Press Conference
13 July 2011
Near-verbatim transcript of the Press Conference
by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for South Sudan,
Hilde F. Johnson
UNMISS, Juba
SRSG Hilde F. Johnson: I can say a few words at the outset, this is of course my first meeting with press here in South Sudan after taking on the mission . We have a clear mandate that was passed by the Security Council on the 8th of July, Security Council Resolution 1996 that established formally the Mission, immediately after that the announcement of my appointment was made .I am then the Special Representative for the Secretary General of UN and Head of Mission in South Sudan. This means that we will be supporting South Sudan as a new independent country after the establishment of the Republic of South Sudan on July 9th . The mandate of the Mission is also therefore different from the mandate of the former Mission, UNMIS. UNMISS – with a double S – has then a different kind of mandate. I’ll say a few words about that and then I would open up for any questions you may have.
In terms of the mandate, whilst UNMIS had as its main Mission support and monitoring of the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005, this Mission is not only geographically different. It is supporting South Sudan, the new Republic, but it is also having a different type of mandate in trying to help stabilise and shore in peace and stability in a new country, the Republic of South Sudan, and also supporting a nascent government and in a more type of state-building exercise. It has a strong peace and security element; it also has strong elements related to the capacity in the security sector – police, rule of law, human rights, etc.
The other element that I wanted to highlight more concretely is the content of the mandate in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1996. Firstly, it highlights three main areas for the Mission. One is peace consolidation – which also includes political diversity, inclusiveness. So the prerequisite for peace and consolidation is that this is an inclusive government. The second area highlighted in the Security Council Resolution is indeed conflict management, conflict resolution and the protection of civilians. And the third element is support to the nascent state, to the State of South Sudan, not least in the security sector, in rule of law, justice, human rights, and abiding by international laws and standards. And, of course, related to that, this is a very strong, integrated Mission which is also different from the former. “Integrated” means we would work as one – the United Nations would work as one in South Sudan. This implies that the security, justice, military and police, etc. – side of the Mission would be there. We would have then the development side as a very important pillar – which is the UN Country Team – and the humanitarian side. So we would have the political mandate, the security mandate and the development and humanitarian mandate. All three pillars come together in one integrated whole. And as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, I would supervise and oversee all these three pillars. This means that the UN Country Team would work in tandem and in an integrated way with us. I would also be the main interlocutor for the UN system in relation to all the donors, international actors and diplomatic community here.
In the Security Council mandate, human right has been highlighted significantly. That is going to be critical for our mandate – women, children, internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, etc. – I would also want to highlight that the military and security side would be stronger than before. It has a very clear and strong Chapter VII mandate. This means that if citizens are in imminent threat and South Sudan forces are not in a position to protect them, indeed the Mission has the mandate to do so. We would need the means and we would need to be able to but we are, from a mandate’s perspective, in a position to do so.
I wanted to just highlight those elements of the mandate.
On a personal note, I am really pleased to be here. I have been working on issues related to Sudan and the peace process and also with south Sudanese ever since the 1990s. For me it is a unique opportunity to be able, from a personal perspective, to support the new Government of the Republic of South Sudan and be able to be in a position to assist. This is a critical moment for all south Sudanese and we are in a situation where the success of the new and independent country in terms of peace, stability and development will be critical going forward and I think the first two to three years would be fundamental. So to be here at this very critical juncture is, for me, both an honour but it is also something I personally take a lot of appreciation in doing.
So those are my introductory words so you have a little bit of insight of what the Resolution says and then also my own appreciation of being able to be here.
I would finally just say that I had my first meeting with the President of the Republic, Salva Kiir Mayardit, yesterday morning and we are going to work closely together going foreword.
Thank you and I would be happy to take any questions.
Q & A
Reuters: What are your immediate and urgent priorities, how are you going to do things differently and what is day one’s biggest objective and for the weeks ahead? Secondly, it is no secret that over 2,000 people have died over south-south violence since the Referendum. It is kind of an extraordinary figure even at the global context. You talked of a new mandate having means to intervene. Could you just elaborate a bit to what degree can you step in between rebel militias or rebel militias and the army if you see the need and the opportunity to do so?
