Preview

Failure/Successes of the United Nations

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
552 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Failure/Successes of the United Nations
FAILURE OF UN Failure to prevent the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which resulted in the killings of nearly a million people, due to the refusal of security council members to approve any military action.
• Failure by MONUC (UNSC Resolution 1291) to effectively intervene during the Second Congo War, which claimed nearly five million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 1998-2002, and in carrying out and distributing humanitarian aid.
• Failure to intervene in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, despite the fact that the UN designated Srebrenica a "safe haven" for refugees and assigned 600 Dutch peacekeepers to protect it.
• Failure to successfully deliver food to starving people in Somalia; the food was instead usually seized by local warlords. A U.S./UN attempt to apprehend the warlords seizing these shipments resulted in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu.
• Failure to implement the provisions of UN Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1701 calling for disarmament of Lebanese paramilitary groups such as Fatah and Hezbollah.
• Sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers. In December 2004, during the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, at least 68 cases of alleged rape, prostitution and pedophilia and more than 150 other allegations have been uncovered by UN investigators, all perpetrated by UN peacekeepers, specifically ones from Pakistan, Uruguay, Morocco, Tunisia, South Africa and Nepal. Peacekeepers from three of those nations are also accused of obstructing the investigation.[
• Also, a French UN logistics expert in Congo was charged of rape and child pornography in the same month. The BBC reported that young girls were abducted and raped by UN peacekeepers in Port-au-Prince. Similar accusations have been made in Liberia and in Sudan. Yes. Almost everyone agrees that the UN ought to be reformed. The difference is just what type of reforms are needed.
Security Council- the SC permanent 5 members who have veto power (P5) are a throwback from 1945, and no longer

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    ^ Democratic Republic of the Congo. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (April 2006). Retrieved on 2008-04-27. The IRC Welcomes New U.S. Law on Congo. International Rescue Committee (January 5, 2007). Retrieved on 2008-04-27.…

    • 12427 Words
    • 50 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Human Rights Dbq Analysis

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages

    To elaborate, despite the UN’s clear outline as to what constitutes a genocide, the UN refused to provide help to the Cambodians who were being “...executed in the hundreds of thousands…” due to the fact that they were considered “intellectuals” (Doc 4). This illustrates how the UN disregarded their proclamation of what defines a genocide, and would not react against the apparent human-right violations, as well as the mass killings caused by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Furthermore, the UN would not intervene with the Rwandan genocide, in which Hutu extremists brutally slaughtered the majority of the Tutsi population; the UN decided to “[not] reinforce the small and lightly armed UN blue helmets already in Rwanda…”(Doc 7). The withdrawal of funds and supportive equipment for the Rwandan UN soldiers goes to show that the UN refused to acknowledge the atrocious genocide that was taking place in Rwanda. It also illustrates that the United Nations acted as more of a peanut gallery by pleading ignorance than a peace group that halts genocidal…

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    United Nations Department of Public Information, 50 Years of United Nations Peacekeeping Opeations, Panel Discussion (United Nations Headquarters, 11 June 1998),…

    • 2704 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In the course of a hundred days in 1994, over 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed in the Rwandan genocide. It was the fastest, most efficient killing spree of the twentieth century. My thesis is that the international community utterly failed to prevent and stop this atrocity. I will focus on numerous interconnected aspects that led to international inaction and also on the main actors, Belgium, the United Nations Secretariat, the United States and France, that knew that there was genocide underway in Rwanda - therefore, they had a responsibility to prevent and stop the genocide, but lacked political will. This led to inaction at the level of the Security Council (SC), where member states fixated on the ongoing civil war rather than discussing the genocide, which would have required them to act under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948, article 5)1. Finally, it will be shown that this international letdown had dreadful consequences for the United Nations Assistance Mission For Rwanda (UNAMIR), which, with neither adequate resources nor mandate, became an eyewitness to the extermination.…

    • 3465 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Kurdish Genocide

    • 1569 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The genocide of the Kurdish population in the northern portion of Iraq by Saddam Hussein and…

    • 1569 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Child Soldiers Inhumane

    • 1117 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Sexual violence and abuse is very common in most countries. But many of these child soldiers are very venerable to these sexual situations. Rape at such a young age can cause mental and physical trauma the rest of their lives. 30% of child soldiers are girls. These girls are usually used for sexual purposes, and are very often used as commanders or leaders wives. In Rwanda rape has been used as a weapon to destroy community ties or are used to start conflict. These poor children are extremely venerable to these situations. Soldiers and marines have been extremely troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them and in some cases they were placing them as commanders of villages. We also do very little to interfere with these situations. Not every country is as privileged as the United States, thus making sexual acts such as rape, forced marriage and molestation very common in these poverty filled…

    • 1117 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    We think that communism and fascism represented something new in history because they caused tens of millions of deaths and had totalitarian ideologies that censored all dissent. We forget that tens of millions of Africans had already died under colonial rule. Colonialism could also be a totalitarian – what, after all, was more so than a forced labor system? Censorship was tight: an African in the Belgian Congo had no more chance of advocating freedom in the local press than a dissident in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Colonialism was also justified by an elaborate ideology, embodied in everything from Kipling’s poetry and Stanley’s lectures to sermons and books about the shapes of skulls, lazy natives, and the genius of European civilization. And to speak, as Leopold’s officials did, of forced laborers as libertés, or “liberated men”, was to use language as perverted as that above the gate at Auschwitz,…

