A Public Lecture Given at Magee College, University of Ulster, Derry, on 20 February 1995 by Cedric Thornberry

Cedric Thornberry is a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations; most recently Deputy Chief of UNPROFOR in ex-Yugoslavia.

It gives me special pleasure to be back in Ulster to discuss these related subjects, with which I have been professionally engaged during the all too many years that I have been living and working away from my home country.

It is particularly exciting to be here at such an historic time in the life of the community; when, provided judgement, skill and courage are exercised, political leaders have an opportunity to begin to create a new quality of life for all the members of this society; a community environment that is more healthy and constructive than that which several previous generations have experienced here; and one in which the human rights of all are respected.

I propose to speak today about peacekeeping, peacemaking and human rights, and about the connections which exist, or which should exist, amongst these three.

Collective Security and Internal Affairs

While, under the League of Nations, there were one or two operations which in some respects resembled modern peacekeeping [see eg Alan James, Peacekeeping in International Politics (1990)] the practice has become especially associated with the United Nations. The UN's Charter, whose fiftieth anniversary we celebrate this year, shows that the primary concern of its draftsmen, in the last months of the Second World War, was, understandably, with the maintenance of international peace and security; and with establishing mechanisms which would make it possible for collective measures to be taken to prevent, and remove, threats to international peace and security. The "Pacific Settlement of Disputes" is dealt with in Chapter VI of the Charter, which provides comprehensive machinery for such settlement if the continuation of the dispute might endanger peace and security. Chapter VII, of course, establishes procedures and mechanisms for action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression.

The Charter also emphasises human rights, the equality of nations, the maintenance of the international rule of law, and international cooperation in economic, social, cultural and humanitarian matters. But the preoccupation is with the maintenance of international peace and security against threats which the Charter's draftsmen principally expected would arise out of inter-state disputes. And, while the Charter was proclaimed in the name of the "Peoples of the United Nations" it is, in fact, firmly founded upon the existing system of sovereign states. Comparatively little attention is paid by it to matters which lie behind the dense veil of sovereignty, though both human rights and self-determination of peoples are given more than token mention.

A key provision is article 2(7) of the Charter, whose first sentence provides that "Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorise the UN to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter". Thus, for example, events in regard to Chechenya appear, by common consent, to be regarded as, in principle, being within the domestic jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. On the other hand, the second part of the article makes it clear that events or situations which would otherwise be outside the competence of the UN would move within it if the Security Council were to determine that they constituted a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression:- thus, apartheid was on the UN's agenda for many years. Situations involving gross breaches of human rights may legitimately move from behind the curtain of domestic jurisdiction into the realm of international governmental concern and, for some years, various organs of the UN have been looking into human rights' situations within individual states.

In recent years, a number of the UN's peacekeeping operations, also, have related to events within the territory of individual states - Somalia, Angola, Bosnia, Salvador, as examples. But in some earlier such operations - in Cyprus, West Irian, the Dominican Republic and, of course, the Congo - the essential issues had also related to inter-communal problems.

We can therefore say that, while the UN Charter primarily contemplated inter-state matters, the Organisation has been building up a limited and cautious competence and capability in inter-communal or other intra-state matters. Since the Charter, moreover, internal conflicts have vastly outnumbered inter-state ones. The prevalence of civil wars is even more marked today:- in 1993, it was calculated, 34 conflicts were taking place around the world - all were internal. The sense, not just of surprise but shock, with which the recent recurrence of hostilities between Peru and Ecuador has been universally received has been significant. The fact is that, in recent decades, international wars havebecome bizarre and exotic aberrations.

The Evolution of Peacekeeping

Let me look briefly at the evolution of UN peacekeeping.

Peacekeeping itself is not referred to in the UN Charter. It evolved, instead, because of the failure of the five permanent members to achieve consensus for the first forty-plus years of the UN's existence; a consensus upon which the effectiveness of much of its security machinery was hypothesised; and it developed as a purely pragmatic response. New conflicts arose, especially as a result of decolonisation, and many could not be resolved by peaceful means. A way had to be found to stop hostilities and control situations so that they would not develop into broader conflagrations. Out of that need UN peacekeeping operations evolved as, essentially, stop-gap actions. They were, as The Blue Helmets recalls, born of necessity, largely improvised, a practical response to a problem requiring action. [2nd ed., 1990, p.4].