Ms. Johnson: Clearly for a Mission like this, the first priorities were to establish the necessary understanding with the Government on how we are to implement our mandate. That is why I met with President Salva Kiir yesterday. I have asked for a mechanism to be established with government ministers which we would have as our primary interlocutors. Of course the Government is also in a little bit of a sense of flux, in a sense that there is a caretaker government now and we are waiting for the formal government to be established but that is the most critical thing.
Clearly the second one is to get this Mission up and running with full capacity. It sounds a little bit technical maybe but clearly we can not act without the necessary team on the ground. There is a lot of people here but we need to reconfigure the Mission and the whole Mission is in transition with the liquidation of UNMIS and getting the new people in with UNMISS.
I think the third element here is going to work exactly on what you are talking about, meaning, what does this mandate mean in practical terms for us. What, for example, does the mandate on the protection of civilians mean? How would we go about this? To which extent and in which way can we take action. These are issues that I need to work carefully through with my team and in consultation with the Government.
To answer your last question, clearly the mandate itself is strong. The mandate specifically says that this is primarily the Government’s responsibility. So the Government of South Sudan now, with the Minister of Defence that was established with the caretaker government, would have the main responsibility, with their forces, to take action in these situations. In the event they are not able or fail to do so, that is when we would have the mandate to act. That would depend entirely, of course, on the situation on the ground, the availability of forces, the distance and the dynamics of the situation. So you cannot respond to that question other than on a case-by-case basis. I think there is also going to be an issue of managing expectations because, as you said, there have been a lot of security challenges so far and we also need to note that a critical part of the Mission’s mandate is related to the political side of the equation. We know that political practices and security in South Sudan go hand to hand so what happens on the political side also has its repercussions on the ground in terms of insecurity. For the Mission, I think we can only succeed if we are very active on the political side working with the Government and with the political forces in South Sudan and that, we hope, can prevent too much insecurity on the ground so that what has happened in the last year or two would not happen as frequently in the new and independent state. But that remains to be seen.
AFP: How many military peacekeepers is the UN going to deploy here? Do you plan to deploy forces in the border areas between Sudan and South Sudan – in the areas of Abyei and Southern Kordofan?
Could you give us the casualty figures and figures of the displaced from the conflicts this year in Southern Kordofan and Abyei?
Ms. Johnson: In terms of the deployment of troops, the Security Council mandate is of a peacekeeping operation of 7,000 but it also has a caveat that it would review after a few months whether 7,000 are necessary or whether one can operate with 6,000. So there is a little bit of a caveat there but the initial number is 7,000 and we would, of course, work with the Force Commander and the structure in New York on the deployment of where they would be and how they would operate – so that we would have to revert to.
As regards the borders, there is a paragraph in the Security Council Resolution that refers to the expectations that the two Parties, the Government of Sudan and the Government of South Sudan, works out border arrangements before July 20th. If that is not the case, meaning monitoring movement across the border of goods, services and arms, the Resolution says that UNMISS should take on a responsibility of this from this end. So we would have to wait a little before we know the border-related responsibilities and whether we would take them on.
As regards the Abyei, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile issue – the so-called Three Areas – Abyei, as you know very well, would be monitored after the withdrawal of SAF forces, by Ethiopian troops. 4,200 have been mandated by the Security Council. I understand that there is now logistics supplies on the way from Ethiopia into the Area but it would take a little while before arrival. So that would be managed separately and would not be under the auspices of this Mission.
As regards Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, we have a situation where these areas now are on the northern side of the border and they are related to the Government of Sudan. The Government of Sudan has explicitly so far said that it did not want an extension of UNMIS and did not want their presence in these two areas any more. However, we are also in a situation of flux here, in a sense that there are negotiations that are taking place in Addis Ababa … I think they would resume next week. Haile Menkerios, the SRSG who was in charge of UNMIS, is now going to be a Special Envoy for the Secretary-General charged with the finalisation of the remaining partition issues in the CPA and he would have the responsibility for taking care of that. This implies that my and this Mission’s responsibility will rest with the issues that are related to South Sudan. So it remains to be seen whether a cessation of hostilities could be achieved in Southern Kordofan and whether there would be any monitoring arrangements. It is too early to say and, again, this is my predecessor, Haile Menkerios’, responsibility now as Special Envoy.
