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The United Nations structure itself is also partly to blame. It is not efficient in coming to decisions, and there is inner turmoil. The UN hadn’t even sent Dallaire to Rwanda prepared. Major Beardsley, Dallaire’s executive assistant, said “We flew to Rwanda with a Michelin road map, a copy of the Arusha agreement, and that was it. We were under the impression that the situation was quite straightforward: There was one cohesive government side and one cohesive rebel side, and they had come together to sign the peace agreement and had then requested that we come in to help them implement it.”
Also, how odd that none of the United Nations officials at the headquarters in New York gave Dallaire the International Commission of Investigation reports of the malignancy in Rwanda by. One would think that the United Nations would brief their representation in Rwanda as fully as possible. Samantha Power, an expert on genocide, remarked that, “Diplomats are so conditioned to be diplomats that they consistently offer conventional responses in the face of unconventional horrors. The United Nations consists of diplomats who attempt to resolve every issue by talking it over, even when that simply will not work. In addition to this fault, the United Nations is set up as a faultily structured system. The Security Council is the highest political body of the UN, and is made up of many member states, as well as the Permanent Five. Any one country of the Permanent Five (U.S, Britain, France, China, and Russia) has the power to veto the entire rest of the United Nations system. In Rwanda’s case, the United States didn’t want to get involved, (the compassionate Clinton administration insisted that the UN “learn to say no” to chancy or costly missions) and therefore, UNAMIR was almost not created at all. Also, the United Nations doesn’t have any funds or soldiers of its own, only what its’ member states wish to contribute. The United States provides 30% of the United Nations’ budget, and since America didn’t get involved, neither did its funds. Even Kofi Annan, the current Secretary-General of the UN, says, “the United Nations and its members lacked the political will and resources to prevent or stop genocide”, admitting to two of the faults of the organization of which he is the head. And Boutros-Ghali pointed out that “U.N. internal politics were a factor in the failure to act.” To sum it up in the words of L.R. Melvern, “What happened in Rwanda showed that despite the creation of an organization set up to prevent a repetition of genocide – for the UN is central to this task – it failed to do so, even when the evidence was indisputable.”
Dallaire said, “Many fine words have been said by all, including the Security Council, [but] the tangible effort…has been totally, completely ineffective.” The peacekeeping mission in Rwanda was most definitely a failure, but not because of lack of effort or heart on behalf of the blue berets (U.N. peacekeepers) there. The reasons for the failure lie in the United Nations itself, and can be traced back to its headquarters. The decision to issue only a Chapter VI mandate, which was peacekeeping without military involvement or enforcement, stopped progress from being made. The supplies and funds donated were a bare minimum, the perception of the crisis was inaccurate; these facts, as well as the memories of the (brief, and supposed) success of the Arusha Accords and the failure to successfully handle other African crises such as Somalia caused the UN to hesitate and proceed with more caution than was necessary, and, as we see now, prudent.
WORKS CITED
• “The Few Who Stayed; Defying Genocide in Rwanda” American RadioWorks May 2, 2004. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/rwanda/segb7.html
• “Leave None to Tell the Story” Human Rights Watch, April 28, 2004. http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/Geno1-3-01.htm
• Mamdani, Mahmood. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton: Princeton University Press 2001
• Melvern, L.R. A People Betrayed; The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide. New York: ZedBooks Ltd 2000
• Power, Samantha. A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Basic Books 2002
• Prunier, Gerard. The Rwanda Crisis: History of A Genocide. New York: Columbia University Press 1995
• “Triumph of Evil” PBS Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda, April 6, 2004. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/
• “U.N discovers ‘foul up’ in Rwanda Probe” CNN.com, April 8, 2004
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/03/11/un.rwanda.probe.ap/index.html
• “United Nations” United Nations, June 1, 2004
http://www.un.org
• http://history1900s.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reliefweb.int%2Flibrary%2Fnordic%2Findex.html
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