 200,000 battle-hardened Vietnamese troops had not achieved that after ten years in Cambodia…”. The head of UNTAC, Akashi Yasushi, makes a similar observation: “I am convinced…that UNTAC was neither authorised nor capable of fighting its way to the Khmer Rouge area and winning a messy guerrilla war” (Akashi 2012, p. 164). The UNTAC’s failure to disarm the Khmer Rouge had other negative consequences. The SOC/CPP, the FUNCINPEC, and KPNLF also found their reasons not to disarm. As will be discussed in Chapter 4, the CPP now show no respect for the PPAs. Now that the party has succeeded in consolidating power, its leaders have become critical of the peace accord. The spirit of the PPAs is now considered dead and has not been celebrated as a national holiday. Hun Sen made this remark: “Don’t imagine you can hold a meeting like the Paris Peace conference again because the Paris Peace agreement is like a ghost” (Cited in Ben and Handley 2017). In short, the level of UNTAC’s legitimacy was high when the mission was established, but quickly eroded when the Cambodian parties refused to cooperate fully with the mission, especially in the area of peacekeeping and electoral competition. The above analysis goes to show that the question of legitimacy is complex. On one hand, one could make the case that anything that awarded the Khmer Rouge a role in the peace process was not only illegal but also illegitimate. No one denies the atrocities committed under the Pol Pot regime. As noted earlier, the international condemnation of the faction’s past human rights violations is perfectly

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justified and the call for bringing its leaders to justice was right and perfectly understandable. On the other hand, excluding the Khmer Rouge from the peace process would not have allowed peace democracy and human rights to thrive either, as will be discussed in Chapter 4.

UNTAC’s Performance and the Limits of Its Effectiveness UNTAC’s performance cannot be fairly assessed unless its different components are evaluated separately. Its mandate included the following areas: (1) military arrangements, (2) human rights, (3) civil administration, (4) the maintenance of law and order, (5) the repatriation and resettlement of the Cambodian refugees and displaced persons, (6) the rehabilitation of essential Cambodian infrastructure during the transitional period, and (7) the organisation and conduct of free and fair general elections. UNTAC’s overall performance was not as effective as it should have been. It was a massive multifaceted mission whose personnel were drawn from nations of the world and deployed to implement the PPAs from March 1992 to September 1993. It employed 15,900 military personnel, 3600 civilian police, 1200 international civilian staff, and 400 UN volunteers. The mission cost more than US$1.8 billion, larger than the UN regular budget at the time (Akashi 2012, p. 162). But UNTAC’s effectiveness was limited. UNTAC performed reasonably well on several fronts but poorly or badly on the others. The mission accomplished its target on the rehabilitation and resettlement of the Cambodian refugees and displaced persons and the rehabilitation of essential Cambodian infrastructure. The UN mission, for instance, repatriated some 370,000 Cambodian refugees. The Election Component of UNTAC has been judged positively. After all, the election for a Constituent National Assembly took place in July 1993. The extent to which the election was successful is a matter of debate, but there is a general consensus among observers that the election marked UNTAC’s qualified success because of the large voter turnout. The election was not as free and fair as envisioned in the PPAs. Political violence and intimidation were widespread until Election Day. The disarmament process was the biggest disaster, as the Cambodian armed factions chose to resist and defy UNTAC (Heder and Ledgerwood 1996; Peou 1997). Much has been written about UNTAC’s poor performance in the post-peace agreement process (Berry 2012; Peou 1997; Findley 1995),

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but it is worth highlighting some of the mission’s major challenges and serious shortcomings. According to Suon Samnang (1998), a colonel in the Royal Cambodian Army who represented the KPNLF within the Mixed Military Working Group of UNTAC’s Military Component, the slow deployment of UN peacekeeping troops was a major hindrance to the peace process. UNAMIC began its deployment soon after the PPAs was signed in October 1991, with only a small staff of 268 tasked with the responsibility to establish monitoring points and liaison teams. Moreover, UNTAC’s military and police personnel were not deployed fast enough. By mid-1992, only two battalions from Indonesia and Malaysia had been fully deployed, but could not even operate effectively because of logistical challenges. Personnel for UNTAC’s Civilian Police Component were not fully deployed until October 1992 (one year after the PPAs was signed). Although insufficient in strength and number, the UNTAC military leadership was called into question when its deputy commander, Jean Loridon from France, said that the UN should sacrifice 200 hundreds of its soldiers to defeat the Khmer Rouge (Akashi 2012, p. 157). By mid-1992, the task of monitoring foreign troops along the borders, especially the Cambodian–Vietnamese borders, remained inadequate. Suon Samnang (1998, p. 15) writes: “Of the twenty four checkpoints planned to monitor withdrawal of foreign forces and verify that new military equipment and supplies were not entering the country, only three, on the border with Vietnam, had been established by the end of April 1992”, resulting in the Khmer Rouge’s claim that the Paris Peace Agreements were not effectively implemented, that Vietnamese troops remained in Cambodia and that the SOC/CPP, not the SNC, was still in control of the country. For those who understood the insecurity dynamics in Cambodia, the results of UNTAC’s weak performance came as no big surprise. The opposition parties, especially the Khmer Rouge, who distrusted just about everybody, lost confidence in UNTAC. No evidence also suggests that the use of sanctions or the threat of military punishment would bring the Cambodian parties, especially the Khmer Rouge, into line. The economic sanctions imposed on the Khmer Rouge did not force the faction to disarm either, nor did this policy instrument effectively pressure it to stay in the electoral process. More recent studies, for instance, question the utility of force or pressure in a war-torn country where personal and factional politics was severe in the absence of strong institutional structures (Whalan 2014).

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Unfortunately much of the influential academic literature on the UN intervention in Cambodia is harshly critical of the PPAs, because the Khmer Rouge was included, and of anyone in favour of this approach to peace. The critics were dialogues and moralists, who allow their logic of appropriateness to trump the logic of consequences that raises questions about the utility of force to keep the peace by fighting another war against the Khmer Rouge without a full understanding of the security dynamics in Cambodia at the time. The fact that the Khmer Rouge faction was allowed to be part of the peace process was one based on the reality on the ground at the time and the dreadful consequences of an ongoing war in this war-torn country. It is far from clear that going to war with the Khmer Rouge would have received support from China and it would have been a disaster if UNTAC had chosen to fight the Khmer Rouge. Further analysis suggests that UNTAC’s failure to disarm the Cambodian factions and create a neutral political environment conducive to free and fair elections resulted in part from its inability to take quick action, thus allowing the security dynamics on the ground to develop to the extent that neither the Khmer Rouge nor the SOC/CPP could trust UNTAC for their security. The argument that none of the Cambodian parties or the Khmer Rouge in particular was willing to comply with the PPAs may hold some truth, but it does not follow that they would not have signed the Agreements had they not had the slightest interest in peace because doing so would have exposed them to international condemnation and isolation. None of their foreign patrons was prepared to give them the support they had received before the end of the Cold War. However, one thing none of them was prepared to accept was their disarmament when UNTAC was unable to take effective action and organising a win–lose election that could also leave them struggling for survival after. It is especially difficult to imagine how the Khmer Rouge in particular would win any seats outside their own zones or areas under their strict control, but this predictable outcome put the faction in a dangerous position as disarming and an electoral defeat would not serve its security interest. The SOC/CPP was also understandably unprepared to see any opposition factions come to power either. This underscores just how difficult it was for the CPP to let UNTAC have its way. Thus, UNTAC’s military and police components were bound to fail unless they could effectively assure the Cambodian factions of long-term security. The Civilian Administration of UNTAC was also slowly established and was unable to create a political environment perceived by the opposition

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parties as neutral and conducive to the holding of free and fair elections. This component was given the task to control government areas, especially national defence, foreign affairs, public security, information, and finance, but could not succeed in doing so because of the SOC/CPP’s resistance. Research findings suggest that this was the case. Suon Samnang (1998, p. 15), for instance, makes this observation: “By May 1992, most of the civil administrative components were only beginning to be established and had insufficient staff. The Civilian Police personnel were not fully fielded until October 1992. It was really too late for UNTAC to be able to control the five administrative ministries of the factions”. Akashi Yasushi (2012, p. 163) further confirms this slow deployment when writing that “it was only towards the end of 1992, after ten months of UN deployment, that the requisite number of [civilian] administrators was finally assembled in Phnom Penh and deployed elsewhere in the country”. Akashi also acknowledges the big challenge of bringing the CPP’s administration under its control because of the UN Secretariat’s lack of experienced international staff. In his words, “UNTAC’s ‘supervision and control’ of the State of Cambodia…administration…was hampered by the serious shortage of experienced supervisory personnel in the UN Secretariat and in Member States” (Akashi 2012, p. 156). Even when fully deployed, the idea of fewer than “200 UNTAC civilian administrators effectively overseeing the operations of even five central ministries…let alone controlling them as they were supposed to do under the Paris Agreements – seems, in retrospect, implausible” (Berry 2012, p. 176). One of the consequences of the failure to take control of the civilian administration meant “that UNTAC was unable to deal effectively with corruption and with the [CPP’s] continuing intimidation of political figures from other parties during the election period” (Berry 2012, p. 177). The slow deployment of civilian administrators and their lack of experience working in situations like that of Cambodia made it easy for the SOC/CPP to retain control over the political environment and difficult for the opposition parties to trust UNTAC’s ability to create a neutral political environment for free and fair elections. Carlyle Thayer (1998, p. 158) makes the following remark: “UNTAC never attempted to exert effective direct control over the five key areas…”. Mats Berdal and Michael Liefer (1996, p. 44) observe that “UNTAC’s attempts to control the administration were in any effect wholly unsuccessful….because SOC ministries and deliberately officials obstructed UNTAC” and “the SOC

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secret police operated as much as it had before”. The CPP “tightly controlled the administration, police, and army and never allowed the United Nations to take over the five principal ministries of the [SOC] government” (Jeldres 2012, p. 86). Yasushi Akashi also acknowledges that, “For this matter, the Khmer Rouge had some legitimate reasons to complain” (ibid., p. 163). The Khmer Rouge knew that their survival was at stake, because of what they did to people during their reign of terror (Peou 2013). UNTAC’s failure gave the opposition parties the impression that it either favoured the SOC/CPP or simply depended on the latter’s goodwill (Peou 2002, p. 520). The above analysis also leads to the following conclusion: neither the Khmer Rouge nor the CPP could be pushed out of power by force or any form of pressure as some scholars suggest, especially in the way UNTAC performed during the transitional period and in a volatile security situation where the Cambodian armed factions could hardly trust each other or found each other extremely threatening. According to Steve Young (2018), the Khmer Rouge and the CPP could have been marginalised had the former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew (not Akashi Yasushi) had led the UN mission. The big difference lies in their cultural or personal dispositions: As a Japanese, Akashi preferred political accommodation and reconciliation; as a Singaporean, Lee would have taken strong action against the two Cambodian parties. Young’s argument is interesting to the extent that neither of the factions would have led Cambodia in the direction of liberal democracy. The Khmer Rouge’s totalitarian tendency as evident during its reign of terror disqualified it from playing the political role as a democracy promoter and human rights protector. As will be discussed in the next chapter, the CPP has now consolidated power at the expense of the political opposition. Young’s argument is unpersuasive, however. UNTAC was in no position to defeat the Khmer Rouge militarily, as discussed earlier, nor was the mission able to prevent the CPP from gaining seats in the legislature, regardless of who served as UNTAC head. Central to the problem that mostly afflicted the peace process was that the two factions were heavily armed but refused to disarm because of the intense security dynamics that UNTAC could not effectively address. The Asian experience further shows that democratisation is not simply the by-product of political culture, nor was it driven by the engine of economic growth alone. More often than not, democratisation results from the fragmentation of political power or from symmetric power relations that make it difficult for any party or faction to monopolise power at the expense

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of others (Peou 2014). From this perspective, the peace accord made it possible for the armed factions to accept, as none of them could really destroy the others by force, but the failure to tame the Khmer Rouge and the CPP also made it difficult for democracy to thrive.

Conclusion UNTAC made a major contribution to the emergence of human security, especially when defined in terms of freedom from fear. Members of the international community were united around the idea of bringing peace, democracy, and prosperity to Cambodia whose people suffered from war and violence for two decades. Unfortunately, the UN peace was not as successful as it should have been. Since success is a matter of degree and can be assessed in various contexts or areas, evidence suggests that UNTAC was most successful in the non-security security arena. In other words, the mission succeeded in repatriating the Cambodian refugees but was less successful in terms of conducting the 1993 election, least successful in terms of providing public order and security, and unsuccessful in disarming the factions. What explains this variation? This chapter has demonstrated that UNTAC as Cambodia’s transitional authority was a perfectly legal mission and initially enjoyed substantial international and local support—a high degree of legitimacy. However, its legitimacy eroded quickly once the peace process was under way. The refusal of the Cambodian signatories, especially the Khmer Rouge, to comply with the peace accord and cooperate with UNTAC in the area of disarmament was the dominant factor. Much has been debated on the work of UNTAC, but least understood is the fact that the country’s political environment was not easily conducive to trust building. After all, the factions had sought to destroy each other for two decades; disarmament could spell the end of their political survival or security, especially when the electoral process produced win–lose outcomes. What this study shows is that the greatest challenge for any peace operations, based on the Cambodian experience, lies in the area of security. The UN’s tendency to rely greatly on international law in the 1990s marked a major turning point in world politics, but could also pose a serious challenge to peace processes that require political compromise and security guarantees, not legal enforcement, as the principal basis of legality, legitimacy, and effective performance.

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UN (United Nations). (1991). The Comprehensive Cambodian Peace Agreement. Available at https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/KH_ 911023_FrameworkComprehensivePoliticalSettlementCambodia.pdf. Yamamoto, T. (2015). Memoir: Japan’s Role in Peacemaking in Cambodia: Factors that Contributed to Its Success. Southeast Asian Studies, 4(2), 385–404. Young, S. (2018). Ideals of the Peace Agreement and Khmer Buddhism. Speech presented at the Overseas Khmer Summit, Mendota Heights, Minnesota, the United States, August 4.

CHAPTER 3

Post-UNTAC UN Peacebuilding and Human Security in Cambodia

Abstract This chapter assesses post-UNTAC intervention by the UN and the impact it has had on human security in Cambodia. Overall, the UN has been a major global legitimate actor, but its operational effectiveness varies and has been most limited by the politico-security dynamics that unfolded after the UNTAC departure. Part of the problem with UN governance is that the post-Cold War global system tends to place too much emphasis on the force of international law and social-economic aspects in the process of peacebuilding that it has been less effective in terms of addressing and transforming security politics within Cambodia. UN agencies, programmes, and funds have proved unable to reform and transform the dominant state institutions like the three branches of government and the armed forces. Keywords Cambodia · Peacebuilding · Criminal justice · Human security · Legitimacy · Effectiveness

Introduction This chapter assesses post-UNTAC intervention by the UN and the impact it has had on human security in Cambodia. As noted in Chapter 2, the UN mission ended after the national election was held in July © The Author(s) 2021 B. M. Howe et al., UN Governance, Security, Development and Human Rights in East Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54572-7_3

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1993, but the world organisation has since stayed actively involved on various fronts: socio-economic development, human rights protection and promotion, as well as democratic- and rule-of-law institution building in various ways. There are more than 23 UN specialised agencies, programmes, funds, and various entities (hereafter, agencies). They have played a major role in contributing to the promotion of human security, broadly defined. Due to space constraints, this chapter does not assess every type of UN involvement in Cambodia but seeks to explain their impact on human security in the country. On the socio-economic front associated with freedom from want, the UN has made a major contribution in terms of economic growth, health, education, public safety, although much more needs to be done. More Cambodians have become more socially and economically secure. On the political front, the UN has made a far more limited contribution in terms of its impact on democratic development. Even more limited is the fact that human rights violations remain a major challenge and the Khmer Rouge tribunal (the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia: ECCC) has been far from effective. This chapter makes the following argument: The UN has been a major global legitimate actor, but its effectiveness varies and has been most limited by the politico-security dynamics that unfolded after the UNTAC departure. Part of the problem with UN governance is that the post-Cold War global system tends to place too much emphasis on the force of international law and social-economic aspects in the process of peacebuilding that it has been less effective in terms of addressing and transforming security politics within Cambodia.

Post-UNTAC Peacebuilding for Human Security The UN as a system made up of different bodies has made a positive contribution to the socio-economic development of Cambodia, but challenges on this front remain. This argument is based on evidence from a study of UN bodies involved in the country over a 25-year period from 1993 to 2018. The country has hosted about 23 UN agencies, all of which form what is known as the UN Country Team operating under the coordination of the UN Resident Coordinator (UNRC). The UNRC is the highest UN official and the chief of UN diplomatic mission in Cambodia. This position was designed to ensure that all UN agencies in the country are coordinated in such a way that prevents them from

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overlapping one another and helps them complement each other for the purpose of maximising operational efficiency and effectiveness. Cambodia has been a member of each of the three Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO), each of which has played an active role in the country with some interruptions. The World Bank was among the first UN agencies to make efforts to help Cambodia rehabilitate, reconstruct, and develop its economy. Although its operation in the country began only on 8 October 2004, the World Bank has funded development projects since 1993. Until 2017, it had funded projects related to economic reconstruction, agriculture, education, health, disease control, and child welfare. It has also been one of Cambodia’s major lenders: Of the $8.3 billion Cambodia borrowed from external actors between 1993 and 2016, $794 million came from the World Bank (Sok 2017). The IMF’s role in efforts to ensure Cambodia’s financial stability began in May 1994, when its resident office was reopened after its closure in 1974. The IMF’s technical assistance was provided under a three-year arrangement of the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF-I) in early 1994 (IMF 2006; Takagi et al. 2018). Cambodia was one of the ten countries participating in the IMF’s Technical Assistance Strategy Note exercise from 2001 to 2003. A long-term IMF technical advisor began work in October 2001 at Cambodia’s National Institute of Statistics to help the government upgrade economic and financial statistics. In March 2005, the National Assembly adopted a new Statistics Law. Among the IMF’s loan programme to the country was $120 million worth of a three-year loan that was pledged but cancelled in 1996, because of the government’s failure to fight illegal logging and generate enough revenue for the national budget. The IMF then resumed its assistance in 1999. The resumption of its assistance was based on the Structural Adjustment Programme, which required Cambodia to reform its military and police forces and financial management, enhance forestry revenue, increase accountability, openness, and transparency that would make it easier for foreign investors to do business in the country. The IMF maintains its representative office in Cambodia and its officials still participate in donors’ forums and make two visits to the country every year. Other UN organisations have also been involved in the development of the Cambodia economy. The UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) is one UN agency. Technical cooperation between the two partners can be traced back to 1993, when UNIDO began to focus

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its activities on agri-industry, trade capacity skills development, renewable energy, resource efficiency, small and medium enterprise development, and environment management (including the reduction of Persistent Organic Pollutants emissions). The total contribution the UNIDO programme has made exceeds $42 million (UNIDO 2017). Also playing a role to help improve Cambodia’s trade relations is the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which held its workshops in February 2016. UNCTAD’s mandate was to assist Cambodia in the country’s development of trade policy. The UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) has worked in Cambodia since the early 1990s with the aim of assisting economic development and poverty reduction at the local level, recently emphasising the need of accelerating financial inclusion and empowering women. It has also implemented programmes to build resilience against climate change and natural disasters. For instance, the Local Climate Adaptation Living Program (LoCALL) aimed at helping local communities adapt for climate change. A number of infrastructure and service delivery projects were implemented ranging from building more resilient roads, to creating new water reservoirs, to hosting workshops that teach better agricultural techniques (Smith 2017, p. 1). The UN programmes involved in the sustainable development of the Cambodian economy include the UNDP and the UN Economic Programme (UNEP). The UNDP has been supportive of various policy agendas, but its overarching goal was progress towards the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and has undertaken activities related to natural resource management, sustainable forest management, and climate change mitigation (UN 2015). The UNEP also provided technical assistance to help Cambodia develop its environmental governance for achieving sustainable development. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has also been involved in Cambodia since the early 1990s. “Since the early 1990s, the ILO has been an active partner in Cambodia’s economic, social and democratic recovery, playing an important role in helping to restore livelihoods, generate sustainable employment, rebuild infrastructure and set-up and strengthen democratic institutions” (ILO, n.d.). Its contribution to the government’s Rectangular Strategy for Growth, Employment, Equity and Efficiency and the National Strategic Development Framework is based on its Decent Work Country Programme (DWCP). “The DWCP addresses a wide range of issues, including skills and human resources development, youth and women’s employment, the informal economy,

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small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), social protection, labour market governance, and industrial relations and social dialogue” (ibid.). There are several other UN agencies involved in the food and health sectors. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) provides loans to support rural and agricultural development. In 1996, the IFAD began to fund projects that cost up to $143.3 million. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) re-established its office in Cambodia in 1992 and employs about 60 people whose tasks include helping the Cambodian government address challenges to food security and nutrition. The World Food Programme (WFP) has been involved in the area of health promotion to help Cambodian children gain universal access to nutrition needs, social assistance, and education in pre-primary and primary school. Its School Feeding Programme involves providing some 300,000 in 1260 primary school children in rural and foodinsecure communities with nutritious meals. It has been part of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly Goal Two: no hunger—a global pledge to end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. Several UN agencies have also been active on the health front, the most important of which is the World Health Organization (WHO), which has an office in Cambodia and works in cooperation with various other partners, including the Cambodian government. For example, at least 30 development partners and more than 160 NGOs are active in the health sector (WHO 2016, p. 7). The UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) was established in Cambodia to help end the AIDS epidemic by providing treatment for all and using different methods and interventions to prevent the epidemic The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is the lead UN fund that works to support women’s wanted pregnancy, safe childbirths, and young people’s fulfilled potential and has operated in Cambodia since 1993. On education, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has the mandate to make contributions to international peace and security through the promotion of collaboration among states in the fields of education, science, culture, and communication. The UNESCO reopened its office in Cambodia in 1991, after it had suspended its programmes in 1975. One of its activities is to ensure universal access to education, based on the Education for All agenda, and to help meet the MDGs in 2000 (UNESCO 2010). The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has also developed different programmes to support

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children, which include integrated early childhood education, inclusive quality education, child protection, and social inclusion and governance. The UNICEF has worked with the government to help children survive, thrive, and reach their full potential, giving special attention to the most disadvantaged children. Other UN entities include the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT). The UNODC works towards security and justice for all by addressing these challenges: (1) transnational organised crime and illicit trafficking; (2) anti-corruption; (3) terrorism prevention; (4) criminal justice system; and (5) drugs and health, and alternative development. The OHCHR established its first country office in Cambodia in October 1993, soon after UNTAC’s departure. The Paris Peace Agreements (PPAs) gave the then-UN Centre for Human Rights a mandate to monitor, protect and report on the human rights situation in Cambodia and to work closely with the Cambodian government, interested UN member states, and civil society organisations. Ever since, the OHCHR has done the following: • Supporting the development of a legal and institutional framework which protects the exercise of human rights, consistent with the international human rights standards enshrined in Cambodia’s Constitution; • Monitoring the implementation of laws and the actions of state institutions responsible for respecting rights, reporting problematic areas to the Government and other relevant actors for corrective action, and looking jointly for solutions; • Supporting the Government’s cooperation with the Human Rights Council and its mechanisms, and promoting the ratification of international human rights treaties; • Supporting the capacity of civil society actors (human rights NGOs, women’s associations, media, trade unions, and others) to monitor and advocate for human rights, and protecting their activities through fostering a climate of mutual respect, dialogue and cooperation with the Government (UNOHCHR 2020); • The OHCHR provides administrative assistance to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which has subsequently appointed a number of Special Rapporteurs whose role has to been to assess the

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human rights situation in Cambodia, report about it, and work with the Cambodian government, civil society organisations, and other interested actors. Each of them made visits to the country every year and submitted the annual report to the UNHRC. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) was established in 2006, after the Cambodian government and the UN signed an agreement to prosecute Khmer Rouge leaders most responsible for the most serious crimes committed during the 1975–1978 period. The ECCC spent some $300 million, equipped with the mandate to strengthen Cambodia’s local judicial system (Ciorciari and Heindel 2014, p. 248). The ECCC aimed to make its trials fair and open, make a contribution to the rule of law, set an example for those who disobey the law, and hold criminals accountable and deter them (Nickson and Neikirk 2018, p. 34). Overall, post-UNTAC UN efforts to assist Cambodia have focussed on several aspects of development: socio-economic, political, judicial, and legal. The UN agencies, programmes, and funds have enjoyed support from the Cambodian government in varying degrees. Although the overall degree of UN legitimacy remains quite high, a few UN activities have encountered resistance, most notably those carried out by the OHCHR and the ECCC. The Cambodian government has unleashed diatribes against the OHCHR’s country representative, accusing the latter of taking sides with the political opposition and even demanding that the office be closed down. It also viewed the idea of bringing to justice more former Khmer Rouge officials (in addition to those already under trial) as potentially leading to civil war and thus refused to cooperate with the court (Prak 2015). As will be discussed next, post-UNTAC UN intervention in the context of human security has produced mixed results: while there has been progress on the social-economic front in terms of economic development and the absence of armed conflict, progress on the political and legal front remains limited and precarious.

