Responsibility of the UN
THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL SHUOLD RECONSIDER ITS NON-INTERVENTIONIST POLICY TO PREVENT GENOCIDES:
At the end of the Second World War, world leaders decided to resurrect the League of Nations with a new name- The United Nations- to avoid further conflicts that might devastate the world as it entered the nuclear era. The Security Council of the UN is responsible for trying to resolve these inter-state and intra-state conflicts. So far, the Security Council has been successful as a mediator in preventing a major world war, but it has witnessed countless conflicts – often, but not always, proxy wars of the two super powers entangled in a ‘cold-war’ and genocides resulting in the death of millions. Since the primary reason for the inability of the Security Council to prevent genocides is its non-interventionist policy, time has come for the UN to reconsider this policy.
The Security Council considers military intervention a violation of international law – despite tolerating numerous such violations by its powerful members, irrespective of a UN mandate- and is reluctant to use force to prevent any atrocity committed by a sovereign state, especially within its own borders. It prefers conflict prevention as the key strategy. And when this strategy fails to prevent conflicts, the Security Council issues warnings to the countries concerned and then imposes arms embargos and economic sanctions. In case of any cease fire agreement between the belligerents, it forms irregular peace-keeping forces- comprising both lightly armed troops and unarmed observers- for particular conflict zones. Although the bulk of the peacekeepers are supplied by poor countries to earn foreign currency, rich and powerful countries also provide manpower. These peacekeepers are usually deployed, when a cease-fire has already been established between the warring parties, to supervise the cease-fire as impartial observers. They are not allowed to use weapons unless they themselves are under attack. But the warring parties are seldom intimidated by warnings and sanctions or even lightly armed peacekeepers. The central African state of Rwanda has paid horribly as a consequence of the failure of this UN policy of non-intervention.
During the 1994 Rwandan civil war, the majority tribe, the Hutus, slaughtered nearly a million civilian Tutsis, within a hundred days, in order to create a “pure Hutu state”. The UN decided not to intervene and prevent the genocide. Moreover, after the killing of ten UN peacekeepers - who had been overseeing a peace treaty between the government and rebel forces - by Rwandan government forces, out of fear for the safety of the peacekeepers, the UN decided to withdraw all of its diplomats and 3000 peacekeeping troops despite repeated warnings from the UN commander in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, about probable consequences. The result is vividly depicted in The Guardian report on April 12, 1994: “A few yards from the French troops, a Rwandan woman was being hauled along the road by a young man with a machete. He pulled at her clothes as she looked at the foreign soldiers in the desperate, terrified hope that they could save her from death. But none of the troops moved. ‘It’s not our mandate,’ said one …The Belgian and French troops are here to get foreigners out…Rwandans, including staff of international organizations, are left to their fate” (Huband). Furthermore, Linda Melvern of The Guardian commented on the 10th anniversary of the genocide, “What we know now is that a corrupt, vicious and violent oligarchy in Rwanda planned and perpetrated the crime of genocide, testing the UN each step of the way. It was convinced that whatever it did, the UN would fail to act. It would also seem that France’s intimate involvement with the Hutu regime only worsened the situation” (2004).
Similarly, the UN failed to prevent the 1995 genocide of Bosnian Muslims by the Serbs in the UN declared ‘safe haven’, Srebrenica, during the Bosnian War. Today, in Sudan, government-sponsored Muslim Arab militias are in the process of ‘cleansing’ a Muslim black minority in the western Darfur area, resulting in a thousand deaths daily. The Sudanese government has also been waging a separate war with Christian rebels from the southern part of the country for the last two decades, which has already caused the deaths of two million people. Although Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, “called on the UN Security Council to issue ‘the strongest warning’ to forces fighting in Sudan to bring an end to the civil war in the south and the crisis in the western Darfur region” (Olivier, 2004), the UN is reluctant to intervene militarily and prevent such a catastrophe. Appalled by the UN reaction to the crisis in Darfur, Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch commented, “The norm of international law is still against intervention, even when a government has forfeited its own claim to legitimacy by committing genocide or ethnic cleansing against its own people…We need military forces that can intervene with heavy infantry to prevent or stop genocides when they begin…we need a world movement to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing, an effort as great as the anti-slavery movement” (2004). Therefore, it has become essential that the UN reconsider its non-interventionist policy to prevent genocide.
Despite repeated UN failures to stop genocide, some observers comment that the UN should continue its current peacekeeping policy of consent of the warring parties, neutrality, and the use of force only in self-defense against any proposals of intervention by multi-lateral forces. A former UN Secretary General, Perez de Cuellar, has characterized peacekeeping “as the opposite of military action against aggression, and non-fighting soldiers of peace as a symbol of international authority providing an honourable alternative to war and a useful pretext for peace” (Currier, 2003). Critics also emphasize conflict prevention strategies since they are less costly options for the international community than military action and reconstruction after a war.
