After
these experiences, secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali recommended in
1995 that peacekeepers under the U.N. should not attempt peace enforcement
but should stay with peacekeeping as their role. He felt the Security Council
would do better if they delegated the responsibility for enforcement to member
states or a group of member states such as NATO. This is the approach that
has
been followed with some success up to now.
The future
Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, has
said that the United Nations will ultimately be judged by its peacekeeping scorecard
more than anything else it does. He said in a speech on U.N. peacekeeping reform
that these "systems are desperately over-stretched. Without fundamental
reform, the strings will snap. … But in considering whether we can together
afford to keep this system in business, we must also consider whether we can
afford not to. In real terms, spread equitably among those who can afford it,
the cost of U.N. peacekeeping barely registers against what we pay for national
defense expenditures. The cost of refusing to pull our weight, on the other hand,
will be measured in innocent lives and in peace and security worldwide."
At present, the United Nations has nearly 150,000 personnel from more than 80
countries on standby who can be called on for peacekeeping duties. The weakness
is that a country can decline to send troops, and many do.
Besides finding a better way to finance operations, there are serious suggestions
that some countries such as Russia, England and the United States should train
and have available 5,000-person forces that can be sent into a crisis situation
within seven days after the Security Council gives approval.
Given the presence of media showing us atrocities around the world, we are no
longer in a position to stand idly by and allow whole groups of people to be
annihilated. The lessons learned in the last decade will hopefully enable the
United Nations to develop techniques to prevent the destruction of civilian
populations.
