A UNITED NATIONS THAT CAN PREVENT MASS MURDER July 1998
Since 1945, more than one UN Secretary-General and a number of governments have proposed creating a permanent international force to help prevent war, genocide and major human rights violations. Had such a force been dispatched to Rwanda or Bosnia early on, much of the killing might have been prevented and more of those responsible for genocide arrested. Despite this, the UN still has to borrow forces from national armies for peacekeeping. By the time such forces are assembled, hundreds of thousands may have died. You can help us call for a UN force to keep the peace.
Bloody handprints on the walls of Ntarama Church are terrible reminders of the 5,000 children, women and men who were mercilessly macheted to death inside. Within a few weeks in 1994, up to a million people were slaughtered in Rwanda, while the international community just watched.
Are you sickened by these acts of mass murder in Rwanda, Cambodia, the Sudan, Bosnia and so many other places? Do you ever feel frustrated when national leaders condemn official terror yet pretend there's nothing they can do? By making your voice heard today, you can let them know there is something they can do.
Since 1945, more than one UN Secretary-General and a number of governments have proposed creating a permanent international force to help prevent war, genocide and major human rights violations. In 1995 the international Commission on Global Governance, co-chaired by then Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson and former Commonwealth Secretary-General Sir Shridath Ramphal, raised the idea once again. They urged the creation of “a highly trained UN Volunteer Force that is willing, if necessary, to take combat risks to break the cycle of violence at an early stage.”
Had such a force been dispatched to Rwanda or Bosnia early on, much of the killing might have been prevented and more of those responsible for genocide arrested.
Today, the UN has to borrow forces from national armies for peacekeeping. Often, governments aren't prepared to risk the lives of their own troops, and nothing is done. Even if a UN force is assembled, it usually takes between three and six months to get the troops on the ground. By then, hundreds of thousands may have died.
Despite the clear need for a standing UN Volunteer Force, every serious plan has been blocked by one or more major countries who care more about maintaining their military freedom of action than preventing bloodshed. As a result of their obstruction, each new act of aggression and mass murder finds the international community as incapable of responding as the last one.
Recent developments, however, show that progress can be made. Nearly 70 nations are now offering troops in a UN “stand-by” system for peacekeeping duty. Austria, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Sweden are setting up a Standby Forces High Readiness Brigade which can be used for peacekeeping when the parties to a conflict agree.
These are positive steps, but as long as the UN relies entirely on national forces a fundamental problem remains: national governments are reluctant to send their own troops to a distant land to confront, arrest or disarm those committing mass murder. When the UN Secretary-General pleaded for troops to stop the genocide in Rwanda from countries with UN stand-by forces, not a single nation came forward. Until the UN has a Volunteer Force trained and ready for this dangerous work, all too often the victims—like those in Ntarama Church—will be left to die.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Please write to one or more of your representatives in your national parliament or congress. Ask them to urge the government to:
* place as many troops as possible on stand-by for UN duty at the maximum level of training and readiness;
* declare its support for a permanent UN Volunteer Force, as recommended by the Commission on Global Governance.
Governments will only strengthen the UN if their voters demand it. Please act now—before the next genocide.
A UN Volunteer Force to Prevent Genocide and War
A world that cannot act
Television networks broadcast live images of Serb gunners hurling artillery shells into Sarajevo's town squares, and Hutu extremists slaughtering Tutsis in Rwanda. Outraged viewers worldwide demand that their national leaders do something. But what?
The world's national governments have more than 40 million men and women in military uniform. Yet even in small countries like Bosnia or Rwanda, we seem to be unable to act to prevent genocidal attacks. In Sarajevo alone, one thousand five hundred children were murdered in cold blood, one by one, by Serb gunners and snipers. Forty million national soldiers around the world were no help at all.
The Cold War period showed that unilateral military intervention by a single country rarely leads to a just peace. After the Cold War, the world turned more often to the United Nations. “Yet,” as Professor Robert Johansen of the Institute for International Peace Studies writes, “no sooner had UN operations moved to center stage in the conflict arena than the UN began to be discredited for lack of staying power (Somalia), for doing too little too late (Croatia, Bosnia and Rwanda), and for deploying forces that were inadequately trained, poorly commanded, and underfinanced.”
Few dispute these criticisms. But fewer appreciate the structural limitations on the UN's effectiveness as a peacekeeper. If and when the Security Council decides to act (often after lengthy debate), it must assemble a peacekeeping force from scratch, with new commanders, new force contingents contributed by member states, and new operational rules. By the time UN blue-helmets show up—usually after three to six months—the conflict may have escalated into a full-scale bloodbath.
Severe budgetary and political constraints often mean that only a fraction, if any, of the needed forces are deployed. The UN Secretary General requested 35,000 troops for Bosnia, but was given fewer than 7,000. When he pleaded for troops to stop the genocide in Rwanda from countries with UN stand-by forces, not a single nation volunteered.
Signs of movement
Despite the obstacles, four recent developments represent steps in the direction of a more effective UN:
• First, a step toward stronger peacekeeping has been taken through implementation of a “Standby Arrangement System,” in which nations can pledge -- in advance of a Security Council resolution -- contingents of troops, police, engineers, and civilian personnel. Nearly 70 nations are participating in some way in this system, with 88,000 personnel on standby alert.