    • 9124 Words
    • 37 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    On April 7, 1994, around 3,000 Tutsis sought safety at the base of a Belgian contingent in Kigali, “but after 10 commandos were killed by forces from Rwanda's regular army, Belgium decided to pull its troops out. The Tutsis were left with no protection, and thousand were slaughtered on April 11 on a hillside called Nyanza” (Corbett). Through this devious act, it shows the world governments arrogance and apathy surrounding Rwanda, effortlessly abandoning 3000 innocent civilians, soon to die. An example of the lack of efficiency is when “the Security Council later voted in mid-May to send 5,000 troops back to Rwanda after reports that the genocide spread. However, by the time the force returned, the genocide had long been over” (Ilibagiza). Due to lack of coordination and orderliness, it created a bubble in which the productivity in the UN was not present leading to a capsize in military force and in Tutsi population. Towards the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide “Major international leaders were ready to collaborate with the common goal of evacuating their own citizens and expatriate employees, but they refused any joint intervention to save Rwandan lives”. The response to the Rwandan genocide was quite disgraceful because those who are meant to preserve and protect human dignity put…

    • 1536 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Most of the world stood still during the genocide in Rwanda. The international community utterly failed to prevent and stop this atrocity. There are numerous interconnected factors that led to international community for not getting involved because the US did not have a lot to gain by intervening, the US would be doing it for the people and unfortunately that's not how the world works. The United Nations did have a small factor in Rwanda at the time of the genocide, the problem was that they did not send enough troops to be a substantial force, and they were not given the power to shoot. Belgian troops were the first ones to be killed by the militia. The murder of 10 Belgian soldiers promoted many countries to get their own citizens out.…

    • 159 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Best Essays

    Rape has always been apart of war, but during the Congo wars, it was used to strike fear and obedience into those of rural tribes, it is about showing terror. Rape was used mostly by rebel militia’s, but has been used by the pro-Kabila militaries and by the United Nations Peacekeepers as well. Rape is so wide spread that it has a normal occurrence in the Congo and affects everyone involved. It is one of the first places where rape has been used as an act of war, instead of an act of just fulfilling one’s pleasures. Many of those that have been raped are considered “unclean” and no longer suitable for marriage. Some, just to make ends meet, have given their lives to prostitution, selling themselves for a mere $1 to UN Peacekeepers. Wherever you look in the DRC, widespread poverty and poor living conditions follow. These people do not have the ability to take matters into their own hands to fix their problems. Their lifestyles are a direct effect of others who did take matters into their own hands, and they have to suffer for…

    • 2887 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    Uganda-Rwanda Genocide

    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Many people around the world are criticizing the United Nations for not preventing or stopping the devastating genocide that happened in Rwanda during 1994. The United Nations tried to mediate a cease-fire and bring peace to Rwanda, but it didn’t work out successfully. The main reason why UN was poorly equipped and insufficient, UN responded too late and Rwanda refused the UN’s support.…

    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    president, Bill Clinton, decided that it was best for America to not get involved. Also they did not want to deem the Rwandan genocide a “Genocide” because U.S. credibility would diminish if they don’t intervene a “Genocide” (“endgenocide.org”). The international leaders also wanted to keep to themselves, afraid to challenge the genocidal government (“endgenocide.org”). When they chose to step in and play their part, no one cared and the killing did not cease. The United Nations sent in a big group of peacekeepers into Rwanda, trying to make a difference, but it was no use (“Rwandan: how it happened”). The peacekeepers failed their mission and had to return, Rwanda was left in a mess. Shortly after the genocide concluded, the U.S. created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda(ICTR) to bring the ones who were responsible to justice("endgenocide.org”). In Rwanda, a court system of Gacaca was used to deal with accused and led to 1.2 million cases being tried (“endgenocide.org”). Rwanda suffered three month of destruction, of the same mistake the world once have made and forbid to make again, it suffered a genocide. The Rwandan Genocide, a mass killing that the world’s best peacekeepers could not stop and a event that shared similarities as it’s…

    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The UN failed to respond to the Rwandan genocide. The Rwandan genocide was the slaughter of about 800,000-1,000,000 people during a period of a hundred days from April to July of 1994. The slaughters were carried out by mainly two Hutu militia groups, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi . The Rwandan genocide is not only important because of the number of people who died, but also because of the way many Western countries responded to the genocide. The United Nations did not authorize a relief mission to aide and to stop the killing. The UN were forbidden from engaging the militias or discharging their weapons, except in self-defense. The UN also did not respond to…

    • 1103 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hotel Rwanda

    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages

    During the atrocities, instead of helping, all of the United Nations officials are called back and the European guests and staffs are being evacuated from Rwanda. Rwanda was left to solve its problem without any help. This…

    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    2. How and why did the international community respond or not respond and what influence did that have on the genocide?…

    • 6594 Words
    • 20 Pages
    Good Essays