The aftermath of a bombing in Aleppo, Syria, Feb. 6, 2014. Credit: Freedom House/cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 17 2015 (IPS)

As the long drawn-out Syrian military conflict passed a four-year milestone over the weekend, the New York-based Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) summed it up in a striking headline: 4 years, 4 vetoes, 220,000 dead.

It was a harsh judgment of the 15-member Security Council, the most powerful political body at the United Nations, which critics say is desperately in need of a resurrection."Those states who have vetoed resolutions aimed at ending atrocities in Syria will be judged very harshly by history." -- Dr. Simon Adams

The devastating civil war and the sectarian violence in Syria have also displaced over 11 million people – more than half of Syria’s population – with 12 million in need of humanitarian assistance.

Dr. Simon Adams, executive director of the Global Centre for R2P, told IPS Syria is clearly the most tragic failure of the U.N. Security Council in a generation.

“Each veto and the inaction of the Council has been interpreted as a license to kill by atrocity perpetrators in Syria,” he added.

The four vetoes, cast by Russia and China to protect the beleaguered government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, were cast in October 2011, February 2012, July 2012 and May 2014.

Dr. Adams said 220,000 dead is a horrifying indictment of the magnitude of the Security Council’s failure in Syria. “They constitute 220,000 reasons why we need reform of the veto rights of the five permanent members when it comes to mass atrocity crimes.”

The five (P-5) holding veto powers are the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia – and each of them has exercised the veto mostly to protect their close allies or their national interests over the years.

Since the creation of the United Nations 70 years ago, the two big powers have cast the most number of vetoes: a total of 79 by the United States and 11 by the Russian Federation (plus 90 by its predecessor, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR), while China’s tally is nine, according to the latest available figures.

“The veto costs lives. Those states who have vetoed resolutions aimed at ending atrocities in Syria will be judged very harshly by history. They have a responsibility to protect and a responsibility not to veto,” Dr. Adams said.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has consistently called for a political solution, said the Syrian people feel increasingly abandoned by the world as they enter the fifth year of the war that has torn their country apart.

They and their neighbours, he said, continue to suffer under the eyes of an international community that is divided and incapable of taking collective action to stop the killing and destruction.

Retracing the violent history of the ongoing conflict, Ban recalled that it began in March 2011, when thousands of Syrian civilians went to the streets peacefully calling for political reform.

But this legitimate demand was met with a violent response from the Syrian authorities. Over time, civilians took up arms in response, regional powers became involved and radical groups gained a foothold, he added.

In what appeared to be a diplomatic turnaround, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has not ruled out a political solution to the Syrian civil war.

“We are working very hard with other interested parties to see if we can reignite a diplomatic outcome,” he said during a television interview Sunday, although the U.S. has been supporting rebel forces trying to overthrow the Assad regime by military means.

Angelina Jolie Pitt, a Hollywood celebrity and Special Envoy for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said: “People are entitled to feel bewildered and angry that the U.N. Security Council seems unable to respond to the worst crisis of the 21st century.”

She said it is shameful that even the basic demand for full humanitarian access has not been met.

Meanwhile, neighbouring countries and international humanitarian agencies are being stretched beyond their limits.

“And it is sickening that crimes are being committed against the Syrian people on a daily basis with impunity. The failure to end this crisis diminishes all of us,” Jolie declared.

Ban said the lack of accountability in Syria has led to an exponential rise in war crimes, crimes against humanity and other human rights violations.

Each day, he said, brings reports of fresh horrors: executions, widespread arbitrary arrests, abductions and disappearances as well as systematic torture in detention; indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas, including with barrel bombs; siege and starvation tactics; use of chemical weapons, and atrocities committed by Daesh (the Islamic State) and other extremist groups.

Dr. Adams told IPS President Assad and all atrocity perpetrators in Syria belong in handcuffs at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

“The U.N. Security Council has failed to end a conflict that has already cost 220,000 lives, but the least they can do now is refer the situation to the ICC so that victims have some chance of justice,” he said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The U.N. flag flies at half-mast in memory of staff killed during the most recent Israeli air strikes in Gaza. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Somar Wijayadasa
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 20 2014 (IPS)

The United Nations was founded “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights.