The ending of the British mandate in Palestine saw the creation there in 1948 of the UN's first peacekeeping operation, UNTSO the UN Truce Supervision Organisation - to help the UN Mediator supervise the truce between the warring Arab and Jewish parties. This was UNTSO's first role; but it has acquired many other mandates over the next 47 years; and in the early eighties, when I was its chief political adviser, based at the old Government House in Jerusalem, we were mainly preoccupied with conflicts in Lebanon, including Beirut. UNTSO's pioneering experience and unique fund of knowledge were vital in setting up several other peacekeeping operations which have followed in the Middle East, beginning with UNEF-I in 1956 after the Suez operation. These operations were rather successful and lent encouragement to the establishment of another fourteen missions which functioned between this time and what I regard as the great watershed in UN peacekeeping, namely, the Namibia operation in 1989 - the UN's seventeenth peacekeeping operation. After Namibia, things were never the same again.

In that meantime, between UNEF-I and UNTAG in Namibia, UN peacekeeping was developing, cautiously, into new functional, as well as geographical, areas - several more operations were established in the Middle East, and others on the Indo-Pakistan border, in the Dominican Republic, in West Irian, Yemen, the Congo and Cyprus. Though some of these missions had mixed success, and ONUC in the Congo nearly destroyed the UN, it is generally accepted that by the mid-sixties the foundations of peacekeeping had been laid and agreement reached on its guiding principles:- the role of the Secretary-General, the need for an agreed mandate, the consent of the host states, impartiality so that the operation could contribute to the management of the problem rather than risk becoming a part of it, the non-use of force save in self-defence, the question of composition, and the need for creative flexibility in conceptualising a peacekeeping presence.

However, by the 'eighties there were just five operations in the field - three in the Middle East, a small observer mission in Kashmir, and UNFICYP in Cyprus. Only in Cyprus was the UN directly involved in the peacemaking process; in those days presiding over meetings of the two sides in the old Ledra Palace Hotel on the Green Line in Nicosia. (It was my fate to be the senior political man in UNFICYP for a short period and thus to participate in the Cyprus inter-communal talks; and I can confirm that it was one of the most frustrating experiences in my years of peacekeeping.) In a sense, peacekeeping by the UN had reached a plateau by the early eighties; had also become, some might say, slightly marginalised, and there was little prospect of its expansion, or of the UN developing new roles in the field of international security.

Pérez de Cuéllar's Peacemaking in the 'Eighties

And yet, seismic events were imminent. For instance, from at least 1984 messages were being conveyed to the UN by Soviet diplomats in various parts of the world indicating the USSR's growing need and desire to rid itself of many of its regional, self-imposed, political and strategic burdens, and to find new international arrangements. Then Secretary-General, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, began, cautiously, to exercise some of the discretionary functions of his office to explore situations which could be susceptible to wary peacemaking overtures :- in Afghanistan, in regard to the Iran-Iraq war, and in Central America. The Americans and the UN were similarly reconnoitring the southern Africa situation once more. In fairly quick succession the UN, with the help of the permanent members, was able to offer fig-leaves to several over-extended belligerents. Parallel to the dramatic changes in eastern Europe, several local conflicts, waged between the superpowers on a proxy basis, and de-stabilising whole regions, suddenly became tractable.

These changes permitted the long-delayed Namibia operation, with UNTAG, involving that most unlikely couple, South Africa and the United Nations, to go ahead. And I believe UNTAG in Namibia marked a major change in peacekeeping, as well as signalling massive change in southern Africa. Moreover, by an uncanny coincidence, Namibia's UN-controlled free and fair elections, one of the culminating points of the UN operation there, took place in the very same week in which another oppressed people thousands of miles to the north, those of Berlin, took their fate in their hands and tore down the wall.

Peacekeeping's Changing Scope and Focus

Now I need to stop for a moment and look at some of the terms I have been using. I feel some reluctance in defining peacekeeping, especially at this time. It has shown, in the last few years, much adaptability, and is now a generic term loosely covering a variety of functions being carried on in the field under a UN flag, and with at least some military element and security tasks. It is used to describe even operations where there is patently no peace to keep, as in Bosnia. The British military have recently produced an excellent doctrinal manual entitled Wider Peacekeeping, underlining the scope of recent change; elsewhere, the phrase "peace support operations" is used as an encompassing descriptive of the present dynamic growth.