Undoubtedly, conflict prevention by diplomatic means is the best solution; but it requires a consensus among all parties involved, and often reaching a settlement becomes impossible because of adherence to inflexible and unjust demands by the parties. Moreover, according to Stanton, “In Sudan, as in Rwanda, diplomats see their job as ‘conflict resolution.’ Genocide isn’t conflict; it’s one-sided mass murder. Jews had no conflict with the Nazis. Armenians posed no threat to Turks. Tutsis did not advocate mass murder of Rwandan Hutus. Conflict resolution isn’t genocide prevention” (2004). In many such cases, governments themselves are reluctant to save their citizens. As a result, they receive condemnation from the UN Secretary General: “When crimes on such a scale are being committed, and a sovereign state appears unable or unwilling to protect its own citizens, a grave responsibility falls on the international community…” (Olivier, 2004).
However, in many cases, threats of arms embargos and later economic sanctions fail to force such parties to refrain from committing atrocities. In such cases, the UN becomes unable to save innocent civilians despite ‘feeling a grave responsibility’. Therefore, the UN should reconsider its current policy of non-intervention. It should stress saving lives instead of endorsement by the warring factions or oppressive governments. It should be bold enough to intervene militarily when all other options fail.
Some critics argue that interventions could escalate the war, as the UN could appear to take sides. Discussing the future of the UN, Tasos Papadimitriou comments, “I would also argue that we need it (the UN) to be able and willing to intervene - and that does not necessarily or primarily mean the use of armed force - when humanitarian principles are at stake. If we accept that gross and systematic infringement of citizens’ well-being can not be tolerated in the name of national sovereignty, the right to intervene is the logical consequence” (2004). Thus, the UN needs to risk taking the side of the victims of genocide. Such a step will make the UN a target of the oppressors, and will result in loss of UN military personnel, but if the UN wishes to espouse universal human rights, it needs to prove that it is serious in its efforts, even at the cost of the lives of its soldiers.
Nevertheless, some observers think that the UN will still be ineffective even with an interventionist doctrine because of the vested interests of powerful nations. This argument cannot be entirely ruled out. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world; powerful nations will never give up their influence. And since they possess the right to veto any Security Council resolution, hardly any military intervention by the UN will be sanctioned which conflicts with the interests of these nations and their allies. As Papadimitriou comments in his article, “Its (Security Council’s) resolutions quite often have nothing much to do with principle or international law but everything to do with the balance of power within it, being results of intimidation, coercion, bribing and horse-trading” (2004). Therefore, some people advocate abolishing the veto power of the five permanent members. It is a fair proposal, but not compatible with realpolitik. As a pragmatic UN official argued, “the UN, at its best, is a mirror of the world…it is far better to have a world organization anchored in geopolitical reality than one too detached from the verities of global power to be effective (Papadimitriou, 2004).” The war in Iraq has proved that powerful nations will act according to their wishes, with or without any UN mandate, with or without veto power. But on the other hand, not all conflicts are the result of power games between powerful nations. Many are caused by hatred of the ethnicity and religion of others without provocation from foreigners. As Emmanuel Dongola commented in the New York Times, “The genocide happened in Rwanda, but it could have taken place in any of the many pseudo-nation-states that are the legacy of colonialism- states in which the people are more loyal to their ethnic communities than to a faraway central government…” (2004). In such cases, a UN-mandated armed force should intervene and save people from genocide.
It is true that the UN is not a panacea. It is unable to end conflicts where major powers are involved, but it should try to intervene where they are not, where they are merely disinterested because of the strategic unimportance of the conflict area. For such interventions, the UN must form a properly equipped armed force under direct command of the Secretary General of the UN by recruiting volunteer soldiers from member nations.
Because of its non interventionist policy, the UN has lost respect from many member nations, especially from civil-war-torn Africa. One Senegalese commentator lamented in Le Quotidien, “As soon as it was understood that this savagery (in Rwanda) was African, it allowed (Europeans) to pontificate at leisure. How else can one explain the infamous phrase, said to have been uttered by François Mitterrand (then French President) that ‘in those countries, genocide is not very important’” (Diop, 2004). While Stanton commented, “Why, 10 years after Rwanda, has the world reacted so slowly to ethnic cleansing in Darfur? Racism is one reason. African lives still are not seen to equal the value of the lives of Kosovars and other white people, who are inside our circle of moral concern” (2004). Unless this kind of resentment is not mitigated by proper action to prevent genocides, the result might be the demise of the UN, or at least of its Security Council, rendering it irrelevant just like its predecessor, the League of Nations, which was accused of being powerless and restricted only to the discussion of trivial issues like the European railway system even on the very day the Germans attacked Poland and started one of the most devastating wars in history: the Second World War.