To meet that objective, the Preamble of the U.N. Charter provides “to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained”.Since the Second World War, these good and evil countries have waged hundreds of wars in which nearly 50 million people have been killed, tens of millions made homeless, and countless millions injured and bereaved.

The United Nations has played a major role in defining, codifying, and expanding the realm of international law – which defines the legal responsibilities of states in their conduct with each other, and their treatment of individuals within state boundaries.

Historically, violators of international law are not only the countries branded as evil and belligerent but also countries that preach democracy and human rights. That undermines the efforts of the United Nations to maintain law and order.

Since the Second World War, these good and evil countries have waged hundreds of wars in which nearly 50 million people have been killed, tens of millions made homeless, and countless millions injured and bereaved. No part of the world has escaped the scourge of war. The countless mechanisms enshrined in the U.N. Charter to resolve conflicts by peaceful means have been rendered useless.

Let’s forget Hiroshima, Vietnam, Korea and a few other major disasters. Let’s look at what happened after the Cold War ended in 1989, and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 – leaving the United States as the only superpower.

The mass murders in Rwanda and Sudan proved that neither the United Nations nor superpowers wished to intervene. Wars in the Balkans, and fragmentation of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia are now forgotten history.

The U.S. and NATO authorised bombings in Kosovo and Serbia in the 1990s. The Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen is over. International law was violated in all these instances, and these countries now are in disarray.

The United States has been criticised for turning away from internationalism by abandoning the Kyoto Protocol, ignoring the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, repudiating the Biological Weapons Convention, repealing the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, refusing to sign the Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, and condoning the continued Israeli violence against Palestinians in occupied territories.

In 2011, following the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration embarked on a strategy of unilateralism, disregarding the U.N. and international law. Worst of all is its military strategy of “pre-emptive strikes” which defies the U.N. Charter by allowing the U.S. to use illegal force against other states.

Despite U.N. opposition, the Bush administration took a series of unilateral actions. The most damaging was the war in Iraq waged on bogus claims of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and the war in Afghanistan.

After a decade of devastation, the expectations of democracy, freedom and human rights have vanished – and there are no winners in these wars despite continuing mayhem and casualties.

U.S. President Barack Obama revealed that the two wars have cost U.S. taxpayers over one trillion dollars. A study by American researchers (including Noble Laureate Joseph Stieglitz and experts from Harvard and Brown), estimate that the costs could be in the range of three to four trillion.

A major challenge to international law today is the U.S. policy of using aerial drones to carry out targeted killings.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) estimates that as many as 4,000 people have been killed in U.S. drone strikes since 2002 in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Of those, a significant proportion were civilians.

UCLA believes that “The U.S. policy instigated in 2006 is violating universally recognized customary international law on numerous counts: failure to discriminate between military and civilian objects, indiscriminate attacks, extrajudicial executions, attacks against places of worship.

“Ironically, the drone strikes could actually be classified as ‘international terrorism’, since they appear to have been often intended to coerce the civilian population and to influence the Pakistani government.”

Another major obstacle to peace in the Middle East and world security is the Israeli Occupation and expansion of settlements in occupied territories – acts that undermine International Law.

According to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention — to which both Israel and the United States are signatories — prohibits any occupying power from transferring “parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Also, a landmark 2004 decision by the International Court of Justice confirmed the illegality of the Israeli settlements.

Since 1948, the U.N. has passed scores of resolutions declaring that all Israeli settlements outside of Israel’s internationally recognised borders are illegal but they have been blatantly ignored by Israel.

Condemning the recent Israeli attacks on homes, schools, hospitals, and U.N. shelters in Gaza that killed thousands of innocent civilians – a gross violation of the Geneva Conventions – U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that “Israel was deliberately defying international law in its military offensive in Gaza and that world powers should hold it accountable for possible war crimes.”

Pillay said she was appalled at Washington consistently voting against resolutions on Israel in the Human Rights Council, General Assembly and Security Council.

Another inconspicuous violation is the application of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) approved by the U.N., in 2005, which is now subtly used for regime changes.

The U.S. and NATO invoked R2P for military intervention in Libya on the pretext of a “no-fly zone” but ended in regime change. Today Libya is fragmented and is in the hands of rebels, forcing United States to evacuate its embassy staff and other foreign personnel in Libya.

