[Congressional Bills 106th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 4453 Introduced in House (IH)]







106th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 4453

  To encourage the establishment of a United Nations Rapid Deployment 
                       Police and Security Force.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                              May 15, 2000

Mr. McGovern (for himself, Mr. Porter, and Mrs. Morella) introduced the 
 following bill; which was referred to the Committee on International 
                               Relations

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
  To encourage the establishment of a United Nations Rapid Deployment 
                       Police and Security Force.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``United Nations Rapid Deployment 
Police and Security Force Act of 2000''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    The Congress finds the following:
            (1) United States Presidential Decision Directive 71 calls 
        for a stronger United States response to maintaining order in 
        societies recovering from conflict. It aims to improve 
        coordination of United States efforts and to enhance the 
        ability of other countries, the United Nations, and regional 
        organizations to plan, mount, and sustain operations in support 
        of the rule of law.
            (2) In a press briefing on February 24, 2000, Secretary of 
        State Madeleine Albright stated the following: ``The recent 
        slowness in deploying desperately needed civilian police to 
        Kosovo provides only the latest evidence that present 
        international capabilities are not adequate. And the ongoing 
        deployment of CIVPOL teams to East Timor and Sierra Leone show 
        that the need will not soon diminish. In response, we must 
        recognize that old models of peacekeeping don't always meet 
        current challenges. Peace operations today often require skills 
        that are neither strictly military nor strictly police but, 
        rather, a combination of the two. The international community 
        needs to identify and train units that are able to control 
        crowds, deter vigilante actions, prevent looting and disarm 
        civilian agitators while, at the same time, winning the trust 
        of the communities in which they are deployed.''.
            (3) In his April 2000 report, ``We the Peoples, The Role of 
        the United Nations in the 21st Century'', United Nations 
        Secretary General Kofi Annan states that only member nations of 
        the United Nations can fix the ``structural weakness of United 
        Nations peace operations . . . Our system for launching 
        operations has sometimes been compared to a volunteer fire 
        department, but that description is too generous. Every time 
        there is a fire, we must first find fire engines and the funds 
        to run them before we can start dousing any flames. The present 
        system relies almost entirely on last minute, ad hoc 
        arrangements that guarantee delay, with respect to the 
        provision of civilian personnel even more so than military. 
        Although we have understandings for military standby 
        arrangements with Member States, the availability of the 
        designated forces is unpredictable and very few are in a state 
        of high readiness. Resource constraints preclude us even from 
        being able to deploy a mission headquarters rapidly.''.
            (4) The December 1999 United Nations ``Report on the 
        Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations 
        During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda'' indicates that in April 
        1994, the United Nations Security Council failed to deploy 
        5,500 United Nations peacekeepers to Rwanda within two weeks of 
        the initial violence, thereby allowing the conflict to 
        escalate. The 6-month estimated cost of the deployment would 
        have been $115,000,000. Instead, the genocide consumed 800,000 
        lives along with $2,000,000,000 in humanitarian aid.
            (5) In Srebrenica, Bosnia, on July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb 
        troops forced the retreat of Dutch United Nations peacekeepers 
        who were part of the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and 
        Herzegovina (UNMIBH) from a ``safe haven'', resulting in the 
        massacre of 7,000 Bosnian civilians and expulsion of 40,000 
        Bosnian civilians.
            (6) The United Nations peacekeeping budget estimate for the 
        United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina from July 1, 
        1997, to June 30, 1998, was $165,600,000, while the North 
        Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-sponsored intervention in 
        the Serbian province of Kosovo cost $37,000,000 per day.
            (7) In July 1999, 4,700 civilian police officers were 
        requested to be deployed to the Serbian province of Kosovo but, 
        as of April 17, 2000, the United Nations has deployed only 
        2,901 of the requested police officers, resulting in the 
        breakdown of law and order and the escalation of unrest in 
        Kosovo.
            (8) In May 2000, Revolutionary United Front rebels in 
        Sierra Leone, in violation of the ceasefire and peace accords, 
        captured and held prisoner approximately 500 United Nations 
        Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) peacekeepers. The weapons, 
        equipment, and vehicles of the peacekeepers were also seized. 
        The UNAMSIL force had been deployed too slowly and was 
        undertrained and understaffed, consisting of only 8,700 
        peacekeepers of the 11,000 peacekeepers requested by the United 
        Nations Security Council.
            (9) On February 24, 2000, the United Nations Security 
        Council approved a United States-sponsored proposal to send 
        5,537 troops on an observer mission to the Democratic Republic 
        of the Congo (to be known as the United Nations Organization 
        Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC)), a 
        Republic \1/3\ the size of the United States, to monitor the 
        implementation of the Lusaka accords. However, it will take at 
        least three months to deploy the required forces. On April 25, 
        2000, South African Foreign Minister Dlamini-Zuma urged rapid 
deployment of the troops and stated ``[i]f deployment is very slow [the 
accords] can fall apart . . . The troops should have been deployed a 
long time ago.''.
            (10) The United States has the power in the United Nations 
        Security Council to veto decisions that are not within the 
        national interests of the United States.

