Recent discovery of a mass grave with nearly 200 bodies in it has caused some human rights groups to demand more action
NEW DELHI (AlertNet) - U.N. troops have helped to contain violence and prevent civil war in Ivory Coast, a senior U.N. official said, defending peacekeepers criticised for not doing more to protect civilians caught up in post-election fighting.
Fighting raged on in Ivory Coast's economic capital Abidjan on Thursday as forces loyal to presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara tried to unseat incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, who has refused to cede power despite U.N. certified results showing that Ouattara won a November presidential election.
Aid agencies estimate that hundreds of civilians have been killed in the West African country. The conflict has uprooted more than 1 million people in Ivory Coast and forced 120,000 others to flee to neighbouring Liberia.
Critics accuse the 9,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission deployed in Ivory Coast (UNOCI) for being unwilling or unable to intervene to protect civilians amid fears that the standoff may rekindle the country's 2002-3 civil war.
"While there have been some criticisms of the U.N. mission there, I think those criticisms are to a very large degree unfounded," Anthony Banbury, Assistant Secretary-General for Field Support in U.N. Peacekeeping, told a news conference on Wednesday in New Delhi.
"Were it not for the peacekeepers, I believe the violence would have been much worse and we might have seen the outbreak of all out civil war in the country as was seen in Ivory Coast several years ago."
The UNOCI was first deployed in Ivory Coast in 2004 following the end of the civil war. Its mandate was to facilitate the implementation of a peace deal between government and rebels.
The mission's main responsibilities have been to observe and monitor the agreement, support demobilisation and disarmament, protect U.N. staff as well as civilians considered "under imminent threat of physical violence", but only "within its capabilities".
However, the blue helmets have been mainly engaged in protecting the hotel in Abidjan where Ouattara and his government-in-waiting have been holed up for months, leaving some humanitarian workers to question how well U.N. troops are protecting civilians.
The recent discovery of a mass grave with nearly 200 bodies in it in the western Ivorian town of Duekoue has intensified the debate and some human rights groups are demanding more action.
The killings were believed to have been a result of inter-communal violence.
Banbury said the peacekeepers had played a vital role in Ivory Coast -- especially earlier this week when UNOCI, together with former colonial power France, broke the impasse and launched helicopter attacks on Gbagbo's last strongholds.
But he added that they were limited in what they could do.
"The U.N. peacekeeping mission were sent with a mandate and type of deployment to work in a certain environment," Banbury said. "They were not equipped, mandated, trained, deployed to separate two armies intent on fighting each in many urban centres. Any expectation that they could do so was unrealistic."
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