The earliest peacekeeping operations basically consisted of a thin blue line of UN military observers or troops, deployed between two warring parties, seeking to maintain a truce, while, usually, others sought long-term solutions to the problems that had led to the conflict in the first place. Of course, there were always ancillary functions, often of a humanitarian kind; and many missions, especially those in the Middle East and Cyprus, had additional political and diplomatic functions. And ONUC in the Congo was unable to avoid assuming many of the functions of a civil power when that power disintegrated. And the West Irian operation in the sixties had fulfilled numerous political functions in tandem with a UN peacekeeping force. And one should also say, that some of the missions being created today - such as UNIKOM on the Iraq-Kuwait border - bear a marked resemblance to what are sometimes called the "first generation" operations such as UNTSO, UNEF and UNDOF on the Golan, So the demarcation line is by no means clearcut.

Nevertheless, the contrast between pre-Namibia and post Namibia operations is dramatic (I can bear personal testimony, having participated in two of the earlier missions and two of the latter - in Namibia and Yugoslavia). In the operations that have taken place over the last five years in Nicaragua, Namibia, Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, ex-Yugoslavia, El Salvador, Somalia and elsewhere, the UN has been asked to disarm protagonists, train and establish unified armies, monitor and help to create new police forces, monitor and act in the field of human rights, conduct the affairs of departments of governments, provide emergency relief on a huge scale, hold or monitor elections, ensure that constitutions are compatible with democratic standards, release political prisoners, repeal repressive and discriminatory legislation, support and protect the return of millions of refugees (the UNHCR will by this year have returned to Mozambique, in conjunction with the UN peacekeeping operation there, 1.6 million refugees). These are just some of the functions which UN peacekeepers, military, civilian and civil police, are today carrying out. In 1994 there were 19 UN operations in various parts of the world; most were multi-functional, in the manner I have described; most were successful to very successful; the great majority were not covered by the media, which were obsessed by Somalia and ex Yugoslavia; and their cost - approximately $ 3.6B in 1994 - was about one third of one per cent of the world's defence budgets; less than 1% of the defence budgets of the four largest spenders in NAT0; less than 10% of the latest estimate of the development costs (alone) of the Eurofighter 2000; comparable to the cost of one Stealth bomber. Pretty good value for money.

In my view, Namibia was the turning point because of when it happened, the widespread perception of its success, and the breadth and nature of its mandate. It had been conceived and planned as a military-backed operation to establish and entrench human rights, including the right of self-determination. And because, while it did not carry out all the new functions which I have just listed, it broke much new ground. And because we came back two weeks under mandated time and 15% under budgeted cost - it's hard, after some years as a director of administration, not still to think like one!

What has been happening since 1990 is, that the Security Council has been conferring on the Secretary-General increasingly broad functions in the context of peacekeeping operations. In many instances the mission has gone into an operation with a fairly detailed mandate which has been carefully negotiated with the parties and interested friends - as in Namibia, Cambodia, the Central American operations, Mozambique and even ex-Yugoslavia (in part - as regards Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, in any event) - and others. At best, the Secretary-General and his aides have been involved in the negotiation of that mandate, ensuring that the tasks are within the capability of the UN, and being able to assess, on a continuing basis, the underlying features of the emerging agreement. It is then the task of the Secretary-General to determine the material needs of the proposed mission, put together an operational plan, and tell the Security Council and then the General Assembly what will be required. Only after resources have been provided can the operation get under way in the field (it is a laborious process, not least because there is no question of the UN being provided with non-earmarked funds governments want to ensure that they control the expenditure of every dollar in a peacekeeping operation's line-by-line budget.

Negotiation and Decision-Making within a Peacekeeping Operation

It would be unrealistic to suggest that, thereafter, the mission in the field operates on some kind of automatic pilot, because the mandate has resolved all problems, and that all one needs to do in order to overcome every difficulty is to read the plan again, more carefully. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every line manager in a peacekeeping operation political and military - has to take dozens of policy decisions each day in regard to problems that have cropped up with or between the parties. He or she does their best to follow the spirit of the mandate in furthering its basic aims. There is usually not time to consult HQ, much less run back to the Security Council every time something new turns up. You have been put there to exercise judgement. Additionally, quite often those who have negotiated the agreed basis for the operation leave crucial questions open - they are too difficult, sometimes, to be resolved "cold", but may be soluble once there is momentum brought about by implementation. So the process of negotiation and problem-solving is continuous; it does not stop with agreement on the mandate. That mandate is usually like a sketch map of unknown terrain. It is one of peacekeepers' tasks to establish its detail by political and military reconnaissance and, sometimes, by trial and error. But sometimes they find that "the consent of the Parties" or "the Parties' assurances" have been more rhetorical than real :- in Croatia, for example, where UNPROFOR's original deployment took place in accordance with the Vance Plan, the parties made little attempt to comply with the agreements they had very reluctantly given.

