Killing of Civilians by UN Supported Troops in Somalia Admitted But Not Acted On
By Matthew Russell Lee
July 21, 2010
The Inner City Press
http://www.innercitypress.com/un1soa072110.html

UNITED NATIONS, July 21 -- In the wake of the World Cup finals bombing in Uganda, there has been even less discussion of the civilians being killed in Mogadishu by the peacekeeping mission which the UN is supporting. But a memo leaked from within that AMISOM mission notes continued firing into civilian neighborhoods.
Inner City Press asked UN Humanitarian coordinator Mark Bowden whether there is a special responsibility on the UN to ensure that the troops to which it provides logistical support through its UNSOA office are not killing civilians. "Yes there is," Bowden said, adding that he's "had discussions" with Ambassador Diarra of the African Union about "reducing civilian casualties."
But shouldn't the UN's support to troops be conditioned on avoiding killing civilians? "I think it is," Bowden said. "It's not my side of the shop" but "my colleagues are in active discussion in Addis with the AU." Video here, from Minute 18:13.
Inner City Press asked, which colleagues? UNSOA or the Department of Field Support? "DFS and UNSOA," Bowden said. Previous questioning by Inner City Press, of DFS chief Susana Malcorra and the Office of the Spokesperson for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, has not yielded any specifics to back up the claim that the UN has made its support to troops in Mogadishu conditioned on not killing civilians.
In fact, despite the UN's and others' support of the Transitional Federal Government, the UN's own Humanitarian report for June describes TFG forces looting UN food supplies in a convoy. Inner City Press asked Bowden about this, and about the TFG's reported shelling of a press conference on June 29, which killed journalists.
Bowden acknowledged "indisciplined TFG forces... vying with each other." On the killing of journalists by the TFG, he referred to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, without providing any more specifics.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, by contrast, when violations by the Congolese Army forces the UN was supporting were exposed, the UN claimed to put in place a detailed policy of conditionality, and to suspend support to a particular unit engaged in the killing of civilians.
In Somalia, the troops the UN is providing logical support to are killing civilians. Where is the policy of conditionality? Are human rights protections another casualty of the World Cup final bombings in Uganda? Watch this site.
Footnote: Of the last two times Inner City Press spoke with new UN Somalia envoy Augustine Mahiga, in the first he agreed that the AMISON peacekeepers are mis-using long range artillery and harming civilians. In the second conversation, it was all about Al Shabab. In between? The bombing in Kampala, claimed by Al Shabab...