5.3 UNSC ethical challenges in handling the Rwanda crisis
5.3.1 UNSC unethical response to the genocide
When the Rwanda genocide broke out the US administration made concerted efforts to minimize the physical and financial involvement of the UN. This was in sharp contrast with what President Clinton had advocated for during his 1992 campaign trail to unseat President Bush Senior. President elect Bill Clinton had envisioned and publicly advocated for US-UN cooperation as the foremost vehicle for resolving crises that required international intervention (Tatum 2010:43). Once in office, this was not to be, as Ali Mazrui noted that a gap often exists between what one advocates and professes before entering public office and activities undertaken once one enters office. Before assuming office one champions and promulgates appealing policy goals however after assuming office the priority focuses on retaining power (Mazrui 1990:55-56). The Clinton administration sought to and succeeded in constraining UN involvement in the Rwandan crisis for reasons that best served US national self-interests in line with the realist school of thought which argues that morality has little space in international relations.
Bellamy and Wheeler (2007) argue that world leaders are still gripped by the realist theory of international relations mind-set that prioritizes national self-interests over humanitarian considerations. They argue that there was no intervention in Rwanda simply because no powerful countries with the military resources and capability to intervene were willing to sacrifice their troops and treasure to protect citizens of little known Rwanda. The international response limited to solidarity slogans, moral outrage and the provision of humanitarian aid well after the genocide had ended (Bellamy and Wheeler 2007). Whereas this observation could be having some merits, it misses the fact that the RPF was fighting a proxy war on behalf of the Anglo-American alliance; hence these two countries could have vetoed any Security Council resolution authorizing a coalition of the willing to intervene in Rwanda to stop the genocide.
Any strong intervention in Rwanda could have seriously derailed the grand geo-strategic plan of avoiding a power sharing regime in Rwanda as agreed in the Arusha Peace Accord brokered by the OAU.
At the height of the genocide, Secretary General Boutros-Ghali proposed the deployment of 5 500 additional peacekeepers to reinforce UNAMIR and the US refused arguing “… that an expanded UN-led peacekeeping operation would need, but did not have, the consent of the Rwandan parties, and that a peace-enforcement operation without Rwandan consent would need, but did not have, a major power to undertake it” (Murphy 1996:245). The US emphasis on the need to respect Rwanda’s sovereignty and consent was indeed hypocritical and was
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therefore part of organized hypocrisy on the part of the Anglo-American allies in the Security Council considering that the same allies were sponsoring the RPF forces that were overrunning the country through a military invasion to topple a legitimate government that the US was falsely purporting to be respecting its sovereignty. This assertion is corroborated by the findings of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative Report (CHRIR) that acknowledges that Kagame and the RPF indeed received military and diplomatic support from the Anglo- American allies and from some UN authorities (CHRIR 2009). The Security Council thus resorted to issuing resolutions that expressed outrage at the carnage in Rwanda without doing anything meaningful to come to the rescue of the Rwandan population that was experiencing genocide.
UN Security Council Resolution 912 of April 21 1994, adopted during the third week of the genocide, highlighted that the Security Council with the mandate to maintain world peace was appalled on learning about the large-scale violence in Rwanda that had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, including women and children. The Security Council was further appalled by the internal displacement the Rwandan population, including those who sought refuge with UNAMIR and outside the country resulting in a significant increase in refugees in neighbouring countries.
The UNSC under the influence of the US and Britain, deployed “a laughably small contingent of blue helmets” at the height of the genocide (United Nations 1996:268). The Security Council was aware of the deaths and wanton destruction in Rwanda, yet it proceeded with the irresponsible and unethical decision not to defend the innocent victims of these heinous and inhumane acts; leaving the Rwandan population to their own fate (Tatum 2010:45). This was a classic demonstration that African states and governments together with their populations should not put too much trust in the protection of the populations in conflict areas by UN peacekeepers. Uriga (2015) emphasised the fact that most African conflicts are planned and organized outside the continent yet to secure peace, the very sponsors of the conflicts are invited as peacekeepers to resolve the same conflicts they would have instigated.21 In lobbying
21In an interview with Dr. R. Uriga on 10 March 2014at Great Zimbabwe University, he lamented the naiveté of African leaders who continue to entrust western powers that sponsor UN peacekeeping missions as benevolent gestures towards genuinely assisting Africans find long lasting solutions to their conflicts through UN missions.
He highlighted that it was high time African leaders learnt from the outcomes of UN peacekeeping missions on the continent where sitting heads of state and government were either assassinated or removed from power under the watch of the UN missions as their presence facilitated regime change in line with the wishes of some foreign powers at the expense of the local populations. He also emphasised that Africans must prioritize dialogue instead of fighting each time there were serious issues under contention as foreign powers always try to take advantage
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for the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers during the genocide, Britain and the US were arguing that they preferred an “African Solution” to the Rwandan crisis (Furley 1998:241) yet they were not only the instigators of the Rwandan crisis through their military sponsorship of the RPF, but also that they had spear-headed the refusal of the OAU to be in charge of the peacekeeping mission. Ironically, in a move that demonstrated UNSC double standards, Resolution 914 on April 27 1994 authorized a significant expansion of the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, a country that was not experiencing the same gravity of humanitarian crisis as Rwanda. Surprisingly, a week earlier, the same UNSC had drastically reduced the size of UNAMIR in a country that was facing a worse humanitarian disaster than what was happening in Bosnia (OAU Panel of Experts Report 2000). This demonstrated George Orwell’s dictum that all animals are equal however some are more equal than others (Ibid.). The UN Independent Inquiry on Rwanda (1999:33) was unequivocal in its assessment of Security Council response to the genocide when it stated that adherence to the traditional norm of peacekeeping neutrality in a situation where hundreds of civilians were being killed in genocide was morally and ethically wrong.
The UN inquiry added that faced with unequivocal evidence of genocide, the UN was legally and morally obliged to abandon the original mediation role by UNAMIR since the original mandate for the peacekeepers had been overtaken by events. The report adds that UN peacekeepers’ resort to mediation was therefore inadequate as the situation demanded a more robust and assertive response to the ongoing genocide and that, there was no justification for being neutral in the case of a genocide (Ibid.). The response by the UNSC to the genocide in Rwanda reflected gross disrespect for African lives, compared to those of Europeans and other regions, a phenomenon that continues up to this day which must serve as a reminder that African countries should desist from paying lip service to the slogan “African Solutions for African Problems”. UN peacekeepers’ practices of undermining host state sovereignty continue to take place yet African countries remain dependent on the developed countries to come and finance their security programmes with little input from the African nations themselves yet in so doing, the collective sovereignty of African countries continues to be eroded.22
of the political fault lines emanating from tribalism and ethnic differences to advance their own geo-political agendas.
22Uriga further added that the IMF, World Bank and multinational corporations from developed countries are interested in the outcomes of UN peacekeeping missions hence the meddling in African political dynamics in
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