The statement "the more acute the situation and by extension the greater the need, the less useful the United Nations is and the more irrelevant international law becomes", was once observed by a critic while talking about the United Nations. This essay will examine this question by drawing upon the book Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, as well as look at some of the efforts of Rafael Lempkin. The above quote, in my own opinion, is stating that the more desperate a situation becomes, the lesser amount of good the United Nations will be able to do to resolve the situation. The worse things are, the more likely international law will be broken, and will be allowed to be broken by the U.N., the ones who are supposed to enforce it
Let's start off with Condition bravo in the book, which takes place in Cambodia, 1993. The authors state how Bulgarian peacekeepers sent to Cambodia were nothing more than "prison inmates and the patients of psychiatric wards, even though they arrived in military uniform to become UN Blue Helmets." Kenneth Cain describes how the "blue helmets" were hated by everyone in Cambodia and described them as "A battalion of criminal lunatics who arrive in a lawless land. They're drunk as sailors, rape vulnerable Cambodian women and crash their UN Land Cruisers with remarkable frequency."
Overall, the Cambodian election is cake, the work is easy and uneventful, the election successful and the trio move on to other peacekeeping assignments, where their fortunes change dramatically. The UN workers did their job and were successful in Cambodia without many instances of corruption. Heidi and Ken go to Somalia and come under siege, Andrew goes to Haiti where he is a helpless and frustrated observer in the face of Haitian warlords. When Heidi and Ken lose a colleague in Mogadishu, their disenchantment for the UN grows. There is evidence of UN corruption here. In Somalia, Cain is caught in a Somali attack on a U.N. ceremony celebrating the UN sponsored reopening of the Somali courts. Unfortunately, during the attack, many of the judges are killed or driven off, and Cain learns that his boss had pushed for the provocative reopening of the courts so that he could collect 15 percent of the judges' salaries for himself. Stories like those are present the authors' U.N. experiences. Cain also relates that while in Rwanda, the chief administrative officer of the U.
Another strength of this book is Prochnau's treatment of the central characters. These journalists were often reviled and criticized for their caustic and searing articles about the Vietnamese situation. These popular opinions undermined the legitimacy of their work and the truthfulness of their reportage of the deterioration of South Vietnam. Prochnau's accounting of these individuals runs contrary to these opinions, and in effect, reaffirms the validity of these journalists' work. For example, the David Halberstram has often been portrayed as an antiwar hero, yet the author stated that Halberstram was quite the opposite. "But not once during his Vietnam years or well afterward, did he (Halberstram) question America's right, even her need to be there (Vietnam). His criticisms were of methods and foolishness, lying and self-delusion, of a failure to set a policy that could win."(pg 141) These depictions exonerate the image of this hardy "band of brothers."
Although there are many contributing factors to this atrocity, when combined with the stresses of war, ordinary people can become agents of significant hostility. This is the underlying lesson to Milgram’s experiment and likely the underlying cause for the transformation of the seemingly normal soldiers of My Lai. When even the destructive effects of their actions become clear and they are asked to continue with this action, even though it is obviously incompatible with their fundamental standards of morality, few have the wherewithal to resist the desires of authority.
Her memoir starts off in Darfur in 2005, where in her late 20’s, she hits rock bottom while managing a refugee camp for 24,000 civilians. It backtracks to her internship in Rwanda, while moving forward to her challenges in Darfur, in addition to her experiences in post- tsunami Indonesia, and post-quake in Haiti. By sharing her story, Alexander gives readers an opportunity to go behind-the-scenes into the devastations that are censored on media outlets. She stresses that these are often the problems that individuals claim they are educated on, but rarely make it their priority to solve. However, that is not the case for Jessica Alexander as she has over 12 years of experience working with different NGO’s and UN operations. As a result, Alexander earns the credibility to critique the multi-billion-dollar humanitarian aid industry. From her painful yet rewarding work experience, Alexander gives an honest and empathetic view of humanitarian aid as an establishment and a
On the thirtieth of January, 1968, as the sun set over South Vietnam, nothing seemed out of place. A cease fire had been declared in observation of the Tet holiday and the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces welcomed the break. The latter half of 1967 had been filled with violent, bloody and perplexing battles for the anti-communist troops. For the last three months the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) were launching regimental sized suicide attacks against remote U.S. outposts near the Cambodian border. The losses for both sides were mounting and morale was dipping due to the perceived stale mate. The peace was exactly what was needed, but it wouldn’t last. Shortly after midnight North Vietnam would launch the largest offensive
"Cambodian Genocide." World without Genocide. William Mitchell College of Law, 2012. Web. 13 Apr. 2014. .