The U.S. attempted to invoke the R2P mechanism in Syria even though there was no proof that the Assad regime killed its own people with chemical weapons.

President Obama was about to wage a war against Syria when a last-minute solution was found by the Russians to avert the war by removing Assad’s chemical weapons.

But the U.S. and its allies showed no interest in invoking R2P in the case of Darfur or in Israeli aggression against Palestinians in Gaza, where over 2,000 civilians were killed.

And no one is screaming to invoke R2P in East Ukraine despite the fact that already over 2,000 Ukrainians have been killed by Ukrainian military forces.

The United Nations has not played a fair role when invoking the Responsibility to Protect.

In 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established with a mandate to consider genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. But it is unfortunate that ICC mainly focuses on criminal cases in Africa, without looking at so many breaches of the law elsewhere.

The United States is not a signatory to the ICC but it cannot escape from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) where cases can be initiated by one state against another.

Actions of many powerful countries prove that they are sticking to the Rule of Power instead of enhancing the Rule of Law.

For over 200 years, America has been a devout apostle of equality and freedom – defending peace, democracy, justice and human rights. It is in this sense that a few former U.S. presidents believed in peace and not war.

President Truman said, “The responsibility of the great states is to serve and not dominate the peoples of the world” and President Kennedy said, “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.”

It is inconceivable that America, today, with its democratic history and unrivaled power, constantly violates international law instead of morally guiding the world towards peace, justice and prosperity.

Such actions not only erode the prestige of the United States and violate the U.N. Charter, but also undermine the effectiveness of the United Nations.

Somar Wijayadasa is a former Representative of UNAIDS at the United Nations.

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

A Palestinian student inspects the damage at a U.N. school at the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip after the area was hit by Israeli shelling on Jul. 30, 2014. At least 16 civilians, including several children, were reportedly killed and more than 100 people were injured. Credit: UN Photo/Shareef Sarhan

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 4 2014 (IPS)

When world political leaders met at the United Nations back in 2005, they unanimously adopted a resolution affirming the principle of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), aimed primarily at safeguarding innocent civilians from war crimes, genocide, mass atrocities and ethnic cleansing.

Since 2006, the 15-member U.N. Security Council (UNSC), the only international body empowered to declare war and peace, has reaffirmed this principle in several military conflicts, including Sudan, Yemen, Mali, Libya, South Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic – and in some instances even authorised military intervention.The U.N. Security Council has only issued a "presidential statement" - far removed from a legally binding resolution either condemning the civilian killings or insisting on both warring parties to end the conflict.

But despite the killings of over 1,800 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in the current conflict in Gaza, the UNSC has remained tight-lipped – and in hiding.

Simon Adams, executive director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, told IPS the United States often speaks of its “special relationship” with Israel “but it has a special responsibility to ensure there is accountability for alleged war crimes.”

He said Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, “has done so much to advance the cause of mass atrocity prevention, but she should lead the Security Council in ensuring that civilians in Gaza get the protection they are entitled to under international law.

“The Israeli government appears to have declared war on U.N. schools and shelters that are housing displaced civilians. Deliberately bombing such places is a war crime,” said Adams.

The UNSC, he said, “must ensure that there is accountability and uphold its responsibility to protect.”

But so far the Council has only issued a “presidential statement” – far removed from a legally binding resolution either condemning the civilian killings or insisting on both warring parties to end the conflict.

According to figures released by the Gaza Ministry of Health, nearly 1,810 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in the three-week old conflict while the Israeli death toll is 64 soldiers and three civilians.

The Israelis have been accused of bombing six U.N. shelters, including three U.N. schools, where Palestinians have sought safe haven.

Israel has argued these bombings were a reaction to the Palestinian military group Hamas firing rockets from nearby schools.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has remained cautious in his comments so far, blasted the last attack on a U.N. school as “a moral outrage and a criminal act.”

“Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children,” he said.

The U.S. State Department was equally critical of the attack on schools.

State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said “the suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians.”

Adams told IPS the responsibility to protect applies everywhere and at all times.

“A stateless Palestinian child has as much right to protection from war crimes as an Israeli citizen of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem,” he said.