Fortunately, Kofi Annan’s ‘strongest warning’ of embargos and sanctions resulted in a peace agreement between the government and the rebels in Sudan. The belligerents agreed to end their conflict by December 31, 2004. However, they have made many such agreements in the last two decades and failed to respect them. There is no guarantee that they will not fail this time. Unless the UN adopts the policy of military intervention to save people, instead of the current policy of only keeping the peace after a cease-fire, it will not gain respect and fear from dogmatic armed groups indifferent to mass murder. A decade after the Rwandan genocide, the crisis at Darfur has presented another opportunity for the UN to make the necessary policy shift. The UN must utilize the opportunity this time and regain respect from its member states, all peace-loving people and the victims of genocides.
References:
Currier, N. (2003). 1988 UN peacekeeping forces: ‘the impartial soldiers.’ UN Chronicle. [online serial], 3. Available: http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2003/issue3/0303p45.asp (November 30, 2004).
Diop, B. B. (April 8, 2004). The world stood by for too long (press review- Le Quotidien, April 6, 2004). The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1187931,00.html (November 30, 2004).
Dongala, E. (April 8, 2004). The world stood by for too long (press review- New York Times, April 6, 2004). The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1187931,00.html (November 30, 2004).
Huband, M. (April 12, 1994). UN troops stand by and watch carnage. The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1186807,00.html (November 30, 2004).
Melvern, L. (April 5, 2004). The west did intervene in Rwanda, on the wrong side. The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1185980,00.html (November 30, 2004).
Olivier, M. & Agencies. (November 18, 2004). Annan urges security council warning on Sudan. The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,14658,1354293,00.html (November 30, 2004).
Papadimitriou, T. (2004). A radical vision for the future of the UN. [online]. Available: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/reform/cluster1/2004/1024radical.htm (November 30, 2004).
Stanton, G. (2004). Bloodbath in the making. [online]. Available: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/sudan/2004/0402bloodbath.htm (November 30, 2004).
At the end of the Second World War, world leaders decided to resurrect the League of Nations with a new name- The United Nations- to avoid further conflicts that might devastate the world as it entered the nuclear era. The Security Council of the UN is responsible for trying to resolve these inter-state and intra-state conflicts. So far, the Security Council has been successful as a mediator in preventing a major world war, but it has witnessed countless conflicts – often, but not always, proxy wars of the two super powers entangled in a ‘cold-war’ and genocides resulting in the death of millions. Since the primary reason for the inability of the Security Council to prevent genocides is its non-interventionist policy, time has come for the UN to reconsider this policy.
The Security Council considers military intervention a violation of international law – despite tolerating numerous such violations by its powerful members, irrespective of a UN mandate- and is reluctant to use force to prevent any atrocity committed by a sovereign state, especially within its own borders. It prefers conflict prevention as the key strategy. And when this strategy fails to prevent conflicts, the Security Council issues warnings to the countries concerned and then imposes arms embargos and economic sanctions. In case of any cease fire agreement between the belligerents, it forms irregular peace-keeping forces- comprising both lightly armed troops and unarmed observers- for particular conflict zones. Although the bulk of the peacekeepers are supplied by poor countries to earn foreign currency, rich and powerful countries also provide manpower. These peacekeepers are usually deployed, when a cease-fire has already been established between the warring parties, to supervise the cease-fire as impartial observers. They are not allowed to use weapons unless they themselves are under attack. But the warring parties are seldom intimidated by warnings and sanctions or even lightly armed peacekeepers. The central African state of Rwanda has paid horribly as a consequence of the failure of this UN policy of non-intervention.
