The United Nations Organization Essay Example for Free

The United Nations Organization Essay The United Nations Organization emerged out of the ashes of the Second World War. Its predecessor, the League of Nations which was created out of the crises of the World War I, obviously failed to prevent the occurrence of another worldwide military crisis. In the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations, its first stated objective is to â€Å"to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind †¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Charter). Surprisingly, the word â€Å"peacekeeping† does not appear anywhere in the Charter of new organization. It, however, became very apparent that in order for the United Natons to carry out its first objective of saving humanity from the scourge of war, peacekeeping would be necessary. Since its first peacekeeping mission in 1948, the objectives of peackeeping have evolved and have sometimes been defined by the conflicts (Peacekeeping). â€Å"Although the military remain the backbone of most peacekeeping operations, the many faces of peacekeeping now include administrators and economists, police officers and legal experts, de-miners and electoral observers, human rights monitors and specialists in civil affairs and governance, humanitarian workers and experts in communications and public information† (Peacekeeping). Given the conceptual diversity of peacekeeping, any measurement of operational success must go back to the Charter to see if the activities of the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission has contributed to the prevention of the scouge of war and its collateral effects. In this paper, two cases of the the U. N. Peackeeing activities, one each in Europe and Africa, would be examined with reference to the first stated objective in the preamble to determine the failure or success of peacekeeping operations. First of all, the very important distinction between peace-making and peacekeeping has to be made. Peace-making is the process of resolving armed conflicts between nations or within a nation. The United Nations limited in its ability to act because of the principle of territorial sovereignty. â€Å"During much of the cold war †¦ most non-Western countries raised the banner of state sovereignity to protect themselves from the unwanted interference of larger states, and the United Nations repeatedly upheld this principle in Security Council resolution† (Holmes, 1993). This preventing the United Nations from getting involved in internal conflicts. On the other hand, the United Nationns only peace-making efforts were limited to diplomacy, a process that did not appy in intra-nation conflicts. Most importantly, the United Nations does not have a standing military to enforce peace. As a a consequence, the United Nations Peacekeeping Force did not get involved in conflict resolutions or making peace. This was left to the Security Council. When, through diplomtic efforts, participants in an armed conflict reach terms of peace, then the United Nations Peacekeeping Force moves in to monitor and not enforce the peace. Even with the end of the Cold War and the U. N. getting involved in resolving intra-nation conflicts, its Peackeeping Force is still a monitoring force. â€Å"The end of the Cold War has brought many changes to the field of United Nations peacekeeping. However, most of the changes have been changes in size and quantitymore operations and bigger operationsrather than different types of operations† (Gibson, 1998). Any measure of the success of the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces must be interpreted in light of its limitations and objectives. As the Soviet Union dissolved, old ethnic rivalries were revived as nation-states began to form along ethnic lines in Eastern Europe. This was certainly the case in the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The uniqueness of the Yugoslavian situation was that Yugoslavia had ceased to exist as a nation. So the issue of territorial sovereignty could not be claimed since there was no government with a recognized territory. In 1991, Croatia and Slovenia broke away from the rest of the country and declared independence. The dissolution of Yugoslavia had begun. The Serbian-controlled government supported the Serbs in Croatia who opposed Croatia’s independence. This resulted in a civil war which was also a war of independence. Sanctions and diplomacy brought about a cease fire. The United Nations sent in a peacekeeping force with the mandate to ensure that the society did not move into total anarchy and that the conditions for peace were in place. The United Nations Protection Force or UNROFOR, as the peacekeeping force was called, was sent into Croatia in 1992. While UNPROFOR was in Croatia, several massacres occurred. UNPROFOR was stationed in Croatia because the Croats were at a disadvantage against the Serbian controlled military of the former Yugoslavia. Yet, the Serbian military killed many Croat civilians and prevented humanitarian aid to Croatia in 1993. Deaths were increased by inhumane conditions created by the Serbs (UNROFOR, 1996). United Nations passed Resolution 819 which made Srebrenica a United Nations â€Å"Sate Area†. This meant that any attack on Srebrenica would be an attack on the United Nations. The Security Council passed another resolution, Resolution 836, to extend this mandate to UNROFOR itself. Unfortunately, UNROFOR was poorly equipped and its non-combat mandate did not allow it to prevent the Bosnian forces from using Srebrenica as the staging grounds for anti-Serbian attacks. The attacks from Srebrenica angered the Serbs and they responded by attacking UNPROFOR and obstructing humanitarian aid into