Freedom from Want: Progress and Limitations The extent to which the UN institutions have contributed to human security defined in broad terms is difficult to determine precisely. On the academic front, scholars disagree on the three Britton Woods institutions’

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contributions to countries like Cambodia. Those who are critical of these global institutions would point to the harmful effects of marketisation and liberalisation. As will be discussed from a human security perspective, when examined in light of freedom from want, liberals are right to a large extent. The UN agencies, programmes, and funds have enjoyed a high degree of legitimacy and been effective in terms of making positive contributions to socio-economic development. Death rates across the board have declined. A positive development can be measured in terms of higher mortality rates and a longer lifespan. Cambodia was among the only nine countries that met the MDG Five target: the maternal mortality ratio was reduced from 472 in 2005 to 170 per 100,000 live births in 2015 (by almost two-thirds) (UNFPA, n.d.). Life expectancy at birth also increased to 68.8 in 2015 from 53.6 in 1990 (an overall increase of 15.2 years) (UNDP 2016a). According to the World Bank (2018), “The maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births decreased from 472 in 2005 to 170 in 2014, the under-five mortality rate decreased from 83 per 1,000 live births in 2005 to 35 per 1,000 in 2014”. Cambodia ranked 143rd among 187 countries in terms of homicide rate per 100,000, but progress has been made (1.8 in 2011, 2.3 in 2010, and 3.4 in 2005). The number of AIDS victims peaked around the late 1990s but began to decline after that. In 1990, there were 1400 people (all ages) living with HIV and the number rose quickly right after that: 11,000 (1992) and 110,000 (2000). However, the number began to decline in subsequent years: 100,000 (2002) and 69,000 (2016) (UNAIDS 2017). Overall evidence tends to support the liberal perspective on socioeconomic development. According to the World Bank (2018), socioeconomic progress can be observed by the fact that the average rate of economic growth between 1994 and 2015 was 7.6%, ranking sixth in the world. With gross national income per capita reaching $1070, the country gained its lower middle-income status in 2015. The rate of poverty fell from 47.8% in 2007 to only 13.5% in 2014. The Global Hunger Index (2016, p. 34) scores show that Cambodia saw its level of hunger dropped to 21.7 in 2016, a noticeable decrease from 26.6 in 2008, 44.7 in 2000, and 45.3 in 1992. Cambodia has also made improvements on primary education in rural areas, early childhood development, and maternal health. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), “Cambodia has observed a significant improvement in the health status of the population due to strong economic growth and the initiatives of

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the Government in accelerating various health sector reform measures since the 1990s” (WHO 2016, p. 2). Progress towards the targets of the health-related MDGs has been impressive (ibid., p. 3). Quantitative data on human development from the UNDP further reveals noticeable improvements. Measured in terms of healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living, human development in the country’s Human Development Index (HDI) value is 0.581 (2018), which put the country in the medium human development category— positioning it at 146 out of 189 countries and territories. Between 1990 and 2018, its HDI value increased to 0.581 from 0.384, representing an increase of 51.4%. In the same period, life expectancy at birth increased by 16 years, mean years of schooling increased by 2.2 years and expected years of schooling increased by 4.6 years. Cambodia’s Gross National Income (GNI) per capita increased by about 160.4% (UNDP 2019, pp. 2–3). Although it was still below the average of 0.634 for countries in the medium human development group and below the average of 0.741 for countries in East Asia and the Pacific, Cambodia’s HDI value was close that of Myanmar (which ranked 140 with 0.584) and higher than that of Laos (which ranked 145 with 0.604). Overall, it is worth remembering where Cambodia was in 1990 compared to where it was in 2018 and keeping in mind that no other country in the region had been devastated to the extent that Cambodia was between the 1970s and the 1980s. The Cambodian government should be credited with its ability to work with other actors in making progress possible. Adopting a promarket liberal approach to economic development and implementing it since the early 1990s, the government has opened Cambodia for business and relied on international support. The UNCTAD (2018, p. 15) points out that “Cambodia is one of East Asia’s most liberal economies”. Two decades of economic modernisation, regulatory reforms, and accession to the WTO saw real progress on this front. These factors “led to an impressive economic growth…Cambodia’s openness, its young population and agile work force attracted the flow of foreign capital and foreign skill to invest in and develop the country’s fast growing industries especially in sectors such as tourism, infrastructure, construction, telecommunication and manufacturing” (ibid.). The new market-oriented approach began with the dismantling of price controls and the development of the private sector in 1989 and 1990, followed by efforts to rehabilitate, reconstruct, and develop the economy. The rehabilitation phase (1989–1998) faced some serious challenges, but the reconstruction phase that began in 1999

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focused on the need to ensure macroeconomic stability and integrating Cambodia to the global economy. During this phase, the economy grew by 8.8% on average. The next phase is known as the ‘take-off’, starting from 2004 and focusing more on investment in infrastructure such as provincial and rural roads financed mainly by the rapidly growing banking sector and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows (Hang 2012, p. 253). This socio-economic approach ran contrary to those in the second of the 1970s when the Khmer Rouge regime adopted the socialist policy of autarky or self-reliance and the 1980s when the PRK/SOC regime maintained a centrally planned economy. As a result of economic growth in recent decades, the Cambodian government has been able to collect more and more revenue and increase public expenditures in various sectors, most notably health, education, water supply, agriculture, irrigation, road, and energy. Current expenditure increased from US$136 million in 1993 to US$246 million in 1998, then to US$930 million in 2008 (Hang 2012, p. 256). In 2017, the government’s proposed budget for 2018 was $6 billion, an increase by $1 billion for 2017, $1.8 billion in 2016, $2.2 billion in 2015, and $2.6 billion in 2014. Health and education were among the sectors that saw large increases: $848 million (24% of the national budget) and $485 million (14%), respectively (Ben 2017). In November 2019, the proposed national budget of $8.2 billion for 2020 was approved, representing an increase of 22% compared to the budget adopted in 2019 (Chea 2019). Although reports confirm that Cambodia had met many of the MDGs by 2015, the extent to which the UN institutions have made an overall contribution to Cambodia’s socio-economic development is difficult to measure precisely. It is important to keep in mind that the UN is only one of the major players. Other bilateral and multilateral actors have also provided Cambodia with international assistance and loans (Ear 2013; Peou 2007). Cambodia has also borrowed from bilateral and multilateral sources to finance its development, much of which has been concentrated on infrastructure. The various players involved in the development of Cambodia include countries and multilateral organisations. The major countries that provided loans to Cambodia between 1993 and 2016 include China, Japan, South Korea, France, Thailand, India, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Altogether the amount of bilateral debt was around $5.3 billion. The debt from multilateral sources amounted to $3 billion: The Asian Development Bank ($2 billion), the World Bank ($794 million), International Fund for Agriculture Development ($87 million), Nordic

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Development Fund ($10.6 million), and the OPEC Fund for International Development ($70 million) (Sok 2017). FDI has also been a major factor in economic growth. FDI inflows increased to nearly $3.6 billion in 2019, from $2.784 billion in 2017 and $2.466 billion in 2016 (Sok 2020; Peou 2019, p. 111). But without UN intervention in post-UNTAC Cambodia, the country would not have accomplished as much as it has. In spite of the progress evident in the past two decades, data shows the limits of UN actions in socio-economic development. Not every Cambodian adequately enjoys security in terms of employment, income earning, health, and education. Some 70% of the population was still among the working poor. Those “with disabilities and…living with and affected by HIV face stigma and discrimination in the labour market” (UN 2015, p. 3). Some 64% of employment was still considered vulnerable and the percentage was higher for women (70%). Those who work in factories still do not earn a living wage. According to a UN report, for instance, “The garment sector employs around 500,000 predominantly young female workers but does not yet pay a living wage, and its working conditions are sometimes precarious” (ibid.). Davy (2014, pp. 793, 801) argues that the Cambodian government is struggling to provide adequate employment for its young population, leaving many young Cambodians susceptible to the grasp of traffickers. A large number of Cambodians had to go outside Cambodia, particularly Thailand, to find work and better pay. According to the UNODC (2017, p. 8), “Many Cambodians look to Thailand to improve their lives and the lives of their families, hoping to find employment and better pay”. Causes for migration work include a lack of employment opportunities, a generally poor economic situation relative to those of most neighbouring countries, widespread poverty, landlessness and debt experienced by many people in rural areas, a rapidly growing population, and limited access to markets (ibid., p. 11). Many of them were physically and sexually abused; many ended up deported back to Cambodia (ibid., p. 10). Challenges to health and access to education also remain. For instance, according to the World Bank (2019) “As of 2015, 25% of Cambodia’s population (3.8 million people) do not have access to improved water, and 44% (6.8 million people) did not have access to improved sanitation”. The field of education also has made some headway but remains limited. For instance, net enrolment in primary education increased to 97% in 2016 (from 82% in 1997), but the rates of lower secondary education

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(57% in 2017) remain “significantly below the average for lower middleincome countries” (ibid.). People in rural areas and indigenous communities in particular remain vulnerable to poverty. According to the UN (2015, p. 3), “Rural households are financially vulnerable, and the financial services available to them are exploitive, putting them at risk of overindebtedness. Indigenous communities in the northeast do not receive levels of public assistance consistent with their level of poverty”. There is a rapid increase of rural landlessness, as more arable land was allocated to business tycoons, political elites and foreign investors (mostly for the development of agriindustrial plantations) in the form of ‘Economic Land Concessions’ at the expense of land-poor and landless farmers who have received far fewer less land allocations under ‘Social Land Concessions’. Large-scale and widespread land grabbing has resulted rural communities being dispossessed and disempowered (Neaf et al. 2013). Some scholars even suggest that forced evictions have become a serious problem (as a growing number of families are still being deprived of lands, homes, and livelihoods), so serious that this development could lead to a potential violent revolution that would be disastrous (Rudi et al. 2014). Although a real revolution is unlikely, social unrest is a strong possibility. Socio-economic development still looks unsustainable in short and long terms, for various identifiable reasons. Firstly, Cambodia’s economic governance structure remains unchanged since the 1990s, because of its dependence on low-skilled, low-value-added sectors (UN 2015, p. 3). The IMF has put blame on the government for not effectively implementing the necessary reforms to develop good governance. In 2004 Cambodia’s competitiveness had weakened, and poor governance, in part due to lack of progress in legal and judiciary reform, exacerbated uncertainty in the business environment while rudimentary infrastructure and high wages kept operating costs high (Takagi et al. 2018, p. 37). In Cambodia it had been slow to implement tax policy recommendations as the capacity of the Government remained constrained by lack of human capital and entrenched governance problems (ibid., p. 39). Secondly, prosperity remains uncertain because economic growth has also been driven by few formal sectors, foreign aid, loans, foreign investment, resource exploitation, exports, and international stability, thus making the economy susceptible to external shocks. According to a report, “Cambodia’s economic performance is susceptible to external shocks, given the narrow export base and a large external current account

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deficit. Garment exports can be affected by a slowdown in Europe or the United States, and weaker-than-expected growth in China can have negative spillovers through foreign direct investment, banking, and tourism” (Takagi et al. 2018, p. 33). Economic growth depends heavily only on a small number of sectors (garment export, the real estate, construction, and tourism sectors). Approximately 80% of the formal economy depends on garment manufacturing, which employs around 600,000 workers, and garment exports. Tourism is of economic growth, but can be subjected to negative domestic and international circumstances such as political instability. According to a report by the WHO, “The heavy reliance on donor funding and low government spending on health, if the trend continues, will pose further risks and challenges to the health sector in terms of possible fragmentation and sustainability” (WHO 2016, p. 6). Cambodia’s economic growth has been primarily export-oriented and -dependent, and this places the economy in an ever-vulnerable position. Over 80% of Cambodia’s total exports in garment and footwear goods go to both the European Union (EU) and the US and the rest go to 90 other countries including China and Japan. But there is a dilemma. On one hand, Cambodia has enjoyed trade surpluses with Western countries such as the EU and the US, but experienced trade deficits with countries in Southeast Asia and China. For instance, Cambodian exports to the US totalled $3.1 billion in 2017, but its imports from China grew to $4.48 billion in the same year (compared to only $634 million worth of exports to China from January to November 2017) (Peou 2019). What all this suggests is that Cambodia’s economic growth has been dependent on Western markets. On the other hand, this dependence makes the economy vulnerable to external factors such as trade wars between China and the US and economic sanctions. The EU threatened to impose sanctions on Cambodia in the wake of government crackdowns on the opposition by planning to remove the country’s Everything-But-Arms (EBA) trade privileges. In February 2020, the EU finally implemented its temporary sanctions partially targeting selected garment and footwear products worth about $1.5 billion. Whether the government will mend its ways by showing respect for human rights, as demanded by the EU, remains to be seen. China has pledged to make up for losses as the result of EU sanctions, but it is far from clear that Beijing would open its market to absorb exports from Cambodia to the extent that its economic growth

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could be sustained. The sanctions are, at best, unlikely to be effective as designed or may, at worst, further limit economic growth. Thirdly, large-scale environmental degradation has posed a growing threat to long-term economic development. Droughts and floods have become more common and more frequent phenomena. Resource scarcities and climate change have been identified as threatening to human security (such as food-producing areas in downstream countries along the Mekong River). Water shortages could reduce downstream flow and, thus, crop yields and the risk of crop failure (Khem et al. 2019 p. 229). In addition to the lack of rain, human activities such as the plundering of natural resources, the unregulated upstream damming of the river and climate change have threatened livelihoods and long-term economic development (Fawthrop 2019). What explains the progress of freedom from want in Cambodia and its limits? The debate on whether foreign aid or FDI (especially Chinese investment) is responsible for socio-economic development in the developing world is misleading. Liberal economists consider official development assistance (ODA) as a positive factor for achieving the MDGs because ODA would help countries “jump-start the process of capital accumulation, economic growth, and rising household incomes” (Sachs 2005, p. 246). Others argue that prosperity in some developing countries was achieved without large amounts of ODA and that ODA is even unnecessary for economic development (Easterly 2006). Still others conclude that foreign aid has made developing countries even poorer. One liberal economist contends that African countries in fact benefited from export promotion, financial markets, and Chinese investment (Moyo 2009). In the case of Cambodia, the truth lies somewhere in between these arguments, especially when taking into account not only economic growth but also other indicators such as food security, health, and education. Liberals are correct to the extent that socio-economic progress in Cambodia (evident over the past few decades) has much to do with the fact that international actors have helped transform the country into one of the most pro-market countries in the developing world. The UN agencies, programmes, and funds have certainly made positive contributions, but ODA is neither a panacea for all economic ills nor a necessary condition for long-term economic development. Exports and FDI, such as that from China, have contributed to economic growth, but evidence does not point to a level of sustainable development necessary for the promotion

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of freedom from want. While Cambodia still bears primary responsibility for the progress of this freedom and also its limits experienced by most Cambodians, it is also important to keep in mind that a weak state with a small economy remains vulnerable to negative changes in domestic and world politics.

Freedom from Fear: Peace, Democratisation and Rule of Law The direct or physical sources of threat to the Cambodian population have decreased when compared to the pre-UNTAC and UNTAC period. Although the disarmament process failed during the UNTAC period and war continued until 1998, the Cambodians have enjoyed security defined in terms of the absence of armed conflict. However, UNTAC’s legacies on the political front have diminished. UN efforts at promoting liberal democracy and the rule of law have not born much fruit, as neither of these two issue areas has progressed well. As will be seen, Cambodia has moved away from a multiparty system and towards a one-party system and the rule of law in this country remains extremely weak. The war in Cambodia ended in 1998, after the Khmer Rouge had disintegrated (Peou 2017). Whether the UN played an role in ending the war is debatable. On one hand, UN support for the post-UNTAC Coalition Government provided the latter with a degree of international legitimacy. The Khmer Rouge was internationally isolated, receiving no support from external actors, even from China (which, as been pointed out, had lent support to the faction throughout pre-UNTAC period). The UN worked with other actors to help Cambodia develop economically and achieve better human development, which enabled the government to enjoy domestic political legitimacy, and this performance legitimacy has contributed to political stability. No political groups have since been effectively formed to overthrow the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP)led government by force. On the other hand, it would be misleading to conclude that the UN was responsible for putting an end to the Khmer Rouge’s rebellion. The faction disintegrated because of the government’s reconciliation policy based on amnesties extended to Khmer Rouge leaders, resulting in their defections and infighting (Peou 2017). Neither the UN nor the ECCC has been effective in advancing human security through the process of democratic and rule-of-law institution

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building, either. Much has been written about the setback of Cambodia’s party system and there is no need to repeat the findings here, but it is worth highlighting the fact that Cambodia can no longer be considered a liberal democracy. By and large, Cambodians have enjoyed a number of freedoms, such as freedom of worship and freedom of movement, but political freedom has become increasingly restricted. According to Global Witness, “Cambodia is currently experiencing a backwards slide in terms of democratic freedoms and openness. A look at the events of 2015 and 2016 reveal an onslaught of new repressive legislation and a harsh crackdown against all government critics including the legitimate opposition part” (Global Witness 2016, p. 30). The CPP has become the hegemonic party (Peou 2019, 2020a, b). This negative political trend has worsened than that of Timor-Leste, despite the fact the ECCC has been more effective than the Special Panels of the Dili District Court. East Timorese leaders rejected the international approach to rule-of-law building through prosecution, relying instead on their traditional idea of clemency and forgiveness as the way to “leave behind the violent past” (Ottendorfer 2013, p. 33). Many efforts have been made by the international community to promote the rule of law in Cambodia, but little evidence still suggests that this collective action has borne significant fruit, as far as strengthening the country’s judicial and legal institutions is concerned. The UN bodies such as the OHCHR and the ECCC have not succeeded in fulling their shared mandate to promote the rule of law in Cambodia. Formal trials as those conducted by hybrid tribunals like the ECCC have different aims, including conflict and atrocity crime termination and deterrence, reconciliation and peacebuilding through democratic and judicial/legal institution building. But as Ciorciari and Heindel (2014, p. 436) put it: “there is little evidence that the ECCC is profoundly affecting the local judicial system”. A UNDP report points out that “The judiciary scores the highest on perceived level of corruption in two countries of Asia-Pacific: Afghanistan and Cambodia” (UNDP 2016b, p. 11). The World Justice Project’s scoring project (based on constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice), but its Rule of Law Index (2017–2018) continues to rank Cambodia extremely low, much lower than any other countries in the Asia-Pacific. Based on scores that range from 0 to 1, with 1 indicating the strongest adherence to the rule of law, Cambodia is given a low score of 0.32, putting

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Cambodia in the 112th place among 113 countries. Within East Asia and the Pacific, Cambodia ranks 15th of the 15 countries scored (WJP 2018, pp. 6–7, 65). Whether the CPP’s consolidation of power has been driven by Cambodia’s political culture remains a subject of debate. Much of Cambodian scholarship tends to place blame on traditional authoritarianism, client– patron relations, nepotism, and neo-patrimonialism (Un and Ledgerwood 2010; Global Witness 2016). Other scholars have paid much of their analytical attention to Hun Sen as the leader who has relied on traditional myths to consolidate power (Norén-Nilsson 2016). A critical question can be raised, however: does Cambodia, which ranks the lowest in the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, have the worst cultural tradition in the world? Even if it does, it is difficult to measure the extent to which this variable has thwarted efforts by international actors to promote democracy and the rule of law. Other variables, such as regional and global politics, also have explanatory power. Instead of conforming to the liberal international legal standards, the Cambodian government has moved closer to the legal practices by undemocratic or illiberal states in the region (McCarthy and Un 2017). Countries in the non-Western world such as Brazil, Cambodia, China, India, Israel, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Uzbekistan, and Russia have also resisted the idea of universal human rights. Stephen Hopgood rings an alarm bell in his The Endtimes of Human Rights (2014) by pointing out this negative global development. More recent reports further support this global trend. Freedom House also sees democracy (whose basic tenets include free and fair elections, political rights, civil liberties, minority rights, and the rule of law) ‘in crisis’. The global human rights situation began to decline in 2006, with 2017 as the year when democracy faced its most serious crisis in decades (Abramowitz 2018). The ongoing rise of populism and nationalism around the world has also posed a threat to human rights in both developing and developed countries. In the case of Cambodia, the CPP’s power consolidation is not simply driven by cultural or traditional values (such as nepotism or neopatrimonialism) or even power maximisation (as the political end), as often assumed by ideologues, activists, and scholars who subscribe to culturalism and legalism, but more about the deep manifestation of the ruling party’s political insecurity. In spite of its success in consolidating power after 1997, the CPP remains largely insecure, as evidenced by the CPP’s relentless and ruthless efforts to politicise the judiciary and keep it

