How Efficient Is the United Nations Security Council in Promoting Global Security (with Specific Reference to Darfur and Iraq)?

In both the Rwandan and Bosnian genocide, the UN was “involved.” Their main job was to be peacekeepers and try to keep the remaining peace that was left, intact. They were equipped with guns and weapons to defend themselves, but they were not to be used to protect the victims during the genocides. The UN decided they would only

The attacks affected the civilians living in the region, leaving as many as 300,000 dead and 2.8 million displaced (Darfur Conflict). Aicha el Basri, a former UN spokesperson, stated, “In one instance last September, peacekeepers "watched" the pro-government Janjaweed militia group carry out an assault on civilians travelling in a truck, but did not intervene (Darfur Conflict).” The UN hasn’t acted on the attacks occurring right in front of them. The civilians of Darfur feel the UN has betrayed them, by standing back and not protecting them. The UN organization, the African Union Mission In Darfur (UNAMID), has also failed to bring safety to the civilians. According to Ahmed H. Adam, “...UNAMID neither has a mandate nor the equipment for intervention, so even in the midst of conflict; it is unable to effectively respond (Adam).” The destruction of the population by their own government is the most recent failure of the UN, since the genocide in Darfur still continues

The structure and power of the UN Security Council is a major factor regarding how some states are able to exert power over the UN. For example, any permanent member of the UNSC (China, Russia, the US, Britain or France) can veto any resolution proposed as they please. As a result of this we have seen much needed resolutions been dropped due to permanent members vetoing due to national interests. In the case of the conflict in Syria, both resolutions proposed by the UNSC were vetoed by Russia and China as they went against their national interests. In this way, the permanent five members are certainly more powerful than the UN. Furthermore, states sovereignty imposes limits on the extent to which the UN can protect human rights. States sovereignty can also mean that states can refuse to sign international agreements that are seen as against their national interests. For example, the US’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Nevertheless, the UN does exhibit some power over states. It can authorise the use of force or peacekeepers or economic sanctions against states where internal conflict has occurred. For example, in 2006 the UNSC authorised the use of peacekeeping troops in Sudan in response to the conflict in Darfur. Similarly in 2011, the UNSC authorised the use of force to protect civilians against the attacks of the Gaddafi regime. Conclusively, although the UN has the ability to authorise various

The United Nations failed Rwanda, in a time of need they abandoned the Rwandan people giving them no physical protection. Sadly, things go wrong with the slaughter of almost 800,000 Rwanda people, left defenseless in a country where no one outside cared. U.N. troops were present as only “peace-keepers.” The dispute was between the Hutus and Tutsis people could of been controlled if the U.N. changed their position, but the result could bring more consequences. This conflict between the two social groups in Rwanda,was left to be resolved on its own with many lives lost.

As a response to the crisis in Darfur in 30th July 2004, the United Nations and the Security Council assigned

The UN and the US government are accredited for deploring conflict situations as well as contributing humanitarian aid, and this is what these two organizations did in Rwanda and Darfur. However, the UN did not do anything to punish or prevent the genocides that took place in these two countries. The US government promised to support the peace talk’s agreement in Darfur and hold the perpetrators accountable for their acts. It never kept that promise since nothing has been done. So far, the UN’s Security Council has also failed in its peace keeping mission effeorts, and is instead pressuring Sudan with words only. No solid steps have been made to bring the wrong doers into justice (Shapiro).

Genocide is definitely a huge problem that has troubled the world in the past, and still continues to do so. The United Nations must intervene in genocide because it is their job. If they are not going to try and solve problems, then the supranational organization can be disbanded, and World War III will be the result. According to the Office of the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, the United Nations has a few roles when it comes to genocide. First of all, they are supposed to raise awareness of genocide, by teaching States and their governments to institute prevention mechanisms, and how to handle ethnic diversity so that the different ethnic groups can coexist peacefully. Secondly, they are supposed to collect information on serious violations of human rights and humanitarian laws, that if not stopped may lead to genocide. They, in a timely matter, must also report situations of concern to the Security Council. Lastly, they are required to mobilize the United Nations’ system and other key partners to conduct missions to countries where intervention is needed. As previous genocides have shown us, the United Nations do not perform these acts to the extent that they are required to do so. According to these genocide guidelines that were created at the Convention for Genocide Prevention, there is absolutely no excuse for mass ethnic atrocities and genocides. When, and if, the United

For example, as the events of the Darfur genocide unfolded, member nations pressured the UN to call it a genocide, obligating it to act, yet refused to provide it with the essential military and financial support. As Gérard Prunier, author of Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide explains, "this situation came to demonstrate the UN's practical limitations in crises where the heavyweight member states do not want to act. Blaming the UN was easy for those who were responsible for its inaction." The United Nations has and continues to accomplish volumes for humanity, but in the face of genocide, the UN is a defunct organization, dependent entirely upon the will of its member nations.

