World Press Review
Aug 10 2007
Global Poll: U.N. Should Protect Against Genocide
Worldpress.org
August 9, 2007
In a global poll released earlier this year, respondents collectively
indicated their belief that the United Nations has the responsibility
to protect people from genocide and other severe human rights abuses
– even if it meant acting against the will of their own government.
Large numbers of those polled were open to U.N. intervention in
Darfur, Sudan, where Arab militias linked to the Sudanese government
are accused of massacring civilians.
The survey was conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and
WorldPublicOpinion.org, in cooperation with other polling
organizations.
The study was taken in 18 countries – China , India, the United
States, Indonesia, Russia, France, Thailand, Ukraine, Poland, Iran,
Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Argentina, Peru,
Israel and Armenia – in addition to the Palestinian territories.
The international press has not been reticent in expressing opinions
and making observations about the U.N.’s actions, or the lack
thereof, with respect to Darfur. To say the least, there appears to
be a healthy amount of skepticism regarding the U.N.’s ability to
provide an effective solution.
Former British Labor government adviser David Clark, writing in
London’s Guardian Unlimited (Aug 1), posited that the mission had
been handled incorrectly from the start:
The fallacy at the heart of our failure in Darfur until now has been
the idea that you can stop genocide and ethnic cleansing with the
consent of those responsible. That error persists even now, as the
resolution describes the U.N.’s "determination to work with the
government of Sudan, in full respect of its sovereignty."
There is no credible reason to believe that this noble sentiment is
shared in Khartoum, and the sooner the international community
realizes that the better.
A press release from Switzerland’s online ReliefWeb (July 31)
followed the same line of reasoning:
After months of pressure the Government of Sudan recently agreed to
the deployment of a more robust AU/UN "hybrid" force. … However,
there has been some skepticism about this breakthrough, as the
Government of Sudan has proven to be adept at diffusing pressure by
making concessions once international pressure reaches a crescendo,
only to renege on it’s promises at a later date.
Reporting on the most recent U.N. initiative to ameliorate the
situation in Sudan, London’s BBC News (Aug 1) struck a cynical tone:
The mission, to be known as Unamid – the United Nations African Union
Mission in Darfur – is expected to cost up to $2bn a year and will be
world’s largest peacekeeping force.
The new force will not have the right to disarm the militias and it
does not have the powers to pursue and arrest suspected war criminals
indicted by the International Criminal Court. Furthermore, the
resolution does not threaten sanctions against Sudan if it does not
comply.
Much harsher criticism of the U.N. effort was leveled by Professor
Eric Reeves of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, who wrote
an article for the Sudan Tribune (July 11) under the headline,
"Darfur situation makes a mockery of Ban Ki-Moon fatuous optimism":
Since U.N. Secretary-General Ban cannot possibly point to "progress"
on the ground in addressing the security crisis in Darfur, or to
improvement in the terrifying humanitarian picture in Darfur and
eastern Chad, he is committed to the claim that the international
community is moving ahead with a "peace process," and that efforts
are underway to provide protection in the form of a UN/AU "hybrid
force" … But the voices from Darfur, from the camps, from eastern
Chad, from civilians throughout the greater humanitarian theater, now
including Central African Republic, are all urgently one: "Protect
us, protect us and our families!" The cry is painfully simple,
direct, anguished. A fifth year of genocidal counter-insurgency
warfare proceeds, and still this cry is not heard.
Remaining true to its ideological point of view, the China Worker
(July 11) views the United Nations as nothing but a willing pawn of
capitalism:
Despite the failure of the United Nations since its inception to
prevent and resolve wars and conflicts, and its inability to
eradicate crushing poverty and prevent climate change on a world
scale, many (including those on the political left during last year’s
Lebanon war), continue to promote it as a ‘world parliament’. But the
U.N. is beholden to the world’s major capitalist powers and cannot
play an independent role. … United Nations’ peacekeeping
interventions are often controversial affairs and lay bare the U.N.’s
inability to keep the peace when there is no peace to keep.
According to a commentary by Joseph S. Nye in Lebanon’s Daily Star
(July 19) there are many in the United Nations’ host country who
think that the organization is not living up to its responsibilities:
With 192 members and a mandate that covers everything from security
to refugees to public health, the United Nations is the world’s only
global organization. But polls in the United States show that
two-thirds of Americans think the U.N. is doing a poor job, and many
believe it was tarnished by corruption during the Iraq oil-for-food.
Writing for Japan’s Daily Yomiuri (July 11), Ramesh Thakur noted that
there is perhaps a wider societal failure in the global inability to
stop genocide:
Revulsion at the murder of large numbers of civilians in a range of
atrocity crimes (crimes against humanity, large-scale killings,
ethnic cleansing, and genocide) – the drowning of the ceremony of
innocence – has led to a softening of public and governmental support
for the norms and institutions that shield the perpetrators of
atrocity crimes from international criminal accountability. … Darfur
is the current poster child for callous international indifference.
Citing another example where the international community has failed
in this regard, Canada’s online MWC News (July 11) carried a scathing
column by Richard Falk concerning the current status of the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, under the headline, "Slouching toward a
Palestinian Holocaust":
If ever the ethos of "a responsibility to protect," recently adopted
by the U.N. Security Council as the basis of "humanitarian
intervention" is applicable, it would be to act now to start
protecting the people of Gaza from further pain and suffering.
But it would be unrealistic to expect the U.N. to do anything in the
face of this crisis, given the pattern of U.S. support for Israel and
taking into account the extent to which European governments have
lent their weight to recent illicit efforts to crush Hamas as a
Palestinian political force.
Summing it all up, the Brunei Times (July 9) pessimistically noted:
Today, unfortunately, the concept of "responsibility to protect,"
which established itself a while ago is losing strength.