A Multi-Purpose Tool of International security Policy icy

Let me, therefore, sum up in regard to peacekeeping. It is a device that has been used by UN members to help defuse situations, usually of inter-state tension. Most of the earlier missions had an overwhelmingly military character and, as their primary objective, a freezing of the situation while others sought solutions. On the other hand, many of the more recent undertakings have been more ambitious. Most have had a substantial non-military element, many have been led by civilians, and the majority have been multi-functional. It has not been simply a question of them being bigger than before (though UNPROFOR is now edging towards 40,000 members). The tasks of the UN have become more dynamic. It is, usually, no longer there to maintain the status quo. In many cases its primary task has been itself to bring about peace or some other fundamental change in the situation. It has to operate in accordance with a plan, usually set out in broad terms, endorsed by the Security Council at the time of implementation. In some cases, modern peacekeeping operations have had, as their main task, to provide support in times of grave humanitarian need. But in many other recent missions the UN's main task has been to conduct nationwide processes of reconstruction and reconciliation; sometimes, to harmonise or even unify deeply divided nations long racked by war; often to establish democratic societies where previously there might have been some perversion of democracy, tyranny or anarchy. Therefore, although many modern missions have also had substantial military components and advanced military tasks, they have, basically, been missions with specific political objectives and complex mandates: with civilian, military and police elements and functions, mutually interlocking and supportive, under a political leadership. And, I repeat, the majority have been successful to very successful; a few have not. Finally, a mission cannot do what it does not have the mandate or resources to do; and it is not a substitute for policy. Peacekeeping is a tool by which international policy can be furthered.

Peacemaking

What, then, is meant by "peacemaking"? One thing it is not:- in some military doctrine, heavily influenced, you might think, by George Orwell, "peacemaking" is used in contrast to "peacekeeping" to mean "enforcement"; that is to say, "warmaking". I am not using "peacemaking" in the Orwellian sense.

"Peacemaking" is the process by which a third party or parties seek to bring an end to an existing conflict by negotiation, mediation, good offices or other peaceful means, or in this way seek to obviate a possible future conflict. It may be conducted by the United Nations or other public international organisation, by a government or governments, by a non governmental organisation (e.g. the International Committee of the Red Cross), or by one or more distinguished individuals. In each case it is essential that the interlocutors be acceptable to the parties in dispute or conflict. While it usually refers to the process of comprehensive peace settlement, it may also refer to a more localised agreement. It aspires to permanence but settles for less in a realm in which condition. Even by definition, peacekeeping and peacemaking tend to merge.

Thus, in recent days or weeks, we have seen a representative of the UN Secretary-General seek to put an end to the conflict in Afghanistan, meeting with all the parties; representatives of governments, the Secretary-General of the UN and the European Union continue their mediation efforts in regard to Croatia and Bosnia; former President Jimmy Carter, as a private citizen, also seek to establish cease-fires in Bosnia; the UN secretary-general and the Security Council draw up a mandate for a UN peacekeeping operation in Angola to fulfil a peace agreement negotiated by the Secretary-General's Special Representative there. In South America, a combination of regional powers has sought to bring about a ceasefire and agreement in the border dispute between Ecuador and Peru. None of these well-publicised undertakings has been pre-emptive.

Preventive Diplomacy, Peacekeeping and Peacemaking

Last year, the delegate of Bosnia-Herzegovina told the General Assembly of the UN that "the preventive diplomacy approach has long been praised yet, in reality, not given substance. We only continue to react to crises, rather than prevent them, or deter their expansion. We still fail to address the causes of crises, but are caught in the web of treating consequences without the prospect of putting an end to displacement, expulsions, torture and murder that cause so much suffering" [Proceedings of the Fourth Committee, 10 November 1994]. The Delegate of Bosnia Herzegovina was perfectly correct. He might have added that in many circumstances these evils may bring about not only acute human suffering but also regional instability. That these remarks should come from Bosnia is very understandable, yet also paradoxical:- Had Europe reacted differently in 1992 to the recognition question over the former Yugoslav republics, including Bosnia, by exercising some preventive peacemaking, there might not have been a Bosnian war; but there might also not have been a Bosnian representative in the General Assembly of the UN two years later. And, close to Bosnia, we are seeing one of the first major international initiatives to avoid conflict and instability, in the FYR of Macedonia, in which UNPROFOR has deployed a preventive peacekeeping force. Meanwhile, representatives of the United Nations, of the OSCE, and of the European Union have been attempting to defuse problems both between FYROM and its neighbours, and within Macedonia itself. The operation which we set up in 1992, in response to a Macedonian request to the UN, has been quite successful in dealing with symptoms, but has found the underlying problems more difficult to resolve. Another example of UN preventive action is currently seen in Burundi, where in recent months a representative of the UN Secretary-General has been endeavouring to prevent a crisis which could bring about yet another genocidal horror.