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as a tool for political control. Its consolidation of power (as the means) and security maximisation (as the end) through institutional control, coercion, and co-option is a clear manifestation of political weakness rather than strength (Peou 2018). Cambodia observers often make the ‘common-sense’ remark that it is not Hun Sen who is insecure but those whom he threatens. This observation is one-sided and it is deeply ahistorical. The history of Cambodian politics is filled with leaders who rust anyone. Even Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia’s most-revered king and leader (who passed away in 2012), had this to say, “I am better protected by 25 North Koreans from the Democratic Republic of Korean” (cited in Post Staff 1994). In a similar vein, Hun Sen has maintained an impressive army of between 4000 and 6000 bodyguards, who are well-trained, well-equipped, and better-paid than those in the regular armed forces. There are several indicators that point to the ruling party’s perceived insecurity. Losing power is not an option for leaders like Hun Sen who, once a Khmer Rouge commander, has been accused of violating human rights and sued at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The international pressure to prosecute those who commit the most serious crimes may have motivated CPP leaders (many of whom were part of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime) to fear the pursuit of retributive justice against them. International NGOs were among the advocates of bringing corrupt CPP leaders to justice (Crothers 2014; Radio Free Asia 2014). The lawyer who represented the human rights NGOs and individuals made it clear that Hun Sen had made “efforts to stop the proceedings of the Khmer Rouge tribunal, and in essence to shield the perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge genocide from prosecution”. In his view, “there has been systemic, longstanding, ongoing pattern and practice of repression of the Cambodian population in very violent ways” (cited in Radio Free Asia 2014). Whether this course of action amounted to anything is not relevant, what matters is the fact that Hun Sen took this threat seriously. Threats of judicial punishment are no doubt morally justified, but they may be counterproductive when made in institutionally weak or fragile countries like Cambodia where political leaders, concerned about potential retribution, resort to violence as a way to further consolidate power by politicising judicial and legal systems. Instead of working cooperatively with the UN to execute justice against Khmer Rouge leaders and strengthening the multiparty system, the CPP government has also turned to China and Russia for their support and protection. Evidently, the level of Chinese support for the CPP government has reached the point where

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observers have made the case that Cambodia has now become China’s best ally in Southeast Asia. China ended its support to the Khmer Rouge after the signing of the PPAs and extended its full support to the CPP after the coup in 1997. As Cheunboran Chanborey (2017, p. 237) puts it, “[F]ollowing the July 1997 crisis, China emerged as a major power that could provide Hun Sen’s regime with political and economic breathing space while Phnom Penh was condemned and isolated again from the region and the world”. The two countries’ “bilateral relationship has experienced remarkable transformation…In December 2010 … [they] upgraded their ties to a ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Cooperation’” (ibid., p. 229). Delux Teng (2017, p. 284) describes improved bilateral relations between Phnom Penh and Moscow as follows: “Russia’s strengthening of ties with Cambodia is a key component of President Vladimir Putin’s broader goal of expanding Russian influence within the ASEAN bloc”. All this goes to show that the CPP government has been successful in maximising its security interests by moving closer to both China and Russia. The CPP’s success in maximising its security interest is also relative to its ability to prevent Western powers and other Asian democracies such as Japan and South Korea from undermining its political control. In spite of the positive effort made by Australia in the Cambodian peace process, bilateral relations between Phnom Penh and Canberra remain from ideal. In fact, as one observer writes, “Strategically, while Canberra seeks to mitigate Chinese influence in the region, Phnom Penh pursues the matter in the opposite direction” (Leng 2017, p. 174). In spite of their positive contributions to the socio-economic and political development of Cambodia since the early 1990s, both the EU and the US have now had to contend with the growing influence of China and Russia in this Southeast Asian country (Hör 2017; Bulut 2017), especially when one looks at the levels of Chinese investment, grants, loans, and technical cooperation, as well as Beijing’s willingness to protect the Hun Sen government. The fact that Cambodia has been sliding back to authoritarianism clearly shows that Western democracies have been losing ground on the political and security fronts. What all this shows is that CPP leaders, especially Hun Sen, are likely to continue doing what most dictators have done: they just do not know when and how to stop when caught in an insecurity dilemma (Peou 1997), the situation in which they perceive their political survival to be

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at stake both when they rely too much on political repression to maintain power and when they actually lose power. But losing power is not the best option for dictators who prefer to err on the side of using too much force rather than little to ensure their personal or party survival, and this preference helps explain the limits of UN governance in countries like Cambodia. Part of the great tragedy in this country is that good international intentions to promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law do not always produce anticipated outcomes. Deeper structural causes such as insecurity dilemmas are often least understood or left unaddressed.

Conclusion This chapter demonstrates that UN governance extended to post-conflict Cambodia remains positive but limited in its contributions to human security therein. The UN agencies, funds, and programmes generally enjoyed a high degree of legitimacy in the socio-economic front because the government saw this area of assistance as beneficial in terms of enhancing its performance legitimacy. On the political, legal, and security fronts, however, the UN efforts can be judged as far less legitimate and effective: they tend to be perceived by the ruling party as undermining its political control. The political-party system has been negatively transformed from one characterised as multiparty to one close to a one-party state. The ruling party’s successful consolidation of power is not just a matter of anti-democratic political culture but a combination of factors— domestic and external. Domestically, the CPP leadership’s perception of threat to its long-term security is the primary cause of its security maximisation. In institutionally weak states like Cambodia, leaders who have done their political opponents much harm could never be sure that they would survive if they either lost power or stepped down. Thus, the politics of survival remains intense in the mind of ruling elite members and this mindset makes them prone to repressive violence. Externally, the rise of illiberal powers like China, global terrorism and counterterrorism, as well as the rising tide of populism, economic sanctions, and protectionism still threaten to set the clocks of world politics back to the Cold-War era (Peou 2019). Political leaders in small countries like Cambodia have taken advantage of this global development by seeking to enhance their political legitimacy at home and working closely with external actors on the socioeconomic front but at the same time resisting any international efforts

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perceived as undermining their power base or threatening their security interests. The UNs’ successes, which are confined to socio-economic development, clearly reveal the inability of the world’s most important organisation to transform domestic and great-power politics.

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CHAPTER 4

A Critical Reflection on the UN Mission’s Contributions to Human Security in Timor-Leste

Abstract The UN missions in Timor-Leste were a limited success when assessed in terms of legality, legitimacy, and efficacy. They would not have been launched had the UN Security Council not reached an agreement and would not have enjoyed as much legitimacy as they did if stakeholders such as the Timorese political elites, Indonesia, Portugal, and Australia had objected to the proposed mandates. Comparatively, however, the degree of legality was higher than that of legitimacy, and local legitimacy waned as Timorese elite felt uncomfortable with the usurpation of sovereignty by the UN. Despite the earlier mistakes and setbacks in 2006 of the UN intervention, the Timorese enjoyed more freedom from fear and want than any time since the declaration of independence in 1975. Keywords Timor-Leste · United Nations (UN) · Peace Operations · Peacekeeping · Human Security

Introduction This chapter examines four UN missions deployed to Timor-Leste, namely the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), the UN Transitional Administration of East Timor (UNTAET), the UN Mission of Support

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in East Timor (UNMISET), and the UN Integrated Mission in TimorLeste (UNMIT). Their mandates were to help a new-born state undergo a triple transition from military occupation to independence, from dictatorship under Indonesian rule to liberal democracy, and from poverty to prosperity by way of market-based economic development. In Timor-Leste, the UN intervention began after Indonesia underwent a radical political transition from Suharto’s dictatorship to democracy and the East Timorese (hereafter, Timorese) were given an opportunity to decide whether they should remain a part of the Republic of Indonesia or seek independence. After the fall of President Suharto’s new order in 1998, the UN brokered negotiations between the two former colonial powers: Portugal, which administered the territory until December 1975, and Indonesia, which annexed the territory in 1976. Under this tripartite framework, on 5 May 1999, the Agreement Between the Republic of Indonesia and the Portuguese Republic on the Question of East Timor (hereafter, 5 May Agreement ) was reached, which led to the ‘popular consultation’ (hereafter, referendum) held on 30 August 1999, in which 78.5% of Timorese voters chose independence. A critical question raised in this chapter is the extent to which the UN intervention achieved freedom from fear for the Timorese. This is quite important, given that the UN was obligated to support the process of transition towards independence of a new-born state until such time as full independence became a viable option. To this end, a series of multifaceted and large-scale missions were carried out by the UN in Timor-Leste, following the footsteps laid down by the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). However, unlike UNTAC, which ended in eighteen months, the last UN mission in Timor-Leste left the country in December 2012, almost thirteen years after the first inception of its kind in 1999. This chapter mainly covers the period from the referendum in 1999 to the withdrawal of UNMIT in 2012, focusing on four major phases of UN intervention, namely UNAMET (1999), UNTAET (1999–2002), UNMISET (2002–2005) and UNMIT (2006–2012), and examines the questions of legality, legitimacy, and efficacy of these UN missions.

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The Legality of UN Intervention During the Cold War The UN had been involved in the ‘Timor-Leste question’ since 1960, when the territory was still under Portuguese administration. The UN General Assembly (GA) ruled that “East Timor and Dependencies were a non-self-governing territory according to Chapter IX of the UN Charter, and to which the General Assembly Resolution on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples applied” (Kondoch 2001, p. 247). After the Portuguese withdrew from Portuguese Timor in 1975, a tripartite civil war among Timorese factions followed, which caused the military intervention and forced annexation of the territory by Indonesia. After the Indonesian invasion, the political elite of the Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor (Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente: FRETILIN) fled to Mozambique, Angola, and GuineaBissau and led the national liberation struggle from there. Throughout the Cold War even under the period of Indonesian occupation, Portugal maintained its position as administrative power of the territory, albeit nominal, and stated in its constitution that “Portugal shall remain bound by its responsibility, in accordance with international law, to promote and safeguard the right to self-determination and independence of Timor Leste” (Martin 2001, p. 17). On 22 December 1975, the UN Security Council (SC) adopted unanimously the resolution 384 (1975), calling on Indonesia to withdraw all its forces from the territory without delay, and on all states to respect the territorial integrity and the people’s right to self-determination (Martin 2001, pp. 17–18). However, Indonesian actions were not condemned as an act of aggression, which would have justified the UNSC to authorise military sanction against Indonesia; nor were they identified as a breach of Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter, which requires states to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. This weak reaction from the international community was the result of the US policy during the Cold War, in which Indonesia was seen as a seawall against the communist expansion in Southeast Asia (Saramago 2011). For example, when UNSCR 389 (1976) was adopted, the US and its ally, Japan, abstained. In addition, contradictions between the Soviet Union and China over their policy on Vietnam and Cambodia also contributed to this outcome (Freney 1979, p. 1).

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UNGAR 37/30 (1982) gave the UN Secretary-General a mandate to find a comprehensive solution to the problem, and the direct discussions between Indonesia and Portugal began under his auspice (Martin 2001, p. 18). This provided the legal footage for the UN’s involvement in the ‘Timor-Leste question’; however, the tripartite process saw little progress during the Cold War. It was not until a change in the international security environment with the end of the Cold War, combined with internal political changes in Indonesia, that the progress became possible. Post-Cold War Period With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US felt less concerned about the emergence of a new state governed by FRETILIN, which had officially adhered to Marxist–Leninist ideology (Kiernan 2017). Furthermore, even more critical to the trajectory of Timor-Leste’s independence was the collapse of Suharto’s regime in Indonesia, which was triggered by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The authoritarian regime of Suharto, which had effectively ruled Indonesia since a military coup in 1965, finally came to an end in 1998. The new President, B.J. Habibie, proposed a special status for Timor-Leste, which stopped short of full independence but stimulated further talks between the conflicting parties. Negotiations between Indonesia and Portugal ultimately led to the 5 May Agreement , in which it was agreed that the UN Secretary-General should consult the Timorese people on the constitutional framework for autonomy through a direct, secret, and universal ballot. At first sight, the UN missions deployed to Timor-Leste seem to rest on fairly firm legal foundations. The UN was asked to become involved by the interested parties: Indonesia and Portugal. The 5 May Agreement also included clauses outlining the UN’s role after the consultation exercise. With the overwhelming rejection of the special autonomy proposal, the parties were therefore committed to making arrangements for a peaceful and orderly transfer of authority to the UN, and, ultimately, to enabling Timor-Leste to begin a process of transition towards independence. After the 5 May Agreement A number of UNSCRs legitimised UN involvement in Timor-Leste. First, UNSCR 1246 (1999) established UNAMET to organise the referendum. Following a vote overwhelmingly in favour of independence, and the

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breakdown of law and order—with rampaging pro-integration militia killing pro-independence local civilians, driving many from their homes, and forcing the evacuation of many UNAMET personnel—the UNSC again met to endorse UN actions in Timor-Leste. UNSCR 1264 (1999) determined the situation to be a threat to international peace and security, thereby justifying Chapter VII enforcement actions in the form of a multinational military intervention (International Force East Timor: INTERFET) followed by UNTAET. Although INTERFET calmed the situation, the UNSC continued to see it as a threat to international peace and security, invoking Chapter VII and authorising UNTAET to ‘take all necessary measures’ to fulfil its mandate, which was defined by UNSCR 1272 (1999) as follows: • To provide security and maintain law and order throughout the territory; • To establish an effective administration; • To assist in the development of civil and social services; • To ensure the coordination and delivery of humanitarian assistance, rehabilitation and development assistance; • To support capacity-building for self-government; • To assist in the establishment of conditions for sustainable development. After Independence With the independence of Timor-Leste on 20 May 2002, UNMISET was established by the UNSCR 1410 (2002) to succeed UNTAET, and to provide assistance to core administrative structures critical to the viability and political stability of Timor-Leste. UNMISET was concluded on 20 May 2005 and succeeded by a small follow-on special political mission called the UN Office in Timor-Leste (UNOTIL). However, in April–May 2006, almost one year after the withdrawal of UNMISET, a politicosecurity crisis erupted in Dili which required the Government of TimorLeste to approach the UN for police and military assistance to restore order and stability in its territory. In the aftermath of the crisis, UNMIT was established by UNSCR 1704 (2006), which stipulated its mandate as follows:

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• To support the Government and relevant institutions with a view to consolidating stability, enhancing a culture of democratic governance and facilitating political dialogue; • To support Timor-Leste in all aspects of the 2007 presidential and parliamentary electoral process; • To provide support to the national police and assist in conducting a comprehensive review of the role and needs of the security sector; • To assist in further strengthening the national capacity for the monitoring, promotion and protection of human rights; • To cooperate and coordinate with UN agencies, funds and programs and all relevant partners with a view to making maximum use of assistance in post-conflict peacebuilding and capacity-building. Assessment of Legality At each stage, the UN’s involvement in Timor-Leste was sanctioned through explicit endorsement of UNSCRs, the highest source of relevant positive international law. In addition, host nations’ consent to the mandate of the UN mission bestowed additional legality upon this mission. There remains a question as to the extent to which states must give their explicit consent to be bound by international law, and whether UN missions can only legally be instigated with the consent of the host state, when for much of the early period of UN missions in Timor-Leste there was no national authority to give such consent. Unlike the case of Cambodia, in which major Cambodian factions were involved in the peace process that led to the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements (PPAs) and the Supreme National Council (SNC) was established to represent Cambodia as a national authority, Timorese factions were absent from the series of negotiations held between Portugal and Indonesia. Although the UN received explicit endorsement from the two former national authorities— Portugal and Indonesia—two major Timorese resistance organisations, namely FRETILIN and the National Council for Timorese Resistance (Conselho Nacional da Resistência Timorense: CNRT), were excluded from the formal peacemaking process. Because the UN missions in Timor-Leste went beyond the traditional mandate of UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs), it was not certain if the procedures used for traditional UNPKOs could be legally endorsed. The UN involvement in Timor-Leste reflected a new interpretation of peacekeeping, which expanded the roles undertaken by UN missions.

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UNAMET undertook the tasks of organising the referendum, which were different from a traditional peacekeeping mandate of keeping conflictual parties apart and monitoring ceasefires. UNTAET was given a mandate that went well beyond traditional peacekeeping and included extensive governance and state-building activities. The mandate of UNMISET was qualitatively different from its predecessor, as its role in state-building shifted from leading to supporting the national authorities. Due to the collapse of the security institutions in Timor-Leste in 2006, UNMIT was given a role not only to provide support to the national police, but also to provide law and order (i.e. executive policing), through UNSCR 1704 (2006) and the Arrangement on the restoration and maintenance of public security in Timor-Leste and on assistance to the reform, restructuring and rebuilding of the Timorese National Police (PNTL) and the Ministry of Interior (hereafter, Supplement Arrangement ). In short, the UN missions in Timor-Leste had travelled a fair distance from the original concepts of UNPKOs; therefore, any meaningful assessment of the UN intervention must be accompanied by the discussion of legitimacy and efficacy of these UN missions, which is the topic of the next section.

The Legitimacy and Efficacy of UN Missions The UN’s criteria for the legitimacy of its missions are twofold: international legitimacy and national/local legitimacy, or perceived legitimacy on the ground. International legitimacy can be interpreted as the willingness of the UN member states continuously to support the mission (in both financial and normative terms), as well as to provide legal foundations for the mission in the form of a mandate or UNSCRs. Perceived legitimacy on the ground can be understood as a result of an even more complex and subjective process. Building upon the UN’s classification, the degree of legitimacy can be assessed at three levels: global, regional, and national/local. Global support for UN missions can be measured in terms of support given by UN member states, most notably the UNSC’s Five Permanent Members (P5). Regional support for UN missions is no less important, given the constraints placed on the UN at the end of the Cold War when demand for more UN intervention in civil wars grew significantly. Despite the trend of ‘sub-contracting’, all UN missions deployed in Timor-Leste were conducted without any substantive involvement of regional organisations.

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The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) did not become involved in INTERFET as an institution, and ASEAN member states such as the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore contributed merely symbolically to INTERFET. Instead, regional powers such as Australia formed the ‘coalition of the willing’, which was financially supported by Japan, another regional power. Furthermore, despite the fact that the situation could be defined as a matter concerning Indonesia’s internal affairs, ASEAN member states found a way to engage in ‘regional’ peacekeeping and to circumvent the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of any member-state by using UN missions as an expedient platform for collective actions without mobilising any regional mechanisms. For example, Malaysia, a non-permanent member of the UNSC at that time, voted for UNSCR 1272 (1999), which established UNTAET under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and authorised it to take all the necessary measures to fulfil its mandate. One of the most fundamental factors affecting the effectiveness of UN missions is the support from national elites and local populations. This is a question of legitimacy at the national/local level. As legitimacy is a matter of perception, it is important to assess how UN missions have affected the perception of both ‘national’ and ‘local’ legitimacies. ‘National’ legitimacy depends on how secure local political elites feel during the peace process. After all, the efficacy of UN missions depends much on the security interests of those involved in conflicts. The perception of the general population, or ‘local’ legitimacy, is dependent not only on the effectiveness of protection measures provided by the UN mission against the direct and immediate physical threats but also on its achievement in creating a post-intervention environment in which empowerment of the governed will be ensured in the socio-economic sphere (Richmond 2011). The question of UN legitimacy, therefore, is not only a matter of local perceptions of UN missions, but is also closely intertwined with their efficacy in promoting two pillars of human security, namely protection and empowerment. If the UN intervention is measured in terms of national/local support for the missions, it is clear that the degree of legitimacy and efficacy it enjoyed was changing depending on the phases of each mission. Hence, these aspects will be examined for each mission by using the above-mentioned three-level framework in the following.

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UNAMET (June–September 1999) Although relevant UNSCRs provided the legal basis for UN involvement in Timor-Leste, UNAMET did not receive all the support it needed to make it fully effective. For example, the 5 May Agreement granted the UN Secretary-General the right to establish an appropriate UN mission to carry out effectively the referendum, but illegal forces such as paramilitaries and militia were not disarmed, the presence of the Indonesian security forces was not substantially reduced, and the introduction of a neutral international peacekeeping force to maintain law and order was not made available during the referendum. In short, the international community was not ready to establish a consent-based PKO, much less a peace enforcement one, at the initial stage before the outbreak of post-referendum violence in 1999. On the last point, the US and Australia did not want to endanger the agreement itself by pushing security provisions too much, such as through a possible dispatch of UN peacekeepers (Marker 2010). Martin (2001) argues that it is doubtful whether any amount of pressure could have induced Indonesia to accept international peacekeepers, but there remains the question of whether a firmer stand in the negotiations by the UN and Portugal, backed by the US and Australia, could have strengthened the security provisions for the ordinary Timorese. Before major bloodshed, the international community was not ready to enforce peace upon recalcitrant parties, preferring instead to negotiate a compromise with Indonesia to hold its security forces accountable without attaching any enforcement authority to UNAMET. At the international level, the degree of UNAMET’s legitimacy was only superficial, as the UN failed to marshal sufficient political will to equip UNAMET with an adequate mandate and resources so that it could accomplish its tasks effectively. At the regional level, UNAMET did not receive full support from the regional actors such as ASEAN, Australia, and Japan, as they did not want to upset Indonesia. According to Ichihara (2009, p. 98), ASEAN member states were vocally supportive of Indonesia in the 1990s. Even after the 1999 post-referendum violence, they were reluctant to push Indonesia to accept international intervention, and Thailand’s deputy prime minister, Supachai Panitchpakdi, maintained that ASEAN countries should stick to the principle of non-interference (ibid., p. 99). Such attitude resulted in no significant ASEAN involvement in the tripartite peace talks held

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between Indonesia and Portugal under the UN’s auspices. Nevertheless, Malaysia and Thailand sent their military liaison officers and police officers to UNAMET, and the Philippines sent its police officers. Other regional players, such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Russia, also contributed their police officers and/or military liaison officers, but China, at that particular point in time, did not, as this could be seen as a breach of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states. This lukewarm support was partially the result of naïve predictions about Indonesia’s response to the outcomes of the referendum, which led to the post-referendum violence. Unable to control this violence and protect itself, UNAMET had to be withdrawn and replaced by INTERFET. Witnessing the atrocities committed by pro-integration militias and the role of the Indonesian military in post-referendum violence, the international community was ready to exert more pressure on Indonesia. As a result, Indonesia accepted intervention by multinational forces acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. This decision allowed other ASEAN member states and China to subscribe to a seemingly contradictory but expedient idea of a consent-based, Chapter VII multinational force authorised by the UN. In fact, it was only after Indonesia gave its consent that ASEAN member states started considering seriously their participation in INTERFET (ibid). The Secretary-General of ASEAN, Surin Pitsuwan, negotiated with the Indonesian authorities and other ASEAN member states, and played an instrumental role in getting Indonesian consent as well as marshalling support from ASEAN member states (Pitsuwan 2016). Hence, UNSCR 1264 (1999) was adopted unanimously, which established INTERFET to restore peace and security, to protect and support UNAMET, and to facilitate humanitarian assistance until such time as a UNPKO could be approved and deployed in the area. INTERFET was led by Australia (5500 personnel) with Thailand (1600) and New Zealand (1200), while the Philippines (600), Singapore (250), Malaysia (30), and South Korea, among others, contributed their military personnel symbolically (Dupont 2000, p. 167). At the national level, Indonesian security forces, pro-independent guerrilla forces called the Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor (FALINTIL), militias and other armed elements in Timor-Leste failed to comply fully with the 5 May Agreement , as they foresaw different roles from that stipulated in the 5 May Agreement in post-independence

