Delegation from the Republic of Ecuador

Position Paper for the Security Council

The topics before the Security Council (SC) are Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflicts, The Situation
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and The Use of Robust Mandates in Peacekeeping. The
Republic of Ecuador is convinced of the high importance of these issues and of the need to address
them at an international level and is therefore looking forward to the upcoming conference.

I. Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflicts

Although the protection of civilians (POC) has long been addressed by the United Nations (UN) and the
SC, this goal has not been satisfactorily reached. To cite one particularly troubling event, according to
the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), at least 6919 civilians have
perished in the Russia-Ukraine conflict by the end of 2022, including 429 children. In the Butcha
massacre alone, 419 people were killed by Russian soldiers, almost all of them innocent civilians. The
worrying fact that children and women are among the victims highlights the importance of specifically
addressing the protection of vulnerable groups in armed conflicts at an international level. The Republic
of Ecuador is concerned about the cruel events in Ukraine and the fatal situation for civilians in other
military conflicts worldwide and is dedicated to improving the situation and the protection of civilians.

The international legal basis for the topic was laid with the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the
Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War (1949), which has been ratified by all UN member states.
It lists the various dimensions of the POC, from the sparing of physical violence to humane treatment
and the preservation of honor. Interestingly, the convention defines war merely as the state of a present
armed conflict which the parties involved do not necessarily have to acknowledge as a war, like it is the
case in the ongoing war of Russia on the Ukraine. In the SC, the issue was brought into focus by SC
Resolution 1265 on the “Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflicts” (1999) and subsequently efforts were
made to examine the effects of UN peacekeeping missions on the civilian population in detail. With SC
Resolutions 1325 (2000) and 1612 (2005), special focus was placed on the protection of children and
women. Ecuador supports these resolutions and advocates strict respect for human rights. Therefore,
it condemns Russia's inhumane treatment of Ukrainian civilians by supporting the General Assembly
Resolution A/ES-11/L.2 (2022) on “Humanitarian consequences of the aggression against Ukraine”.

Ecuador is convinced that only through the resolute processing of violations against the POC in times
of war the member countries of the UN can be pressured into consistent compliance with international
law. To this end, the security and access of aid workers and fact-finding missions to the civilian
population in crisis areas must be ensured. Since experience has shown that this is not always the case,
the SC should collect data on possible obstacles in this regard and urge and remind all member
countries to promote, not hinder, the implementation of humanitarian and medical assistance missions.
In addition, measures beyond mortalities should be implemented to provide additional resources to
address the circumstances of violence against civilians. Especially for vulnerable groups such as
children, the effects of war are particularly diverse and formative for their futures, ranging from
educational deficits to physical development arrears and mental illnesses such as long-term trauma.
Even though Ecuador is fundamentally convinced of the benefits of peacekeeping missions, it identifies
shortcomings in standardized assessments of the multimodal impact of UN peacekeeping missions on
civilians, especially vulnerable groups, and calls for new parameters to measure the impact of missions.
Thereby and through increased transparency, it may be possible to increase the efficiency and success
of peace missions in the future and thus to encourage contributing countries to support them financially.

II. The Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Since the declaration of independence in 1960, the DRC has already been rocked by the first and second
Congo war, and the tense and politically unstable situation seems to have no end. In the east of the
country, a now deep-rooted conflict between paramilitary groups such as the March 23 Movement (M23)
and the Armed Forces of the DRC is simmering, with terrible consequences for the civilian population.
According to the Report of the SC Secretary-General just in the period from September to November
2022, 346 persons were victims of alleged extrajudicial and summary killings, including 51 women and
17 children. Additionally, due to the persisting violence and insecurity, the United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Action estimated that nearly six million people are currently internally
displaced within the DRC, more than in any other country in the world. Ecuador is therefore deeply
concerned about ensuring the basic human rights of these people and therefore seeks to work with the
international community to provide effective support and solutions.

As a member of the UN and the African Union, the DRC is in the precarious position of being legally
bound by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the African Charter on Human and
Peoples' Rights of 1986, whose human rights standards the DRC cannot meet due to the unstable
political and economic situation. To ensure peace and the long-term stabilization of democratic political
institutions, the Security Council established with the resolution 1925 (2010) the United Nations
Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), currently
covers nearly 20,000 Blue Helmet troops and massive financial investments. In the context of the recent
violence in 2022, the Nairobi and Luanda processes were created to negotiate between the DRC's
official army and the armed Congolese groups with the intention of integrating them into the national
program for disarmament and demobilization. Ecuador supports these efforts as well as the continuation
of the MONUSCO mandate, although it acknowledges that the issue could not yet be satisfactorily
addressed and that further new strategies and approaches need to be developed.

Therefore, Ecuador pleads that the first step is to re-establish humanitarian corridors in the conflict areas
to ensure the safety of UN institutions and their staff as well as other humanitarian workers. To this end,
the conflict parties should enter into close consultation with local UN agencies and the involvement of
the Catholic Church as a mediator with good network in even inaccessible areas should be considered.
In a further step, the training of the Congolese police and military should be intensified to prepare a
perspective withdrawal of MONUSCO. Furthermore, Ecuador advocates that the SC call on all countries
in the region to use all means available to them to urge an immediate cessation of hostilities in the DRC
and to recognize the democratic and rule-of-law structures. In addition, all support to non-state armed
actors must be stopped and the SC should impose sanctions on the responsible organizations and
countries if support is suspected. Especially in view of the upcoming election in December 2023, the
situation in Congo must be placed in the focus of the international community to ensure an orderly and
democratic election process to enable the stabilization and further development of the DRC.

III. The Use of Robust Mandates in Peacekeeping

Since the first UN peacekeeping mission in 1948 monitored the armistice between Israel and its Arab
neighbors, the requirements for peacekeeping missions have expanded considerably. They are now
expected to support law enforcement, promote disarmament, demobilization and to ensure the POC.
For this very purpose, peacekeepers should not only enter existing conflicts reactively as in the past,
but also proactively prevent them in the sense of the Responsibility to Protect principle (R2P) to avoid
atrocities like in Srebrenica 1995. Ecuador is convinced that robust mandates for UN peacekeeping
missions are necessary for the new, multimodal requirements profile and is committed to the
development of new strategies to increase the effectiveness of the missions.

The legal basis for armed peacekeeping missions was laid in 1948 in Article 42 of Chapter VII of the
Charter of the UN. In the following years, the basis and requirements of peacekeeping missions were
constantly expanded and principles such as R2P (2001) and the Kigalie Principles on the Protection of
Civilians (2015) were developed by UN member states as guidelines for the objectives of UN
peacekeeping missions. Ecuador considers the inclusion of women and the youth in Resolution 1325
(2000) and Resolution 2250 (2015) to be a particularly important step in the direction of robust
mandates, as this is where great potential for lasting peace lies. With the support of the General
Assembly Declaration of Shared Commitments on UN Peacekeeping Operations (2018) Ecuador
recently endorsed its conviction of the importance of peacekeeping missions and the need to strengthen
them.

Ecuador is committed to collecting more precise data on obstacles to the peacekeeping mission during
the planning and execution of the missions. Through better data, the potentially obstructive influence of
stakeholders such as third countries on the peace process can be disclosed and potential disruptive
obstacles can be removed. In addition, the monitoring structures for mission objectives should be
expanded to constantly assess the progress and efficiency of the mission. To adapt to the multimodal
possibilities of digitalization in peacekeeping missions, a common data and digitalization strategy should
be established, and innovative, data-driven, and tech-enabled peacekeeping should be promoted.