Srebrenica. When the United Nations forces cannot protect themselves, how can they protect even less unarmed civilians? The situation deteriorated in 1993 when war broke out between the Bosnians and the Croats. Serbs and Bosnians were in Ahmici were massacred (UNROFOR, 1996). The situation had deteriorated to the point where one group’s atrocities were met by atrocities by from the other group. The United Nations Peacekeeping Forces in the former Yugoslavia were completely ineffective to the point where their operations were limited to United Nations Save Areas. It took a threat from the Croatian Government to get the Security Council to change the mandate of UNPROFOR to include military action (UNROFOR, 1996). In 1994, more atrocities occurred while UNROFOR was present. The Serbs attacked Gorazde, a United Nations Safe Area, and hundreds of civilians were killed. NATO bombed Serb positions and the Serbs captured UNPROFOR personnel and used them as human shields, placing them in locations that they NATO could possibly bomb. No matter what standard of measurement is used, it can be said that the United Nations peacekeeping efforts in the former Yugoslavia was a dismal failure. UNPROFOR failed in its mission to protect the Serbs, Bosnians, and Croats from the scourge of war. As a matter of fact, UNROFOR could not even protect itself from the scourge of war. In this situation, peacekeeping failed by any metric. Consider another case in Africa. Genocide in Rwanda has been dramatized in the movie Hotel Rwanda. Many of the worst mass murders occurred while the United Nations had peacekeepers on the ground. First, let us get some background information. Civil war broke out in Rwanda in 1990. The parties were the Hut-dominated government and the opposition Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front or the RPF (Rwanda, 2001). The United Nations got involved in this arena about three years after the war began. At the request of the governments of Rwanda and Uganda, the United Nations sent military observers in the border area between the two countries. The force was called United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda or UNAMIR. According to the United Nations own web site, â€Å"UNAMIRs mandate was: to assist in ensuring the security of the capital city of Kigali; monitor the ceasefire agreement, including establishment of an expanded demilitarized zone and demobilization procedures; monitor the security situation during the final period of the transitional Governments mandate leading up to elections; assist with mine-clearance; and assist in the coordination of humanitarian assistance activities in conjunction with relief operations† (Rwanda, 2001). The United Nations forces were in Rwanda when nearly one million people were massacred by the government supported Hutu forces. The deaths are estimated to be between 500,000 to one million (Des Forges, 1999). All this occurred within a very brief period, April to July. How did this happen? The catalyst for the genocide was the deaths of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi in a plane that was shot down as it about to land in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. The crash was blamed on Tutsi-led RPF (Des Forges, 1999). The next day, the wife of the Rwandan president was assassinated and the ten UNAMIR soldiers that were protecting were found dead. Hutu militias and the military went on a murder binge, killing every Tutsi that could found regardless of age, gender, or political affiliation. The world could not have been ignorant about these atrocities. As the situation deteriorated in Kigali, western countries evacuated their citizens and left the Tutsi to fend for themselves. Mass rapes, mutilations, and murders quickly spread nationwide. UNAMIR was ineffective to respond at the onset of the genocide because of resistance by members of the Security Council. UNAMIR failed in every respect to meet its own mandate. There was no capital to secure, no peace agreement to monitor, and no security situation at all. The western nations did not want to get involved in Rwanda mainly because it was not popular with their governments for their citizens to placed in harms way in Africa. United Nations Peacekeeping activities have to be measure in terms of the objectives of the United Nations Charter and the mandates given by the United Nations. If these objectives and mandates cannot be met, then the United Nations ought not to be involved at all. False peacekeeping is just as bad as no peacekeeping. References Charter of the United Nations. An Internet publication retrieved on May 8, 2009 from: http://www. un. org/aboutun/charter/preamble. shtml Des Forges, Alison (1999). Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. Human Rights Watch. Retrieved on May 8, 2009 from. http://www. hrw. org/reports/1999/rwanda. Gibson, Susan S. (1998). The Misplaced Reliance on Free and Fair Elections in Nation Building: The Role of Constitutional Democracy and the Rule of Law. Houston Journal of International Law. Volume: 21. Issue: 1. Page 1 Holmes, Kim R. (1993). New world disorder: a critique of the United States. Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 46, 1993 Peacekeeping. United Nations Peackeeping. An Internet publication retrieved on May 8, 2009 from http://www. un. org/Depts/dpko/dpko/ Rwanda (2001). Rwanda: United Nations Assistance Mission For Rwanda –UNAMIR- October 1993- March 1996. UNPROFOR (1996) – United Nations Protection Force. Former Yugoslavia UNPROFOR. Prepared by the Department of Public Information, United Nations as of September 1996. An Internet publication retrieved on May 8, 2009 from http://www. un. org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/unprof_b. htm