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Timor-Leste. In short, UNAMET did not receive all the support it needed to make its operation fully effective. Despite the predictions made by the external observers in favour of independence from Indonesia, the Indonesian government apparently expected that the Timorese would choose union with Indonesia (Benzing 2005, p. 306). As long as such ‘wishful thinking’ was maintained, Indonesia was ready to recognise UNAMET’s legitimacy because it was able to refuse foreign military intervention and the disarmament of pro-integration militias, and it could still claim its ‘sovereign’ responsibility to maintain law and order in the territory with its military and police intact. The voting itself proceeded peacefully, with high voter turnout (98.6%). Almost everyone who was eligible cast their vote. This indicates that the Indonesian authorities did not plan to jeopardise the referendum. The announcement of the result, however, triggered the outbreak of violence by pro-integration militia. It was anticipated that the outcome would be in favour of independence, and that such an outcome would spark violence by pro-integration militia or the Indonesian security forces (ibid), UNAMET was not prepared to deal with post-referendum contingencies. Nevertheless, ‘local’ legitimacy towards UN involvement did not decay to the critical level, as INTERFET was introduced after the outbreak of post-referendum violence and performed as a credible guarantor of security to many vulnerable populations in Timor-Leste. UNTAET (October 1999–May 2002) At the international level, UNTAET enjoyed legitimacy, as UNSCR 1272 (1999) was adopted unanimously. It granted UNTAET 8950 military troops, 200 military observers, and 1640 civilian police. Three of the UNSC’s P-5—the US, UK, and Russia—contributed military and police personnel, whereas China contributed 15 civilian police officers initially and later increased its presence to 55 (Zürcher 2019, p. 26). For the first time in history, China contributed its personnel to a UN mission authorised to use ‘all necessary means’ acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (S/RES/1272), albeit civilian police officers. This signalled a shift in Chinese policy from adhering to the principle of non-interference to strengthening the UN’s position as the only legitimate authority for international peace operations (ibid., pp. 26–27). Among the four UN missions deployed in Timor-Leste, UNTAET, which was deployed in the aftermath of the 1999 post-referendum

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violence to take over the responsibility for maintaining law and order in the territory from INTERFET, had the most robust mandate. In addition to the security mandate that INTERFET carried out, UNTAET assumed overall responsibility for the administration of Timor-Leste and was tasked to exercise legislative and executive authority, including the administration of justice. UNTAET was the most radical state-building exercise in which the UN had engaged, and the UN acted as a ‘midwife’ for the new state (Benzing 2005, p. 297). Judging from the magnitude of its ‘executive mandate’, UNTAET enjoyed international legitimacy during the transition period until independence. At the regional level, ASEAN was divided in terms of approval of any external intervention in Timor-Leste. The Philippines and Thailand showed their support, while Myanmar was vocally opposed and Vietnam showed little enthusiasm for supporting external intervention (Dupont 2000, p. 168). In the end, four ASEAN member states—the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia—contributed both military and police personnel to UNTAET. Such a major change in ASEAN’s principle of non-interference was possible because Indonesia as well as other members of ASEAN preferred to have an Asian-led UN mission rather than a multinational force led by the West. The fact that China was increasingly interested in reiterating the notion that UN military intervention requires consent of the parties (Zürcher 2019, pp. 26–27) also helped to legitimise UNTAET both internationally and regionally, although China did not contribute its military to UNTAET (but made a symbolic contribution of police personnel). It should also be noted that Japan, for the first time in history, sent military personnel, albeit engineering units, to a UNPKO acting under Chapter VII (in 1992–1993 Japan sent its military units to UNTAC which was not a Chapter VII operation). Other regional actors, such as Australia, Bangladesh, Fiji, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Korea, and Russia, also contributed troops to UNTAET. While the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) was a Brazilian, Sérgio Vieira de Mello, other senior mission leaders were from the region. For example, de Mello’s deputy, Dennis McNamara, was from New Zealand, and the force commander, Del Los Santos, was from the Philippines, and was later succeeded by Winai Phattiyakul from Thailand in 2001. Although ASEAN member states were divided, these ASEAN member states showed their interest in supporting UNTAET despite ASEAN’s principle of non-interference in internal affairs of the other member states. Shin-ichi Suzuki from Japan was appointed as UNTAET’s

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special advisor to the SRSG on development and humanitarian affairs. This indicates that UNTAET was not a simple, traditional PKO, but that its mandate encompassed a wider range of tasks, including development and humanitarian assistance. In short, UNTAET enjoyed sufficient legitimacy, both at the international and the regional level. At the national/local level, many Timorese collaborated with the UN, despite the fact that UNAMET failed to accomplish its duties effectively. Many innocent and vulnerable people, including the national staff of UNAMET, were left at the mercy of prointegration militias during the post-referendum violence in 1999. Legally speaking, it was not the fault of UNAMET. Rather, it was the Indonesian authority that should be blamed for post-referendum violence, as it was responsible for providing security in the territory. Having said that, after such a tragedy, it is only natural that UNTAET’s legitimacy in the eyes of the national elite and the local population could have been eroded, if not entirely lost. However, it seemed that UNTAET was still able to maintain its national/local legitimacy. It was shared among Timorese that they had no other options but to work with UNTAET if they wanted independence. Perhaps, such a perception helped to preserve UNTAET’s perceived legitimacy. For example, Xanana Gusmão, then the President of the National Council for Timorese Resistance (Conselho Nacional de Resistência Timorense: CNRT), stated that “[i]t is my sincere belief that the support of the international community must, above all, focus on the needs of the people and take into account the acute necessity to safeguard an environment of political tolerance in an atmosphere of tranquility” (UN 2001). This statement is illustrative of the relationship between UNTAET (which governs) and the Timorese (who are governed): i.e. the latter were at the mercy of the former. Another significant factor that neutralised the negative image of the UN was the role played by INTERFET to ‘liberate’ the Timorese from the oppressive regime and violence committed by the Indonesian security forces and pro-integration militias. Although Australia was a long-time ally of Indonesia and supported Indonesia’s invasion of Timor-Leste in 1975, its performance through INTERFET changed the local perception and Australian forces were seen as a ‘liberator’ from the Indonesian occupation. In other words, the national elite and local populations tolerated expediently the setbacks and negative past associated with the UN and

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Australia, although later, when independence became a viable option, the national/local support for them decayed. Even if the political endpoint of the transitional administration was clear, the manner in which it was to be reached proved problematic and was disputed (Benzing 2005, p. 313). UNTAET was deployed initially in conjunction with INTERFET, a peace enforcement mission acting under Chapter VII, to take over INTERFET’s security role. As UNTAET began to exercise its executive mandate, national elites felt that they were excluded from key decisions regarding the state-building of their country. When a governing authority is not selected directly or indirectly by those who are governed, it is not considered to be democratic. Indeed, TimorLeste’s democratisation process was initiated in a non-democratic manner. Such a forceful approach was possible in Japan under the US military occupation after World War II because Japan surrendered ‘unconditionally’ to the US and its allies. This was not the case with Timor-Leste. The ‘neo-trusteeship’ character of UNTAET began to jeopardise its national legitimacy, and soon after the initial honeymoon period was over, Timorese political leaders started to express dissatisfaction and demanded that the power should be transferred from the UN to their hands, as they were excluded from UNTAET’s decision-making process (Chesterman 2004; Uesugi 2017). In Cambodia, under the PPAs, the SNC was created, which embodied Cambodian sovereignty. The SRSG of UNTAC held the final decisionmaking authority at the same level that the Transitional Administrator of UNTAET had, but he preferred to reach a consensus at the SNC without exercising his executive power. In Timor-Leste, the CNRT, a non-partisan umbrella organisation established in 1988 (originally as the National Council of Maubere Resistance: CNRM) to pursue national liberation and self-determination for all Timorese, could be counted as something equivalent to the SNC in Cambodia. However, it was not given the status as a representing Timorese sovereignty and UNTAET chose to proceed without any significant local participation, as its mandate predicted just the obligation to consult and cooperate with the Timorese authorities, without specifying any effective structures of local participation (Saramago 2011). In other words, state-building in Timor-Leste was led by a benevolent altruistic foreign autocratic authority that was installed by outsiders without the direct consent of the local inhabitants. Indeed, UNTAET represented a sovereign authority in Timor-Leste, and initially locals were

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not permitted to take part in the governing structures (Howard 2014, p. 128). Meanwhile, as one of the primary ends of UNTAET was to prepare a democratic system of governance in Timor-Leste, the centre of gravity was destined to shift gradually from UNTAET to the national political elite. This shift is known as ‘Timorisation’—i.e. including the Timorese in the governing structures (ibid., p. 129). On 29 March 2001, even after almost seventeen months since the launch of UNTAET (in the case of UNTAC, which ended in eighteen months, at this phase the mission was preparing for its drawdown), the Transitional Administrator still had to stress the need to speed up the political and administrative handover of power in the territory, to ensure the viability and strength of the country once full independence was reached (UN 2001). As INTERFET had eliminated a major source of threats and UNTAET was successful in preventing the penetration of Indonesian forces across the border, UNTAET was seen as an effective security guarantor for most Timorese. The local population’s support for UNTAET can be partially explained by the high voter turnout in the Constitutional Assembly election held in 2001, in which 384,248 of 446,666 registered voters (representing 86% of the eligible voters from a total population of about 0.865 million) cast their votes (ElectionGuide 2001). The first presidential election was held in April 2001, with 82% voter turnout, allowing Xanana Gusmão to become the first President. In short, these election results showed a high degree of local support for UNTAET despite what happened in the aftermath of the 1999 referendum, carried out under the auspices of the UN. As in Cambodia in 1992, the local population was hungry for peace, security, and democracy. At the same time, the failure to establish a strong political relationship with the Timorese people was the key problem, as UNTAET effectively limited its consultation to political elites who were represented by the CNRT (Leach 2017, pp. 121, 144). UNTAET’s bureaucratic approach and limits as a PKO that was not allowed to build public infrastructures, and whose budget went essentially to troop-contributing countries and never reached the people on the ground, affected negatively the evaluation of UNTAET as a credible transitional administration delivering public goods and services effectively. This became apparent towards the end of its deployment and compromised the legitimacy of UNTAET in the eyes of the Timorese. Widespread frustration and opposition to UNTAET’s role during the

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transitional period increased gradually even among the ordinary population (Saramago 2011). UNTAET’s bureaucratic limitations, operational priority, and exclusive structure seriously jeopardised its local legitimacy in the state-building process, creating feelings of distrust between the UN and the Timorese, which persisted even after independence. This hindered the efficacy of UNTAET and the subsequent missions. UNMISET (May 2002–May 2005) On the day when Timor-Leste restored its independence, UNTAET was replaced by UNMISET, which continued to support the Timorese authority in the areas of stability, democracy and justice, internal security and law enforcement, and external security and border control until its withdrawal. Its mandate had three priority areas: (1) to provide assistance to core administrative structures that were critical to viability and political stability; (2) to provide interim law enforcement and public security and to assist in the development of a new law enforcement agency; and (3) to contribute to the maintenance of external and internal security (S/RES/1410). In short, UNMISET was essentially an institutionbuilding mission and its role was to focus explicitly on the development of administrative and governance structures in the area of politico-security order, and the task of socio-economic development was given to the World Bank, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), bilateral aid agencies, and international NGOs. At the international level, UNSCR 1410 (2002) gave UNMISET a mandate to provide assistance to Timor-Leste over a period of twelve months initially, extended for another twelve months by UNSCR 1480 (2003) until all operational responsibilities were fully devolved to the authorities in Timor-Leste. UNMISET was also allowed to have 5000 military personnel, including 120 military observers and 1250 civilian police officers, and four of the UNSC’s P5 members—the US, UK, Russia, and China—continued to contribute their military and/or civilian police personnel to UNMISET. At the regional level, UNMISET followed the path set by UNTAET and maintained its regional legitimacy and support, as it was able to inherit and maintain its Asia-Pacific character from its predecessor. Regional powers such as Australia, China, Japan, and Russia, as well as three ASEAN member states, namely the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand, continued to play a major role, and other countries in the region,

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such as Bangladesh, Fiji, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Korea, Samoa, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Vanuatu, also contributed their military and/or police personnel. UNMISET’s senior leadership positions were filled by Asians. The first SRSG, Kamalesh Sharma, was from India (May 2002–May 2004), who was followed by Hasegawa Sukehiro from Japan (May 2004–May 2005). The Force Commander’s position was rotated among ASEAN troop-contributing countries: Winai Phattiyakul of Thailand; Huck Gim Tan of Singapore; and Khairuddin Mat Yusof of Malaysia. While UNMISET was legally and technically a UN mission, it demonstrated the possibility of using UN missions as an alternative to regional platforms for peacekeeping, and also provided a way for ASEAN member states to act ‘partially’ collectively when they are not able to reach consensus for collective actions as ASEAN. No election was conducted during the UNMISET period at the national level. At the village (suco) level, in 2004–2005, the election for suco councils took place, through which 442 positions of chefs de suco (village chiefs) were filled. Unlike the last two elections, which were conducted before independence under the auspices of the UN, it is difficult to judge UNMISET’s popular legitimacy using election results as indicators. In the following, therefore, UNMISET’s local legitimacy will be evaluated using its performance effectiveness in accomplishing given tasks. According to the mandate of UNMISET, its primary goals were to build institutions critical to political stability, effective law enforcement, and public security. In short, UNMISET’s efficacy can be judged based on its achievements in security sector reform (SSR), which is closely related to the goal of achieving a pillar of human security, namely freedom from fear. During the UNTAET era, the FALINTIL-Defense Forces of TimorLeste (Forças Defesa de Timor-Leste: F-FDTL) and the National Police of Timor-Leste (Policia Nacional de Timor-Leste: PNTL) were established. A major decision was made by UNTAET before independence and the constitution became effective, which influenced the performance of UNMISET in SSR. Only 650 of the former members of FALINTIL were absorbed into F-FDTL, whereas more than 1300 of them were excluded, shocking many who had understood that simply by being FALINTIL, they would become F-FDTL (Rees 2003). The selection was made in a less than transparent manner, as it was left in the hands of senior FALINTIL officials who were non-FRETILIN affiliated and loyal to Xanana Gusmão (Leach 2017, p. 125). The selection was based on

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subjective criteria such as the political proximity and loyalty towards the command of FALINTIL, and thus the majority of those admitted were loyal to Gusmão and those who had less fraternal relations with the former leader of FALINTIL were demobilised (Elias 2006, pp. 158, 371). This led to the politicisation of F-FDTL, as most of its members were loyal to Gusmão before they were loyal to the state and its institutions (Saramago 2011). In hindsight, this created a serious problem in the security sector, which later led to the politico-security crisis in 2006. First of all, disgruntled veterans’ groups recruited those who were excluded from F-FDTL, which became a source of insecurity (Leach 2017, p. 125). Secondly, F-FDTL’s senior positions were filled with non-FRETILIN Gusmão loyalists, which was perceived as a threat to the FRETILIN government. Thirdly, the division was prepared within F-FDTL between those who served in FALINTIL and those who did not. UNMISET was tasked to build institutions that would contribute to political stability, but the very security institutions that UNMISET helped to develop turned out to be the major source of political instability due to the aforementioned mistakes. Because the primary responsibility for the development of F-FDTL fell into the hands of bilateral donors such as Australia and the ill decision was made before UNMISET came into being, it is unfair to blame UNMISET for the problem of the security sector. At the same time, UNMISET was tasked to develop PNTL and it should be responsible for the outcomes of its intervention. By the time of independence in 2002, over 1700 PNTL officers had passed through the Police Academy, rising to approximately 3000 by the end of the first phase of UNMISET in May 2004 (Hood 2006). However, the UN’s recruitment of cadets for PNTL was marred by inadequate consultation with Timorese leadership on the force’s composition, excessive reliance on former employees of the Indonesian National Police (POLRI), and the use of foreign procedures to determine candidates’ suitability (ibid). Perhaps, the local consultation process was not sufficient, but Xanana Gusmão (2016) stated that he was consulted by UNTAET about the decision to recruit some senior officers from the former cadre of POLRI into PNTL and he gave his endorsement to those who were recruited. The actions and inactions of the early UN administrations in TimorLeste had, therefore, resulted in a poorly trained and supervised police

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force with little local legitimacy, tainted by the inclusion of senior officers from the former cadre of POLRI, with a large number of former FALINTIL guerrillas, as well as those who fought on the clandestine front, left out in the cold, and a military at odds with the central administration and resentful of the UN (Howe and Uesugi 2015, p. 95). Under such circumstances and given the fact that FALINTIL veterans enjoyed blanket respect from the local population, it can be concluded that UNMISET’s legitimacy in the eyes of the local population was not high. The same can be said of the national political elite. Technically, power was handed over from the UN to the Timorese authority that was established originally by the Constituent Assembly election conducted in August 2001. This transition placed Timorese leaders in the driver’s seat, while UNMISET was given the navigator’s seat. With this turnover, ‘Timorisation’ was supposed to be accelerated, but due to the lack of human resources in the modern form of judiciary and public administration, many ‘advisors’ were sent to the key positions in the state institutions via UNMISET, World Bank, and bilateral arrangements. Furthermore, despite the legal transition of power, the Timorese authority was not able to enjoy the monopoly of control over their finances, as a major source of the revenue for the newly born state came from foreign aid. In this sense, the UN kept its grip on the state-building process, and remained as a de facto authority in Timor-Leste. By doing so, ‘neo-trusteeship’ features continued even during the UNMISET period. In sum, UNMISET aimed to build public institutions that were vital for political stability and effective law enforcement. However, in the 2006 crisis, these institutions were proven neither effective nor sustainable. As soon as UNMISET was withdrawn in May 2005, Timorese political elites accelerated their power struggle openly and mobilised and misused both the statutory security institutions and non-state armed groups such as veterans’ groups (CPD-RDTL, Sagrada Familia, and Colimau 2000) and martial arts groups (Scambary 2009, pp. 268–271). Before the crisis in 2006, UN intervention was often regarded as a successful example of externally led SSR insofar as they managed to establish a local police force and local security governance institutions (Kocak 2013, p. 3). For example, Hood (2006, p. 60) stated at the closure of UNMISET in May 2005 that over 100,000 refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) were resettled, a civil administration was established, free and fair elections were held, and an independent state emerged from centuries

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of Portuguese colonial rule, 24 years of Indonesian military occupation, and the devastating violence of 1999. However, the security institutions established by the UN clashed between the different cleavages that existed across and within the organisational structure, which led to the collapse of the initial period of rule of law. In the April–June 2006 crisis which took place four years after gaining independence, PNTL and F-FDTL were fighting each other in the streets of Dili, leaving both institutions in ruins and security was handed back to international forces (ICG 2008, p. i). UNMIT (May 2006–December 2012) The UN intervention laid the minimum foundations for state-building in Timor-Leste. However, these massive experiments faced a major setback in 2006 in which different elements of newly established security institutions were agitated and misled by the national political leaders who engaged in an internal power struggle. Learning lessons from this failure, the UN established another mission called UNMIT. The 2006 crisis highlighted the inadequate development of state institutions for Timor-Leste following the withdrawal of international security agents in the post-transition period. The fragility of the situation in Timor-Leste and the necessity for the UN mission to continue its support for state-building were identified by UN officials on the ground on the eve of the 2006 crisis. Ironically, it was during deliberations at the UNSC on the UN footprint in Timor-Leste that the 2006 crisis erupted. The SRSG of UNOTIL was in New York to convince the UNSC to extend the mandate of UNOTIL, but the major donors felt that it was time for the UN to terminate its presence: i.e. the international legitimacy of the UN mission in Timor-Leste had expired (Hasegawa 2013). Despite the timely warnings and suggestions from cautious UN officials on the ground, the UN and the Timorese authority both failed to address the security threat posed by rivalries among local political groups (Sahin 2007, p. 254). The report of the Independent Special Commission of Inquiry for TimorLeste, which was formed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at the request of the Secretary-General, identified the fragility of state institutions and the weakness of the rule of law as underlying factors that contributed to the crisis (ibid., p. 263). In response, UNSCR 1704 (2006) approved the establishment of UNMIT. This time the official

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mandate specifically included, among other things, enhancing a culture of democratic governance. However, the UNSC did not authorise UNMIT to have a robust military component. It authorised 34 military liaison and staff, and 1608 police personnel. In essence, UNMIT was a police-oriented mission and its police officers were from over 40 counties around the world. Its military component performed trilateral coordination with F-FDTL and the Australian-led International Stabilisation Force (ISF) that was invited by the Government of Timor-Leste and operated outside of the UN command. UNSCR 1704 (2016) affirmed that the UNSC would adjust the nature and size of UNMIT’s military component, taking into account the mandate given to ISF. This indicates that at the international level, UNMIT was given a secondary responsibility for achieving freedom from fear in Timor-Leste. At the regional level, no major shift of policies among troops and police-contributing countries was observed, which continued to give UNMIT an Asia-Pacific appearance. In addition, ISF comprised troops mainly from Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand (plus Portugal) and it withheld its Asia-Pacific character. These facts implied that regional powers were willing to collaborate with each other to achieve peace and security in Timor-Leste. It is noticeable that China provided both military observers and police forces to UNMIT even though UNMIT operated in parallel with ISF. According to Lanteigne (2011), China had the distinction of being involved in a complex PKO right from its inception. This shows China’s readiness to use UN missions as a platform to demonstrate its intention to be a responsible stakeholder in both regional and global fronts. At the national/local level, UNMIT’s legitimacy was in jeopardy throughout the term. Having been unable to handle the 2006 crisis, the Government requested police and military assistance from the UN as follows: In view of the deterioration of the internal security conditions in TimorLeste and in order to establish measures of security and confidence among the populations so as to restore tranquility throughout the national territory and promote a climate of dialogue among the various sectors of the society, the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste has requested assistance from the governments of Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, and

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Malaysia in sending defence as well as security forces from their countries to Timor-Leste as a matter of urgency. (S/2006/319)

While the request was addressed to the UN, the contents indicated that the Government chose bilateral arrangements with Australia and Portugal to restore order. This clearly shows that the national authorities saw the UN as ill-equipped to respond in a timely manner to emergency situations, and the lack of effectiveness and national legitimacy of the UN had an impending effect on the programmes carried out by them in Timor-Leste (Ferro 2011, p. 29). After order was restored by ISF and Portugal’s National Republican Guard (Guarda Nacional Republicana: GNR), the Government continued to rely on them to guarantee freedom from fear in the country. Tasks related to security provision that were delegated to UNMIT included the reform of the PNTL, depriving the Timorese authority of its policing responsibility. Under the Supplement Arrangement , UNMIT was legally authorised to screen PNTL officers and certify those who met the standards set by UNMIT. UNSCR 1704 (2016) enforced this arrangement without the request of the Government, which raised national legitimacy issues. The Government kept demanding the return of policing responsibilities from the UN (Wilson 2012), as the Supplement Arrangement stipulated that it was the Police Commissioner of UNMIT who was given the authority to decide when policing responsibility should be returned to Timorese authority. On several occasions, the Government circumvented the Supplement Arrangement and conducted autonomous policing operations without UNMIT endorsement. With support from Australia and Portugal, for example, the Government quelled the rebel activities led by former ‘petitioners’ (army deserters or those illegitimately sacked by the authorities in the 2006 crisis, depending on one’s perspective). Despite objection from UNMIT, the Government organised a joint operation between F-FDTL and PNTL to eliminate the threat from the rebel groups in 2018, and after such threat was removed effectively, another joint operation was conducted in the western districts of Bobonaro and Covalima for several months (Belo 2014, p. 157). Furthermore, PNTL formed a ‘Dili Task Force’ to address the problems of youth gangs and martial arts groups in Dili two years before policing responsibility was formally returned to the Government (CIGI 2009, p. 4; Lemay-Hébert 2009, p. 397).