In an op-ed piece last week, Adams said the distinction between military and civilian targets is central to international humanitarian law and must be adhered to, regardless of where a conflict is occurring, or whom it is occurring between.

With ongoing rocket attacks on Israel and unrelenting retaliatory airstrikes in densely populated parts of Gaza, both Hamas and the Israeli government appeared to be potentially violating the fundamental laws of war, he noted.

Navi Pillay, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said, “If civilians cannot take refuge in U.N. schools, where can they be safe?”

“They leave their homes to seek safety – and are then subjected to attack in the places they flee to. This is a grotesque situation.”

In a statement released Monday, the spokesman for the secretary-general said Sunday’s attack is yet another gross violation of international humanitarian law, which clearly requires protection by both parties of Palestinian civilians, U.N. staff and U.N. premises, among other civilian facilities.

United Nations shelters must be safe zones not combat zones, he said.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have been repeatedly informed of the location of these sites.

“This attack, along with other breaches of international law, must be swiftly investigated and those responsible held accountable. It is a moral outrage and a criminal act,” the spokesman said.

The spokesman also said the secretary-general is profoundly dismayed over the appalling escalation of violence and loss of hundreds of Palestinian civilian lives since the breach of the humanitarian ceasefire on Aug. 1.

The resurgence in fighting has only exacerbated the man-made humanitarian and health crisis wreaking havoc in Gaza. Restoring calm can be achieved through resumption of the ceasefire and negotiations by the parties in Cairo to address the underlying issues, he added.

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Calm and composed, Omar heads a family of seven in his tent at a refugee camp in Jordan, including his elderly mother, Samah. He used to be an Arabic language teacher back in Syria. Credit: EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 13 2014 (IPS)

As the protracted Syrian conflict enters its fourth year, there seems to be little or no hope of a resolution to the devastating crisis.

The death toll has now been estimated at more than 140,000, up from over 100,000 last March, claiming the lives of both rebel and security forces.

And according to U.N. figures released Tuesday, about 5.5 million children have been reduced to the status of refugees, the economy is in free fall, half of the total population of 22 million are living below poverty levels, about 2.5 million have lost their jobs and unemployment is estimated at 44 percent.

Still, the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) remains paralysed and unable to act – and will continue to remain so, since the United States and Russia are now bickering over a new divisive issue: the spreading crisis in Ukraine.

A peace conference in Geneva last month, presided over by Joint Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi, ended in shambles.

Three out of the eight children gathered in Omar’s tent said they were continuing their education. One reason for not attending school is the distance, they say, especially for those living in the outskirts of the village like Omar. Credit: EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection

With Ukraine taking centre-stage, says one Third World diplomat, Syria has slipped from the negotiating table.

“The three years of deadly devastation in Syria may soon be a thing of the past – and perhaps forgotten,” he predicted, particularly if the big power confrontation over Ukraine continues to escalate.

Jose Luis Diaz, head of Amnesty International’s U.N. office, told IPS one measure of how outrageous the situation in Syria — and of the complicity of some countries in that tragedy — is that the most the UNSC has been able to achieve in three years is to call on the parties, and principally the Syrian government, to abide by the most basic responsibility.

And that responsibility, he said, “is not letting people die of hunger and lack of medical care.”

After taking a tough stand against Western-inspired moves to punish the government of President Bashar al Assad, Russia and China last month supported a Security Council resolution, adopted unanimously, calling for humanitarian access to Syria.

“We hope Russia and China are taking seriously the UNSC’s intention to ensure its recent resolution on humanitarian access is respected, including if necessary by agreeing further steps against parties that don’t comply,” Diaz added.

Mohammad, one of the Jordanians living in the village, has been trying to assist the incoming refugees. He says that most of the aid goes to the camp, with those living with host communities receiving a minimum, which however does include food vouchers distributed by the World Food Programme (WFP). Credit: EC/ECHO/A. Al Sukhni

In a hard-hitting statement Wednesday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said three years ago, the Syrian people stood up in peaceful protest to demand their universal rights and freedoms.

“In response came brutal force, escalating bloodshed and the devastation of civil war,” he said.

Ban appealed to all warring parties to reflect upon the long and growing list of horrors taking place in Syria every day.

