UN expert outlines lessons of 1994 genocide

The UN Security Council held an open meeting on Friday to discuss how and why the international community failed to prevent or stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and how the avoid such a situation arising again. In introducing the report by an independent panel on UN actions before and during the Rwandan genocide slaughter, the panel's chairman, former Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, urged the Council to give future UN peacekeeping operations the mandates, resources and troops they needed to function, and show "the same determination to exercise your responsibility for international law, peace and security wherever the crisis and whatever the continent," a UN press release stated. The inquiry found that the overriding failure of the UN in 1994 was the lack of resources and the lack of political will to act, Carlsson said, adding: "There can be no neutrality in the face of genocide or massive violations of human rights." The council must be more active in "ensuring the capacity, resources, robust mandates and clear rules of engagement existed to carry out the operations it authorised," as well as taking into account the expectation that UN peacekeepers would protect civilian populations, he added [see the full Independent Report into UN Actions During the Genocide at: http://www.un.org/News/dh/latest/rwanda.htm ]