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Incidents triggered by an attempted assassination of the President and the Prime Minister in February 2008 by the rebel groups did not devolve violently out of control, as had happened in April–May 2006. This is a sign that Timor-Leste was in fact stabilising. After demobilisation of the ‘petitioners’, who were newly recruited soldiers under UNTAET, against the wishes and expectations of FALINTIL, and the surrender of the mutineers in April 2008, the political tensions surrounding them calmed, and no further violence has been detected that was directly related to them (Arnold 2009, p. 449). The death of the rebel group leader, former Major Alfredo Reinado, allowed the Government to begin its programme of relocating IDPs back to their homes free from the fear of insecurity generated by political instability and civil unrest caused by a movement by the ‘petitioners’; it undermined the bargaining position of lawless forces; it distanced both the Prime Minister and the President from the taint of association with Reinado which had dogged them until that point; and it enhanced their legitimacy, particularly that of President José Ramos-Horta, who was in a very real sense ‘blooded’ (Kingsbury 2009, pp. 360–361). Once Timorese security forces were able to eliminate threats from the rebel groups in 2008 and became confident in their ability to maintain stability without relying on external forces, the Timorese authority became more assertive in criticising the legitimacy and efficacy of UNMIT. By the end of 2008, Timor-Leste was showing real signs of internal stabilisation, and in return, the interim role of UNMIT as a security guarantor and law enforcer on behalf of the Government was coming to an end (ibid., p. 367). In a nutshell, despite the nominal positive outlook, the legitimacy and efficacy of UNMIT as a provider of freedom from fear in the eyes of the national leadership in Timor-Leste had started to decay as early as 2008. The Government did not perceive the ongoing hosting of UN missions to be to its advantage, and thus did not extend its consent to continuing intrusion of its sovereignty by UNMIT. The UN was aware of this challenge of eroding perceived legitimacy, as legitimate and capable government structures have emerged in Timor-Leste (UN 2008, pp. 33–36).

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Conclusion Thirteen years of UN involvement may have brought Timor-Leste an interim stability. In a relatively short period of time since independence, Timor-Leste has actually developed a comparatively good record of democratic competition and has firmly established many of the conditions for a working representative democracy. By 2012, ten years after independence, Timor-Leste had held three sets of free and fair elections (two presidential and one parliamentary) without significant disruption beyond stone-throwing incidents, appearing to consign its recent fractious and violent past to the pages of history, and allowing the withdrawal of UNMIT (Della-Giacoma 2012). Credit should be given to FRETILIN, which had ruled with a strong parliamentary majority for five years until the second general election in 2007 (Arnold 2009, p. 51). According to the constitution, the leading party should form a government, or if necessary, form a coalition with other political parties. Given that FRETILIN won 21 seats (29 per cent of votes) and CNRT won 18 (24% of votes), FRETILIN was the leading party and therefore CNRT was not in a position to form a majority coalition. However, having realised that they no longer enjoyed the nationwide support of the people, FRETILIN stepped down peacefully and played the role of a healthy opposition party. Such self-restraint was observed again in the aftermath of the 2012 election. This indicates that national political situation in Timor-Leste has passed the phase dictated by the ‘politics of survival’ of local elites. Political elites no longer have to worry about their survival when they are defeated in elections. They still have a role in democracy, serving as opposition, checking and monitoring those who are in power. This chapter has examined the issues of legality, legitimacy, and efficacy of the four major UN missions that undertook a major state-building endeavour in Timor-Leste. In doing so, given that Timor-Leste is seen by many as something of a test case, or even a benchmark for a new form of peacekeeping, it has demonstrated some important lessons for the formulation of future legal and normative constraints, as well as implementation strategies. A series of resolutions and references to Chapter VII enforcement, as well as the adoption of executive mandates by the UNSC, surely satisfied the legal foundation of such UN missions, which also contributed to their legitimacy at the international and regional levels. At the same time, however, the case of Timor-Leste indicates that if the UN missions

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fail to maintain a healthy relationship with national authorities and local populations, their perceived legitimacy on the ground will soon be jeopardised. It is often difficult to maintain the legitimacy of UN intervention at the national level, as the national authorities are sensitive to the usurpation of sovereignty and they tend to be obsessed with ‘politics of survival’. If the UN intervention is successful in respecting national leadership and nurturing national ownership, while assisting the national political elites to emancipate themselves from the ‘politics of survival’ by offering physical security and political stability, the legitimacy of UN missions at the national/local level will be strengthened. In Timor-Leste, despite the serious usurpation of sovereignty, coercive military interventions by INTERFET in 1999 and by ISF in 2006 were both conducive to quelling the disturbance, which contributed to the emergence of political space in which contesting national elites were able to search for an alternative to ‘politics of survival’. Nevertheless, this division of labour in the security sector between the UN mission and the UN-endorsed multinational forces, together with the UN mission’s inability to address security challenges effectively on the ground, damaged the national/local legitimacy of the UN mission. Despite the inherent challenges of insufficient national/local legitimacy, the UN interventions, together with other international actors, have laid an important foundation for human security for the Timorese. Acknowledgement This research was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 16KK0089.

References Arnold, M. B. (2009). Challenges Too Strong for the Nascent State of TimorLeste: Petitioners and Mutineers. Asian Survey, 49(3), 429–449. Belo, N. (2014). Peacebuilding and Security Sector Governance in Timor-Leste. In Y. Uesugi (Ed.), Peacebuilding and Security Sector Governance in Asia. Zurich and Berlin: LIT. Benzing, M. (2005). Midwifing a New State: The United Nations in East Timor. In A. von Bogdandy & R. Wolfrum (Eds.), Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law, 9, 7, 295–372. Chesterman, S. (2004). You the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administrations and State Building. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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CHAPTER 5

Post-UNMIT Peacebuilding and Human Security in Timor-Leste

Abstract This chapter assesses the legacy of UN intervention by examining its impact on human security in the post-UNMIT Timor-Leste. The UN and other international actors left a positive legacy in various national institutions for democratic governance and natural resource management. However, their impact did not penetrate into politico-security and justice/reconciliation sectors. UN governance was dictated by idealistic approaches and leaned towards retributive justice, and it has been less effective in terms of addressing the immediate and real needs of the people on the ground. After the UNMIT departure, the Government in Timor-Leste redirected the course of action to improve security situations by implementing the policy of ‘buying peace’, through which issues of economic resource allocation and social justice were linked with security politics within Timor-Leste. Keywords Timor-Leste · Peacebuilding · Human Security · Development · Reconciliation

© The Author(s) 2021 B. M. Howe et al., UN Governance, Security, Development and Human Rights in East Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54572-7_5

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Introduction This chapter examines the legacy of UN intervention using the framework of human security, which focuses on the people and their community as a unit of analysis rather than the state or national security perspective which has dominated the discourse of conventional realists and policy makers in the world. Hence in the following sections, human security threats which exist in the Timorese community will be discussed in two major categories: freedom from want and freedom from fear. Then attempts made by the UN to address each type of threats during the periods from UNTAET to UNMIT, as well as the reality of their impact on the ground in the long run, will be assessed. Methodologically, it is very difficult to argue direct causal effects/relationships between what the UN has done in the past and what we see on the ground now (Hunt, 2016, No. 1758). Therefore, the following is merely an attempt to compare what was initiated by the UN and the plausible ‘contribution’ of such initiatives to the existing consequences in several focused areas (Destrée 2020, pp. 11–12; Hughes, 2016, No. 1392; Hunt, 2016, No. 2047).

Post-UNMIT Peacebuilding for Human Security Different actors played critical roles in different phases of the peacebuilding process in Timor-Leste. It has been over eight years since the departure of UNMIT in December 2012 and Timorese by themselves have managed to settle the post-election turmoil of May 2018. Thus, as discussed in Chapter 4, UNMIT’s contribution to peacebuilding in Timor-Leste has been a limited success when its immediate outcomes are assessed in terms of its legality, legitimacy, and efficacy. In the following, however, much longer-term impact or the legacy of the series of UN missions in Timor-Leste will be assessed using human security as an evaluative framework. UNTAET had a dual mandate: on the one hand it had to establish itself as the de facto government of Timor-Leste and on the other hand it had to build the state and prepare Timorese for self-government (Beauvais, 2001). Because UNTAET felt that achieving the first goal itself was a heavy challenge, it invested primarily in the first goal, effectively deprioritising the move towards the second goal (Beauvais, 2001). This decision amplified UNTAET’s ‘neo-trusteeship’ character and entrapped it in a state-building dilemma (Paris and Sisk 2009).

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After the independence of Timor-Leste in May 2002, a major incident witnessed in the justice and security sector evolved in April–May 2006 from a peaceful demonstration of frustrated soldiers, who were later on called ‘petitioners’. Xanana Gusmão claimed that the UN intervention must bear some of the blame for the events of 2006 as it failed to prepare Timor-Leste for independence, lacked respect for local culture, and the conspicuous consumption of the UN bureaucracy was an affront to the mass poverty surrounding them (Paul 2010, p. 112). A local NGO called Luta Hamutuk argued that the main problem was that money was spent on consumption rather than investment (Akara 2011). While West Timor’s budget of US$400 million stretched to cover 4 million citizens, in Timor-Leste US$1.3 billion was spent on 1.1 million citizens (Howe 2013, p. 183). For example, “while Australia spent more than A$2 billion on its military intervention, what was needed was an equivalent Marshall plan to put the country on its feet” (Paul 2010, p. 113). Another local NGO called La’o Hamutuk likewise criticised international organisations for paying attention to physical security when the biggest problems faced in Timor-Leste were the other societal issues such as colonial legacies, the need for justice, accountability of perpetrators, rural poverty and land rights (Martins 2011). Some blamed the discrepancy on too many international advisors (de Vasconcelos 2011), and claimed that exclusionary practices and the lack of capacity-building increased reliance on outsiders and led to local wariness about imposed and unreliable systems while “new institutions have not tended to provide human security or protection” (Stanley 2007, p. 131). These accusations are not groundless, nor were they a surprise to the UN. It is now conventional wisdom that local ownership is essential for successful peacebuilding, but the UN practice on the ground continues to exclude local stakeholders in the design of UN missions as was the case in Timor-Leste. The very fact that UN missions are carrying out human security tasks such as security sector reform (SSR) is regarded by a host country as a serious infringement upon its state sovereignty; therefore, UN legitimacy on the ground can easily be eroded if it is not handled with care. State-building assistance by the series of UN missions in Timor-Leste was regarded as a usurpation of sovereignty. As human security challenges were left unresolved, long-term prospects for peace and development remained uncertain, and the legitimacy of UN missions was open to question. The UN needs to excel in midwifery and should master strategic planning to assist local stakeholders in addressing human

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security challenges. This is not only the most relevant normative justification for UN involvement in post-conflict peacebuilding, but also it is a practical way to overcome the problem of fragile legitimacy in international state-building assistance. Therefore, in the following, the legacy of the series of the UN missions upon the state-building process will be assessed from the point of view of addressing human security challenges.

Freedom from Want: Progress and Limitations In this section, a component of human security, that is the freedom from want, is used to discuss potential human security threats. It is true that the level of freedom from want that Timorese people enjoy now is still low in many statistics. According to 2014 Timor-Leste Living Standard Survey, 25% of the population is still living in a household with no access to safe drinking water, and 28% with no electricity connection (World Bank 2014, p. 7). Between 2002 and 2016, Timor-Leste’s real GDP growth per capita increased by only 35% (an average of 2% per year) and in 2018, its GDP was US$ 1.6 billion and its GDP per capita was US$1187 (Martins 2019, pp. 1–2). At the same time, if we recall that some of security incidents witnessed in the past were the manifestation of people’s frustrated need for representation, development, equality, and justice, the absence of major security incidents in the past few years indicates that the situation is improving, or at least it has not fallen below people’s expectation. Since it is not the purpose of this chapter to predict the future prospect of the human security situation in Timor-Leste, the following sections will focus on immediate and direct challenges closely related to freedom from want, and will not cover the long-term and structural impacts that are related to human development and societal changes. Hence, the following sections will discuss the three major policies that aimed at addressing the immediate and direct human security challenges in Timor-Leste: (1) Petroleum Fund (PF); (2) National Recovery Strategy (NRS); and (3) Veterans’ Pension (VP). The following discussion on existing mechanisms and programmes helps us to draw a general conclusion about whether people enjoyed more freedom from want as a result of the UN intervention.

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Petroleum Fund (PF) The livelihood of the people of Timor-Leste is heavily dependent on the effective use and management of the revenue collected from petroleum reserves in the Timor Gap, located in Timor Sea between the territorial waters of Timor-Leste and Australia. The two governments jointly established the Timor Sea Designated Authority (TSDA) to develop and manage the natural resources. Due to the executive mandate of UNTAET, international actors could design a fairly effective resource governance architecture in Timor-Leste. In August 2005, after the departure of UNMISET in May and under article 5 of the PF Law, the PF was set up in Timor-Leste to regulate effective management of the revenue from petroleum in the Timor Gap. In other words, in the period between 1999 and 2005, the State Budget was entirely dependent on foreign aid. According to the design, all petroleum income was to be put into the PF first, and then be divided into two: one portion for investment in US Government bonds (this practice was later amended in June 2009) and the other to be transferred to the State Budget. The Law set the ceiling on the latter not exceeding the ‘Estimated Sustainable Income for a Fiscal Year’ (3% × petroleum wealth). Petroleum Wealth comprises the balance of the PF and the Net Present Value of expected future petroleum revenue (PFAU 2018, p. 3). Legal and institutional architectures of petroleum management were designed initially by expatriates. One of the key state institutions related to petroleum management is the Banking and Payment Authority (BPA), which is the equivalent of the central bank, and responsible for managing the State Budget. The IMF played a critical role in the establishment of the BPA (Rasmussen 2008). Under the BPA, the Investment Advisory Board (IAB) was set up to advise the Finance Minister on investment strategies and petroleum management policy (Ministry of Finance, n.d.). The international community has invested in human resource development and those officials who work in key state institutions such as the BPA and the Ministry of Planning and Finance (now the Ministry of Finance) were given priority over others. The Banco Central de TimorLeste (BCTL), the central bank, was established on 13 September 2011, and replaced the BPA. It now carries out the operational management of the PF (PFAU 2018, p. 4). At the initial stage, the normal operation of the BPA owed much to the presence of international advisors, and the petroleum management

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mechanism would not have operated without support from them. For example, Torres Trovik, a Norwegian national and an investment professional, who was one of the architects of the PF, sat on the IAB as a board member (PFAU 2018, p. 89). At the same time, the Government of Timor-Leste has also invested in human resources in the area of natural resource management. The Secretary of State for Natural Resources, who oversees the petroleum related policy, sent his staff overseas to obtain master’s degrees in relevant fields such as macro economy, taxation, finance, and natural resource management (de Vasconselos 2008). In 2008, the Government established the national scholarship scheme for areas related to natural resource management and sent youth to Australia and Indonesia (Pires 2008). Thanks to political reconciliation with Indonesia, Timorese students are allowed to pay their tuition at the domestic student’s rate in universities in Indonesia (ibid.). In 2017, 1302 Timorese students were enrolled in universities in Indonesia (WENR 2019). Initial involvement of international actors in the design as well as the operation of the PF contributed to securing the transparency of the use of petroleum income by the Government. Indeed, the transparency of the PF was ranked 12th (in the category of ‘comprehensive revenue transparency’) in the Resource Governance Index 2010 (RWI 2010). At the same time, such tight control did not allow the Government to use the fund effectively according to the needs of its population as the Government did not yet have an effective bureaucracy to master the sophisticated procedures. Because the people were not well informed about the restricted usage of petroleum income, they began to suspect corruption of government officials, as the situation on the ground had not improved much since independence. This misperception by the public contributed to the upspring triggered by the 2006 demonstration led by the ‘petitioners’ in F-FDTL. Sufficient distribution of income from the PF to the State Budget has been essential for sustaining not only the economy but also the daily lives of the people in one of the poorest countries in the world. In 2012, for example, about 77% of Timor-Leste’s GDP came from the revenue from oil and gas (IMF 2012), which meant that most people needed the provision of the PF to sustain their livelihood, even though a decade had passed since independence. Indeed, other measures introduced to achieve the freedom from want are also dependent on the revenue from the PF. In other words, effective economic governance and

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resource management by the Government were urgent priorities for the state to provide services to its people. The Government did not have sufficient funds to be used for development before the transfer of wealth from the PF started in 2005. This implies that for Timorese people to enjoy freedom from want, all the measures and remedies had to come from the international community through foreign aid, at the nascent stage. After the departure of UNMISET in May 2005, the presence of the international community downsized significantly, affecting the economy of Timor-Leste. This contributed to the frustration of the population against the FRETILIN government and led to a politico-security crisis in April–May 2006. This indicates clearly that economic governance is closely linked with political governance, both of which can contribute to restoring security and vice versa. For example, in the aftermath of the politico-security turmoil in 2006, the first change of government since independence was realised and a different policy on petroleum management was adopted by the new government in 2007. The State Budget doubled in 2008 and since then it has constantly increased except for the year 2013 when the transfer of petroleum income was reduced to less than half of that of the previous year. As will be discussed below, the National Recovery Strategy (NRS) was initiated to solve the problem of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in 2007; the distribution of pensions to veterans started in 2008, and the number of pension recipients increased from 2011 in 2008 to 37,704 in 2012 (Dale et al. 2014, p. 289). These programmes have helped Timorese to enjoy freedom from want at a critical juncture. However, it does not mean that the effects of such programmes are sustainable over a long period of time. Some critics argue that the PF is set up to provide a stable source of revenue for the budget over the long term and to preserve intergenerational equity (Doraisami 2018), but the aftereffects of the current policy of ‘buying peace’ can endanger the sustainability of the PF. For example, Doraisami (2018) warns that with oil production expected to cease in 2023 and withdrawals from the fund far exceeding the estimated sustainable income level, expenditures on veterans’ payments and largescale infrastructure projects have thwarted the stated aims of the fund particularly that of preserving intergenerational equity.

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National Recovery Strategy (NRS) The policy called the NRS has been characterised by the international community as ‘buying peace’ (Dal Poz 2018) since the Government relied on various cash payment schemes to mitigate conflict and provide social security alternatives to the victims of conflict and violence. For example, the Government completed the relocation of IDPs and closed down their camps, paying families up to US$4000 to return to their places of origin: this was equivalent to around eight years’ average income and represented a significant incentive to most of the IDPs (Kingsbury 2009, p. 361). At the same time, this programme served to provide the Timorese people with a prerequisite to enjoying freedom from want. In its original design, the NRS had five complementary pillars: (1) Together Building Confidence (to increase trust between the people and the Government and to strengthen community); (2) Together Building Social Economy (to create livelihood opportunities for all, both in areas of return and in the districts); (3) Together Building Stability (to address security concerns and to create an environment conducive to return or resettlement); (4) Together Building Protection (to establish a social safety net for the most vulnerable with due attention to the specific needs of the IDPs); and (5) Together Building Homes (to help IDPs return home when it is safe and possible and to provide new houses for those who had lost their homes). Van der Auweraert (2012, p. 7) argued that only the first and the last pillars were extensively operationalised, and the last pillar was modified drastically becoming a cash disbursement. While this criticism may be accurate, one must not forget the fact that the last pillar tackled the most urgent human security challenge and the first pillar aimed to address the most significant human security challenge in the long run. The liberal professionalism of the UN made it difficult for such a quick and dirty solution to be implemented under its auspices. But it worked. With no proper administrative mechanisms set in place, it was difficult to imagine that a complex social security system would work. In a society where the majority of the people were in grave need, it was imperative that a quickand-easy-to-execute solution was provided as the issue was finding ways to survive for tomorrow. Therefore, the UN cannot claim direct credit for the ‘buying peace’ solution, but it can be said that the UN contributed indirectly to creating a conducive environment for such a solution to be effective. For example,

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the first pillar of the NRS was represented by the extensive use of dialogue and mediation to promote and facilitate the social integration of the IDPs, which was based on indigenous/foreign hybrid approaches of dispute settlement. The Ministry of Social Solidarity (MSS), and its dialogue teams, played an instrumental role in facilitating the return of the IDPs. The UNDP provided technical support to MSS’s dialogue teams whose activities were based on customary mediation practices used in communities (Belo 2011). Van der Auweraert (2012, p. 16) argued that the strategy of not investigating and prosecuting low-level perpetuators was justified for reasons of community-level stability and reconciliation, but he was critical of the apparent lack of interest in ensuring accountability at the leadership level, saying that the effects of such an approach on medium- to long-term peace and stability in Timor-Leste remains to be seen. It can be concluded that the Government which came into office in August 2007 solved the IDP problem, at least on the surface, in five years. The cleavage between easterners (Firakus or Loro Mono) and westerners (Kaladis or Loro Sae), propagated in 2006 causing a massive displacement, has not resurfaced since then, and the cleavage has been successfully bridged through the NRS combining reconciliation with tangible reparations. This could imply that, as a result of the NRS, the people were able to enjoy the minimum level of freedom from want to the extent that they no longer had to resort to protest, uprising and revolts to change the situation. A contributing factor that facilitated the ‘buying peace’ policy as a viable option for shutting down the IDP camps was that security concerns, caused by the rebel groups led by Alfredo Reinado and Gastão Salsinha since 2006, had already been addressed via political reconciliation among political elites and a partially bloody but a partially face-saving closure initiated by the Government. The claims of the ‘petitioners’ were addressed, albeit not through returning them to F-FDTL, but with their acceptance of what appeared to be a generous payout offer of US$8000 each to rebuild their lives (Kingsbury 2009, pp. 361–362). This shows that circumvention of punishment in the name of reconciliation led to a local solution to the IDP problem, which facilitated the withdrawal of UNMIT in December 2012. The east and west divide has not been directly tackled but somehow effectively dealt with a national debate about the veterans and their pension schemes, another ‘buying peace’ measure, which will be elaborated next.