The final reason why the United Nations is to blame for Rwanda’s Genocide is because of the fact that they ignored evidence of planned genocide and abandoned Rwandans in need of protection. The United Nations failed trying. The independent report, commissioned by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan ( who was in charge at the time of the Rwandan Genocide), says the UN peacekeeping operation in Rwanda was hopeless from the start by an poor consent and destroyed by the Security Council's unwillingness to strengthen it once the slaughters, murders and rape began. UN officials, together with Annan and then-Secretary-General

Later the peacekeeping forces brought about cease-fires in Central America and the Iran-Iraq War. As a safeguard they kept forces there to make sure that peace continued. After a few failures in Africa, the United Nations learned that by sending a force that is too small and not very intimidating, peace will crumble. The largest peacekeeping mission ever undertaken by the United Nations was the civil war between Bosnia and Herzegovina, after Yugoslavia broke up. On numerous occasions the United Nations underestimated the forces needed and failed the campaign. Since that failure in Bosnia, the United Nations has refused help to any other nations requesting assistance. (United Nations 2)

The global powers failed to step in quickly and took so long that a mister Eric Reeves had time to write an article called The World’s Abandonment of Darfur in which he writes “The United States, Britain and France need to muscle up politically in the Security Council now or the fate of Darfur will be dictated by the very men who began the genocide 12 years ago. This would be unprecedented in the grim history of genocide” (Reeves). Clearly, the global superpowers need to step up their game in the international community to help stop things like this from happening in the future. If these countries could not even prevent the same tragic events from happening back to back, that is terrible. Granted, the restructuring of a state can be a long and difficult project to undertake, just look at the Middle East and the United States’ involvement, but it is necessary to make sure that the same people, or any people at all, are incriminated and tortured like those living in the Darfur region were. The global heavyweights, at least, need to intervene in any restructuring post-genocide to ensure that the county does not fall back into a state in which mass killings are taking

The war in Darfur materialized at the wrong time for the United States, Norway, and Britain, two of which are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. At the time, they were focused on ensuring the success of the Naivasha negotiations in Sudan. The Naivasha agreement, also known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was an permanent ceasefire agreement between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/ Sudan People’s Liberation Army to end the Second Sudanese Civil War. This was long time coming because the conflict had started all the way back in 1983. The Security Council used the ‘Brahimi principal,’ which states “regional organizations take primary responsibility for the problems in their backyard” to push responsibility on to the A.U. The Brahimi principle The Security Council was glad to give someone else the responsibility of Darfur so they could focus on others tasks at hand.

The United Nations is made up of many countries from all over the globe. There are five countries who are permanent roles in it: United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, and China. With these five major countries, there shouldn’t be a reason an organization could have a lack of resource. But during the genocide the UN was not able to bring about enough personal and equipment to sufficiently run a peace keeping operation in Rwanda. With a lack of resources, they also had a lack of will to try and gain resources. People in the Security Council believed it wasn’t going to be anything worth getting into at the start of the killing.

The United Nations, with its rigid moral and political limitations against force, has become a benchmark of peace and a social achievement of modern times. From war torn Europe, the United Nations developed from five major powers with an initial goal to prevent the spread of warfare through peaceful means and to establish and maintain fundamental human rights. Through the past fifty years, this organization has broadened its horizons with auxiliary organizations from peace keeping missions to humanitarian aid, to economic development. However, in a modern example of ethnic cleansing, the UN faces new a new role as a bystander as its power is bypassed by NATO forces. The UN, however, promises to be an

The purpose of this paper is to examine the six chapters assigned for this week. First, in Weiss et al.’s first chapter entitled The Theory of UN Collective Security, the authors elaborate on the foundation and purpose of the United Nations serves on a global scale by means of collectivity. Second, chapter four entitled Evolving Security Operations: Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, and Syria, provides specific examples of relations between the United Nations and individual nation-states, the progress the UN has made in developing countries, and how the resistance the UN faces affect the organization as well as the population they serve. Third, chapter ten of Weiss et al.’s book, Sustainable Development as Process: UN Organizations and Norms focuses on the humanitarian efforts of the UN, especially in the focus of establishing self-sufficiency in developing countries. Then the three chapters in Pease’s book, Security, The Environment, and Human Rights and Humanitarian Issues, focus on three key issues facing the international organizations today.