As regards the numbers, I am afraid that since I have not taken on this part of the mission, I don’t have the numbers for you but I am sure others can give them to you so that you have more details in terms of the casualties on the civilian side.
VoA: In relation to the peacekeeping force, do we know which countries the troops would come from?
Ms. Johnson: Very briefly, no. We have candidates and there is a dialogue ongoing in New York from the Department of Peacekeeping to discuss with potential Troop Contributing Countries the possibility of sending battalions to South Sudan. At the moment we do not have certainty as to which they would be. We now have Troop Contributing Countries present here under the former mandate which would be liquidated and they are expected to leave. And so we would have some time before we have new troops present and, since there also a rainy season at the moment, it is not necessarily a big problem for the Mission. We think if we can get new troops in by November-December, we would be operational militarily also from that time.
The Citizen: What would happen if certain communities refuse to cooperate with particular troops from particular countries since there have been cases where certain UN troops have not been observing the norms and traditions of certain communities?
For the last 6 years the UN has been watching civilians being slaughtered in their presence and they would not even report. I witnessed in 2008 when wounded Murle tribesmen were slaughtered by the police in the presence of the UN. What will be new in the new mandate?
A lot of people from outside have the feeling you may not be neutral because you are very close to the ruling Party. This may be a great setback for you being in South Sudan because they were expecting a neutral person out of the SPLM circle. How do you comment?
Ms. Johnson: On the latter, I can just say one thing: They don’t know me. If there is one thing in my history that I have been holding high, it is the respect for international norms and standards, respect for human rights. These are principles that would be upheld also in this new job. For those who are doubtful as to my role, I would encourage them to read my book, Waging Peace in Sudan, the inside story of the peace negotiations that ended Africa’s longest civil war. It came out in January and is going to be available with more copies here for those in Juba who can’t find it. But I think it would be quite clear, if one reads that book, that I am able to take a pretty objective position in relation to Khartoum as well as the SPLM/A.
As regards the questions from your side on the behaviour of the Mission, what would happen if communities reject their presence, if they do not operate in accordance with local norms and standards? I want to do two things as the new SRSG. Apart from making it clear that it is a new Mission with a new mandate and a new approach - that is very, very clear and I want communicate that everywhere – I did it to President Salva Kiir yesterday but I am also going to do it in all context going forward. To make sure that we also get the feedback we need, I want to do two things: One: I want to have a survey that can tell us a little more about the perceptions of people in South Sudan, the local communities, on how the Mission has been doing, what it has been doing well and what it is not being done well, what one can improve, and have that perceptions survey give us feedback on behaviour, on operational modalities, on how we have been doing. We would like to do that and we would get back to you on when and how it would be done in practice but that is one important thing for me. I think it is absolutely critical that the local communities feel that the peacekeeping operation is there for them and there to protect them and make sure that there is stability and peace and we need to make sure that they are able to communicate back to us whether we are actually operating the way we should.
The second thing I want to do is to establish an Advisory Council for me as SRSG, consisting of local and traditional leaders in South Sudan – people that can advise me on how we are doing – whether its representatives of the Church, of the communities, ethnic groups, civil society, other parties – I would very much like to have that kind of advisory council established that would give me feedback on how we are doing. Many of these have networks far into the rural areas and can also communicate whether there has been inappropriate behaviour by individuals or groups. In that regard, I hope to be able to get honest and good information and be able to correct anything that might not be appropriate if indeed that happens.
On the question on what is different, I think I did respond a little bit on that. This has a stronger Chapter VII mandate than before. Chapter VII meaning that it mandates the UN Mission to take action if civilians are under imminent threat and if the Government is not able to protect. That is new. As I also said, it is new in that it is not monitoring only; it is supposed to be supporting the Government in terms of its stability, peace and making the nascent new Republic stand on its own feet. It is also stronger in its support functions in terms of actions than the previous mandate – so from monitoring to a more actionable type of mission.