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Veterans’ Pension (VP) As soon as President Gusmão assumed office, he established the Commission for Matters of Former Combatants (CAAC) and the Commission for Matters of Veterans of Falintil (CAVF) in September 2002, as the veteran issue was his top priority in stark contrast to that of the UN. The CAAC was responsible for veterans between the period of 1975 and 79, whereas the CAVF was mandated for veterans serving between 1980 and 1999 (World Bank 2008, p. 11). These two commissions dealt with armed resistance but not the civilian clandestine movement, which raised tension about who should be recognised as a part of the national liberation/resistance front. In September 2004, the Commission for Matters of Cadres of the Resistance (CAQR) was also established, this time to register ‘veterans’ of a civilian nature, including former political prisoners and members of the clandestine network (ibid.). These commissions were all supported by the World Bank, UNDP, USAID, AusAID, and other bilateral donors. As defining who were the true veterans was highly politicised, the result of the commissions’ work, that is, the numbers of people registered officially as veterans imply that there has been some kind of political consultations or negotiated deals between the two major forces in Timorese society (Table 5.1). The veterans’ issue was resolved with another ‘buying peace’ initiative: pension. The Law on Status of National Liberation Combatants (hereafter, veteran law) and the Law on Pensions for Combatants and Martyrs of National Liberation (hereafter, pension law) provide legal grounds for providing pensions, benefits for widows and orphans, and educational subsidies and other social assistance (ibid., p. 23). The community consensus on the veteran issue was addressed via community dialogues orchestrated by the veteran commissions which consisted of commissioners who are gatekeepers (Roll 2018, p. 265). In September 2008, veterans numbered 75,143 according to the Government, and of that figure, 13,889 had been granted recognition for their fight, while 12,538 Table 5.1 Numbers of registered veterans Total Deceased

CAAC-CAVF

CAQR

Total

38,337 14,876 (39%)

36,806 3640 (10%)

75,143 18,516 (25%)

Source World Bank (2008, p. 18) edited by the author

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had received veteran’s funds from the Government (CEPAD 2010, p. 68). According to Roll (2018, p. 276), modifications to eligibility criteria and registration practices brokered by gatekeepers resolved tensions between the capital and the veranda (informal negotiation space and agency) and between ‘hybrid’ state actors (the commissioners) and the ex-resistance members at the grassroots level. It was generally agreed that those who devoted themselves to the liberation/resistance struggle should be adequately acknowledged and compensated. Due to extralegal social engineering by gatekeepers at the mid-space (intermediary ‘hybrid’ negotiation space), local conceptualisations of fairness, merit, and seniority were completed (ibid., p. 277). A major source of instability was removed successfully, which can be counted as a contribution to freedom from fear at the community level. The fact that the VP issue was not included in the mandate of UNMIT allowed a locallygrown solution to be brokered by the mid-space gatekeepers (Uesugi 2020). Liberal approaches of anti-corruption would have rejected such social engineering done by the gatekeepers, accusing it of being simply an unacceptable practice. The activities discussed above are all developmental undertakings. For example, the PF can be assessed from the point of view of natural resource governance, the NRS can be analysed from a purely developmental angle, and the VP can be evaluated as a social welfare scheme. The human security lens, however, allows us to see the nexus between security and development. It suggests that development projects should be aligned closely with security approaches because they are accelerating factors for achieving the freedom from fear, which is the next topic to be explored.

Freedom from Fear: Peace, Democratisation, and Rule of Law In this section, another component of human security, that is, the freedom from fear, is presented from three viewpoints: (1) strategic reconciliation; (2) national-level political reconciliation; and (3) communitylevel reconciliation. This issue of reconciliation can be categorised into two levels: one at the national strategic level between Indonesia and Timor-Leste; and the other at the communal level between former pro-independent residents, including liberation fighters and clandestine

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movement members, and former pro-integration residents such as agents of colonial authority as well as militia members. Strategic Reconciliation After independence, Timor-Leste’s relationship with Indonesia was a central security concern. From the point of view of national security, Timor-Leste, a tiny infant country sitting next to Indonesia, a rapidly growing regional power, had no choice but to explore reconciliation with its former enemy and oppressor. Overall, its national priority was defined by the strategic national interest for survival at the expense of the feelings of victims. UNTAET (later succeeded by UNMISET) set up a Serious Crime Unit within its structure and the Special Panels for Serious Crimes (SPSC), which was attached to the Dili District Court, to deal with crimes committed between 1974 and 1999 (Kent 2012, p. 13). Due to the political sensitivity and a wall of national sovereignty as well as the request from some elements of Timorese leadership, the SPSC could not bring to justice many of those who were indicted, including General Wiranto of the Indonesian Armed Force (TNI) (“UN Indicts General for East Timor Crimes” 2003; Aglionby 2004). The SPSC indicted 367 people, but it could prosecute only Timorese who joined militia groups operated under the TNI. Those who were strategically responsible for the atrocities committed in Timor-Leste were not put on trial. The Government of Indonesia with a presidential decree established the Ad Hoc Human Rights Court for East Timor in Jakarta, through which eighteen members of the TNI were indicted and all found not guilty (Cohen 2002, p. 4, cited in Kent 2012, p. 16). No further appetite for seeking justice existed among the major stakeholders of the international community, not to mention in the two Governments concerned. From the standpoint of retributive justice and the liberal notion of human rights, such lukewarm treatment by the international community is a total failure. However, this failure brought negative peace to Timor-Leste. The UN attempted to push for retributive justice, but in reality, the preferred and realistic choice for Timor-Leste was restorative justice emphasising reconciliation and friendship pursued at the national level, thus restoring positive relationships with Indonesia. Freedom from fear for the population of Timor-Leste resulted from the fact that the Governments of

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Timor-Leste and Indonesia chose not to pursue retributive justice but instead saw political reconciliation as a path forward (Peou 2014). While the Ad Hoc Human Rights Court for East Timor played only an expedient nominal role, the bilateral Commission on Truth and Friendship established in August 2005 by the two Governments served as a mechanism to guarantee freedom from fear for ordinary Timorese people. For Timor-Leste, the best defence against TNI’s threats was not to build a robust military force against it nor to bring perpetrators to justice to deter future offenses, but reconciliation and cooperation with Indonesia to prevent a similar situation from happening again. Such pragmatism was the result of necessity on the ground. National-Level Political Reconciliation After the external threat of Indonesia was removed effectively through strategic reconciliation, internal political rivalry resurfaced as a major source of instability. The two major political figures—Xanana Gusmão, a former FALINTIL commander who fought in the jungle, and Mari Alkatiri, a political committee member of FRETILIN who escaped from the Indonesian invasion and operated from overseas—had a common enemy during the independence struggle, which made political reconciliation between them much easier than the case of Cambodia where the major parties were all involved in a civil war and killing each other. At the same time, when they lost their common enemy and assumed power, power politics doomed to dictate their relationship, and internal splits became unavoidable. Democracy, which the UN advocated, inherently introduced the logic of competition among the political elite and it accelerated the division. Hence, national unity in a newborn state faced critical challenges as the power struggle intensified between Gusmão and Alkatiri. A fundamental cause of the 2006 crisis can be traced back to this political rivalry. The UN’s involvement failed to prevent it from becoming out of control and violent. From the standpoint of liberal peace, a major negative consequence which came out of the aftermath of the 2006 crisis was the culture of impunity. The UN did not enjoy independent jurisdiction over the sovereignty of Timor-Leste, so it needed the support and cooperation of the Government to execute its judicial decisions. This can also be characterised as a threat to the rule of law. Those who were identified as

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legally responsible for the violence in 2006 by the UN Special Independent Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste (OHCHR 2006) were not legally punished except for Rogerio Lobato, who was the Minister of Interior at the time of the crisis, and was sentenced to seven years but released from prison in 2007 for urgent medical treatment overseas (Peake 2012). He was subsequently pardoned by President José Ramos-Horta. In 2012, Lobato ran as a candidate in the presidential election. Although he did not succeed, it showed that Timorese society valued highly his devotion to his country and was ‘tolerant’ and ‘forgiving’ of his past wrong doings. His family members such as his elder brother and FRETILIN’s head, Nicolau Lobato, his wife, two younger sisters, a younger brother, and other relatives, were all executed by Indonesians (The United States Congress 1980, p. 243). In the language of the UN, tolerance and mercy can be equivalent of impunity. But in Timorese society, these virtues are highly recognised. Another example is Gastão Salsinha, a spokesperson for the ‘petitioners’ who were one of the triggers of the 2006 crisis, and who was allegedly accused of the attempted assassination of the President and the Prime Minister in 2008. He was sentenced to ten years and eight months in prison but was pardoned by President Ramos-Horta. According to Julio Salsinha (2019), a brother of Gastão Salsinha, Xanana Gusmão came to meet with his brother and convinced him to stay away from trouble and make a living as a businessman in Gleno. Such conciliatory actions were criticised by the UN as they could undermine efforts to combat impunity and jeopardise the rule of law (Belford 2010). Frameworks for the rule of law and judicial independence were introduced but the deals made among the political elite have overridden them. Louis Gentile, the local representative of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, criticised such actions as “trading justice for stability” (ibid.). He may be right from the perspective of liberal peace, but such a trade-off effectively created a pragmatic political settlement, and a necessary closure to the post-2006 turbulent journey of state-building. One can still question, however, whether the amnesty was a necessary move to settle years of political turmoil. If amnesty was not granted, for example, to Lobato and Salsinha, would their supporters have continued to destabilise the situation? That is difficult to answer. What can be argued instead in this context is that justice was not registered in the legal sense, but it was understood socially. The political leaders in Timor-Leste sought to strike and restore the balance by pardoning political scapegoats. They

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pursued fairness or righteousness, which means that nobody should be a scapegoat for someone else. It is not fair or right to punish only those who lost the political battle while victors are given blanket impunity for what they have done. If it is impossible to bring to justice those maun boot (big brother) who are most responsible for the atrocities, it is not fair or even ‘right’ to bring anyone else to justice. The law should be applied equally to everyone and both winners and losers have to face justice indiscriminately. For them, it was not trading justice for stability but seeking ‘justice’ in a different manner or pursuing a different kind of justice—fairness and righteousness. Justice is not just punishing perpetuators. It can be achieved through other means. While in the short-term the electoral system crafted under the auspices of the UN deteriorated the tensions among the political elite, in the long run democratic governance mechanisms with the same origin such as the rule of law and an independent judiciary helped mitigate the political rivalry. It seems that both Gusmão and Alkatiri agreed to compete with one another with nonlethal means after they barely avoided catastrophe in 2006 (Hasegawa 2013). This shows that the freedom from fear was the by-product of political reconciliation and inclusive politics, not retributive justice (Newman and Richmond 2006; Peou 2014; Budi 2008). In hindsight, it can be said that the overdue stationing of UNMIT, which lasted until December 2012 despite the fact that its local legitimacy had been eroding since 2008, helped to consolidate the rooting of democratic systems in Timor-Leste. In February 2015, Gusmão, the then Prime Minister and the leader of the CNRT, stepped down and appointed Rui Maria de Araujo, a young ace of the FRETILIN, as his successor. It may be difficult to understand the true intention of this move. It was recognised as either a conciliatory gesture by Gusmão towards the FRETILIN to achieve political reconciliation or a cunning tactic to divide the unity of the FRETILIN to weaken his political opponent, depending on one’s political position. Some critics argue that such a political manoeuvre undermines the healthy development of democracy or merely see it as an act of conspiracy intended to win over the loyalty of future leaders of the opposition party and to split them (Kammen 2019, p. 52). In the presidential election in 2017, Francisco ‘Lu Olo’ Guterres of the FRETILIN won 57.1% of the vote and was elected as President with the support of the CNRT, which was supposed to be his opposition (IFTS 2017a). This is another fruit of collaboration between two dominant and

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‘opposing’ parties. All the major players in the liberation struggles, such as Xanana Gusmão, Taur Matan Ruak, José Ramos-Horta, Mari Arkatili, and Francisco ‘Lu Olo’ Guterres, have become either President or Prime Minister or both. This could be characterised as the phenomena of powersharing often observed in post-conflict environments or more specifically in the context of Timor-Leste, ‘power-rotating’ practice among elites to share the spoils. However, the collaborative atmosphere between the two major political parties collapsed in July 2017 when the CNRT and the FRETILIN competed practically one-on-one in the Parliamentary election. It was a fierce and close competition which resulted in the FRETILIN winning 29.7% (168,480) with 23 seats and the CNRT winning 29.5% (167,345) with 22 seats (IFTS 2017b). This time neither of them won an outright majority and no majority coalition was made, which led to a new election in May 2018. In this election, a coalition, the Alliance for Change and Progress (Aliança de Mudança para o Progresso: AMP), was formed with the CNRT and two smaller parties, and it won 49.58% (309,663) with 34 seats and the FRETILIN won 34.15% (213,324) with 23 seats (ibid., 2018). This could be understood as an epoch-making signal that the process of political reconciliation was not yet completely over. Nevertheless, democratic platforms established by the UN provided an arena for the Timorese political elite to compete in a legal and peaceful manner. Although not perfect from liberal peace standards, it continues to provide a basic foundation for democratic governance in Timor-Leste. As highlighted, there were hiccups in the process of democratisation in a nascent democracy. Violent means and abuse of power were employed occasionally but the basic principles of electoral democracy were respected by the senior Timorese leaders. The seeds were planted during the UNTAET era and institutionalisation of a democratic system was supported by subsequent UN missions. Therefore, the UN should be recognised for what it has instituted. While local political leaders prioritised reconciliation for restoring order and stability over institution building, the UN supported necessary institution building persistently although it was unpopular among the Timorese elite. In hindsight, one can argue that political reconciliation is indeed a part of long-term institution building, and in the case of Timor-Leste, nascent institution building supported by the UN helped to consolidate a foundation for long-term political reconciliation, both of which contributed to the realisation of freedom from fear at the national level.

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Community-Level Reconciliation In the beginning, immediately after the 1999 post-referendum crisis, cross-border penetration by former pro-integration militias was perceived as another source of threat for communities in Timor-Leste, particularly in its western districts bordering with Indonesia. Judging from a series of interviews conducted on 29 August 2001 with several residents who lived in Suai, Covalima district alongside the border with Indonesia, the presence of UN peacekeepers helped ease anxiety among the population who were paranoid about illusionary shadows of former militias who remained in Atambua, West Timor. Also, the confrontation between the pro-independence residents and returned pro-integration militias was considered to be another potential source of instability. In the same manner that the strategic and national reconciliation was made, President Gusmão employed the reconciliation method at the community level, approaching the above-mentioned threats in a conciliatory manner. He travelled to Atambua and delivered speeches assuring the ‘refugees’ that they would not face retaliation upon their return (“Gusmao Calls East Timor Refugees Home” 2002). On the one hand, such a guarantee given by the President without going through the necessary legal procedures could be regarded as an encroachment of the legally defined role of the President and the accusation could be made that such an extrajudicial political decision undermines judicial independence and rule of law. On the other hand, however, this move facilitated the return of ‘refugees’ with ‘light’ criminal records back to their community of origin. The return of ‘refugees’, including former militia members to their community, required intra-community reconciliation measures to be installed to prevent the recurrence of communal violence including retaliatory self-claiming punitive acts. The UN together with the Government launched an activity of transitional justice called the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor-Leste: CAVR). This measure was initiated to address the existing cleavages between former proindependent residents and former pro-integration residents, particularly between the victims and those who committed atrocities between 1974 and 1999. This reconciliation initiative was a hybrid form of justice, in which a customary community reconciliation process called ‘Nahe Biti’ was integrated with a modern form of mediation in which a panel of

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impartial outside (of the community) mediators worked with traditional elders (lia na’ins ) in the community concerned. In a CAVR public hearing which took place in Baboe leten village in Atsabe subdistrict of Ermera on 13 November 2003, the reconciliation process maintained the characteristic of formal mediation whereas such a rational-legal format was accompanied by the traditional outlook of a ceremonial ritual. The mediation session was held in an open public space where people were allowed to attend the hearing. In a customary Nahe Biti, the mediator’s role was assumed by traditional elders and the rational-legal authority. During Portugal time and Indonesian time, the traditional authority such as liurais and/or lia na’ins served as the rational-legal authority as long as they did not rebel against the colonial authority (Brown 2013, p. 11). In the hybrid ‘Nahe Biti Boot ’ carried out by the CAVR, it was a team of impartial outside mediators not the traditional authority that facilitated the dialogue. At that time, minor offenses were dealt with Nahe Biti Boot and forgiveness was granted to perpetuators in return for sharing ‘truth’ (meaning, explain to victims and their families what exactly happened so that they could collect the remains of victims and properly bury them) and serving their sentences (usually ‘community service order’ was given to them as an act of reconciliation), while reparation was not given to the victim’s side (later, the Government provided compensation for the damage incurred by atrocities committed between 1974 and 1999 in the form of a pension). According to a set of interviews conducted at the above-mentioned CAVR reconciliation public hearing with residents of Atsabe, where pro-integration militia committed atrocities against pro-Independence villagers in the aftermath of the 1999 referendum, some victims felt that reconciliation was an established national policy set by their leadership, and they were obliged to forgive the perpetuators. Due to the lack of social safety nets, victims had to find their way to survive, while the perpetuators of minor offenses were ‘welcomed’ back in their community without facing retaliation. Even those who committed a serious crime such as murder and rape were released from jail after they served their terms, which was usually three to five years (S/2005/458). The UN failed to extend its support to fill this gap as it was geared towards dealing with serious crime committed. However, looking from a human security lens, providing a safety net for the most vulnerable should have been prioritised over collecting forensic evidence to bring perpetuators to justice. In fact, it was after the 2006 crisis that the pension scheme for

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veterans was introduced in Timor-Leste to mitigate this type of conflict (Kent and Wallis 2014). Due to its commitment to liberal idealism, the UN ignored the needs for social security as well as the concerns of the victims who were mostly veterans (former non-state armed groups) and their family members. It seems that the UN Justice Team was more interested in criminal justice, punishing those responsible, than in social justice, supporting the livelihood of victims, which was provided by the UN Humanitarian Team at the minimum life-sustaining level. During and in the aftermath of the 2006 crisis, due to the lack of social justice, a feeling of victimhood surfaced among the most vulnerable people whose social security and well-being were neglected. While the real physical violence was confined geographically to Dili where 38 were killed and 69 injured, around 150,000 people were displaced not only in Dili but also in Baucau district and others (OHCHR 2006). This meant close to 15% of the population was displaced from their homes, which could be a potential source of conflict in Timor-Leste. It is difficult to prove the causal relationship between the high number of IDPs and the shared trauma among Timorese people. Judging from various interviews conducted with anonymous IDPs in different IDP camps in Baucau, Metinaro and Dili in August 2007, it can be assumed that such a sense of fear came from a shared feeling of anxiety over unsettled injustice and unfairness—those who devoted their lives to the liberation movement were not acknowledged adequately. Although the UN helped alleviate the suffering of IDPs, it was the Government that provided a solution to the IDPs problem. As discussed in the previous section covering the NRS, the Government offered cash payments to IDPs so that they could rebuild their livelihood.

Conclusion This chapter demonstrates that the legacy of UN involvement in TimorLeste remains positive but limited from the point of view of human security. The UN has planted several key seeds for promoting human security, facilitating the sense of freedom from fear and want to emerge among the population of Timor-Leste. But the severe limits on its performance effectiveness can be found in the areas of democratisation, retributive justice, and the rule of law from the point of view of liberal peace. The UN efforts to promote human security through retributive justice was denied as the Timorese Government’s choice was to seek

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restorative justice and compensation, which was seen by the UN as ‘buying peace’ and not sustainable in the long run. In other words, the Government employed measures for achieving the freedom from want to assist in the realisation of some elements of freedom from fear, while the UN’s approach had a disconnect between the two. The above discussion refutes the assumption that retributive justice promotes reconciliation, while presenting an empirical proof that restorative justice could lay the foundation for reconciliation if it is fine-tuned into achieving social justice and accompanied by political accommodation. The UN’s success, which is limited to establishing the foundation of democratic governance, clearly reveals the continued failure of the world’s most important organisation to understand the local context and priorities. At the same time, this study also revealed that the Government of Timor-Leste was able to pursue what they believe the state and the people needed (of course, with some critical errors and many minor trials and errors) by basing its efforts both on the democratic foundations as well as locally grounded legitimacy which was drawn from indigenous authority and experience. Timor-Leste seems to have circumvented, with the strategy of ‘buying peace’, the short-term challenges of human security at the nascent stage of state-building. Thanks to the PF, the Government was able to employ the strategy of ‘buying peace’. However, Scheiner (2015, p. 92) warns that the PF will be used up by 2026. Because of the legacy of ‘buying peace’, the amount budgeted for veterans in the fiscal years between 2011 and 2018 was US$794.9 million (average of about 100 million per year, and 5.82% of the total state budget), whereas the budget allocated for F-FDTL in the same period was US$173.2 million (average of 21.65 million per year) (Kammen 2019, p. 47). Will the Government be able to maintain the same level of commitment to veterans, when it loses its financial basis for ‘buying peace’? What would be a doable alternative to ‘buying peace’? If there is not enough money to buy peace and no more spoils to be distributed, will the current negative peace be hold? Acknowledgement This research was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 16KK0089.

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References Akara, M. (2011). Interview with the Author in Dili, Timor-Leste, on August 5. Aglionby, J. (2004). UN Issues Warrant for Indonesian General. The Guardian, May 11. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/11/ indonesia.easttimor. Belford, A. (2010, November 1). East Timor President’s Clemency Extends to His Attackers. The New York Times. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/ 2010/11/02/world/asia/02timor.html. Belo, J. (2011). Interview with the Author in UNDP Office in Dili, Timor-Leste on August 16. Brown, M. A. (2013). Timor Leste Report. Brisbane: The University of Queensland. Available at https://www.berghof-foundation.org/fileadmin/redakt ion/Publications/Grantees_Partners/UoQ_Grant_Timor_Leste_Report.pdf. Budi, S. (2008, May 29). East Timor/Indonesia: Reconciliation at the Cost of Justice? Inter Press Service. Available at http://www.ipsnews.net/2008/05/ east-timor-indonesia-reconciliation-at-the-cost-of-justice/. Centro Estudo ba Dame no Dezenvolvimento (CEPAD). (2010). TimorLeste: Povu Nia Lian no Dalan ba Dame. Dili: CEPAD/Interpeace. Available at http://www.tl-cepad.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/timorleste-voices-and-paths-to-peace-tetum.pdf. Cohen, D. (2002). Seeking Justice on the Cheap: Is the East Timor Tribunal Really a Model for the Future? AsiaPacific Issues, No. 61. Dal Poz, A. (2018). ‘Buying Peace’ in Timor-Leste: Another UN-Success Story? Peace Human Rights Governance, 2(2), 185–219. Dale, P., Lepuschuetz, L., & Umapathi, N. (2014). Peace, Prosperity and Safety Nets in Timor-Leste: Competing Priorities or Complementary Investments? Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, 1(2), 287–299. Destrée, T. P. (2020). A Refresher on Evaluation. In T. P. Destrée (Ed.), New Directions in Peacebuilding Evaluation. Lanham and London: Rawman & Littlefield International. der Auweraert, P. V. (2012, July). Dealing with the 2006 Internal Displacement Crisis in Timor-Leste: Between Reparations and Humanitarian Policymaking. Case Studies on Transitional Justice and Displacement. ICTJ/Brookings. de Vasconselos, A. (2008). Interview with the Author at the Banking and Payment Authority (BPA) in Dili, Timor-Leste on February 21. de Vasconcelos, F. M. (2011). Interview with the Author in Dili, Timor-Leste on August 4. Doraisami, A. (2018). The Timor Leste Petroleum Fund, Veterans and White Elephants: Fostering Intergenerational Equity? Resources Policy 58(October), 250–256. Gusmao Calls East Timor Refugees Home. (2002, April 4). BBC News. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1910863.stm. Hasegawa, S. (2013). Primordial Leadership: Peacebuilding and National Ownership in Timor-Leste. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.

