Peace Support Operations and Perpetual Human Failings: 'Are We All Human, or Are Some More Human Than Others?'

In 1994, in the tiny African country of Rwanda , eight hundred thousand Rwandans were brutally murdered in a period of a hundred days. In the words of Lt. General Romeo Dallaire, the force commander of the United Nations (UN) Assistance Mission for Rwanda from July 1993 to September 1994 (UNAMIR), it was a case of ‘betrayal, failure, naïveté, indifference, hatred, genocide, war, inhumanity and evil’2. The UN stood by and the world’s great powers chose to do nothing. On the other hand, the slaughter of the innocent in the former Yugoslavia received such an overwhelming response from the same powers that even apolitical people were left wondering why. As of today, over three million people have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in a conflict spanning decades, but where the peacekeeping force (in a country larger than the entire Western Europe) is tiny compared to the size of forces deployed in the former Yugoslavia. It may therefore be asked whether race is the major factor in the nature of responding to conflicts3. Since the inception of UN peace missions, there have been 15 such missions sent to the African continent, while (currently) the mission number has dropped to eight. It is interesting to compare this with other missions elsewhere. In the past, the Americas have had eight UN missions, Asia and Europe had seven, and the Middle East has had six. Presently there is only one UN ­mission in the Americas , Asia has two while Europe and the Middle East have three each4. Given 43 peacekeeping missions in the past and 17 at present, it may be correctly deduced [Wrong: it can only be noted that the UN’s response level has dropped. It may imply that…] that conflict levels have indeed dropped. However this does not necessarily imply that there has necessarily been a reduction in fatalities. This commentary aims to make the point that peace support and peacekeeping operations have thus far not brought about the peace and security the world has been searching for. After looking at some related concepts, it focuses on a conceptual assessment of the concepts designed to seek an explanation for the dysfunctional nature of peace support and peacekeeping operations. This commentary also elaborates on a variety of dimensions that contribute to the inability of humanity to make these operations work.