The secretary-general said he “deeply regrets the inability of the international community, the region and the Syrians themselves to put a stop to this appalling conflict.”

Ban specifically appealed to both the United States and Russia to help re-energise the virtually defunct peace process in Geneva.

Diaz of Amnesty International told IPS, “Just as important is that the UNSC follows through on its various statements, including in the latest resolution, that those responsible for violations of human rights and international humanitarian law will face justice.

“We continue to believe the Council should refer the situation in Syria to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC).”

In a statement released Thursday, the New York-based Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect (R2P), said, “Syrians cannot wait any longer.”

The Centre urged the UNSC to demand full implementation, by all parties in Syria, of resolution 2139 (demanding humanitarian access), including the cessation of attacks on civilians, lifting of sieges and facilitation of immediate humanitarian access to all areas of the country.

The Centre also asked the UNSC to authorise targeted sanctions against any government and non-state actors who continue to act in defiance of resolution 2139 and are responsible for mass atrocity crimes; impose an arms embargo on Syria; and refer the Syrian situation to the ICC for investigation, and hold accountable those responsible for mass atrocity crimes.

Additionally, it called for increased efforts to find a political solution to the conflict, including by engaging with all relevant regional powers.

Conscious of the deadlock in the UNSC, the Centre said: “Given the detrimental effects of UNSC division and inaction on Syria, we urge the permanent members of the Council (the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia) to commit to refrain from using the veto, in any case where crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or genocide, are occurring.”

Rwandan genocide survivors exhuming the bodies of their relatives killed and buried in a mass grave during the 1994 100-day massacre. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15 2014 (IPS)

On Jan. 11, 1994, Romeo Dallaire, force commander of the United Nations Mission in Rwanda, sent a fax to U.N. Headquarters in New York, telling officials there a source close to the government had confided to him that Tutsis were being forced to register themselves in Kigali.

“He suspects it is for their extermination,” wrote Dallaire.“Having 26,000 people running around [DRC] just with a rifle doesn’t mean you are going to actually have a solution." -- Romeo Dallaire

In five months, a million, mostly Tutsi, Rwandans would be dead, victims of a meticulously planned 100-day genocide unleashed by Hutu extremists after they shot down the plane of President Juvénal Habyarimana, fearful he would soon seal a lasting peace in the country.

On Wednesday in New York, the U.N. marks the sombre 20th anniversary of what most consider its greatest failure – and the lives that proved the price required to force peacekeeping into the 21st century.

“Twenty years ago, humanity turned itself inside out,” Dallaire told reporters Tuesday. “The international community did its best to ignore Rwanda. It wasn’t on their radar, it was of no self-interest, it had no strategic value.”

Simon Adams, executive director of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, who joined Dallaire and Rwandan ambassador Eugene-Richard Gasana, said the genocide, along with ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, was a turning point for the U.N.

Eleven years after the genocide, in 2005, the U.N. launched the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) initiative, obliging states to protect their own population from mass killings and holding the international community accountable for taking collective action to prevent genocide.

“Without the tragedy of Rwanda, we wouldn’t have had the Responsibility to Protect,” Adams told IPS. “There’s no way that would have happened without the process of sad reflection afterwards and the utter failure of the U.N. in 1994.”

Yet in 2009, the U.N. came under heavy criticism for not doing more during the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war, when up to 40,000 civilians were killed in a conflict which had, for most purposes, already been decided.

A 2012 internal U.N. report echoed investigations from the 1990s, finding “the UN’s failure to adequately respond to events like those that occurred in Sri Lanka should not happen again. When confronted by similar situations, the UN must be able to meet a much higher standard in fulfilling its protection and humanitarian responsibilities.”

Still, U.N. peacekeeping missions now prioritise the protection of civilians and sovereignty no longer takes precedent when they are targeted. Today it is expected that peacekeeping operations, such as recent interventions in South Sudan and the Central African Republic, will receive Chapter Seven mandates, authorising peacekeepers to use force in order to prevent the deaths of non-combatants.

Dallaire’s mission had no such mandate.

