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.
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...
Daniel Goldhagen (2009) states that in less than four years, Cambodia’s political leaders induced their followers to turn Cambodia’s backwards and regressing society into a massive concentration camp in which they steadily killed victims. Furthermore, a deeper understanding of the Cambodian genocide is provided within Luong Ung’s personal narrative, “First They Killed My Father” (2000). Ung’s memoir is a riveting account of the Cambodian genocide, which provides readers with a personalized account of her family’s experience during the genocide. She informs readers of the causes of the Cambodian genocide and she specifies the various eliminationist techniques used to produce the ideological Khmer vision. Nonetheless, she falls short because
Walker, Luke. "Cambodian Genocide." World Without Genocide. William Mitchell College of Law, 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. .
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. .
The United Nations General Assembly 36-103 focused on topics of hostile relations between states and justification for international interventions. Specifically mentioned at the UNGA was the right of a state to perform an intervention on the basis of “solving outstanding international issues” and contributing to the removal of global “conflicts and interference". (Resolution 36/103, e). My paper will examine the merits of these rights, what the GA was arguing for and against, and explore relevant global events that can suggest the importance of this discussion and what it has achieved or materialized.
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.”
The Cambodian Genocide has the historical context of the Vietnam War and the country’s own civil war. During the Vietnam War, leading up to the conflicts that would contribute to the genocide, Cambodia was used as a U.S. battleground for the Vietnam War. Cambodia would become a battle ground for American troops fighting in Vietnam for four years; the war would kill up to 750,00 Cambodians through U.S. efforts to destroy suspected North Vietnamese supply lines. This devastation would take its toll on the Cambodian peoples’ morale and would later help to contribute that conflicts that caused the Cambodian genocide. In the 1970’s the Khmer rouge guerilla movement would form. The leader of the Khmer rouge, Pol Pot was educated in France and believed in Maoist Communism. These communist ideas would become important foundations for the ideas of the genocide, and which groups would be persecuted. The genocide it’s self, would be based on Pol Pot’s ideas to bring Cambodia back to an agrarian society, starting at the year zero. His main goal was to achieve this, romanticized idea of old Cambodia, based on the ancient Cambodian ruins, with all citizens having agrarian farming lives, and being equal to each other. Due to him wanting society to be equal, and agrarian based, the victims would be those that were educated, intellectuals, professionals, and minority ethnic g...
Flaws in the Roman Statute and lack of participation of the United States, one of the world’s most powerful and influential nations, prevent the International Criminal Court from reaching is goal of prosecuting the most serious international crimes. The ICC would be much more effective if it had U.S. support and made modifications to the Roman Statute, like adding the crimes of aggression, allowing more authority in jurisdiction, and becoming less dependent on State Parties. In the ICC’s current State it is ineffective and has little point in existing.
"From 1975 to 1779- through execution, starvation, disease, and forced labor-the Khmer Rouge systematically kill an estimated two million Cambodians, almost a fourth of the countries population."(Ung Author's Note). In First They Killed My Father, Loung Ung and her family were victims of Pol Pot's invasion of Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. She, her parents, and her six brothers and sisters were all forced into labor camps to work for the Khmer Rouge and fight a battle that wasn't even theirs to fight. From 1975 until 1979, the Khmer Rouge held control over much of Cambodia. To keep the people under their control the soldiers used many techniques of terror. In the memoir, First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung, the author describes how the Khmer Rouge used the techniques of intimidation, restriction, and isolation in order to keep people
Unfortunately, set aside all of those captured beauty that Cambodia has, at one point in time in its history; darkness devoured this fragile nation and turned it upside down. This peaceful nation was once ruled by the French as part of French Indochina. With the struggled that Cambodian government undertaken to restore balanced and granting their nation’s independence back from the European colonization, they paid a price. The years of sad and worn out history of this nation’s corrupt government, turmoil, and followed by years of civil war thus making them in a state of dire emergence. Furthermore, with their bordering neighbor’s war, Vietnam, with the United States, Cambodia was slowly dragged into the state of darkness during the Nixon Administration. The Nixon administration conducted secret bombings in Cambodia in the early 1970’s because Vietnam forces had their bases camped in the Cambodian province. As a result of this misleading casualty, it led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot. His influence gained many fellow native supports in Cambodia. Pol Pot and his entourage brought ...
...ractices of other branches of power that the UN cannot grasp upon. In contrast, the virtues of the UN remain undeniably consistent throughout history, but the powers and legislative action the organization fluctuates due to the constant uprising of conflict. However, throughout the history of the 20th century and post Cold – War conflict, the organization's extensiveness has increased, such through the actions of the Non-proliferation treaty of nuclear weapons, and the ongoing tasks of UN Peacekeeping missions. These actions reflected upon the UN fiasco of the Cold War, demonstrate the emerging “politico-economic” society, by laying a prodigious impact of the world via its numerous stretches of the organization.
Fifty-eight years after the signing of the Charter, the world has changed dramatically. Its universal character and comprehensiveness make the United Nations a unique and indispensable forum for governments to work together to address global issues. At the same time, there remains a large gap between aspiration and real accomplishment. There have been many successes and many failures. The United Nations is a bureaucracy that struggles – understandably – in its attempt to bring together 191 countries. It must come at no surprise, therefore, that a consensus cannot always be reached with so many different competing voices.
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.
The process of reforming the United Nations (UN) has been a highly debatable issue among the international community. Since the initial signing of the UN Charter in 1945, the world has changed dramatically as the UN is trying to regulate a forum that assesses and deals with global issues while also struggling to unite all 193 member states of the UN when some states have been seen to have conflicting ideas and personal agendas (Teng, 2003, pp. 2-3). This essay is targeted to highlight what I feel are the most pressing arguments for UN reform amongst the international community. This will be done by highlighting the problems and ongoing issues surrounding the lack of representation and P5 power of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), arguing that the UNSC is out of date and controlled egotistically. This essay will also highlight the humanitarian aspect of the UN and the role it plays in meeting and solving complex global problems. This will be done by showing reform propositions in the aforementioned councils in the UN in hopes of showing how reform will be achieved.
Cambodia is a country in the eastern region of Asia between surrounding neighboring countries Thailand at the North West, Vietnam at the east, and Laos situated at the northern section. Cambodia has a dark past that many people of today’s society aren’t aware of. A past so appalling it is even having effects on the country today. Cambodia is a country home to one of the most atrocious acts that have ever occurred in the world. During the 1970’s Cambodia was plagued by an act of genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge so horrendous that it nearly decimated the entire populace of Cambodia. During the 1960’s through the 1970’s Cambodia was engulfed with battles for authority primarily between two political organizations. One political organization was the Khmer Republic. The Khmer Republic didn’t agree on the direction its country was heading at the hands of its monarch. As a result members of the Khmer Republic initiated a rebellion against the monarch in efforts to dethrone and to gain political strength. Another was the Communist Party of Kampuchea better known as the Khmer Rouge with the unpleasant intentions of initiating its ideology. Cambodia is a country that was held captive for four grueling years by Khmer Rouge. The intention of this organization was to return the country back to an agrarian society composed of peasant people focused on agriculture. This Political organization was led by a man with the radical name Pol Pot. This communist regime without a doubt would have slaughtered more of its own people if it weren’t for the invasion of Cambodia by the Vietnamese Army. This invasion ended the horror of the Cambodian population and the rule of terror by the Khmer Rouge.