Collective Security and Humanitarian Intervention: Coping with Contending Principles: The Rwanda Crisis in Perspective

One abiding image of post-Genocide Rwanda is the disjunction between
the activities of the humanitarian community and the United Nations Assistance
Mission in Rwanda [UNAMIR]. This separation between late 1994 and the end of
1995 was reflected in many ways. There were instances when UNAMIR took
operational decisions that placed the safety, security and objectives of
humanitarian organizations directly at risk. There were all too many instances
when both sides – the humanitarian and the peacekeepers – failed to share
information, and where each undertook initiatives with little consideration for the
impact that such initiatives might have upon the other.

Post-genocide Rwanda reflected not only the operational and conceptual
gaps between peacekeepers and the humanitarian community in general, but
also demonstrated the perceptual and operational schisms between the
peacekeepers and humanitarian organizations within the UN, itself. Rwanda in
that sense was an important stage of an emerging awareness within the UN and
amongst various member-states that the institution had to change the way it dealt
with complex and multifaceted missions. Kigali in that sense was an institutional
step down the road to Kabul, where the latter witnessed the first full blown UN
effort to initiate an integrated mission – a concept that was articulated in the
Brahimi Reort.

The Brahimi Report and subsequent efforts to define and to operationalise
integrated missions have brought into greater clarity the tensions that exist
between two broad issues that go to the core of much of the UN’s raison d’etre:
collective security and humanitarian intervention. The extent to which one could
reconcile the contending principles of each was and continues to be an issue that
emerged so clearly in the aftermath of Rwanda’s tragedy.