The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (94 page)

While some progress was made after the imposition of the sanctions and the acceptance of the Governors Island Agreement (GIA) signed by both Aristide and Raul Cedras, the leader of the de facto regime,
³⁷
Venezuela stressed its increasing ‘concern over the serious violations and abuses relating to human rights that continue to take place in Haiti’.
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Not long after, the Council unanimously authorized both an advance team of thirty personnel to prepare for the deployment of the proposed UN mission to Haiti,
³⁹
and the creation of the mission (UNMIH) for a period of six months.
⁴⁰
Further intransigence on the part of Haitian authorities, coupled with a renewed surge in violence, led to the withdrawal of personnel from UNMIH and the International Civilian Mission in Haiti (MICIVIH), and ultimately the imposition of both a naval blockade and a commercial embargo.
⁴¹
The latter was imposed unanimously, in response to what the Security Council condemned as ‘numerous instances of extra-judicial killings, arbitrary arrests, illegal detentions, abductions, rape and enforced disappearances, the continued denial of freedom of expression and the impunity with which armed civilians have been able to operate and continue operating’.
⁴²

From May until July 1994, reports continued to flow into New York concerning the deteriorating human rights situation under the new military-backed provisional government led by President Émile Jonassaint. Jonassaint’s subsequent expulsion of inspectors from MICIVIH was vigorously condemned by the Council in a Presidential Statement issued on 12 July 1994, which asserted that this ‘provocative behaviour directly affects the peace and security of the region.’
⁴³
The Council’s Statement, combined with domestic pressure on the Clinton Administration to act (from both the Congressional Black Caucus and those concerned with the influx of refugees), marked the end of the UN’s reluctance to use force in Haiti.

On 31 July 1994, the Security Council adopted Resolution 940 (drafted by Argentina, Canada, France, and the US) by twelve votes in favour and two abstentions.
⁴⁴
Citing grave concerns over the ‘significant further deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Haiti, in particular the continuing escalation by the illegal de facto regime of systematic violations of civil liberties, the desperate plight of Haitian refugees and the recent expulsion of the staff of the MICIVIH’,
⁴⁵
the Council authorized the use by a US-led multinational force (MNF) of ‘all necessary means to facilitate the departure from Haiti of the military leadership, consistent with the Governors Island agreement, the prompt return of the legitimately elected President and the restoration of the legitimate authorities of the Government of Haiti’. In addition, the MNF was mandated to establish and maintain a secure and stable environment that would permit implementation of the GIA. In its resolution, the Council planned deployment in three stages, consisting of an advance team of the UN peacekeeping mission (UNMIH), then the US-led MNF, and ultimately the full deployment of UNMIH, to replace the MNF.
⁴⁶

Although Council members were explicit in their desire
not
to have the intervention in Somalia set a precedent for subsequent humanitarian interventions, the mission did have at least one critical knock-on effect for the future. The death of eighteen US soldiers in the autumn of 1993 in Mogadishu contributed to the reluctance of the Clinton administration to contemplate military force in the context of the genocide in Rwanda.
⁴⁷
This landmark case of non-intervention has engendered criticism of, not only US foreign policy, but also the entire UN system. Faced with arguably the first instance of genocide since the holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s, the international community failed to mount an effective response and, in the eyes of some critics, ‘condemned the Rwandans to their fate’.
⁴⁸
Indeed, Permanent Members never even suggested that Rwanda – which coincidentally held a non-permanent seat during the genocide – should be barred from the Council.

A key factor in accounting for the inaction of the Council in the most critical phase of the genocide (6–21 April 1994) was the way in which the conflict was framed in debates. Member states did issue a statement on 6 April, when the violence erupted, condemning the killings and demanding protection for civilians
and UN officials. However, Council records over the next two weeks show member states choosing to portray the crisis, not as a case of genocide, but as a civil war between government forces and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) – an impression that was reinforced by the Secretary-General’s own representative on the ground.
⁴⁹
The characterization as genocide would have given the Council not only a clear legal right to act, but also a duty to do so: Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide obliges state parties to prevent and punish acts of genocide. It was the depiction as a civil war, combined with a breakdown in communication between UN forces on the ground, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and the Security Councils,
⁵⁰
that laid the groundwork for the crucial decision in Resolution 912 of 21 April 1994 to
withdraw
the bulk of UNAMIR’s forces.
⁵¹
But the event that precipitated this resolution was the death of ten Belgian peacekeepers and the return of their bodies to Brussels on 14 April. The incident was followed by Belgium’s swift decision to withdraw its troops from UNAMIR, and to US Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s instructions to the US Ambassador to the UN (Madeleine Albright) to demand a full UN pull-out.

The most powerful member states in the Council, along with officials at UN headquarters in New York, voiced concern that outside military forces would have little chance of success in the context of civil conflict, and that a ‘failure’ along the lines of Somalia would have damaging consequences for the organization as a whole. This high estimation of the costs of intervention was coupled with a low estimation of its expected benefits. US pessimism
⁵²
about the prospects for international actors in situations of ‘political turmoil’ was reflected in Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD 25), which was issued in early May 1994. In the words of then National Security Adviser Anthony Lake: ‘neither we nor the international community have either the mandate, nor the resources, nor the possibility of resolving every conflict of this kind …the reality is that we cannot solve other people’s problems.’
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In fact, PDD 25 did more than discourage US intervention during the genocide; it also contributed to US efforts to block the attempts of other states to put together a robust UN mission.
⁵⁴

