UN peacekeeping operations (catch all)

[Tom Odom]

120MM,

I hear what you are saying and it is quite true: the policy chefs ignore the pot and the staff cleans up.

That aside, I often pose the question about alternatives to UN PKOs: simply who else will do it?

We struggle right now with the question of filling needs in Iraq for a war we essentially decided was necessary. Elsewhere in the world, conflicts go on most don't even hear about. I put Carl's Congo Sitreps on here because they offer insights into the insane world of MONUC--the largest PKO in history.

Darfur in Sudan continues to befuddle Western and African efforts to unravel. Faulty or not, the UN is often the only venue for action.

best

Tom

[Stan]

AllAfrica reports on the recent sentencing of former Rwandan Army Major Ntuyahaga who stood trial in Belgium over the Genocide. Ntuyahaga was sentenced to 20 Years in Jail for the killing of 10 Belgian Peacekeepers in 1994.

Bernad Ntuyahaga, 55, was convicted yesterday by a Belgian court which has been trying him. However, the court acquitted him of murdering then Rwandan PM Agathe Uwilingiyimana.

The murders, committed in front of Rwandan army officers, triggered the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers.

Belgium's prime minister told the court that had peacekeepers stayed, thousands of lives could have been saved.

International fallout

Prosecutors said Ntuyahaga took the peacekeepers from the residence of Mrs Uwilingiyimana, who they were trying to protect. He then handed them over to fellow soldiers in a military camp in the capital, Kigali, where they were beaten to death, shot or slain with machetes.

Christine Dupont, the widow of Belgian peacekeeper Christophe Dupont, said before the verdict: "It's a very important day, a day we have been waiting for the last 13 years."

It is not the first time Rwandans have stood trial in Belgium over the Genocide. Two Catholic nuns, a university professor and a businessman were sentenced in 2001 to between 12 and 20 years' jail for aiding the mass murders.

[Jedburgh]

UNDPKO, 14 Mar 08: United Nations Peace Operations Year in Review 2007

....UN peace operations have become essential instruments for the international community in maintaining international peace and security. The challenges and the numbers are unprecedented: UN peacekeeping currently maintains 20 operations on four continents with more than 100,000 men and women in the field.The budget for peacekeeping is expected to grow from US$5 to US$7 billion over the 2007-8 biennium, US$1.28 billion of that for Darfur alone. New UN political missions were also deployed to the field, even as existing operations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East faced continuing challenges in preventing and resolving conflict.

Once a mechanism for keeping the peace after a conflict had ended, UN peacekeeping operations and personnel are now being asked to deploy into still fractious environments, and are expected to protect civilians, mitigate conflicts before they widen, and keep societies and regions from further disintegration.

The growing challenges stretched the capacity of the Organization and demanded innovation: in his first year in office, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon initiated a comprehensive programme of internal restructuring, reorganizing the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and establishing a separate Department of Field Support.This enabled a major augmentation of resources along with new capacities and integrated structures to match the growing complexity of mandated activities and to ensure unity of command and integration of effort.....