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Howe, B. (2013). The Protection and Promotion of Human Security in East Asia. Critical Studies of the Asia Pacific Series. London: Palgrave Macmillan. International Foundation for Electoral System (IFTS). (2017a, March 20). Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste: Election for President. ElectionGuide: Democracy Assistance and Elections News. Available at http://www.electiong uide.org/elections/id/2552/. International Foundation for Electoral System (IFTS). (2017b, July 22). Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste: Election for Timorese National Parliament. ElectionGuide: Democracy Assistance and Elections News. Available at http:// www.electionguide.org/elections/id/3036/. International Foundation for Electoral System (IFTS). (2018, May 12). Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste: Election for Timorese National Parliament. ElectionGuide: Democracy Assistance and Elections News. Available at http:// www.electionguide.org/elections/id/3059/. IMF. (2012). World Economic Outlook, October 2012: Coping with High Debt and Sluggish Growth. IMF. Available at https://www.imf.org/en/Publicati ons/WEO/Issues/2016/12/31/World-Economic-Outlook-October-2012Coping-with-High-Debt-and-Sluggish-Growth-25845. Kammen, D. (2019). Independent Timor-Leste: Between Coercion and Consent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kent, L. (2012). The Dynamics of Transitional Justice: International Models and Local Realities in East Timor. Oxon and New York: Routledge. Kent, L., & Wallis, J. (2014). Timor-Leste’s Veterans’ Pension Scheme: Who Are the Beneficiaries and Who Is Missing Out? In Brief. Canberra, ACT, Australia: Australian National University. Kingsbury, D. (2009). East Timor in 2008: Year of Reconstruction. Southeast Asian Affairs, 2009, 357–369. Martins, I. (2011). Interview with the Author in the Office of La’o Hamutuk in Dili, Timor-Leste, on August 4. Martins, P. M. G. (2019). Timor-Leste Economic Report: Moving Beyond Uncertainty (English). Washington, DC: World Bank Group. Available at http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/207941557509771 185/Timor-Leste-Economic-Report-Moving-Beyond-Uncertainty. Ministry of Finance, Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. (n.d.a). Petroleum Fund of Timor-Leste. Available at https://www.mof.gov.tl/budget-spe nding/petroleum-fund/. Ministry of Finance, Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. (n.d.b) Petroleum Fund Annual Reports. Available at https://www.mof.gov.tl/category/doc uments-and-forms/petroleum-fund-documents/petroleum-fund-annual-rep orts/?lang=en.

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Newman, T., & Richmond, O. (Eds.). (2006). Challenges to Peacebuilding: Managing Spoilers During Conflict Resolution. Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). (2006). Report of the United Nations Independent Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste 2006. Available at https://www.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/WopiFr ame.aspx?sourcedoc=/Documents/Countries/COITimorLeste.pdf&action= default&DefaultItemOpen=1. Paris, R., & Sisk, T. (2009). Introduction: Understanding the Contradictions of Postwar Statebuilding. In R. Paris & T. Sisk (Eds.), The Dilemmas of Statebuilding Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations. Oxson and New York: Routledge. Petroleum Fund Administration Unit (PFAU). (2018, August). Timor-Leste Petroleum Fund Annual Report 2017 (Ministry of Finance, Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste). Available at https://www.mof.gov.tl/wp-content/ uploads/2018/08/PF-FINAL-REPORT-2017.pdf. Paul, E. (2010). Obstacles to Democratization in Southeast Asia: A Study of the Nation State, Regional and Global Order. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Peake, G. (2012, February 15). Rogerio Lobato: From Inmate to President? The Interpreter. Peou, S. (2014). The Limits and Potential of Liberal Peacebuilding for Human Security. Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, 2(1), 37–60. Pires, A. (2008). Interview with the Author at the Office of the Secretary of State for Natural Resources in Dili, Timor-Leste on February 22. Rasmussen, T. N. (2008). Interview with the Author at the IMF office in Dili, Timor-Leste on February 21. Rees, E. (2004). Under Pressure Falintil-Forcas de Defesa de Timor-Leste: Three Decades of Defence Force Development in Timor-Leste 1975–2004. Geneva: DCAF. Revenue Watch Institute (RWI). (2010). Revenue Watch Index Country Ranking. 2010 Revenue Watch Index. Available at http://www.revenuewatch. org/rwindex2010/rwindex.html. Roll, K. (2018). Street Level Bureaucrats and Post-conflict Policy-making: Corruption, Correctives, and the Rise of Veterans’ Pensions in Timor-Leste. Civil Wars, 20(2), 262–285. Salsinha, J. (2019). Interview with the Author at the Village Office in Suco Estado in Ermera, Timor-Leste on May 3. Scheiner, C. (2015). Can the Petroleum Fund Exorcise the Resource Curse from Timor-Leste? In S. Ingram, L. Kent, & A. R. McWilliam (Eds.), A New Era? Timor Leste after the UN (pp. 73–101). Canberra: ANU Press. Stanley, E. (2007). Transnational Crime and State-Building: The Case of TimorLeste. Social Justice, 34(2), 124–137.

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The United Nations Security Council. (2005). Annex II, Report to the SecretaryGeneral of the Commission of Experts to Review the Prosecution of Serious Violations of Human Rights in Timor-Leste (Then East Timor) in 1999 (S/2005/458). The United States Congress. (1980). Human Rights in Asia, Noncommunist Countries: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs and on International Organizations of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 96th Congress, Second Session. US Government Printing Office. Available at https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=o7jHe5 TMoOEC&rdid=book-o7jHe5TMoOEC&rdot=1. Uesugi, Y. (2020). Introduction. In Y. Uesugi (Ed.), Hybrid Peacebuilding in Asia (pp. 1–14). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. UN Indicts General for East Timor Crimes. (2003, February 25). The Guardian. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/ 11/indonesia.easttimor. WENR (World Education News + Review). (2019). Education in Indonesia. Available at https://wenr.wes.org/2019/03/education-in-indonesia-2. World Bank. (2008, September 30). Defining Heroes: Key Lessons from the Creation of Veterans Policy in Timor-Leste (Report No. 45458-TP). Available at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTTIMORLESTE/Resources/ DefiningHeroes.pdf. World Bank. (2014). 2014 Timor-Leste Living Standard Survey. Available at http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/577521475573958 572/pdf/108735-REVISED-PUBLIC-012-TL-REPORT-R02.pdf.

CHAPTER 6

Legacies and Futures

Abstract This chapter first examines the interaction between global governance aspirations and East Asian realities. It compares Cambodia and Timor-Leste in the extent to which the UN was able to achieve its objectives of stopping the fighting, transitioning to democratic governance, and developing out of poverty. Similarities and differences are addressed, as well as enduring legacies of UN administration. Lessons learned include the necessity of considering not only the justifiability of the initial intervention, as well as the legitimacy of UN policies while governing, but also the long-term conditions laid for the future governance of the polity. The chapter emphasises the importance of local ownership, consultation, participation, and perspectives, to the twin goals of transforming conflictual relationships, and ensuring a sustainable and equitable development model. Keywords International organisations · Peacekeeping · Peacebuilding · Responsibility to Protect (R2P) · East Asia

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Introduction By focusing on the two most prominent instances of liberal peacebuilding by the United Nations (UN), this volume illuminates the extent to which the post-Cold War optimism may have been misplaced. It also reveals shortcomings in terms of policy prescription inherent in the liberal paradigm itself. In particular, the substantive empirical chapters have identified the challenges faced by the agencies of global governance when universal aspirations are confronted by regional and local perspectives and conditions on the ground. This concluding chapter first, therefore, examines the interaction between global governance aspirations and East Asian (both Northeast and Southeast Asian) realities. The second section of this conclusion compares these two prominent case studies in the extent to which the UN was able to achieve its avowed objectives of stopping the fighting, transitioning the polities to consolidated democratic governance, and developing them out of poverty. Both similarities and differences are addressed with regard to UN governance in Cambodia and Timor-Leste, as well as the enduring legacies of UN administrations and engagement. The final concluding section looks at what lessons can be learned from studying these two cases. These include the need to consider not only the justifiability and necessity of the initial governance intervention, as well as the legitimacy of actions and policies of the UN while governing, but also the long-term conditions laid for the future governance of the polity. The importance of local ownership, consultation, participation, and perspectives is emphasised with regard to the twin goals of transforming conflictual relationships in order to build a positive and lasting peace; and ensuring a sustainable development model which is equitable and gives most benefit to those in most need.

Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, and International Organisation International organisation has been fundamentally, even though not exclusively, a reaction to the problem of war. Safeguarding international peace and security was the primary reason for the establishment of the UN in 1945. The aspiration “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” is enshrined in the opening lines of the UN Charter. Maintaining peace and security appears first in the Charter’s statement of purposes

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and principles. Even the roles and non-military functions of international organisations dealing with other aspects of global governance are often justified by the contributions they can make to international peace and security. As noted in Chapter 1, however, the global governance agenda has evolved to include consideration of peace within states rather than exclusively focusing on the generation of peace between them. This has been reflected in the evolution of the peacekeeping agenda, as well as that of the human security paradigm and the responsibility to protect (R2P). And the UN has been at the forefront of this developmental path, often acting as a norm entrepreneur, challenging state prerogatives, and championing the rights of vulnerable individuals and groups. This has proven to be extremely controversial, in particular in East Asia. As also outlined in Chapter 1, East Asian states are reputed to be among the most ardent champions of Westphalian sovereignty (Acharya 2003, p. 9). As a result of colonial experience and post-colonial state-building, security threats have generally been identified from the perspective of the state (Nishikawa 2009, p. 217). Facing diverse challenges, including ethnic insurgencies, disputed borders, and the remnants of colonial and/or Cold War experiences, successive governments in the region have adopted state-centric national security policies with an emphasis on national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national unity (Than 1998, p. 392). Hence, the region remains a decidedly state-centric security operating environment, resistant to Western concepts of universalism, solidarism, and collective security. Indeed, East Asia is a unique region in that it combines outstanding economic growth with minimal international organisation. The closest to a regional economic forum is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), established in 1989 to further enhance economic growth and prosperity for the region and to strengthen the Asia-Pacific community. Yet not only does this organisation span the whole of the Asia-Pacific rather than just East Asia, but its membership is actually based on the concept of ‘open regionalism’ meaning that entities from around the world are eligible to join. For Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal (1998, p. 107) “APEC can be viewed as an attempt to avoid confronting the consequences of the ending of the Cold War”, while Mark Beeson (2008, p. 70) notes that for “an organisation that began with such high hopes, APEC has achieved surprisingly little”. In terms of regional security cooperation, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) was established in 1994

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with the stated objectives fostering constructive dialogue and consultation on political and security issues of common interest and concern; and making significant contributions to efforts towards confidence-building and preventive diplomacy in the East Asian region. Yet the small and medium powers of Southeast Asia which sit in the driving seat of the ARF lack the resources to address regional governance issues. The region’s early experience with international organisation, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, was established through Japanese conquest. The region was firmly divided during the Cold War, and to a certain extent still bears the scars and consequences of this ideological divorce, as well as a suspicion of external great power manipulation and intervention. The major economies of the region have all experienced economic growth and development largely in the context of a supportive trans-regional regime composed of the United States and international organisations with a global focus, and therefore may see little need to change. States in the region have also been less effective in terms of building institutions and taking collective action because of the fact that the political regimes are diverse, ranging from authoritarian to democratic. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea are more democratic than the other countries in the region. Only two countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Timor-Leste, can now be considered to be democratic but still remain unconsolidated (Peou 2010). Indeed, not only the polities of the region, but also the economies can be seen as a poor match. In 2002, China and Japan managed to negotiate free trade arrangements with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries but not with each other. Japan and South Korea have been talking about a free trade arrangement since the late 1990s but have still to put anything of substance together, and in 2019 engaged in tit-for-tat sanctions, which have continued and even escalated under conditions of COVID-19 in 2020 (Howe 2020, pp. 105–106). This, then, is why the case studies evaluated in this volume are of such paramount importance. First, they are, in themselves, the two most comprehensive examples of peacebuilding within state entities rather than between them, and governance by international organisation, ever attempted. Second, they are both situated in a region traditionally seen as hostile to external intervention, and this has raised serious questions about the legitimacy of UN actions. Third, the peacekeeping and peacebuilding initiatives both occurred after the normative watershed that was the end

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of the Cold War, and can, to a certain extent, be judged in accordance with the new human-centred prescriptions espoused by the intervening actors.

Case Comparison The Cambodian case study developed in Chapters 2 and 3 from 1991, reflected with perfect timing, the operationalisation of post-Cold War new world order optimism concerning the prospects for governance by international organisations, and in particular the newly energised UN. As detailed in Chapter 2, the UN action was extremely legal, and followed a somewhat traditional peace and security mandate, but with a focus on building peace between conflictual parties within a single state entity. The UN objectives were putting an end to the war, getting the country to transition from militarised to electoral forms of competition, and putting Cambodia on a path towards peace and prosperity. The achievements of this relatively short intervention by the UN (from UNTAC’s role in the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements in October 1991 to the end of its mission after the first national elections in July 1993) were mixed. From a limited, negative peace perspective, they were mostly positive. Support came from all the P5 Members of the UN Security Council (UNSC), something only possible as a result of the post-Cold War new world order détente bridging the ideological divides within that body, as well as China’s attempts to gain international rehabilitation after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Other great powers and middle powers, such as Japan and ASEAN Member countries, were also very supportive of the process. For the most part, the brutal civil war was ended. Refugees were, on the whole, successfully repatriated. The mission succeeded in organising and holding a national election with a 96% turnout. The foundations were laid for the Cambodian population to enjoy more freedom from fear and, as a result of economic growth following in the wake of the end of the fighting, significant improvement in freedom from want. Initial shortcomings, however, included that the Khmer Rouge in particular refused to disarm, violated the ceasefire, and stayed out of the electoral process, leading to other factions also refusing to disarm or cooperate fully with the mission, thus leaving the peace process marred by political violence and intimidation. The mission was slow in deploying its peacekeepers and failed to take effective control of the factions’ administrative structures in national defence, foreign affairs, public security,

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and information and was unable to complete the disarmament process. As detailed in Chapter 2, even when fully deployed, the idea of fewer than “200 UNTAC civilian administrators effectively overseeing the operations of even five central ministries…let alone controlling them as they were supposed to do under the Paris Agreements—seems, in retrospect, implausible” (Berry 2012, p. 176). The national election itself fell well short of being fully free and/or fair—it was neither free from political violence and intimidation nor fair in terms of levelling the political playing field. The legitimacy of the UN operations declined as they lost the confidence (or in some cases never gained it) of various local factions and actors. These initial shortcomings contributed to a failure fully to achieve the longer-term objectives of this unprecedented multifaceted UN mission, which included a triple transition from war to peace, from socialist authoritarianism to liberal democracy, and from poverty to prosperity through market-based economic reconstruction (Peou 1997, 2000). Chapter 3 further developed the long-term challenges faced by UN agencies following the withdrawal of the initial peacekeeping mission after the national election in July 1993; but also, the long-term consequences of the shortcomings of UN policymaking and peacebuilding efforts from the perspectives of broader interpretations of human security and positive peace. Chapter 3 detailed, in particular, how UN agencies have worked to achieve a number of human-centric policy objectives related to the 2000 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), transitional justice, and to an extent, distributive justice. While overall, post-UNTAC UN efforts to assist Cambodia across a broad range of policy platforms have been supported by the local administration some UN activities have encountered resistance; most notably those carried out by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Khmer Rouge tribunal (the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia: ECCC). Death rates across the board have declined. There has been significant socio-economic progress reflected in an average rate of economic growth between 1994 and 2015 of 7.6%, ranking sixth in the world (World Bank 2018). With gross national income per capita reaching $1070, the country gained its lower middle-income status in 2015. In 2018, the country’s Human Development Index (HDI) value was 0.581,

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also placing Cambodia in the medium human development category— positioning it at 146 out of 189 countries and territories (UNDP 2019, pp. 2–3). Yet these aggregate measurements fail to capture the ongoing challenges faced by the most vulnerable in Cambodia. Some 70% of the population remains among the ‘working poor’, with the disabled, those affected by HIV, women, garment workers, rural populations, and the young particularly vulnerable. Many Cambodians have had to go outside Cambodia, in particular to Thailand, to find work and better pay, further exposing them to the dangers of human trafficking and exploitation. Yet the greatest legacy shortcomings are to be found in the attempt by international organisations to promote liberal democracy and the rule of law with the illegitimate government constantly entrenching its power and violating human rights, thereby undermining the freedom from fear entitlements of all. The case of Timor-Leste, developed in Chapters 4 and 5, was likewise initiated at a watershed moment in the contributions of international organisations in general, and the UN in particular. Failures to intervene and protect the most vulnerable in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Rwanda, and in Kosovo, in the face of practices that are “shocking to the conscience of humanity” (part of jus cogens, or a generally accepted principle of international law) had somewhat discredited the normative initiatives and human-centred global governance claims of the world body (Bassiouni 2008, p. 16). Part of the UN attempt to come to terms with these perceived failures has been detailed in Chapter 1 with the discussions surrounding the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), and the evolution of the R2P paradigm, as well as the normative development paradigm linked to the MDGs and later to the SDGs. Timor-Leste also, however, forms an important part of this narrative. Indeed, Timor-Leste itself represented unfinished business for the UN, as the military intervention and forced annexation of the territory by Indonesia following the Portuguese withdrawal in 1975, was feebly countered by the global body. The UNSC called on Indonesia to withdraw all its forces from the territory without delay, and on all states to respect the territorial integrity and the people’s right to self-determination (Martin 2001, pp. 17–18), but did not condemn Indonesia for an act of aggression justifying enforcement measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

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Chapter 4 assessed the four UN missions deployed to Timor-Leste; the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), the UN Transitional Administration of East Timor (UNTAET), the UN Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET), and the UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT). As in Cambodia, the UN aimed for a triple transition in the new country, from military occupation to independence, from Suharto’s dictatorship to liberal democracy, and from poverty to prosperity by way of market-based economic development. The UN missions, and ambitions, in Timor-Leste far exceeded those in Cambodia, and were tantamount, from the UN perspective, to “starting from Scratch” (Asahi 2012, p. 4). Thus, a benevolent altruistic foreign autocratic authority was installed by outsiders without the direct consent of the local inhabitants. Indeed, UNTAET represented a sovereign authority in Timor-Leste, and initially locals were not permitted to take part in the governing structures (Howard 2014, p. 128). This could be seen as a continuation of League Mandates or UN Trusteeships discussed in Chapter 1, but under direct control of the international organisation. It was questionable whether such assumption of total authority was entirely legitimate, it could certainly be considered a major usurpation of sovereignty, and it stored up problems for the future in terms of generating distrust among local actors. The governance structures imposed on Timor-Leste by the UN and other members of the international community had a mixed record, but the primary challenge was one of legitimacy due to lack of local engagement and input in their construction. The legacy of UN governance in Timor-Leste is, like that of Cambodia, a somewhat mixed bag. After a number of false dawns, the fighting between various factions in the country was quelled, and in a relatively short period of time since independence, Timor-Leste has actually developed a comparatively good record of democratic competition and has firmly established many of the conditions for a working representative democracy. By 2012, ten years after independence, Timor-Leste had held three sets of free and fair elections (two presidential and one parliamentary) without significant disruption beyond stone-throwing incidents, appearing to consign its recent fractious and violent past to the pages of history, and allowing the withdrawal of UNMIT (Della-Giacoma 2012). Despite the now conventional wisdom that local ownership is essential for successful peacebuilding, the UN practice on the ground in Timor-Leste excluded local stakeholders in the design of governance

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structures. Chapter 5 has outlined, that, despite some improvement in terms of aggregate national development statistics, this has been limited, and what improvements have taken place, have not trickled down sufficiently to the most vulnerable sections of society. As with Cambodia, the youth, women, and rural populations remain particularly vulnerable (Howe 2019, pp. 196–197). Peace has been bought, substantially through the Petroleum Fund, which is a finite resource. It is unclear whether conflictual relationships and their drivers have been transformed sufficiently within Timor-Leste to survive a dramatic economic downturn, such as may be on the horizon at the time of writing, with the dual impact of the COVID-19 crisis, and the 2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war. These two paradigmatic case studies demonstrate the humanitarian and human-centred ‘turn’ taken by international organisations in general, and the UN in particular, when attempting to address the global governance challenges of the post-Cold War operating environment. In both cases, however, there was an overarching concern with restoring order, reflected in budget figures for related segments of the administrations. This had the positive effect of stopping the fighting, and achieving the first goal of UN governance, transitioning from conditions of war to those of peace (a negative or narrow peacebuilding endeavour). In Cambodia, even in the face of internal resistance, the international community was able to pursue a degree of criminal and retributive justice through the ECCC, but this has been limited, primarily to the pursuit of defeated and discredited Khmer Rouge, rather than those who remain part of the contemporary governance structure. In Timor-Leste, the UN Special Independent Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste led to the punishment of only a single individual (subsequently pardoned) for the violence of 2006. Thus, in both cases, stability and an end to the fighting was prioritised over criminal and retributive justice. In the case of Cambodia, however, this focus meant that insufficient attention was paid to human rights, the rule of law, and the robustness of the democratic project. In Timor-Leste, the main negative consequence was a lack of local ownership and legitimacy. Thus, the second aspiration, to transform governance in the countries from authoritarian models to liberal democracy, was not achieved in Cambodia, and faces future challenges in Timor-Leste, despite free and fair elections. The fact that Timor-Leste has become more democratic than Cambodia, despite their similar economic successes and the fact that the tribunal in Cambodia has

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been more successful than the tribunal in Timor-Leste, further reflects the importance of local conditions on the ground. In particular, in addition to political cultures and domestic governance infrastructure, leadership factors play significant roles. Not only was the legitimate democratic government of Timor-Leste established in opposition to the external dictatorship of Suharto, but also one of the key components of a functioning democracy, contestation between popular and legitimate leadership alternatives, was available in Mari Alkatiri and Xanana Gusmão (although they may at times have strayed from strictly democratic methods). By contrast, in Cambodia, the focus (both domestically and among international sponsors) was primarily upon the establishment of stable governance, rather than ensuring democratic contestation, and, once Norodom Ranariddh had been successfully sidelined by Hun Sen, there was little effective contestation. The third aim, to transition the countries out of poverty to prosperity by way of market-based economic development, was partially achieved for both Cambodia and Timor-Leste. Yet, despite some apparent progress, there are concerns that not enough of any wealth actually generated goes to alleviate the poverty of the most vulnerable, and there is too much dependency on external capital and actors in both cases. On the whole, UN governance objectives in Timor-Leste were much more ambitious, and, at least in terms of the second set of aspirations, more successful. In part this was down to the timing of the case studies— immediately after the Cold War for Cambodia, when negative peace and top-down governance and development models were still in the ascendancy; in part this was because of the much longer commitment and involvement of the UN missions in Timor-Leste (12 years of effort as compared to 18 months in Cambodia). In both cases, regardless of duration of actual UN governance, there are concerns revolving around the legacies of the interventions. These two points reveal the importance of long-term vision, commitment, and legacy or jus post-intervention, when determining the success of governance by international organisations. Despite both cases being strongly representative of the normative and human-centred turn in the UN global governance agenda, both were only possible due to specific geostrategic conditions holding true. For Cambodia, is was not only the end of the Cold War, but also the rapprochement between adversaries across multiple fault lines, and the (temporary) bridging of the ideological divide at the UNSC. For TimorLeste, it required not only the global geostrategic actors to acquiesce

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to UN intervention, but also the collapse of the authoritarian Suharto regime in Indonesia, and the initiative of the new President, B. J. Habibie. Thus, no matter the aspirations of the UN and other international organisations in terms of providing ‘good governance’ for the vulnerable populations of the world, realpolitik will always play a role in determining the extent of what can be attempted, and what can be achieved. As Otto von Bismarck famously noted, “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable—the art of the next best” (Howe 2018, p. 94). Hence conditions on the ground and in the wider international operating environment must be “ripe for resolution” (Zartman 1989).