All who have participated in senior roles in peacekeeping operations have at one time or another tried to head off conflict, build negotiating bridges between adversaries, arrange local ceasefires if for no other purpose than to allow the parties to retrieve and bury their dead before they start the next round. And, as I have already mentioned, leadership in a peacekeeping operation means a steady stream of political decisions that must be taken to achieve the longer-term strategic goals of the mission.

The Critical Need for Close Coordination between Peacekeeping and Peacemaking

Much the most successful "peacemaking" exercises that I have seen have been those which keep their feet firmly on the ground of political, military, social and economic reality. It is vital, if the two inextricably-linked processes are to be given to different groups, that coordination be continuous and intimate. Only thus can those charged with "peacemaking" functions remain fully informed as to what is actually happening (not what the parties at a flatteringly high level wish them to believe); and only thus can peacekeepers charged with carrying out intricate mandates know what the parties' bottom lines of political or strategic interest may be. From what has been described of the tasks and modus operandi of the recent generation of peacekeeping operations, it would be imprudent and impractical to try to separate peacekeeping and peacemaking in any major manner. Peacemakers and peacekeepers must sing from the same song sheet. It was rather naive, at the beginning of the UNPROFOR operation, for "peacemaking" to be in the hands of the European Community, while peacekeeping was conducted by the UN. Could anyone seriously imagine that the EU's Council of Ministers and the UN's Security Council had identical political goals and approaches in the region? How could the UN Protection Force serve two masters, one of which had no constitutional link with it? At the lowest, the possibility for mischief being made by the contending parties was unlimited.

Human Rights and Humanitarian Goals

What, in conclusion, are the relationships between peacekeeping, peacemaking and human rights? First, of course, the establishment and maintenance of peace and order is, in the great majority of situations, a pre-requisite for conditions in which human rights can develop in a strong and healthy manner. There is, of course, also the peace of the graveyard, and clearly some armed struggles may be morally essential. How otherwise would the obscenity of nazism have been overcome in the middle of this century? But law has a harsh maxim:- leges inter arma silent - 'midst the clash of arms, the laws are silent'.

Second, peacekeeping missions now habitually have many specific tasks in the human rights' field:- in Central America, the UN has been directly engaged in strengthening state mechanisms for the protection of human rights; in Namibia, Cambodia, Mozambique and elsewhere, we ran or supervised democratic elections and gave peoples the chance of self-determination; in one or two states we have had to ensure that democratically-adopted constitutions sufficiently safeguard human rights; we have been releasing political prisoners and repealing tyrannical legislation; UNCIVPOL, now often in practice the vanguard of UN human rights' protection, closely monitors repressive police forces, ensures that local law enforcement mechanisms respect human rights' standards, may help in re-creating police forces which measure up to international standards. In the humanitarian field, the work conducted under the mantle of peacekeeping operations is vast: the refugee return and support programmes run by UNHCR in conjunction with PKOs in such places as Cambodia, Namibia, Mozambique are huge and unprecedented in international history; the support given in such places as Bosnia to war victims, refugees, displaced persons, is amazing, as is the dedication of humanitarian organisations in conjunction with UNPROFOR; and it is hard not to be moved by the courage and commitment of those running the humanitarian airlift, that has been continuing for more than 2~ years (the largest the world has seen) in, almost always, ridiculously dangerous conditions. UN operations are also engaged, subsidiarily, in the reinvigorated war crimes investigations run by various other UN bodies. One of my less pleasant tasks was directing the production of what were in effect prosecution dossiers for the possible international trial of those responsible for atrocities committed while we were there by Serbs and Croats in Croatia upon one another.

