Barry Andrews
by Barry Andrews
In her book A Problem from Hell, Samantha Power (now US ambassador to the UN) wrote about the policy of the US and the international community in relation to the Burundi and Rwanda genocide in the following terms: “The normal operations of the foreign-policy bureaucracy and the international community permitted an illusion of continual deliberation, complex activity, and intense concern, even as Rwandans were left to die.”
Continual deliberation, complex activity and intense concern have been the hallmarks of the UN’s approach to the Syria crisis. Speaking in Dublin last week, Simon Adams, the executive director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, said that Syria has been the UN’s single biggest failure of the century so far. He also described it as “an unprecedented display of callous indifference”.
The latest UN security council resolution – 2165, passed on Monday – is an attempt to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches the 4.5 million Syrians either in hard to reach areas or under siege. However, it represents a significant climb down from what the security council previously stated is required.
In a bid to appease Russia and China, language was revised to say the council “affirms” rather than “decides” that it will “take further measures in the event of noncompliance with this resolution or resolution 2139 by any Syrian party”.
In my opinion, this resolution is going nowhere.
The security council should be guided by the first principle: “do no harm”. The “busy inertia” of the security council might give the impression of great endeavour to please those who demand action. However, each failure either to pass a security council resolution or to deliver on those that are passed has unintended and deadly consequences.
As Adams pointed out, the Assad government is extremely sensitised to what happens at the security council. He made the point that after each false start Bashar Al Assad’s violence “metastasised” accordingly, giving him greater confidence that no consequences would flow from the atrocities he was committing against his people.
The security council’s failure to do anything meaningful is often criticised for not preventing the increasing level of violence. But Adams’s analysis suggests that its failure is actually contributing to the increasing level of violence. With each aborted initiative, Assad takes heart and turns the screw on the innocent populations he routinely targets. In other words, the security council would better serve the protection of innocent populations if it stopped trying to conceive new resolutions while walking over the remains of previous ones.
Apart from these wider political issues, for NGOs such as Goal working in Syria, the resolution is imperfect and potentially dangerous anyway. By contrast with NGOs, the UN has not demonstrated any capacity to properly monitor the distribution of aid to ensure that it goes to the intended beneficiaries. Moreover, it is expected that the delivery of aid will be checked by border monitors, with the Assad regime approving lists of beneficiaries. This is highly unlikely to be deliverable or workable.
If the security council wants to look like it is doing something to justify the salaries of the thousands of bureaucrats busying themselves at computer terminals all day in New York, then it should work at removing the veto or setting it aside in circumstances of dire humanitarian need. Alternatively, it could do the unthinkable and try to make the previous agreed resolutions actually work. For instance, resolution 2139, passed in February to great acclaim, sets out a very reasonable and perfectly workable mechanism for the delivery of humanitarian aid over national borders to the most inaccessible parts of Syria.
A popular saying has it that wise men talk because they have something to say; but fools talk because they have to say something.
THE GUARDIAN
by Barry Andrews
In her book A Problem from Hell, Samantha Power (now US ambassador to the UN) wrote about the policy of the US and the international community in relation to the Burundi and Rwanda genocide in the following terms: “The normal operations of the foreign-policy bureaucracy and the international community permitted an illusion of continual deliberation, complex activity, and intense concern, even as Rwandans were left to die.”
Continual deliberation, complex activity and intense concern have been the hallmarks of the UN’s approach to the Syria crisis. Speaking in Dublin last week, Simon Adams, the executive director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, said that Syria has been the UN’s single biggest failure of the century so far. He also described it as “an unprecedented display of callous indifference”.
The latest UN security council resolution – 2165, passed on Monday – is an attempt to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches the 4.5 million Syrians either in hard to reach areas or under siege. However, it represents a significant climb down from what the security council previously stated is required.
In a bid to appease Russia and China, language was revised to say the council “affirms” rather than “decides” that it will “take further measures in the event of noncompliance with this resolution or resolution 2139 by any Syrian party”.
In my opinion, this resolution is going nowhere.
The security council should be guided by the first principle: “do no harm”. The “busy inertia” of the security council might give the impression of great endeavour to please those who demand action. However, each failure either to pass a security council resolution or to deliver on those that are passed has unintended and deadly consequences.
As Adams pointed out, the Assad government is extremely sensitised to what happens at the security council. He made the point that after each false start Bashar Al Assad’s violence “metastasised” accordingly, giving him greater confidence that no consequences would flow from the atrocities he was committing against his people.
The security council’s failure to do anything meaningful is often criticised for not preventing the increasing level of violence. But Adams’s analysis suggests that its failure is actually contributing to the increasing level of violence. With each aborted initiative, Assad takes heart and turns the screw on the innocent populations he routinely targets. In other words, the security council would better serve the protection of innocent populations if it stopped trying to conceive new resolutions while walking over the remains of previous ones.
Apart from these wider political issues, for NGOs such as Goal working in Syria, the resolution is imperfect and potentially dangerous anyway. By contrast with NGOs, the UN has not demonstrated any capacity to properly monitor the distribution of aid to ensure that it goes to the intended beneficiaries. Moreover, it is expected that the delivery of aid will be checked by border monitors, with the Assad regime approving lists of beneficiaries. This is highly unlikely to be deliverable or workable.
If the security council wants to look like it is doing something to justify the salaries of the thousands of bureaucrats busying themselves at computer terminals all day in New York, then it should work at removing the veto or setting it aside in circumstances of dire humanitarian need. Alternatively, it could do the unthinkable and try to make the previous agreed resolutions actually work. For instance, resolution 2139, passed in February to great acclaim, sets out a very reasonable and perfectly workable mechanism for the delivery of humanitarian aid over national borders to the most inaccessible parts of Syria.
A popular saying has it that wise men talk because they have something to say; but fools talk because they have to say something.
THE GUARDIAN
