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The Security Council Response to Mass Atrocities: A Case Study of Rwanda and Darfur

Journal Name:

  • Annales de la Faculté de Droit d’Istanbul

Publication Year:

  • 2009
Author NameUniversity of AuthorFaculty of Author
Abstract (2. Language): 
The mass atrocities taking place in internal conflicts and the obstacles in responding to massive human rights violations in the context of such conflicts have long been in the agenda of the international community, as Koffi Annan stated in the Millenium Report of the Secretary-General, “Wars since 1990s have been mainly internal. They have been brutal, claiming more than 5 million lives. They have violated, not so much borders, as people. Humanitarian conventions have been routinely flouted, civilians and aid workers have become strategic targets, and children have been forced to become killers. Often driven by political ambition or greed, these wars have preyed on ethnic and religious differences, they are often sustained by external economic interests, and they are fed by a hyperactive and in large part illicit global arms market.”1 It is beyond dispute that the massacres that took place in Rwanda and Darfur have taken their places in history as black dots of humanity and examples of a drastic failure of the international community holding aloof of the approach of a slaughter that was even hesitated to be called as “genocide” before it all ended. There are indeed several parameters that caused this failure, from various state to non-state actors, including the inner political atmosphere that was influenced by the foreign states, especially the colonial powers of the cold war era, and the dynamics in the world organization, the United Nations, which depends highly on the interests of its Member States. More glaring than the role of such factors is the failure of the international community to even mitigate the atrocities and prevent the upcoming ones. The United Nations (UN), as the most prominent international body which holds the capacity to intervene where it sees a threat to peace and security via the decisions of its primary organ with such authority, the Security Council2, has thus been the target of human rights activists, NGOs, regional organizations, as well as member states of its own, for failure to act and a lack of deriving lessons from the former failures. As Kofi Annan indicates the high level of expectations of the international community from the UN Security Council , which is assigned responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, he asserts that only the Security Council has the authority to determine whether the internal situation in any State is so grave as to justify forceful intervention and further states, “The Council’s authority depends not only on the representative character of its membership but also on the quality and speed of its decisions. Humanity is ill served when the Council is unable to react quickly and decisively in a crisis”3. With this view, this essay focuses on the causes of the actions, inactions, failures and weaknesses of the Security Council with connection to the situations in Rwanda and Darfur, with a critical view reflecting different perspectives; starting with a general information regarding the mandate of the Security Council, proceeding with the briefing of the Security Council response regarding both situations and concluding with the analysis of these responses embracing the factors causing such attitude.
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  • 58
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