I just saw the documentary based on Gen. Romeo Dallaire’s book Shake Hands with the Devil.
For those who don’t know, Dallaire was the general who headed up UN forces in Rwanda during the genocide. He had the chance to stop it before it started and the UN said no, followed by the rest of the international community. He was left watching over a stadium acting as a secure area, which became a UN death camp, an insanely vulnerable base of operations and Peacekeepers who were killed because he couldn’t stop it.
Eventually he had a breakdown and was relieved. He came back to Canada and was found passed out drunk under a park bench several weeks after getting back. He was suicidal and suffering from post traumatic stress order. He was then attacked for his decisions and inability to do anything during the massacre.
I read his book when it came out last year, and the documentary on the CBC tonight reminded me of it. Anyways, read it if you can, catch the doc if you can, certainly made me change my opinion of the UN and it is embarassing for the wealthier nations of the world.
I’m not sure what your opinion of the UN was before this eye-opener but I’m guessing that it has come down in your estimation. Certainly this looks like the kind of thing the UN ought to be able to prevent.
One thing to remember in criticising the organisation is that the UN is not like a country or a government with a clear and stable leadership free to act as it pleases, have policies and act on them. The Security Council is the arm of the UN specifically charged with preventing situations like this getting out of hand. It consists of 5 permanent members (China, France, Russia, USA, UK) and 10 elected members who come and go. It’s resolutions are binding on all members, unlike the resolutions of the more democratic General Assembly, but the catch is that each permanent member has a power of veto. Put bluntly, unless you can convince each of the big five, and three other temporary members out of ten, nothing happens. So, instead of criticisng the UN for inactivity, you really need to look on a case by case basis at what was proposed and who blocked it. Obviously, if the warning signs were clear and unambiguous and nothing was proposed, the whole security council is culpable. But if action is proposed and it fails to get a majority, those who vote against are to be blamed. If, as often happens, something sensible is proposed and gets a majority but one or two permanent members veto it, those countries are to be held responsible.
Well, it’s more complex than that, but blaming the UN is, in my experience, very often done in ignorance of how hamstrung the organisation is by its charter.
No, I know how the organization works, and like it or not, the UN runs according to its Charter, to say the UN is fine but the Charter is rotten is a funny way to look at it. I believe the case is damning, and not only for the inaction. Why were Belgians allowed to make up the major part of the force in Rwanda? The case is a series of stupid moves by the UN (but not only the UN).
Sorry to tell you what you already know. It wasn’t clear from your original post. A lot of people criticise the UN because it doesn’t act like a government and doesn’t act consistently when it simply can’t do either.
I know only too well what happened in Rwanda but I’ve never studied the decisons, or decision failures, that led up to that farcial situation. I’ll check them out. I’ve heard the line you’re running before but just haven’t got around to checking the facts.
No apology necessary Wombat, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I don’t claim to be an expert on the UN and after reading this book, Gen. Dallaire’s anger has admittedly rubbed off on me. I’m not someone who would advocate the immediate destruction of the UN, just someone who recognizes that the organization is not helped by processes and members with conflicting interests.
One of the better parts in the documentary was when Dallaire went back to visit the UN Base in the country and was told at the gate that they had not heard he was back. He waited outside for an hour while they decided whether he was clear to come in, he said “This is basically the UN in a nutshell.”
Genocide is one topic I study and try to keep up with. I had a chapter on it in a book I wrote last year and Rwanda was one case I looked into in detail. But my focus was on local causes rather than on the failure of outsiders to prevent it. If you want to get angry and stay angry, just keep studying genocide. There is so much of it; it’s really hard to keep up.
I wonder if reform of the UN or replacement with another organisation would help here. I wonder if it would be even possible. Having permanent members of the Security Council at all seems a bit weird and giving them a veto seems just mad. But there’s not much point having a game unless the big powers play and they certainly won’t play on democratic terms—whether each nation has an equal say or a nation’s position depends on the size of its population.
A quick look at the facts of this case leave me a bit unsure of who was to blame. Certainly, information about the impending genocide got out at least 3 months before it happened. In the meantime the Rwandan government were, if I’m not mistaken, appointed to the security council. Since France was arming Rwanda, they had to know about what was being planned and they are a permanent member of the security council. Requests to help were stonewalled, in one instance by Kofi Annan—why I’m not sure—and repeatedly by the security council who met in secret so we can’t be entirely sure what was said. There is no way they could possibly not have known in advance unless France kept information from the rest, but their failure to act after the genocide began makes it look like they had no intention of acting anyway. The US and UK joined together in denying that what was happening was genocide. Why? Apparently, the Belgian Government chickened out when their soldiers started to die. OK, we at last have one action which we can at least explain.
It seems to me that everyone I’ve named is to some extent responsible. A conspiracy to prevent intervention makes each nation on the security council guilty of abetting genocide as far as I can tell, unless they tried and failed to get action to be taken. I think we can be fairly sure that none of the permanent mebers can have tried very hard, if at all.
The UN is actually having some success in legally trying perpetrators of genocide. Not a lot, nowhere near as much as we’d like, but some. So that is one way in which it its existence is justified. UNESCO and so on are others of course although, having been a consultant for them, I can report that there’s plenty of room for improvement.
I wish we could actually hold nations accountable for debacles like this in much the same way as we try to bring the perpetrators to justice. But how could this be arranged? Clearly all the nations I mentioned were signatories to the Genocide Convention and all failed to do their duty. But what is the alternative? One (or two) rogue powers rushing around playing vigilante? That’s perhaps more frightening than doing nothing but that seems to be where we are headed, or perhaps where we already are.
The UN is nothing but a venue for the nations of the world to talk to each other, and occassionally take collective action.
Cursing “the UN” for doing or not doing something is silly; ultimately, there’s no such thing.
The peacekeepers in Rwanda were refused permission to act because the governments which sent them there–which includes Canada, Dallaire’s employer–didn’t want them to do anything that would draw these nations any further into the conflict.