SEC. 4. ESTABLISHMENT OF A UNITED NATIONS RAPID DEPLOYMENT POLICE AND 
              SECURITY FORCE.

    (a) Establishment.--The President shall direct the United States 
representative to the United Nations to use the voice, vote, and 
influence of the United States to urge the United Nations--
            (1) to establish a United Nations Rapid Deployment Police 
        and Security Force that is rapidly deployable, under the 
        authority of the United Nations Security Council, and trained 
        to standardized objectives;
            (2) to recruit personnel to serve in this Force; and
            (3) to provide equitable and reliable funding for the 
        United Nations Rapid Deployment Police and Security Force.
    (b) Mission Statement.--The United Nations Rapid Deployment Police 
and Security Force should have a mission statement that provides for 
the following:
            (1) The United Nations Rapid Deployment Police and Security 
        Force will engage in operations when--
                    (A) the United Nations Security Council determines 
                that an imminent threat to the peace requires a 
                preventive deployment of forces and the Security 
                Council deems it as an appropriate response;
                    (B) the United Nations Security Council determines 
                ongoing gross violations of human rights or breaches of 
                the peace require rapid intervention by the 
                international community and the Security Council deems 
                it as an appropriate response;
                    (C) peace has been restored to a region but the 
                rule of law has not yet been reestablished and when 
                national civilian police or United Nations member 
                nations personnel are not available and the Security 
                Council deems it as an appropriate response; or
                    (D) the United Nations Rapid Deployment Police and 
                Security Force can utilize its personnel to help train 
                the military and civilian police of member nations of 
                the United Nations to better participate in 
                international peace operations.
            (2) The United Nations Rapid Deployment Police and Security 
        Force will consist of not more than 6000 personnel who are--
                    (A) placed under the authority of the United 
                Nations Security Council;
                    (B) under the direction of the Secretary General of 
                the United Nations;
                    (C) deployed only by United Nations Security 
                Council resolution;
                    (D) volunteers from United Nations member nations 
                employed directly by the United Nations;
                    (E) trained as a single unit, appropriately 
                equipped, expressly for international peace operations 
                including civilian policing; and
                    (F) rapidly deployable.
            (3) The United Nations Rapid Deployment Police and Security 
        Force will be organized as a sub-department within the United 
        Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations or under the 
        control of the United Nations's Military Staff Committee and 
        will contain personnel trained as military staff officers and 
        civilian police officers to be deployed immediately to a 
        potential conflict area.
            (4) The deployment of the United Nations Rapid Deployment 
        Police and Security Force will be limited to a maximum of 6 
        months, at which time the Police and Security Force would be 
        replaced by personnel supplied by United Nations member 
        nations.
            (5) The basing and infrastructure service of the United 
        Nations Rapid Deployment Police and Security Force will be 
        leased from existing member nations' institutions.

SEC. 5. REPORT ON UNITED NATIONS RAPID DEPLOYMENT POLICE AND SECURITY 
              FORCE.

    Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the 
President shall prepare and transmit to the Congress a report on the 
progress of negotiations with the United Nations and its member nations 
regarding the creation of a United Nations Rapid Deployment Police and 
Security Force described in section 3.

SEC. 6. DEFINITIONS.

    In this Act:
            (1) The term ``international peace operations'' means--
                    (A) any such operation carried out under chapter VI 
                or chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations; 
                and
                    (B) any such United Nations operation that includes 
                civilian policing.
            (2) The term ``rapidly deployable'' refers to the capacity 
        to deploy military or civilian personnel to a region undergoing 
        conflict within 15 days of the enactment of a United Nations 
        Security Council resolution authorizing a deployment.
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