The third element which is not in the mandate but which we hope to do is to be closer to the communities. With more of a decentralised presence that the Mission can be closer to the communities that it would be better at engaging with the communities, listening to the communities and, with our presence also, enable development agencies to deliver to the communities. That is another thing that I hope we can change where we hope to have a much stronger presence there. Again, this also needs to be discussed in more details with the Government of South Sudan so that they are comfortable with how we are deploying and how we are operating. I think the closeness to the communities is one important way of working and I think that is going to be quite different.
Q: I guess some of the most serious instances of violence here were involving Government of Southern Sudan against civilians. In those instances, does the mandate allow the UN to go between the Government and the civilians?
MS. Johnson: The mandate doesn’t explicitly say who any perpetrators are. The mandate says when civilians are under imminent threat but does not specify by whom. That is what I can say to that, meaning that if civilians are under imminent threat and the authorities are not protecting them, then we do have the mandate to take action. Of course this mandate would be limited by means and proximity. So we do have the mandate; whether and how we take action would depend on whether we have available troops … whether we are in a position to take action – so it would depend on that. If you ask the military, they would say that 7,000 is far too little for a strong Chapter VII and would say that with infrastructure problems of South Sudan, the distances, etc., it would be very difficult to be able to operationalise the mandate. Military experts would tell you that. So the means and deployment patterns would of course be decisive for whether you are able to take action, but the formality in terms of what the mandate provides you of the possibility to take action does not distinguish between who any perpetrators are. It says when civilians are under imminent threat and if government is not willing or not able to protect. I am not quoting directly now but this is the core of the message. Indeed we have the mandate to take action.
Radio Miraya: Which areas of development would the Mission be focussing on?
Ms. Johnson: The Mission is going to be integrated Mission. This means that the development and humanitarian pillar would be consisting of, primarily, the UN funds and programmes. So it is not the Mission’s staff that would do the development. The Mission’s staff would enable the development actors to do development. To be more specific, if we use the support bases for example that we would like to use mainly in the communities and the counties, we would like to use them not only for conflict mitigation, for using military and police advisors, civil affairs, political officers to work with the communities on conflict resolution and conflict mitigation. With the presence of the Mission we can also enable development agencies to be present with their staff to do education, health, infrastructure, etc, activities. That is what we are talking about that the presence of the Mission can create the premises for development actors to engage.
The development part of the Mission is much more related to capacity-building particularly and it is more the security and justice sector that is the most relevant one where we are engaging directly with the government and relevant ministries in capacity building in those areas but also in capacity building in the areas of human rights, international norms and standards where, for example, having training courses for the military and police in South Sudan on respect for human rights would be an essential part of capacity building.
Similarly, the traditional way of missions is to assist in demobilisation of armed forces including children and reintegration. The Mission would therefore be doing a major demobilisation effort and work there. However; the reintegration part would most likely be done more by the development actors such as UNDP and other development agencies. Overall, UN as one family would do development but the agencies, funds and programmes would be doing more of the actionable development. So we are working together under my leadership but the Mission itself would do capacity building mainly in the areas of security, justice, human rights, etc.
Q: You talked about a more integrated operation with the UN Country Team. Could you kindly elaborate on that?
You said there would be a separate Secretary-General expert group to handle the unresolved issues, you talked about the Abyei Mission which is separate; you talked of the Mission in South Sudan which is separate. While this may be very clear to those of us here, how do you plan to make it clear to the people on the ground at the grass-roots levels, especially at the border areas, who are directly affected by these issues about our role as a Mission so that there are no confusions?
Ms. Johnson: On your latter question, the only way that we can communicate that is by trying to use our presence on the ground to share this information with government officials, with civil society, with leaders of different varieties and of course use Miraya Radio to try to get that message out as quickly, extensively and broadly as possible. Since this is my third day, I have not made a communications plan yet but clearly we need to have a communication plan for communicating more proactively what the mandate of the Mission is and what the mandate of the Mission is not. We would work on that with communications team. We are getting them in quite soon extra reinforcement in communications and we would take action on that. And I agree with you it is particularly in the border areas and the Nile states that this is going to be critical.
