Rapes in Congo Demonstrate, Yet Again, Limits of UN Peacekeeping

(Aug. 24) -- As Rwandan and Congolese rebels spent four days raping up to 200 women and baby boys within miles of a United Nations military camp, U.N. peacekeepers did ... nothing. "There was no immediate explanation as to why the attacks were not reported until today," AOL News reported on Monday.

And yet, the news of the U.N. soldiers' non-response will surprise no one familiar with past U.N. peacekeeping efforts. The 1994 Rwandan genocide was arguably the organization's greatest failure, for which the U.N. finally admitted responsibility in 2000. But there have been others: For instance, the 2005 massacre of 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica, Bosnia, which two years earlier been placed under U.N. protection, protected by 400 armed peacekeepers, none of whom fired upon the advancing Serbian soldiers. Similarly, the U.N. has not stopped the killings in Darfur.

Given such a flawed track record, many have raised the question of whether the U.N. needs its own army, which would allow it to deploy to potential hot spots more rapidly with the fighting capability to stop future atrocities.

But it's unclear how such a force could operate free of the constraints inherent to the larger U.N. For instance, in Darfur the U.N. is constrained by the pre-eminence it gives to state sovereignty, which Sudan's leaders invoke in response to any calls for outside intervention.

Plus, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States -- are unlikely to surrender their veto power. (China has supported the Sudanese government with an eye on its oil reserves.)

In Rwanda, the meager U.N. peacekeeping force managed to save about 30,000, while 800,000 were massacred. Early on, Belgium (the former colonial force) withdrew its peacekeepers. And when the U.N. force commander on the ground asked for additional troops, member nations, including the United States, dithered. President Bill Clinton refused to categorize the mass slaughter in Rwanda as genocide, a designation that under U.N. mandate obligates involvement to stop the killings and prosecute those responsible.

Without independence, which is against its very nature, the U.N. will never have an effective fighting force, which is something the Congolese government recognized even before last month's mass rape. The government has "demanded the withdrawal of the $1.35 billion-a-year U.N. mission, the largest peacekeeping force in the world with more than 20,000 soldiers, saying it has failed in its primary mandate to protect civilians," The Associated Press reports.

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