• Second, to facilitate the timely placement of these personnel on the ground, the UN is creating a Rapidly Deployable Mission Headquarters.
• Third, seven nations have taken the lead to set up their own Standby Forces High Readiness Brigade, which will be ready for use by the UN in 1999. Austria, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Sweden are currently developing a permanent, unified command structure.
• Fourth, despite opposition from seven countries, including the United States, Iraq, and China, the rest of the world is proceeding to set up a judicial system whereby those responsible for genocide, aggression, war crimes or crimes against humanity can be tried and imprisoned. The creation of the International Criminal Court, coupled with the failure to arrest those indicted for war crimes in Bosnia, highlights the need for an international capacity to arrest such criminals.
But who will confront the killers?
These are positive steps, worthy of support by all the world's governments. However, they leave a basic problem unsolved.
When mass murder is happening, those responsible are—by definition—armed and dangerous. Often the perpetrators of such crimes are well-organized military forces. To protect the victims, members of an international force must not only be sufficiently well trained and armed to deter further attacks and if necessary arrest those responsible—they must also be prepared to risk their lives to protect innocent people.
The reality is that in the most bloody and dangerous situations, the governments of other nations are unwilling to risk the lives of their own national troops to save the lives of foreigners.
Empowering the UN
If national forces won't act, who will? The best and perhaps only hope for the victims of genocide, aggression and mass murder is a UN force of highly-trained and highly-motivated volunteers, ready to take whatever risks are necessary to prevent the murder of innocent people, and ready to act even without the agreement of all parties to a conflict.
The first UN Secretary General, Trygve Lie, argued that if the United Nations is to get serious about preventing war, it must have a permanent force. The same argument was forcefully made by Secretary-General U Thant in the 1960s. In 1995 the Commission on Global Governance, made up of senior political figures and NGO leaders from two dozen nations, re-launched the idea. Co-chaired by Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson of Sweden and former Commonwealth Secretary-General Shridath Ramphal, the Commission's members ranged from former President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica to Wangari Maathai of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya to the former UN Under-Secretary-General in charge of peacekeeping, Brian Urquhart. They concluded:
“In many of today's crises, it is clear that an early intervention could have prevented later negative developments, and might have saved many lives. The problem has been to find the capacity to deploy credible and effective peace enforcement units at an early stage in a crisis and on short notice. This underlines the need for a highly trained UN Volunteeer Force that is willing, if necessary, to take combat risks to break the cycle of violence at an early stage. This would be particularly useful in low-level but dangerous conflicts.”
Following the Rwanda genocide, the then Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van Mierlo circulated a detailed proposal for a standing UN Rapid Deployment Brigade of 5,000 troops. Like the Commission on Global Governance, he proposed that the Brigade should be made up of individually-recruited volunteers, ready to go at a moment's notice to the scene of dangerous conflict or aggression anywhere in the world.
The cost of such a force would represent just a tiny fraction of world military expenditures. The gains—in terms of lives saved and suffering avoided—could be enormous.
These ideas, however compelling, run up against the same obstacles that have blocked thoughtful peacekeeping proposals since the UN's inception. Most major governments are pressed by their defence and foreign affairs ministries not to surrender any freedom of military action. Moreover, the continued failure of several countries -- most notably the United States and Russia -- to meet their financial obligations has left the UN in a permanent state of crisis, where there is little scope for new initiatives. The result is that when war is breaking out or mass murder commencing, the global community continues to be completely unequipped to respond.
Roles for a UN Volunteer Force
When armed conflict is beginning, there is often a moment of opportunity when decisive international intervention might well be able to prevent it. This is true of internal conflicts, and also international ones.
If a country is massing its troops on a border, threatening an invasion, a UN force should immediately be deployed to help defend the border. If a UN soldier had confronted the first Iraqi tank as it crossed the Iranian or Kuwaiti borders in unprovoked aggression, the political cost of that aggression would have been raised immeasurably—and Saddam Hussein might have thought better of it. If so, hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved.
If UN soldiers had arrested those carrying out the first killings in Bosnia or Rwanda, others might have been deterred from joining in.
In some situations, UN forces might not even need to be armed. The police in some countries are effective in confronting criminals without carrying weapons themselves.
A UN volunteer force should make maximum use of the power of the television camera. If an invading tank commander knows that, should he kill the UN soldier standing before him in the road, the whole world will see the murder, he will be more likely to stop in his tracks.
A UN Volunteer Force would also be of great value as a rapid deployment force to help the victims of natural disasters.
The need for other changes in the UN
To be fully effective, a UN Volunteer Force needs to be combined with other steps to transform the UN into a more effective organization. There should be reform of the Security Council, especially to eliminate the right of the five big powers to veto peacekeeping actions. To avoid delays when time is of the essence, the UN Secretary-General should have the right to authorize the initial deployment of the Volunteer Force. The UN's capacity for preventive diplomacy should be strengthened. The International Criminal Court should be set up as quickly as possible, to create a legal deterrent against mass murder. And the UN should be made more democratically accountable, preferably by creating a democratic chamber alongside the existing General Assembly.
All these steps would enhance the UN's ability to protect people from violence. No matter what other steps are taken, though, without a standing Volunteer Force the UN will have no effective way to confront aggression and massive abuses of human rights. Until such a force is created, we are all too likely to watch in horror yet again as innocents are murdered—and no help comes.