Thirdly, the peacemaking process which should accompany even the most ambitious of peacekeeping operations must address the roots of crisis, not merely its symptoms. These roots are often embedded in deep injustice of one kind or another, but are nourished and refreshed by what in my experience is a universal craving for basic human rights. Any peace process which neglects deep injustice and visceral aspirations for dignity and equality of treatment is, I believe, doomed from the outset. It will not be possible in ex-Yugoslavia, for instance, to establish lasting peace if the aspirations of minorities to a high level of autonomy and security, as well as equality within their communities, are not understood and respected; and peacekeeping endeavours, however valiant, which fail to comply with these parameters should in my opinion be abandoned forthwith - they will just prolong the bloodshed. Of course, as we all know, especially here, making human rights effective may be a lot easier said than done; and it demands leadership which is courageous as well as perceptive and skilled.

Moreover, we should not be daunted by the concept of preventive peacemaking, such as the OSCE is now engaged in several areas of European stress and potential conflict. Of course, it will usually involve great sensitivities, where it comes from an external agency. I myself had something to do with the establishment of the UN's first preventive peacekeeping deployment in Macedonia. It was done at the request of President Gligorov and the Macedonian authorities because of concerns in the infant state regarding the intentions of several of its neighbours. They wanted a UN presence to help safeguard its borders. Yet many believed that perhaps the biggest problem the Macedonians had was an internal one; especially, the intercommunal tensions that existed in regard to a large Albanian minority which believed its members were treated as second-class citizens. Leaders of both communities agreed, when I discussed the problem with them, that it required defusing. Yet when we put forward our working proposals for the establishment of UNPROFOR's Macedonian Command in December 1992, the local authorities were not concerned about the nearly one thousand armed foreign soldiers they would be bringing onto their territory - what concerned them were our proposals for about 20 genial unarmed UN civilian police, living and working in the communities, and they needed to think about this for some time before they eventually accepted the idea.

Or, let us look at an example nearer home. In a not dissimilar way, though without the UN, what a tragedy it was, here, that the endemic discrimination which permeated our society in Ulster, which created two classes of citizen, which was certainly in the realm of public knowledge from the early sixties, and certainly known to the then British government at highest levels from a couple of years later, was not confronted until after our community had erupted.

What a shame that British governments of the fifties and sixties were not willing to deal with a serious human rights' situation which, sooner or later, would explode, What a difference it would have made had that been done in a firm and timely manner.

My point is, that if a government with full constitutional authority to bring about necessary change before an intercommunal problem became critical was unwilling to do so; then how much more complicated it all would have been, had some external body like the UN or the OSCE sought to involve itself, thirty years ago, in trying to resolve the difficulties we had brought upon ourselves. As I began by saying, third-party preventive diplomacy, preventive peacemaking, is almost always a very delicate business:- virtually everybody is going to resent outsiders interfering.

Fourth, and finally, I believe it vital than UN peacekeeping and peacemaking operations keep the humanitarian imperative in clear focus if they are to retain their legitimacy, effectiveness, public support and future potential for growth. Thus, failure by the UN to confront massive breaches of human rights - though sometimes explicable - could, in the long-term, erode some of the basic assumptions of our society, and the humanitarian standards which the UN has itself played a major part in establishing in its first fifty years. For example, I believe that our operations have done a vast amount of good in Ruanda and Bosnia, and have been given neither mandate nor resources to do more. But the media have, On the whole, pinned the blame on the UN, rather than on member governments throughout the world, for the continuing crises there. There is a real danger of this politically discrediting the organisation and the concepts of international action for which it stands, however unfair that might be - we see it already, in actions of the US Congress.

Many believe that the establishment of these humanitarian standards ranks with the invention of international peacekeeping as the UN's two most significant achievements.

Let me, finally, Mr Chairman, say this :- How does one try to ensure that governments maintain the link between humanitarian ideals and human rights on the one hand, and international peacekeeping and peacemaking on the other? Because they are not always naturally interlinked in the official mind seeking to steer its way through strategic minefields. The answer is twofold, I believe. First, encouragement can be given through the regular processes which exist in a parliamentary democracy, though ordinary citizens are always much dependent on the quality of information coming through the media. Second, the role of international non-governmental organisations can be important in shaping policy; and politicians and bureaucrats alike listen when the most influential speak - organisations such as Amnesty, the UN Association, the Red Cross, the churches, Médicins sans Frontières, other major humanitarian foundations. Frequently, in regard to human rights and in regard to peacekeeping, it is through these kinds of NGO that the world's peoples can be heard most effectively.

For let us recall that it was in the name of the peoples of the world that the UN Charter was promulgated, 50 years ago this year.