During the 1994 Rwandan civil war, the majority tribe, the Hutus, slaughtered nearly a million civilian Tutsis, within a hundred days, in order to create a “pure Hutu state”. The UN decided not to intervene and prevent the genocide. Moreover, after the killing of ten UN peacekeepers - who had been overseeing a peace treaty between the government and rebel forces - by Rwandan government forces, out of fear for the safety of the peacekeepers, the UN decided to withdraw all of its diplomats and 3000 peacekeeping troops despite repeated warnings from the UN commander in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, about probable consequences. The result is vividly depicted in The Guardian report on April 12, 1994: “A few yards from the French troops, a Rwandan woman was being hauled along the road by a young man with a machete. He pulled at her clothes as she looked at the foreign soldiers in the desperate, terrified hope that they could save her from death. But none of the troops moved. ‘It’s not our mandate,’ said one …The Belgian and French troops are here to get foreigners out…Rwandans, including staff of international organizations, are left to their fate” (Huband). Furthermore, Linda Melvern of The Guardian commented on the 10th anniversary of the genocide, “What we know now is that a corrupt, vicious and violent oligarchy in Rwanda planned and perpetrated the crime of genocide, testing the UN each step of the way. It was convinced that whatever it did, the UN would fail to act. It would also seem that France’s intimate involvement with the Hutu regime only worsened the situation” (2004).
Similarly, the UN failed to prevent the 1995 genocide of Bosnian Muslims by the Serbs in the UN declared ‘safe haven’, Srebrenica, during the Bosnian War. Today, in Sudan, government-sponsored Muslim Arab militias are in the process of ‘cleansing’ a Muslim black minority in the western Darfur area, resulting in a thousand deaths daily. The Sudanese government has also been waging a separate war with Christian rebels from the southern part of the country for the last two decades, which has already caused the deaths of two million people. Although Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, “called on the UN Security Council to issue ‘the strongest warning’ to forces fighting in Sudan to bring an end to the civil war in the south and the crisis in the western Darfur region” (Olivier, 2004), the UN is reluctant to intervene militarily and prevent such a catastrophe. Appalled by the UN reaction to the crisis in Darfur, Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch commented, “The norm of international law is still against intervention, even when a government has forfeited its own claim to legitimacy by committing genocide or ethnic cleansing against its own people…We need military forces that can intervene with heavy infantry to prevent or stop genocides when they begin…we need a world movement to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing, an effort as great as the anti-slavery movement” (2004). Therefore, it has become essential that the UN reconsider its non-interventionist policy to prevent genocide.
Despite repeated UN failures to stop genocide, some observers comment that the UN should continue its current peacekeeping policy of consent of the warring parties, neutrality, and the use of force only in self-defense against any proposals of intervention by multi-lateral forces. A former UN Secretary General, Perez de Cuellar, has characterized peacekeeping “as the opposite of military action against aggression, and non-fighting soldiers of peace as a symbol of international authority providing an honourable alternative to war and a useful pretext for peace” (Currier, 2003). Critics also emphasize conflict prevention strategies since they are less costly options for the international community than military action and reconstruction after a war.
Undoubtedly, conflict prevention by diplomatic means is the best solution; but it requires a consensus among all parties involved, and often reaching a settlement becomes impossible because of adherence to inflexible and unjust demands by the parties. Moreover, according to Stanton, “In Sudan, as in Rwanda, diplomats see their job as ‘conflict resolution.’ Genocide isn’t conflict; it’s one-sided mass murder. Jews had no conflict with the Nazis. Armenians posed no threat to Turks. Tutsis did not advocate mass murder of Rwandan Hutus. Conflict resolution isn’t genocide prevention” (2004). In many such cases, governments themselves are reluctant to save their citizens. As a result, they receive condemnation from the UN Secretary General: “When crimes on such a scale are being committed, and a sovereign state appears unable or unwilling to protect its own citizens, a grave responsibility falls on the international community…” (Olivier, 2004).
However, in many cases, threats of arms embargos and later economic sanctions fail to force such parties to refrain from committing atrocities. In such cases, the UN becomes unable to save innocent civilians despite ‘feeling a grave responsibility’. Therefore, the UN should reconsider its current policy of non-intervention. It should stress saving lives instead of endorsement by the warring factions or oppressive governments. It should be bold enough to intervene militarily when all other options fail.
Some critics argue that interventions could escalate the war, as the UN could appear to take sides. Discussing the future of the UN, Tasos Papadimitriou comments, “I would also argue that we need it (the UN) to be able and willing to intervene - and that does not necessarily or primarily mean the use of armed force - when humanitarian principles are at stake. If we accept that gross and systematic infringement of citizens’ well-being can not be tolerated in the name of national sovereignty, the right to intervene is the logical consequence” (2004). Thus, the UN needs to risk taking the side of the victims of genocide. Such a step will make the UN a target of the oppressors, and will result in loss of UN military personnel, but if the UN wishes to espouse universal human rights, it needs to prove that it is serious in its efforts, even at the cost of the lives of its soldiers.
