Sticks and Stones: Living with Uncertain Wars

The Responsibility to Protect

146 The Responsibility to Protect ROMEO DALLAIRE It is the aim of those us who have survived the catastrophe of the Rwandan genocide never to let it disappear. During the genocide in Kigali in Rwanda, my mandate was self-defense. I was not authorized to protect the forty thousand-odd people that we protected. That was done against orders. We do not know how to resolve conflict today within these new, complex problems . We do not have the structures or instruments we need. We still insist on solving them within two years—from the peace agreement to a democratic process and elections in two years. That’s impossible. In my country [Canada], we are still arguing a problem between a minority and a majority that started in 1759. How can we tell other nations how to solve their problem in two years? Where does that pretentiousness come from? Why do the big international institutions impose such milestones? Ladies and gentlemen, humanitarian catastrophes are resolvable if we use a far more mature premise of involvement. The will to intervene is the problem. The instruments of intervention are there in a spectrum that needs to be harnessed, then to be improved, and then made usable in a systematic fashion. We need a whole new conceptual basis to conflict resolution—multi-disciplined, political, diplomatic, military, humanitarian—all working on one plan, not separate plans, and for a long time. We were in Cyprus for forty years. Prosperity is there now, and maybe in twenty years the green line will disappear. We have to acknowledge that we’re in for the long haul in these missions. Ladies and gentlemen, I have no confidence in single-nation-led coalitions. They are fundamentally not altruistic; they are fundamentally based on selfinterest . Their aims are not necessarily humanitarian. It is my opinion that we must work through the UN—it is still the most transparent and impartial world organization (with warts)—and that it can, in fact, grow if we want to use it. Why should we worry about that 80 percent of the humanity that’s in poverty? Is it relevant to us? Is humanity in fact the 20 percent of the haves and the other ones not? Within forty-eight hours of the start of the genocide, French, Italian, Belgian, and American troops were landing in and around Rwanda, pulling out about four thousand expatriates and leaving every black person behind: The people who had raised the kids of those who left were slaughtered in their houses.The From the EPIIC Symposium at Tufts University, “Sovereignty and Intervention,” February 2003 The Responsibility to Protect 147 others left with banks full of gold and precious jewels and ivory.They even brought out their dogs. There were over two thousand of the best trained and equipped soldiers in the world in and around Kigali. But once the last white person was on the plane, they left and abandoned nearly two thousand ineffective (for the most part) UN troops. Bangladesh had received the order not to help or protect anyone. That’s eleven thousand troops. The Belgians pulled out because of casualties and influenced everybody they could to pull out with them. No one came. Weeks and weeks and weeks and no one came. Why? A staff of- ficer from a power told me, “Sir, we’re not going to come in to help stop this.” And what were the reasons? One, Rwanda is of no strategic value in the world. Two, there is nothing here—no resources, certainly no strategic resources. He said, “The only thing here is humans, so we’re not coming.” They died by the hundreds of thousands, there were more people killed, injured , internally displaced and made refugees in less than one hundred days in Rwanda than in the eight years of the Yugoslavian campaign. I couldn’t keep troops on the ground, or feed the people, or give them water to keep them alive. There are still tens of thousands of troops in Yugoslavia. There are billions of dollars of aid going in there. What is the difference? Is the international community racist? Does it have a pecking order? Does it create orphan nations because there are only humans there? Ladies and gentlemen, humanity is made 100 percent of humans and every one of them counts. They would stop convoys by putting children in the middle of the road. Children became instruments of war. As such they’re...