The UN is Not
Doing Well
on Human Rights
By JONATHAN POWER
NEW YORK--With righteous Italian anger
of the radical variety, Emma Bonino, the European Union's
commissioner for humanitarian aid, has turned on the
institution she has long been a passionate supporter of. The
UN, she said last week, faces "being tarnished for ever by
shame" for its role in the Congo. "The saga of the
commission of inquiry into the massacres has surpassed the
degree of ridicule it has already earned."
Mrs. Bonino, who directs the world's
biggest budget for humanitarian aid, had better be listened
to, for knowing Mrs. Bonino, I can say this, "there's no
fury like this woman scorned."
More to the point, she is right. We
need to know what is going through the minds of the
(relatively) new UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan and the
(brand) new High Commissioner for Human Rights, the former
president of Ireland, Mary Robinson.
How could the UN just decide to buckle
and pull out its human rights investigators when the
(fairly) new strongman of the Congo, Laurent Kabile, told
them to? The UN human rights team was dispatched to the
Congo in June to investigate reports that Mr. Kabila's
rebels, in the battle to topple the long-time dictator,
Mobutu Sese Seko, massacred Rwandan Hutu
refugees.
When these UN human rights
investigators were first deployed it was with the
acquiescence of Mr. Kabila. But no sooner were they on the
ground than they were obstructed and denounced at every
turn.
Reports from human rights and
intelligence sources make it clear that all this was a
stalling tactic to give time for the mass graves to be
exhumed, the bodies burnt and the evidence scattered to the
wind and rivers. Witnesses have been intimidated and
jailed.
Mr. Kabila's government has tried to
bolster its case by denigrating the UN's self-image as an
impartial, human rights organization. It has a point: The UN
peacekeepers (mainly Belgians and Bangladashis) cut and ran
from Rwanda three years ago after some of the peacekeepers
were brutally murdered. Facing a de facto U.S. veto on the
UN returning, it was left to the French to unilaterally send
in their forces in an attempt, not greatly successful, to
end the killings orchestrated by the Hutu
militias.
The UN has two serious problems to
overcome--its failing credibility as a human rights
organization--which Mrs. Robinson has supposedly been
recruited to solve--and its fading seriousness as a
peacekeeper, for which the Clinton Administration's
whimpishness in the face of the anti-UN hostility of the
chairman of the U.S. Senate's foreign relations committee,
Jesse Helms, has been largely responsible.
Its human rights weaknesses are
something the secretary- general can do much to repair
himself, since it has deep roots in the culture and mores of
the institution itself, and had a willing supporter of the
take-it-easy approach during the tenure of his predecessor,
Boutros Boutros Ghali.
This was expertly documented in a
report written two years ago by Article 19, the London-based
International Centre Against Censorship. It showed in
enormous detail how governmental manipulation of UN human
rights committees had led to the suppression of a
"substantial number of allegations of abuses in the five
veto-wielding countries." This was not just the Soviet Union
and China but the U.S., Britain and France too. It showed
how UN operations in the field have often failed to report
publicly human rights violations. In ex-Yugoslavia essential
information that would have helped relatives trace missing
victims during the ethnic cleansing was withheld. Most
serious of all was that the UN forces in Somalia violated
the Geneva Convention by refusing to disclose crucial
information about the casualties they inflicted on local
people. Not surprisingly, Canadian and Italian units of the
UN peacekeepers from that operation have been accused of
brutality and cruelty.
The UN's problem with peacekeeping is
that its authority, finances and reach have been so mangled
by consistent opposition from the U.S. during the Clinton
presidency that it does not have the spine to stand tall. A
new secretary-general is not enough. The rot has gone too
far for that. We are now paying the price for this in a
number of arenas. There is a blunting of sensibilities
following one televised ethnic war after another, in which
the world community seems politically helpless. It also
affects issues like the aftermath of the Gulf War where
there is a growing unwillingness by rank and file member
countries to support the continued and intrusive monitoring
of Iraq's war machine by the UN. Saddam Hussein's gain here
is going to be America's big loss.
Intellectually, this state of affairs
doesn't add up. With the end of the Cold War and with the
number of smaller wars declining dramatically each year,
this should be the time for great UN activism in pursuit of
helping the world peace process along.
Instead, this quite unique historical
opportunity for a great peace and the advancement of
universal human rights is being wasted and frittered
away.
October 15,
1997
Copyright © 1997 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
|