United nations all bark and no bite

Running head: UNITED NATIONS FAILUREUnited Nations Failure: All Bark and No BiteNameInstitutionInstructor`s NameCourse United Nations All Bark and No Bite The United Nations has the mandate to save generations from the afflictions of war and to endorse hope in human rights, and the establishment of conditions in which respect and justice arising from treaties of international law is maintained. The UN is responsible for ensuring that nations adhere and maintain international norms and standards spelt out in the 550 treaties that cover issues like human rights, refugees, environment and disarmament (Evans & Sahnoun, 2002). Despite the mandate of the UN, the society has failed to follow its principles of non-intervention, sovereignty and the principle of not using of force. There are many instances that the UN has failed in protecting people from genocides, mistreatment and the realization of their basic human rights. This paper seeks to prove that the UN has not met its mandate as it purports. This failure is best described through the massacred of refugees of the 1996 and 1997 war in Congo. This war presents the perfect example of the gap between the definition of international and the application of these laws as sovereign states are supposed to assist helpless people (Emizet, 2000). The UN having been aware of the civil war in Rwanda-Burundi and the turmoil in neighboring countries would have immediately prevented the massacre of the hundreds of thousands of people. This massacre would have been prevented given the fact that there was a history of genocide in the region and an earlier 1994 ethnic cleansing in Rwanda. The genocide of 1996-1997 has its roots in 1990 when the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which was a Tutsi political and military movement which operated in Uganda was defeated by the Rwandan army backed by Mobutu`s troops (Khan, 2000). This marked the beginning of a decade long war in this region. Moreover given the deep rooted ethnicity of the region, it is expected that the UN would have foreseen the lack of security for Rwandan refugees in the region.This wide gap between paper and action would have been prevented if the UN followed article 2 of the genocide convection, which states "genocide is committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group" (Emizet, 2000). Therefore, by definition it is evident that there is a clear definition of what the UN defines as the necessary conditions for genocide. This situation was definitely brewing at the boarders of Rwanda and Congo, following the 1994 ethnic cleansings in Rwanda. Clearly, the 1996-1997 Congo massacres were an after math of the Rwanda-Burundi genocide (Planck, 2000). As Rwandan troops killed Tutsis as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) aggressively attacked the government (Emizet, 2000). The height of the crisis occurred on between April and June of 1994, as between 200,000 and one million Tutsis and mo...