On your first question on the UN Country Team, under the former mission the UN Country Team worked more independently than the former Mission because the Mission’s mandate was monitoring the CPA. Now we are in a different situation and our mandate is to support the new Republic of South Sudan and to try together to make peace and security a reality as well as development a reality for the people. That kind of mandate is different and hence we would work together to make it happen. I would like to have an integrated presence at all levels meaning not only here in Juba but also in the states and the county levels so that we all work in the same premises and we work together so that the arms of the security and the political works with the development arm. Of course in same cases the humanitarians would want to operate separately and that is a different story and I fully respect those principles of impartiality and neutrality – that’s a different story. But the development side of the equation, we would like to work together. I am seeing the UN Country Team tomorrow, I think, and we would have our first meeting then and we would then start our discussions on how we can do this together. Of course the basis of our work is the South Sudan Development Plan. The Government has already developed it – I think it has four or five pillars – and we would look at how we can support that development plan and make the very ambitious plans, at least from the draft that I saw, a reality for the South Sudanese people.
Sudan Catholic Radio Network: You talked about consolidating peace. We have the two armed movements of George Athor and Peter Gadet so how do you see the plans for consolidating peace worked out?
Ms. Johnson: This is one of the key missions of the new Mission. It is going to be working with the groups and seeing what could be done to bring more unity in South Sudan. I think the signals we heard from the President on 9th July were extremely positive – multi-party, multi-ethnic, multi-everything – and the signals on inclusiveness were strong. I think the critical issue that remains is how we make that happen in reality so that peace and security can be achieved in South Sudan. The Mission, clearly, would have an important role in doing so. We have a strong political mandate from the Security Council; we have Political Affairs and Civil Affairs that work on conflict mitigation. They have already been doing that for the last six years to some extent in relation to the groups you have been talking about. Now we have a stronger mandate to be able to engage even more systematically in this way and we are intending to do so. How we all do it, I would not talk about at this press conference, and we would both need time to work it out but we also need to have the possibility of doing this more discretely than flagging it to the press.
AFP: How long would the peacekeeping force be operating in South Sudan?
Ms. Johnson: The peacekeeping operation is going to be renewed on an annual basis. Clearly this is not a situation where you have an end-date such as the CPA. We are going to work on what we call “benchmarks” that the Security Council will agree upon that we would like to see achieved as to when the Mission has completed its mission and can exit. So it is the achievement of the benchmarks when the Mission would be deemed no longer necessary is when the Mission leaves. Of course, I don’t think one foresees that this would be a timeframe of ten years. It would be a renewal annually and it is quite clear that it would have a limited timeframe. In the Resolution it does not state a maximum number of years but I wouldn’t assume that it would last for longer than the previous mission. What we are doing then is to go to the Security Council every year with the deliverables of the Mission and of the Government of South Sudan against the benchmarks and they would give us new instructions and new guidance on what they expect from us the next year. And then we would have an idea of when it is time for the Mission to exit and, hopefully, we would be able to see a situation in five years or so, without prejudging any outcome, where we would no longer be necessary as a presence.
Reuters: Clearly there is a sense of how big a task this is trying to build this country from scratch. How can you work to build these institutions and capacities of government and how would that be different than has been done in the past?
Ms. Johnson: I think the difference is from being an autonomous regional government to running your own country is a beginning. And I think the UN Country Team has done some solid preparatory work in this area before Independence Day through preparing, together with the regional partners, what we call the “core functions of the state”. There has been a whole process of dialogue and cooperation between development partners, UN agencies in particular, and government and regional partners in supporting the core functions of the state. One of the things that has been done already is to use personnel that have executive experience from other countries to support government ministries and core state institutions in South Sudan to help them function. This has been done with great success, for example, in Mozambique after the civil war in 1992 and in a few other countries like Botswana after independence also where you had experts that had executive experience in other countries deployed and assist here. This is one of the areas where I know the IGAD countries have prepared to send their staff and I know other UN agencies – I think it is UNDP in particular – are prepared to do so. That’s one way of doing this.