Coming a year after the disastrous failed mission in Somalia, countries were hesitant to send troops to Rwanda. Even when Dallaire asked the U.S. to jam radio transmissions emitting instructions to kill, Washington declined, afraid doing so would violate Rwanda’s sovereignty.

“The onus is on every sovereign state that makes up this U.N.,” said Dallaire. “Every sovereign state washed its hands, didn’t want to get involved, saw another Mogadishu catastrophe coming on line and did its best to avoid being engaged. So there was no prevention. There were words, but there was no prevention.”

Not only did the U.N. not heed Dallaire’s pleadings, but during the worst of the genocide, when seven Rwandans were being murdered every minute, the Security Council voted to cut its peacekeeping mission in the country by 90 percent.

Ordered to leave the country, Dallaire, along with several hundred soldiers, refused. They tried desperately to protect civilians, but the killing subsumed the ill-equipped and overwhelmed troops.

Only three weeks before Tutsi rebels took the capital and ended the genocide, the Security Council finally approved a French intervention force, but the 3,000 French troops soon after gave safe passage to fleeing interahamwe and Hutu soldiers, even allowing them to keep their weapons. Pursuit of the genocidaires continues today, both abroad and in the jungles of eastern Congo.

“History has judged the U.N. very harshly for its inaction in Rwanda, and we must learn the lessons of the past,” Adams told IPS.

In March 2013, the Security Council authorised the “U.N Force Intervention Brigade,” a rapid response force that aggressively and successfully pushed into submission the M23 rebels in Eastern Congo.

“The new force there, having offensive capabilities, is a significant departure from the mandates that were so restricted,” said Dallaire.

“Peacekeeping always suffers from a lack of rapid reaction,” said David Curran, lecturer in peacekeeping, peace building and conflict resolution at University of Bradford. “There is a strong need to examine concepts of rapid deployment.”

Curran says countries still complain about erratic mandates and many member states – mostly developing – are remiss to send soldiers on orders from a security council whose members offer few or none at all.

“Certain states, mainly from the non-aligned movement, find they are being pushed to provide peacekeepers in situations where there is little peace to keep,” Curran told IPS. “They say they are being given vague mandates pertaining to protection of civilians from the Security Council, which certainly has a majority of states who do not provide troops to peacekeeping operations.”

Dallaire says peacekeeping often is a question of money and resources, no more evident than in Congo missions, which for many years were seen as failures.

“Having 26,000 people running around there just with a rifle doesn’t mean you are going to actually have a solution,” Dallaire told reporters. “So until developed countries get reengaged in peacekeeping and peacemaking operations we will continue to have forces that are not necessarily effective on the ground but also we seem to also continue to have mandates that are so restricted.”

But, he added, there is “a whole new generation of conflict resolution in which peacekeepers can be deployed but with the ability to influence the situation and not stand there and observe it, report, a sort of referee without a red card.”

Recent mandated French-led interventions in Mali and Central African Republic – cheaper than full blue-helmet missions – have seen mixed results, but observers raise questions concerning those actions’ long-term viability and development prospects.

Dallaire spoke encouragingly of the recent deployment of troops from other missions to augment the peacekeeping force in South Sudan, which the Security Council voted to increase by 5,500 shortly before Christmas.

But Adams says the mission in South Sudan is tentative and unwilling to enforce its mandate. On Tuesday, gunfire burst through the walls of an UNMISS camp in Malakal but the U.N. did not report any engagement. Groups say 10,000 have died, many of them civilians.

“In the case of South Sudan, they have a responsibility to protect mandate, it’s written in there,” says Adams. “There’s no problem with doctrine, which is very different from 1994. I think what we see in South Sudan is a question of resourcing, political leadership and will.

“What we often lack in mass atrocity crime situations is not early warning but timely response,” he added.

Closer to Rwanda, Gasana said the interahamwe that the French let slip so easily through their grasp continue to operate as FDLR rebels in the Eastern Congo, and for that, celebrations were not yet in order.

“I don’t think that they’ve learned anything. MINUSCO’s been there 13 years. And everybody, all of us here, knows what FDLR represents and they are still there,” said Gasana. “But we learned a lesson, we are part of the U.N., we don’t want this to happen anymore and that’s why we contribute peacekeepers to see how we can do our duty and serve the people all over the world.”