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that are considered less valuable than their European counterparts as demonstrated by the double standards in the handling of the Bosnian and Rwandan crises.
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organized hypocrisy as there was no truth in the alleged respect for the need for consent from the warring parties. The two powerful members of the Security Council, the US and Britain effectively blocked any meaningful and effective intervention in Rwanda as 800,000 to a million civilians were slaughtered in a state sponsored genocide (Mgbeoji, 2003:104). Various reasons for the failure to come to the rescue of the Rwandan civilians facing imminent death fall into two broad categories.
Advocates for the first school of thought on this subject include (Melvern 2004; Power 2003;
Prunier 1997) who argue that the reluctance to effectively respond to the genocide was a reflection of the tension that exists between the classic norm of respect for state sovereignty and the emerging norm of human security as well as a practical appreciation that intervening to stop a genocide or mass violation of human rights could be very difficult, dangerous and expensive in both human lives and treasure. The other school of thought however argues that the rhetoric about respecting Rwanda’s sovereignty and explaining the violence in Rwanda as a civil war was designed to keep the world community outside Rwanda in order for the RPF to gain military victory uninterrupted by outside interference (Branch 2005 and Philpot 2005).
The key dilemma was on one hand between respecting the territorial and political sovereignty of Rwanda, a state that was sponsoring genocide against its own population and on the other hand, the protection of human rights and security interests of the native population against gross human rights abuses (Harrington 2009:159). Sadly, the international community under the strong influence of the Anglo-American alliance opted to ignore the plight of the Rwandan population that was facing mass slaughter during one of the worst genocides of the twentieth- century. This goes to confirm that peacekeepers were predominantly not meant to be absolutely neutral in their operations and that their activities are designed to promote the interests of some powerful countries in any given mission as was the case in Congo during the early 1960s and Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. What is evident in UN peacekeeping operations is that there are multi-interest actors that try by all means to influence the outcome of peacekeeping missions to achieve their own selfish interests irrespective of the political and economic impact on the host population and government.26
26These were the views expressed by a retired Lieutenant General Nyambuya on 15 October 2015. He highlighted that the self-interests of the big powers are manifested starting from the crafting of UNSC resolutions for peacekeeping missions as different interest groups attempt to outmaneuver each other well before the UN troops are deployed in the target country. As a result of such competing national self-interests, the world witnessed the dismal response to the Rwanda genocide as the French, Belgians, British and Americans were trying to maximize their national benefits from the symbolic presence or the absence of peacekeepers in that country without paying
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Rieff (1995:155-62) argues that the evidence supporting the view that the US wanted a very weak peacekeeping mission deployed in Rwanda was available even before the finalization of the Arusha Accords. Firstly, the US applied its political muscle to insist that UNAMIR would have a very restricted mandate and operational capability basing on the argument that a weak mission with a consent-based mandate was non-threatening to the signatories of the agreement hence more acceptable to the parties to the conflict (Ibid.). Secondly, when the strength and composition of UNAMIR was deliberated in the Security Council, the US influenced the adoption of the least effective option thus ensuring a weak mission. Thirdly, the authorized mission, once in Rwanda, experienced serious operational, financial and logistical challenges due to the negative influence of the US whose budgeting considerations guaranteed that the critical resources for UNAMIR to be effective in discharging its mandate were not forthcoming (Ibid.). Existing literature on the deployment and conduct of UNAMIR acknowledges that the mission was very weak as it was poorly manned and grossly under equipped to the extent that the peacekeepers were unable and in some cases deemed unwilling to prevent and forestall the genocide in Rwanda (Power 2003:329-45).
The US and the UK adopted unethical policy positions that not only led to the deployment of a very weak UNAMIR but also to the withdrawal of the bulk of the peacekeepers at the peak of the genocide and in that regard, sabotaged any possibility of a humanitarian intervention as outlined in the Genocide Convention (Barnett 2002). Instead of advocating for reinforcements for UNAMIR when news of genocide first surfaced, the US under the influence of the Belgians and the British, not only prevented attempts at reinforcing the peacekeepers already in Rwanda but instead strongly advocated for the reduction of deployed peacekeepers, a role considered to be counterproductive and destructive as this act served to empower the genocideries.
Gourevitch and Lamb (1998:150) observed that "… the desertion of Rwanda by the UN force was Hutu Power's greatest diplomatic victory to date, and it can be credited almost single handedly to the US." The inference of this argument is that the UN abandoned Rwandans at the time of their greatest need and that a humanitarian intervention should have been launched to protect Rwandan civilians against their own government sponsored genocide, which could have reinforced precedents set by humanitarian interventions in Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo (Al Qaq 2009:107). Indeed after the Rwandan genocide international debate on military
attention to the plight of the suffering population and the violation of Rwanda’s national sovereignty that they were practicing.
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humanitarian intervention intensified culminating in the adoption of the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) by the UN General Assembly in 2005.
The next section examines Belgian participation in UNAMIR and the negative role it played towards undermining the outcome of that mission.