NEW YORK — A critical assessment of U.N. security risks around the world recommends an overhaul of safety and security procedures and reaffirms that host governments and the United Nations share responsibility for keeping U.N. staff safe.
Released Tuesday afternoon, the report - the second commissioned after 17 staffers were killed in December by a car bomb in Algeria - found “ample evidence” that several staff members up and down the security chain of command failed to respond properly.
The 103-page report triggered the resignation of David Veness, the head of U.N. safety and security.
Other resignations are expected after another report - this one to assess responsibility - is completed in about six weeks.
The panel, headed by veteran diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, also found inadequacies in accountability, leadership and internal management and oversight of security, in part because the department was set up so hastily in the aftermath of the 2003 bombing of the U.N. offices in Baghdad.
“That the host government holds ’primary responsibility for the security of United Nations personnel’ in no way means that the responsibility of the Organization itself diminishes or disappears,” the report says, quoting a 1994 U.N. convention on safety and security.
“As an employer, the U.N. continues to be morally and legally responsible for what happens to its personnel.”
The U.N. legal office is hosting a ceremony Wednesday to honor nations that have signed the 2005 international agreement to protect U.N. staff members.
That protocol has not entered into force, however, because it is still eight ratifications short.
The question of staff security does not include peacekeepers, who are soldiers on loan from their national armies, but the civilians, relief workers and technical experts.
The issue is timely as the U.N. Security Council prepares to authorize a U.N. mission to Somalia.
The head of the U.N. refugee agency in Mogadishu, Hasan Mohamed Ali, was kidnapped on Saturday.
Mr. Brahimi notes in the panel’s report that the security of civilian personnel must be taken into account by the Security Council when it create new missions — and by donors who must be willing to pay for it.
Members of the six-person panel that compiled the report visited 20 U.N. sites and examined perceptions of the United Nations in different countries around the world.
The Brahimi panel found that violent attacks on U.N. staff members in the field have increased 22 percent over the last nine years. The period coincides with the end of the Cold War and the rise of Islamist terrorism.
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Reports (PDF)
— U.N. preliminary investigative report of bombing
— Complete 103-page safety report of the independent panel (warning: this is a large PDF file, downloading this document may take a few moments)
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