I think the other areas of development, and here I would refer to the situation in South Sudan, are critical areas of development for people: basic social services, and infrastructure. We heard in the President’s speech on the 9th of July that basic social services and public services as one of the key deliverables of the new Republic. This is going to be absolutely fundamental. South Sudanese out there need to feel a change that education is coming, that there are health and clinics coming, that there are health services available, that there are roads coming, that there is water. These critical, essential basic services are going to be absolutely fundamental for the credibility of the Government and the development agencies. And I think that taking these services to scale is going to be the biggest challenge we’re facing, apart from the security one.
The Mission itself will not be engaging in providing water, education and health. We can just be enabling in terms of providing the enabling environment for that to happen, and we can also provide the basis in the rural areas through our decentralized presence with the communities so that more can be done in the rural areas for the people who need it the most. It’s going to be a huge challenge for the development actors and for the Government to make this happen.
But it has been done before, so I think that learning also from other countries that have successfully scaled up basic social services in a post-conflict, post-independence period is going to be critical so I think those are the two main issues that I would like to focus on.
Sudan Radio Service: Does UNMISS have a mandate to investigate what happened in South Sudan during the CPA interim period? And what is the cost of the new mission?
Ms. Johnson: Okay, very quickly, on your question of investigating what happened under the interim period, no, that is not part of our mandate. I think, instead of looking at the past, we should look at the future. And what we have been given is a new mandate from the Security Council with a new approach, and we are intending to work differently. And so this implies both the way we engage with the communities as well as the way we tackle the security challenges. It is going to be very challenging, but this is our intention and I think I answered other questions related to how this would be done previously.
And in terms of the budget, we’re still working our way through that, and there are tentative figures out there. I can’t give you a firm figure now because it depends quite a lot on how we structure the Mission. The tentative calculations that have been flying around have been in the order of eight to nine hundred million dollars. That again is very tentative, and it has not been finalized, so it is not a firm figure that can be written down as the budget for the Mission. That will have to wait until everything is clarified in terms of structure and our budgetary process has gone through its necessary phases. And of course it is the General Assembly that ultimately decides on the budget.
Bloomberg News: I’m kind of wondering what your thoughts are on the UN’s relationship with the press. It seems like when you go in the front door and ask them to tell you what is going on, they’ll never do it on the record. So you have go through the back door and try to get reports. I’m wondering if you think the UN should be more open about what goes on.
Ms. Johnson: Well, I think I need to learn more about what policies have been in place and what policies traditionally are in place in peacekeeping missions before I can answer your question properly. There will always be reports that are confidential and there will be reports that are available for the public, and that distinction will have to be there. Now whether one has been leaning more towards keeping things more confidential than necessary, I will have to look at personally since I’m not in a position at the moment to make that judgment. I might lean towards making more things available, I might not. It depends entirely on the policy so I don’t think I can give you a very satisfactory answer at this stage.
I need to look at what they did before and what we then would like to do in this new Mission. So I’ll have to revert on that a little bit later, I think.
The Citizen: If the government of South Sudan writes a letter to you saying it wants to disarm this community, what will you do? Because if they go alone on their own, they will kill particular communities, It happened in Jonglei when they closed the area and they informed the UN and the UN accepted not to fly there. It happened in the Shilluk area where the whole area was closed from the UN. What will you do in that situation if they inform you they want to (unintelligible) this area.
Ms. Johnson: I think the critical issue here is having a full disarmament strategy and plan that we work out together with the Government, and have that plan and strategy developed in a way that implies that we will deliver on the disarmament on a number of SPLA. And in relation to specific requests, I’m not in a position to give you a concrete answer because those issues need to be managed on a case-by-case basis. However, what is clear is that the principle of the UN is to do disarmament on a voluntary basis and provide incentives for disarmament rather than force. Now that is the principle for the UN’s operation, and hopefully we can agree with the government on a disarmament policy and disarmament strategy, but deliver on this in a way that implies the release of arms on a voluntary basis and avoid conflict situations like the one you are hinting at.
ENDS
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