Genocide is a pressing issue with a multitude of questions and debates surrounding it. It is the opinion of many people that the United Nations should not get involved with or try to stop ongoing genocide because of costs or impositions on the rights of a country, but what about the rights of an individual? The UN should get involved in human rights crimes that may lead to genocide to prevent millions of deaths, save money on humanitarian aid and clean up, and fulfill their responsibilities to stop such crimes. It is preferable to stop genocide before it occurs through diplomacy, but if necessary, military force may be used as a last resort. Navi Pillay, Human Rights High Commissioner, stated, “Concerted efforts by the international community at critical moments in time could prevent the escalation of violence into genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing.”
Walker, Luke. "Cambodian Genocide World Without Genocide." Cambodian Genocide. William Mitchell College of Law, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2014. .
Prak, K, B, & Schuette, S. (2007). Gender and Women in politics in Cambodia. Henrich Boll
During the author’s life in New York and Oberlin College, he understood that people who have not experienced being in a war do not understand what the chaos of a war does to a human being. And once the western media started sensationalizing the violence in Sierra Leone without any human context, people started relating Sierra Leone to civil war, madness and amputations only as that was all that was spoken about. So he wrote this book out o...
Walker, Luke. "Cambodian Genocide." World Without Genocide. William Mitchell College of Law, 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. .
The Web. The Web. 25 Nov 2013 Williams, Sarah. The "Genocide: The Cambodian Experience." International Criminal Law Review 5.3 (2005): 447-461.
David Galula and Roger Trinquier have common roots, they were French citizens and both lived in the 20th century when the study of counterinsurgency theory was coming into focus. Each of these men experienced bitter conflicts of war. Galula fought in North Africa, Italy, and France. In addition, Galula fought in irregular wars located in China, Greece, Indochina, and Algeria. Galula was a lieutenant colonel when he decided to author his now classic book. Whereas, Trinquier an officer in the colonial infantry defended the French concession in Shanghai and later in Indochina under the Japanese occupation where he was held prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. After Trinquier’s release from prison, he continued to serve in Indochina and additionally in Algeria. Both men wrote from first-hand experience and published their accounts in 1964 while the Cold War waged. Communism ideology vs. the free world theorists collided across the face of the globe in a race for domination. Counterinsurgency has been an American strategy since the 1960s ebbing and flowing in strategic signi...
Marks, Stephen P. "Elusive Justice For The Victims Of The Khmer Rouge." Journal Of International Affairs 52.2 (1999): 691. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 19 Dec. 2011. .
1. As far as peace keeping methods go, the reputation of the United Nations is very pitiable. This is not only because they have not been doing their job to it’s fullest extent, but also because the member states on the security council haven’t given the UN the power it needs if it is to be a successful force in peace keeping methods.
Although, within the U.N. Charter of 1945, Article 2(4) prohibits the use of force against ‘the territorial integrity or political independence of any state’ (U.N. Charter, art.2 para.4), it has been suggested by counter-restrictionist international lawyers, that humanitarian intervention does not fall under these criteria, making it legally justifiable under the U.N. Charter (e.g. Damrosch 1991:219 in Baylis and Smith 2001: 481). However, this viewpoint lacks credibility, as it is far from the general international consensus, and unlikely the initial intentions of the draftsmen of the charter. In more recent times, one can examine the emerging doctrine of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’(RtoP), which was adopted unanimously by the UN in 2005, as a far more persuasive example of modern legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. While not consolidated within international law, RtoP, which promotes humanitarian intervention where sovereign states fail in their own responsibility to protect their citizens, does use legal language and functions as a comprehensive international framework to prevent human rights