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ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN had foreseen
the tragedy in the inability of the United Nations Organization (UNO)
to respond to genocidal crimes and prevent their occurrence because
of its partiality to the powerful minority, which controls the UN
Security Council while ignoring the interests of the vast majority
of nations. With all the power vested in the UNO, it has still
failed to anticipate genocidal crimes and prevent them from
happening, or even when such acts have already occurred, it has
miserably failed to avert further massacres and destruction, and
even just simply to make an appropriate and immediate response, and
be prepared for such eventualities. Such inability is tantamount to
apathy, consequentially, reflective of its ineffectuality and
inefficiency. Likewise, the failure of any international or national
leader to articulate condemnations or protests on vicious attacks,
particularly the targeting of children, is also reflective of the
international community’s fundamental indifference over world
events as these horrifying events have no immediate parochial
concern to them and do not tend to affect or disrupt their national
security or economies.
National
governments are certainly capable of assuming cognizance or absolute
jurisdiction over apparently domestic issues. But will they be
capable of providing an appropriate domestic response, without any
international intervention whatsoever, when there exists serious
allegations on their partiality and prejudices? For example, why
would the Sudanese government headed by Arab janjaweeds be even
slightly interested in investigating the genocide committed on the
peoples of Darfur when said government is precisely being accused of
masterminding or ordering the slaughter of these innocent tribal
peoples, without any regard for the lives of innocent children?
Unfortunately, domestic responses of an accountable government
allows it to shut off any publicity and unwanted international
responses to these abominable incidents, thus shutting off every
option towards an achievement of justice in the quest of a people
for peace. Serious crimes of international concern are generally
swept under the rug as domestic issues over which UNO international
bodies just lamely aver its lack of jurisdiction to investigate,
much more prosecute.
For example, the
genocide in Rwanda between the Hutu and Tutsi communities had the
dangerous tendency of spilling over to Burundi and Zaire. Yet, until
now, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda is taking a long
time to prosecute its genocidal perpetrators while they freely roam
around in continuously advocating genocide against the other tribal
community. While genocidal massacres were being committed, the
Belgian forces deputized by the United Nations stood by, without
wishing any armed engagement with the apparently domestic issue. UNO
peacekeeping forces were deemed impotent as they failed to stop the
slaughter of Tutsi people, mostly children, by rampaging Hutu
forces. Ironically, Belgium was the first country to ever
unilaterally declare that its national courts could hear and
adjudicate international crimes as international criminal courts.
However, even as they claimed authority and assumed jurisdiction
over crimes of international complexion, their Belgian peacekeepers,
even with UNO’s deputization and authorization, stood by during
Rwanda’s genocidal slaughters.
In the former
Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic stoked conflicts that left more than
300,000 people dead, more than 3 million homeless, and the Yugoslav
economy in ruins. Serbian Radovan Karadzic, now under UN custody,
also ordered the sexual abuse of male prisoners, mostly young boys,
by forcing nudity or forcing them to have sex with one another.
Sometime in July 1995, Serbian generals ordered the separation of an
estimated 8,000 Bosniak males, which included boys as young as 13
years from their families and the rest of the prisoners, in which
they were systematically murdered. But again, during the mass
murders of the 8,000 Bosniak males, the Dutch forces deputized by
the United Nations as a peacekeeping force in the former Yugoslavia
stood by, without engaging the Serbians in preventing or averting
the massacres.
In all these
incidents, the children victims of genocide were not caught in the
crossfire. Albeit the children were not even participants in the
armed conflict, they were specifically targeted as part of an
orchestrated campaign to terrorize and intimidate whole populations
and subjugate entire communities. But in these given situations,
UNO’s incompetence and inability in averting such humanitarian
disasters involving children, or minimizing its disastrous effects
on children, is highlighted. UNO’s reaction time to the direct
targeting of, and actual assault on, children appears to be
disappointing, even appalling. International law must rapidly
evolve, to strengthen the normative system that prescribes
beneficial behavior and proscribes inimical conduct. Quick response
teams from the United Nations must be established to avert and
prevent further escalation of genocidal slaughters and rapes.
International crimes defined in the Rome Statute are certainly mere
guidelines on human conduct that deny the dignity due human beings
owing to their basic humanity. But its implementers must take
their tasks seriously, not just in remediating the problems but also
in seeking pro-actively the solutions to the festering conflict
situation among warring parties.
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