India asks UN to ensure safety of peacekeepers after losing two more men in blue beret

Shishupal Singh and Sanwala Ram Vishnoi were the 176th and 177th Indians to lay down lives fighting for peace in faraway lands.

The two head constables of the Border Security Force (BSF) were killed on Tuesday – not while guarding the borders of India, but while building peace in conflict-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They were killed by a frenzied mob that stormed into a United Nations facility at Butembo in the Central African nation. They were among nearly 18000 UN personnel deployed in the DRC for the MONUSCO – the international organization’s peacekeeping mission in the country.

New Delhi’s diplomatic mission in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, on Wednesday demanded that the attackers should be swiftly brought to justice.

India has been a leading contributor of troops to UN peacekeeping missions, having deployed more than a quarter million troops in as many as 49 missions around the world so far.

The nation has lost 177 of its military and police personnel who were deployed in peacekeeping missions, with Singh and Vishnoi being the latest.

New Delhi has since long been arguing at the UN forums that the peacekeeping missions should be given clear, focused, sequenced, prioritized and practically achievable mandates. India has also been insisting that the mandates should be matched by adequate resources for the peacekeeping missions.

Singh and Vishnoi were among nearly 2000 military and police personnel India contributed to the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo. Their mortal remains will soon be brought back home, for their bereaved families to perform the last rites – respectively at Sikar and Barmer in Rajasthan.

India at present has over 5500 men and women in blue beret deployed in nine of the 12 ongoing peacekeeping missions of the UN.

The protesters, who killed the two Indian and a Moroccan peacekeepers at Butembo on Tuesday, allegedly included the local militiamen as well as the activists of the youth wing of the DRC’s ruling Union for Democracy and Social Progress led by the country’s President Felix Tshisekedi. They were demanding a faster exit of the UN from the DRC, alleging that the international organization’s peacekeeping mission had proved to be ineffective in protecting civilians from conflicts.

The UN has been scaling down MONUSCO after the 2018 elections in the DRC. The conflict, however, escalated again over the past couple of years, with over a hundred militant organizations fighting against each other as well as against the government for control over the mineral-rich eastern region of the country.

India’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN argued during a meeting of the Security Council on Wednesday that it was important to set clear benchmarks and criteria for an exit strategy for the peace-building missions of the international organizations.

“Safety and security of peacekeepers should be an utmost priority for all of us,” Saurabh Kumar, Secretary at the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), told the UN Security Council on July 12 last. When the (Security) Council decides the crafting of peacekeeping mandates, we need to keep that cardinal principle in our minds. We cannot let the bearers of the blue flag be exposed to harm’s way, without providing them the necessary resources needed to tackle such threats.”