Owing to the pressure exerted by key Non-permanent Members, the Security Council did eventually authorize an expansion of UNAMIR’s mandate and numbers.
⁵⁵
However, the Council also maintained that a ceasefire needed to precede deployment and implementation. This precondition continued to prove elusive, given the incentives for the RPF to keep fighting. As a result, states delayed in providing both the forces (with many of the troops offered arriving long after the genocide was over) and the supporting military equipment (the armoured personnel carriers promised by the US did not arrive until early August).
⁵⁶

The failure by member states to assemble UNAMIR II led the Council to authorize a second-best option: the deployment of the French-led
Opération Turquoise
on 22 June 1994. This mission (authorized under
Chapter VII
) was tasked with an explicitly humanitarian goal, and did manage to save, by some estimates, approximately 10,000 lives.
⁵⁷
Indeed,
Opération Turquoise
proved two things: that interventions could be mounted quickly if there was a ready and determined state willing to lead; and that a relatively small force could have made a difference in Rwanda (as General Roméo Dallaire had insisted when he called for an expansion of UNAMIR in the early stages of the genocide). Nonetheless, a shadow hung over the operation owing to questions about France’s lack of impartiality and the clear opposition of the RPF to its presence. Moreover, the French troops failed in two crucial ways: they did not protect refugees (who had fled to the border of Zaire) from the leaders of the genocide (who took control of the refugee camps); and they allowed key perpetrators of the killing to escape Rwanda.
⁵⁸
Many members of the Security Council feared that France’s motives in offering to lead the mission were more strategic than humanitarian (given its past efforts to rescue its own allies from the fighting in Rwanda), and therefore ensured that the resolution approving the French mission warned against attempts to affect the course of the civil war.
⁵⁹
Others, particularly Dallaire, went further to suggest that the UN might unwittingly end up aiding the genocidaires through its association with French troops and jeopardize the safety of its peacekeepers. But as Barnett concludes, ‘it was hardly imaginable that the Security Council would reject the first offer to provide humanitarian assistance to come its way in over two months of empty searching.’
⁶⁰

The horrors of the Rwandan genocide, and the international community’s inadequate response, had an important legacy for the UN’s posture with respect to humanitarian intervention. Not long after Bill Clinton’s now famous apology for US inaction during the genocide, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan challenged the international community to prevent ‘another Rwanda’ and to develop a new consensus on how to respond more quickly and effectively to humanitarian tragedies within the sovereign jurisdiction of states.
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A key plank in that emerging consensus was an attempt to reframe the traditional understanding of sovereignty, and its corresponding right of non-intervention, through the principle of the ‘responsibility to protect’. According to the formulation of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which released its report to the Secretary-General in 2001, sovereignty had come to imply a ‘dual responsibility’ for each member of international society: to respect the sovereign rights of other states
as well as
the rights and dignity of citizens within one’s territory. ‘Where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.’
⁶²
As is shown below, the ‘responsibility to protect’ was eventually endorsed by member states of the UN in 2005.

The post-Rwanda debate also facilitated the ‘Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict’ initiative, which was officially instigated by then Secretary-General Annan’s report entitled
Situation in Africa
on 13 April 1998. In this report, he identified the protection of civilians in instances of conflict as a ‘humanitarian imperative’, and called for the Security Council to pay greater attention to areas of concern.
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Responding to this call, the Council, led by the Canadian delegation, released a Presidential Statement on 12 February 1999 highlighting several issue areas and requesting that the Secretary-General provide recommendations as to how the Council could improve the physical and legal protection of civilians in situations of armed conflict.
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In its Presidential Statement, the Council underlined the ‘intimate connections between systematic and widespread violations of the rights of civilians and breakdowns in international peace and security’, noting that large-scale human suffering is a ‘consequence and sometimes a contributing factor to instability and further conflict’.
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Reflecting at the end of a decade that had witnessed some of the worst atrocities committed against civilians, Annan’s subsequent report to the Security Council insisted that ‘massive and systematic breaches of human rights law and international humanitarian law constitute threats to international peace and security’, thereby demanding the attention and action of the Council (including, if necessary, enforcement under
Chapter VII
). He also recalled instances from the 1990s (such as Iraq and Somalia) where, he argued, such a precedent had been established. This call for greater attention and action was reinforced by member states, who emphasized that because ‘human security had become synonymous with international security,’ the principles of state sovereignty and non-interference, while still applicable, had certain qualifications. In Resolutions 1265
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and 1296
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(and later in Resolutions 1674 and 1738
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), the Security Council responded by underlining its commitment to human security, condemning the deliberate targeting of civilians, and affirming the view that violations of international humanitarian and human rights law could ‘constitute a threat to international peace a security’.
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However, members of the Council also indicated their reluctance to embrace doctrinal change, instead advising that it approach the issue of protection on a case-by-case basis.

The memory of Rwanda and diplomatic initiatives such as the ‘Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict’ served as a backdrop for one of the most contentious cases to appear on the Security Council’s agenda: the question of military action to halt ethnic cleansing in the Serb province of Kosovo.
⁷⁰
This humanitarian intervention, which NATO undertook without the Council’s authorization, caused a severe rupture within the international community about the legitimacy of the use of force and revealed the limits of the Security Council consensus over how to interpret threats to peace and security. The Security Council first became ‘seized of the matter’ through Resolution 1160, adopted under
Chapter VII
, which determined that the conflict between the Kosovo Liberation Army and Serbian security forces constituted a threat to international peace and security.
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In a preview of the debate that would later prevent the Security Council from reaching consensus over military action, both Russia and China abstained in this vote, insisting that the situation in Kosovo was within the domestic jurisdiction of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). This interpretation was increasingly challenged by other members of the Council, particularly after the UN High Commissioner for Refugees briefed the Security Council in April 1998 about the deteriorating humanitarian situation for the Albanian population in Kosovo.