Nevertheless, some observers think that the UN will still be ineffective even with an interventionist doctrine because of the vested interests of powerful nations. This argument cannot be entirely ruled out. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world; powerful nations will never give up their influence. And since they possess the right to veto any Security Council resolution, hardly any military intervention by the UN will be sanctioned which conflicts with the interests of these nations and their allies. As Papadimitriou comments in his article, “Its (Security Council’s) resolutions quite often have nothing much to do with principle or international law but everything to do with the balance of power within it, being results of intimidation, coercion, bribing and horse-trading” (2004). Therefore, some people advocate abolishing the veto power of the five permanent members. It is a fair proposal, but not compatible with realpolitik. As a pragmatic UN official argued, “the UN, at its best, is a mirror of the world…it is far better to have a world organization anchored in geopolitical reality than one too detached from the verities of global power to be effective (Papadimitriou, 2004).” The war in Iraq has proved that powerful nations will act according to their wishes, with or without any UN mandate, with or without veto power. But on the other hand, not all conflicts are the result of power games between powerful nations. Many are caused by hatred of the ethnicity and religion of others without provocation from foreigners. As Emmanuel Dongola commented in the New York Times, “The genocide happened in Rwanda, but it could have taken place in any of the many pseudo-nation-states that are the legacy of colonialism- states in which the people are more loyal to their ethnic communities than to a faraway central government…” (2004). In such cases, a UN-mandated armed force should intervene and save people from genocide.
It is true that the UN is not a panacea. It is unable to end conflicts where major powers are involved, but it should try to intervene where they are not, where they are merely disinterested because of the strategic unimportance of the conflict area. For such interventions, the UN must form a properly equipped armed force under direct command of the Secretary General of the UN by recruiting volunteer soldiers from member nations.
Because of its non interventionist policy, the UN has lost respect from many member nations, especially from civil-war-torn Africa. One Senegalese commentator lamented in Le Quotidien, “As soon as it was understood that this savagery (in Rwanda) was African, it allowed (Europeans) to pontificate at leisure. How else can one explain the infamous phrase, said to have been uttered by François Mitterrand (then French President) that ‘in those countries, genocide is not very important’” (Diop, 2004). While Stanton commented, “Why, 10 years after Rwanda, has the world reacted so slowly to ethnic cleansing in Darfur? Racism is one reason. African lives still are not seen to equal the value of the lives of Kosovars and other white people, who are inside our circle of moral concern” (2004). Unless this kind of resentment is not mitigated by proper action to prevent genocides, the result might be the demise of the UN, or at least of its Security Council, rendering it irrelevant just like its predecessor, the League of Nations, which was accused of being powerless and restricted only to the discussion of trivial issues like the European railway system even on the very day the Germans attacked Poland and started one of the most devastating wars in history: the Second World War.
Fortunately, Kofi Annan’s ‘strongest warning’ of embargos and sanctions resulted in a peace agreement between the government and the rebels in Sudan. The belligerents agreed to end their conflict by December 31, 2004. However, they have made many such agreements in the last two decades and failed to respect them. There is no guarantee that they will not fail this time. Unless the UN adopts the policy of military intervention to save people, instead of the current policy of only keeping the peace after a cease-fire, it will not gain respect and fear from dogmatic armed groups indifferent to mass murder. A decade after the Rwandan genocide, the crisis at Darfur has presented another opportunity for the UN to make the necessary policy shift. The UN must utilize the opportunity this time and regain respect from its member states, all peace-loving people and the victims of genocides.
References:
Currier, N. (2003). 1988 UN peacekeeping forces: ‘the impartial soldiers.’ UN Chronicle. [online serial], 3. Available: http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2003/issue3/0303p45.asp (November 30, 2004).
Diop, B. B. (April 8, 2004). The world stood by for too long (press review- Le Quotidien, April 6, 2004). The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1187931,00.html (November 30, 2004).
Dongala, E. (April 8, 2004). The world stood by for too long (press review- New York Times, April 6, 2004). The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1187931,00.html (November 30, 2004).
Huband, M. (April 12, 1994). UN troops stand by and watch carnage. The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1186807,00.html (November 30, 2004).
Melvern, L. (April 5, 2004). The west did intervene in Rwanda, on the wrong side. The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1185980,00.html (November 30, 2004).
Olivier, M. & Agencies. (November 18, 2004). Annan urges security council warning on Sudan. The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,14658,1354293,00.html (November 30, 2004).
Papadimitriou, T. (2004). A radical vision for the future of the UN. [online]. Available: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/reform/cluster1/2004/1024radical.htm (November 30, 2004).
Stanton, G. (2004). Bloodbath in the making. [online]. Available: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/sudan/2004/0402bloodbath.htm (November 30, 2004).
posted by Roguentin at 9:53 AM
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Hi,
Here is a good source, Srebrenica Genocide Blog:
http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com
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