Understanding the Un Security Council: Coercion or Consent? by Neil Fenton

Author:Neil Fenton [Fenton, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351143745
Google: R_dADwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 36983705
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2004-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Rwanda

The humanitarian tragedy which struck the small African state of Rwanda in the spring of 1994 provides a painful yet telling insight into the attitudes of the Security Council members towards consent and peacekeeping in the wake of UNOSOM II. During the deployment of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), the Security Council kept the force firmly based on traditional peacekeeping methods. Even in the face of direct attacks on UN personnel and the systematic killing of Rwandan civilians, the members of the UNSC were initially unwilling to authorize the use of force under Chapter VII to counter the violence. In fact, they responded to the Rwandan genocide by reducing the size of UNAMIR. This decision directly relates to the central questions considered in this thesis. Rwanda presents a clear case where the Council's members were reluctant to abandon the principle of consent in preference for enforcement measures under Chapter VII, even when presented with a clear humanitarian case for doing so. It was only well into the crisis that the Council was shamed into reluctantly authorizing a Chapter VII intervention led by France, a former patron of Rwanda. The rationale behind the UNSC's adherence to consent and the decisions taken in response to the Rwandan genocide are the focus of the following chapter.

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