Implications and Prescriptions This volume has demonstrated the impact of changing perceptions of global governance responsibilities among the international community as represented by international organisations in general, and the UN in particular, as well as less formal regimes, institutions, and norms. The legal case for UN peacekeeping and even peacebuilding operations is now firmly established, even if they may be seen as violating strict conceptualisations of the political sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. Both case studies reflect an awareness of, and sensitivity towards the legal requirements incumbent upon international organisational actors. That the UN, while governing, has responsibilities towards those who are governed that are at least as binding as those upon national governments is also well established, but is less well defined in positive international law (Howe et al. 2015, pp. 6–7). Indeed, responsibilities while protecting, or post-protection may be recognised under some aspects of customary international law or international norms and generally accepted practices, but until they are formally codified, they will be subject to dispute and competing interpretations (Howe 2008, p. 117). Codification not only clears up confusion regarding rights and responsibilities, it also strengthens the nature of the obligations upon actors. Until such formal codification, these normative imperatives will remain in the realm of considerations of legitimacy rather than strictly enforced and enforceable legality. Perhaps, not surprisingly therefore, the case studies have revealed less consistent conformity with normative prescriptions among international organisational actors. These shortcomings include lack of consultation with and empowerment of local

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actors; a top-down rather than bottom up approach; a degree of shorttermism when it comes to governance vision; and a failure adequately to include broad-based measures aimed at transforming conflictual relations, rather than simply aiming for a negative peaceful settlement or resolution of overt conflicts. As a result, in both case studies, the UN missions fell short of their own human-centred aspirations, and therefore can be considered to have had limited governance efficacy. And these are considered the paradigmatic case studies. There are many other cases where, due to geopolitical considerations, the international community embodied in international organisations, failed to take any action, let alone sufficient action to alleviate the suffering of the most vulnerable. The lessons to be learned, however, are not that UN governance is either unworkable, or ineffective. Rather the lessons are that steps should be taken to assist local actors to develop governance models which reflect a concern for the human security of the most vulnerable instead of measuring governance success by gains in aggregate statistics; that local ownership is vital; that freedom from fear, freedom from want, and freedom from indignity must all be included in related policy platforms; that we must ensure that the shadow of the future is not discounted; and that we must not be disheartened by pragmatic limitations of what can be achieved, but rather should make sure that we are doing all we can, given these constraints. Finally, and crucially, given the unique considerations of East Asia (and other regions), these case studies demonstrate that rather than emphasising universalism, the UN must give greater credence and prioritisation to local ownership and regional perspectives when attempting to provide good governance. Indeed, the aim should not be conformity to a universal model, but rather a tolerant approach which would allow different worldviews to coexist in harmony with mutual respect and non-aggression. Chapter VIII of the UN Charter already makes clear the importance of regional arrangements, noting in Article 52, paragraph 2, that “Members of the United Nations entering into such arrangements or constituting such agencies shall make every effort to achieve pacific settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements or by such regional agencies before referring them to the Security Council”, and in paragraph 3, that the “Security Council shall encourage the development of pacific settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements or by such regional agencies either on the initiative of the states concerned or by reference from the Security Council”. As noted above, the East Asian

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region is particularly deficient in the formal provision of peace and security mechanisms. This does not, however, mean that actors in the region do not have important and growing roles to play in the generation of peace and security. Smith et al. (2020, p. 1) note that many transitions towards peace in East Asia have been mostly managed by domestic actors through illiberal national and subnational processes of co-option and repression, “which diverge dramatically from the prevailing models of liberal and post-liberal peace-building”. This reflects both the authoritarian and state-centric heritage of East Asian actors and would seem to reject the role of global governance through the UN. Even more so than is the case with liberal peacebuilding, illiberal peacebuilding is unlikely to move beyond mere negative peace or may even provide only a temporary stability within a conflict-affected territory. Illiberal peacebuilding reflects the power political management of conflict, without the legality (and universality) of conflict resolution as touched upon in Chapter 1. In conflict resolution, as embodied in the UN approach to Cambodia and Timor-Leste, and detailed in the case study chapters of this volume, actors seek to bring an end to the conflict through a legal ‘final’ agreement, but potentially leave underlying trust issues between unresolved (Howe 2012, p. 66). Illiberal peacebuilding may, however, possess greater legitimacy due to a closer reflection of domestic and local conditions and norms, rather than attempts to aspire to an eternal or universal truth or ideal. Rather than rejecting illiberal peacebuilding outright, the authors of this volume advocate incorporation of local voices and perspectives by the universal body in its attempt to address the challenges of governance. Hence, the chapters in this book have indicated the need for an approach which reflects a desire for conflict ‘transformation’, implying the further step of transforming conflictual relationships which undermine trust, thereby making a true and efficient ending of the conflict possible. Louis Kriesberg (1997, p. 64) elaborates that conflict resolution aims to solve the issues that led to the conflict while conflict transformation changes the relationships between the parties to the conflict. In other words, conflict transformation seeks “to change the conditions that give rise to the underlying root causes of the conflict” which can transpire in the forms of nation-building, reconciliation and healing, change agency, and social transformation (Diamond 1994, p. 3). Thus, conflict transformation draws attention to the systematic transforming of ‘social relationships’ potentially leading to a comprehensive and lasting peace

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(Miall et al. 1999, p. 21). Yet as also mentioned in Chapter 1, and above, East Asian perspectives on peacebuilding do not necessarily reject the supposedly universal normative principles related to human security and the R2P, they just interpret them differently. In fact, newly empowered and assertive East Asian actors may offer new hope for governance, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding initiatives in the region, whether or not there are regional organisations capable of harnessing their contributions. First, even if national interest is often to the fore when East Asian actors engage in their humanitarian diplomacy, this is not necessarily a bad thing, as it makes them more likely to follow through on their peacekeeping, peacebuilding, official development assistance (ODA), disaster risk reduction (DRR), crisis relief, post-crisis reconstruction, and structural adjustment commitments than has generally been the case among more traditional Western actors. Second, East Asian actors may have a comparative advantage in promoting global governance agendas because they are simply more acceptable as regional partners by countries where human security is challenged, due to their non-interventional heritage. They are therefore likely to have more substantial impact. The third element of constructive influence wielded by actors in the region concerns the politics of attraction, and soft power broadly defined. While Western models have tended to demand almost dictatorial influence in recipient political, social, or economic structures in return for assistance, those from East Asia, and other non-Western regions, have involved unconditional assistance, local ownership, and empowerment. Regional actors have experienced a considerable degree of success through the politics of attraction, whereby other regional states and their citizens seek to emulate them. This can be considered something of a normative ‘flying dove’ model, with conflict-affected states learning from and being inspired by the human-centred transformations and niche diplomatic activism of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. This contrasts with the more traditional economic development flying geese model in East Asia, which has conversely led to an increase in human security challenges for many of the most vulnerable in the region (Howe 2016). It is up to the UN to harness and empower these initiatives at the regional and even global level in order to build peace and ensure good governance for human security in the future. This is particularly important where regional structures are under-developed. Thus, these case studies of UN administration in Southeast Asia, centred in the broader normative and operational East Asian region, demonstrate the need not only to

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bear in mind the R2P when stimulating intervention, but also the newer concept of responsibility while protecting, and perhaps even a responsibility post-protection in terms of providing adequate resources for a good governance legacy.

References Acharya, A. (2003). Guns and Butter: Why Do Human Security and Traditional Security Co-exist in Asia? Global Economic Review: Perspectives on East Asian Economies and Industries, 32(3), 1–21. Asahi, H. (2012). An Uneasy Future for East Timor. Available at http://www2. jiia.or.jp/en/pdf/research/20120628eAn_Uneasy_Future_of_East_Timor. pdf. Bassiouni, M. C. (2008). International Criminal Law: International Enforcement (Vol. 3). Leiden: Brill. Beeson, M. (2008). Institutions of the Asia-Pacific: ASEAN, APEC and Beyond. Oxford: Routledge. Berry, K. (2012). The Role and Performance of UNTAC: An Australian Perspective. In S. Peou, G. Wade & M. Hong (Eds.), Cambodia: Progress and Challenges Since 1991 (pp. 173–187). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Buzan, B., & Segal, G. (1998). Rethinking East Asian Security. In M. T. Klare & Y. Chandrani (Eds.), World Security: Challenges for a New Century (pp. 96– 112). New York: St. Martin’s Press. Della-Giacoma, J. (2012). Has Timor-Leste Left Behind Its Violent Past? International Crisis Group. Available at http://www.crisisgroupblogs.org/resolv ingconflict/2012/07/09/has-timor-leste-left-behind-its-violent-past/?utm_ source=wu9july&utm_medium=timorlesteblog&utm_campaign=wuemai. Diamond, L. (1994). On Developing a Common Vocabulary: The Conflict Continuum. Peace Builder, 1(4), 3–6. Howard, L. M. (2014). Kosovo and Timor-Leste: Neotrusteeship, Neighbors, and the United Nations. The American Academy of Political and Social Science, 656(1), 116–135. Howe, B. M. (2008). Law and Intervention. Review of International Law and Politics, 4(1), 95–117. Howe, B. M. (2012). Beyond Security Towards Peace on the Korean Peninsula. Korean Journal of Security Affairs, 17 (1), 65–82. Howe, B. M. (2016). Econophoria in Theory and Practice. Asian International Studies Review, 17 (1), 101–120. Howe, B. M. (2018). Divergent Interpretations of the R2P and Human Security. The Korean Journal of Security Affairs, 23(1), 80–98.

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Howe, B. M. (2019). Human Security, Peacebuilding, and the Responsibility to Protect in East Asia. Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, 7 (2), 183–218. Howe, B. M. (2020). New Northern or New Southern Policy Prioritization. Diplomacy, 132, 91–133. Howe, B. M., Kondoch, B., & Spijkers, O. (2015). Normative & Legal Challenges to UN Peacekeeping Operations. Journal of International Peacekeeping (JUP), 19(1–2), 1–31. Kriesberg, L. (1997). The Development of the Conflict Resolution Field. In I. W. Zartman & J. Rasmussen (Eds.), Peacemaking in International Conflict: Methods and Techniques (pp. 25–60). Washington, DC: Institute of Peace Press. Martin, I. (2001). Self-Determination in East Timor: The United Nations, the Ballot, and International Intervention. International Peace Academy Occasional Paper Series. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner. Miall, H., Ramsbotham, O., & Woodhouse, T. (1999). Contemporary Conflict Resolution. Cambridge: Polity Press. Nishikawa, Y. (2009). Human Security in Southeast Asia: Viable Solution or Empty Slogan? Security Dialogue, 40(2), 213–236. Peou, S. (1997). Conflict Neutralization in the Cambodia War: From Battlefield to Ballot Box. Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and New York: Oxford University Press. Peou, S. (2000). Intervention and Change in Cambodia: Towards Democracy? New York, Singapore and Thailand: St. Martin Press, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, and Silkworm. Peou, S. (2010). Peace and Security in the Asia-Pacific: Theory and Practice. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Smith, C. Q., Waldorf, L., Venugopal, R., & McCarthy, G. (2020). Illiberal Peace-Building in Asia: A Comparative Overview. Conflict, Security, and Development, 20(1), 1–14. Than, T. M. M. (1998). Myanmar: Preoccupation with regime Survival, National Unity, and Stability. In M. Alagappa (Ed.), Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Influences (pp. 390–416). Stanford: Stanford University Press. UNDP. (2019). Human Development Report 2019. New York: UNDP. Available at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/all/themes/hdr_theme/country-notes/KHM. pdf. World Bank (Cambodia). (2018). The World Bank in Cambodia. Available at http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/cambodia/overview. Zartman, I. W. (1989). Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa. New York: Oxford University Press.

Index

A Ad Hoc Human Rights Court for East Timor, 122, 123 Akashi, Yasushi, 44–48, 50, 51 Aliança de Mudança para o Progresso (AMP), 126 Alkatiri, Mari, 123, 125, 144 Alliance for Change and Progress, 126 Annan, Kofi, 4, 5, 16 Anti-Soviet China-US alliance, 36 Arkatili, Mari, 126 Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor (FALINTIL), 92, 99–101, 105, 123 ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), 137, 138 ASEAN Way, 19 Asian values, 18 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 19, 40, 44, 75, 90–92, 94, 98, 99, 138, 139 Atambua, 127 Atsabe, 128

AusAID, 120 Australia, 43, 75, 90–92, 94–96, 98, 100, 103, 104, 113, 115, 116 B Banco Central de Timor-Leste (BCTL), 115 Bangkok Declaration, 19 Banking and Payment Authority (BPA), 115 Baucau, 129 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, 7, 16 Buying peace, 24, 117–120, 130 C Cambodian, 23, 34, 35, 38–42, 44–49, 51, 52, 58, 60–63, 65–67, 69, 71–75, 88, 96, 139, 141 Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), 45, 46, 49–52, 71–76 Capstone Doctrine, 7, 11

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. M. Howe et al., UN Governance, Security, Development and Human Rights in East Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54572-7

151

152

INDEX

Chefs de suco (village chiefs), 99 China, 35–38, 40–44, 49, 66, 69–71, 73–76, 85, 92–94, 98, 103, 138, 139 Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK), 35–37 Cold War, 11, 35, 36, 39, 42, 49, 58, 85, 86, 89, 136–139, 143, 144 Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor-Leste (CAVR), 127, 128 Commission for Matters of Cadres of the Resistance (CAQR), 120 Commission for Matters of Former Combatants (CAAC), 120 Commission for Matters of Veterans of Falintil (CAVF), 120 Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor, 127 Commission on Global Governance, 3 Commission on Human Security (CHS), 16, 18 Commission on Truth and Friendship, 123 Conselho Nacional de Resistência Timorense (CNRT), 88, 95–97, 106, 125, 126 Constitutional Assembly, 97

D de Araujo, Rui Maria, 125 Decent Work Country Programme (DWCP), 60 de Mello, Sérgio Vieira, 94 Democratic Kampuchea, 35, 36 Dili Task Force, 104 Disaster risk reduction (DRR), 148 Distributive justice, 4, 25, 140 Doi Moi, 40

E Economic Land Concessions, 68 Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF-I), 59 Everything-But-Arms (EBA), 69 Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC), 58, 63, 71, 72, 140, 143

F FALINTIL-Defense Forces of Timor-Leste, 99 5 May Agreement , 84, 86, 91, 92 Firakus , 119 Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 61 Forças Defesa de Timor-Leste (FFDTL), 99, 100, 102–104, 116, 119, 130 Force Intervention Brigade (FIB), 9 Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente (FRETILIN), 85, 86, 88, 99, 100, 106, 117, 123–126

G Gatekeepers, 120, 121 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 39–41 Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR), 104 Gusmão, Xanana, 95, 97, 99, 100, 113, 120, 123–127 Guterres, Francisco ‘Lu Olo’, 125, 126

H Habibie, B.J., 86, 145 Hammarskjöld, Dag, 8, 9 Hasegawa Sukehiro, 99

INDEX

Human development, 4, 65, 71, 114, 141 Human Development Index (HDI), 65, 140 Human security, 2–6, 8, 13, 14, 16–19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 33, 34, 52, 57, 58, 63, 64, 70, 71, 76, 90, 99, 107, 112–114, 118, 121, 128–130, 137, 140, 146, 148 Human Security Now, 16, 18 Human Security Unit (HSU), 17 Hun Sen, 37, 46, 73–75, 144 Hybrid, 72, 119, 121, 127, 128

I Illiberal peacebuilding, 147 IMF, 59, 68, 115, 116 Independent Special Commission of Inquiry, 102 Indonesia, 23, 38, 44, 48, 84–86, 88, 90–95, 116, 121–123, 127, 138, 141, 145 Indonesian Armed Force (TNI), 122, 123 Indonesian National Police (POLRI), 100, 101 Indonesian security forces, 91–93, 95 Internally displaced persons (IDPs), 101, 105, 117–119, 129 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), 19–21, 141 International Conference on Kampuchea, 37 International Criminal Court (ICC), 15, 74 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), 14 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), 10, 14

153

International Force East Timor (INTERFET), 87, 90, 92–97, 107 International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), 61 International Labour Organization (ILO), 60 International Stabilisation Force (ISF), 103, 104, 107 Investment Advisory Board (IAB), 115, 116

J Japan, 21, 36, 37, 43, 44, 66, 69, 75, 85, 90–92, 94, 96, 98, 99, 138, 139, 148 Justice, 5, 10, 45, 47, 62, 63, 72, 74, 94, 98, 113, 114, 122–125, 127–130

K Kaladis , 119 Khmer People’s National Liberation Front (KPNLF), 36, 37, 46, 48 Khmer Rouge, 23, 34–38, 41, 44–49, 51, 52, 58, 63, 66, 71, 74, 75, 139, 140, 143

L La’o Hamutuk, 113 Law on Pensions for Combatants and Martyrs of National Liberation, 120 Law on Status of National Liberation Combatants , 120 Lia na’ins , 128 Liberal democracy, 22, 34, 51, 71, 72, 84, 140–143 Liberal peace, 123, 124, 126, 129 Liurais , 128

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Lobato, Nicolau, 124 Lobato, Rogerio, 124 Local Climate Adaptation Living Program (LoCALL), 60 Local legitimacy, 11, 42, 44, 89, 90, 93, 95, 98, 99, 101, 103, 107, 125 Local ownership, 2, 113, 136, 142, 143, 146, 148 Loro Mono, 119 Loro Sae, 119 Luta Hamutuk, 113 M Metinaro, 129 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 60, 61, 65, 66, 70, 140, 141 Minister of Interior, 124 Ministry of Finance, 115 Ministry of Planning and Finance, 115 Ministry of Social Solidarity (MSS), 119 N Nahe Biti, 127, 128 Nahe Biti Boot , 128 National authority, 38, 88 National Council for Timorese Resistance, 88, 95 National Council of Maubere Resistance (CNRM), 96 National legitimacy, 11, 42, 89, 90, 95, 96, 103, 104, 107 National Police of Timor-Leste, 99 National Recovery Strategy (NRS), 114, 117–119, 121, 129 National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC), 36, 45, 46

Negative peace, 23, 122, 130, 139, 144, 147 Neo-trusteeship, 96, 101, 112 Newly industrialised countries (NICs), 40 L Lee, Kuan Yew, 51 O Official development assistance (ODA), 70, 148 P Panitchpakdi, Supachai, 91 Paris Peace Agreements (PPAs), 22, 34, 35, 38, 39, 41–44, 46–49, 62, 75, 88, 139 Paris Peace conference, 37, 46 Pension, 117, 119, 120, 128 People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK)/State of Cambodia (SOC), 35, 36, 66 Perceptions of its legitimacy, 11 Petitioners, 104, 105, 113, 116, 119, 124 Petroleum Fund (PF), 114–117, 121, 130, 143 PF Law, 115 Phattiyakul, Winai, 94, 99 Pitsuwan, Surin, 92 Policia Nacional de Timor-Leste (PNTL), 99, 100, 102, 104 Politics of survival, 76, 106, 107 Popular consultation, 84 Portugal, 84–86, 88, 91, 92, 103, 104, 128 Portugal’s National Republican Guard, 104 Pot, Pol, 35, 45, 46 Protection of civilians (POC), 7, 9

INDEX

R Ramos-Horta, José, 105, 124, 126 Ranariddh, Norodom, 144 Referendum, 84, 86, 89, 91–93, 95, 97, 127, 128 Refugees, 14, 15, 17, 47, 52, 101, 127, 139 Reinado, Alfredo, 105, 119 Resource Governance Index 2010, 116 Responsibility to protect (R2P), 2, 7, 13, 18–21, 137, 141, 148, 149 Restorative justice, 122, 130 Retributive justice, 10, 15, 25, 74, 122, 123, 125, 129, 130, 143 Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor, 85 Rule of Law Index, 72, 73 Russia, 9, 73–75, 92–94, 98, 143 S Safe havens, 2, 3, 6, 14 Salsinha, Gastão, 119, 124 Secretary-General of ASEAN, 92 Secretary of State for Natural Resources, The, 116 Security sector reform (SSR), 99, 101, 113 September 20, 38 Serious Crime Unit, 122 Sihanouk, Norodom, 37, 44, 74 SOC/CPP, 45, 46, 48–51 Social Land Concessions, 68 Socio-economic, 17, 23, 58, 63, 66, 70, 75, 76 Socio-economic development, 58, 64, 66–68, 70, 77, 98 Soviet Union, 35–42, 85, 86 Special Committee on Peacekeeping (C34), 9 Special Panels for Serious Crimes (SPSC), 122 Spoilers, 9, 12, 15, 43

155

State Budget, 115–117, 130 State-building, 2, 21–25, 89, 94, 96, 98, 101, 102, 106, 112–114, 124, 130, 137 State of Cambodia (SOC), 37, 50, 51 Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs), 8 Status of Missions Agreements (SOMAs), 8 Structural Adjustment Programme, 59 Suco, 99 Suharto, 84, 86, 142, 144, 145 Supplement Arrangement , 104 Supreme National Council (SNC), 38, 39, 48, 88, 96 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 61, 140, 141 Suzuki, Shin-ichi, 94

T Take-off, 66 Taur Matan Ruak, 126 Taylor, Charles, 10 Third Committee, 16, 17 Tiananmen Square, 41, 139 Timorese National Police, 89 Timor Gap, 115 Timorisation, 97, 101 Timor Sea Designated Authority (TSDA), 115 Timor-Leste Living Standard Survey, 114 Transitional Administrator, 96, 97 Transitional justice, 127, 140 Trovik, Torres, 116 Trustee, 39

U UN Advance Mission in Cambodia (UNAMIC), 38, 45, 48

156

INDEX

UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT), 62 UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), 60 UN Charter, 3, 8, 9, 21, 85, 90, 92, 93, 136, 141, 146 UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 16, 61, 62 UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 60 UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), 7, 11, 12 UN Development Programme (UNDP), 4, 5, 16, 33, 60, 64, 65, 72, 98, 119, 120, 141 UNDP’s Human Development Report 1994, 4, 16, 18 UN Economic Programme (UNEP), 60 UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), 61 UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, the, 124 UN Humanitarian Team, 129 UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), 62, 63 UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), 59, 60 UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT), 84, 87, 89, 102–106, 112, 119, 121, 125, 142 UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), 23, 83, 84, 86, 87, 89, 91–93, 95, 142 UN Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET), 23, 24, 84, 87, 89, 98–101, 115, 117, 122, 142 UN Office in Timor-Leste (UNOTIL), 87, 102 UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), 62, 63, 72, 124, 129, 140

UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 62, 67 UN Resident Coordinator (UNRC), 58 UNSCR, 85–93, 98, 102–104 UN Special Independent Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste, 124, 143 UNTAD, 65 UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), 23, 24, 83, 84, 87, 89, 90, 93–100, 105, 112, 115, 122, 126, 142 UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), 22, 23, 34, 35, 38, 39, 41–52, 57, 58, 62, 63, 67, 71, 84, 94, 96, 97, 139, 140 USAID, 120

V Veranda, 121 Veterans, 100, 101, 117, 119–121, 129, 130 Veterans’ Pension (VP), 114, 120, 121 Vietnam, 35–38, 40, 41, 45, 48, 66, 85, 94

W Wiranto, 122 World Bank, 59, 64, 66, 67, 98, 101, 114, 120, 140 World Food Programme (WFP), 61 World Health Organization (WHO), 61, 64, 65, 69 World Justice Project, 72, 73 World Trade Organization (WTO), 59, 65