Without steadfast support from France, which armed the genocidal regime and helped train its killers, the slaughter would have been impossible.

A good post on the Guardian:

"Stephen Kinzer

• 
  
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 January 2009 19.00 GMT
• Article history

An international tribunal has sentenced the mastermind of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, to life imprisonment after convicting him of "genocide and crimes against humanity and war crimes". The verdict, though, is at best a mixed victory for the cause of global justice.

Bagosora richly deserves his sentence. Rwandans themselves bear the central guilt for their tragedy, and he was among the guiltiest. Shortly before the slaughter began, he announced that he was preparing a "second apocalypse". Tutsi-led rebels were close to overthrowing the regime he helped run, and along with a couple of dozen like-minded comrades, he decided that its best hope was to kill every Tutsi in the country. They almost succeeded, organising the murder of as many as one million people or more in a 100-day period.

As punishment, Bagosora will likely spend the rest of his days in material conditions far better than those enjoyed by 95% of Rwandans. He will be deprived of his freedom, but the world's taxpayers, through the UN, will assure that he has a comfortable cell, three meals a day and the world's finest medical care.

One thing will be missing, though. In the modern age, prisons that hold war criminals, political murderers and other terrorists are populated mostly by brutes like Bagosora – people easily portrayed as thugs from thuggish places. So the newly convicted genocide mastermind will not have the chance to exchange thoughts with his more genteel enablers.

In a just world, Bagosora might have French company in his cell block. Without steadfast support from France, which armed the genocidal regime and helped train its killers, the slaughter would have been impossible. So it seems only fair that a few French aristocrats be held responsible. One candidate would be former foreign minister Alain Juppe, who built a framework within which the slaughter could be carried out by telling the world that it was not genocide but "tribal war" in which opposing groups were equally guilty. There could also be room in the block for others who shielded the Rwandan regime as it killed, among them Edouard Balladur, Dominique de Villepin and Hubert Vedrine.( A GOOD POINT )

No one ever took more delight in these men's company than the lifelong Francophone Boutros Boutros-Ghali, so it would be a shame to leave him off the cellblock. As UN secretary-general in 1994, Boutros-Ghali made sure no security council members ever saw the anguished cables that were pouring into New York from the desperate UN commander in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire. Those cables made clear that the killing was no eruption of "tribal war", but the work of Bagosora and a clique of other fanatics who might easily have been intimidated with even a modest show of force.

While the genocide unfolded, Boutros-Ghali was on an extended tour of Europe. To make sure Dallaire's damning cables remained hidden, he relied on his trusted deputy, Kofi Annan, who was then head of UN peacekeeping operations. If there is room for Boutros-Ghali and his French friends on Bagosora's block, there should also be room for Annan.( WOW )

No international gathering these days is complete without Bill Clinton, and by some standards he too could qualify for a cell on Bagosora's block. During the 100 days of genocide in Rwanda, Clinton never even convened a meeting to discuss it because he knew that the facts were so awful that if he confronted them, he would be compelled to act. Later he said he had not known what was happening in Rwanda. General Dallaire called him a liar, and Philippe Galliard, who ran Red Cross operations in Rwanda during the genocide, agreed. "Everybody knew, every day, live, what was happening," he said after Clinton's whopper.( A DISGRACE )

Just as Boutros-Ghali had an ambitious underling who was salivating for the big job, and who knew that demanding action to stop genocide in Rwanda would ruin his chances, so did Clinton. His was Madeleine Albright. As America's ambassador to the UN, she worked tirelessly to assure that the peacekeeping force was kept too small and toothless to stop the killing. Later she helped block a plan to send UN police to disarm the hundreds of thousands of Rwandan genocidaires who had fled to camps in eastern Congo – a piece of work that helped create today's Congolese hell.( DISGRACEFUL )

Justice works slowly, and none more slowly than the international kind. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has spent more than a billion dollars since its creation in 1995, but has completed only 40 cases. All the defendants have been Rwandans, as undoubtedly will be all those convicted in the future. The tribunal's motto is "never again". A better one would from an old Bob Dylan song: The executioner's face is always well hidden."

And this has led to the Congo.

"An American-backed drive to curb misconduct at the United Nations is faltering"

Here's one reason the Congo is a mess. From the WSJ:

"By ANDREW HIGGINS and STEVE STECKLOW

An American-backed drive to curb misconduct at the United Nations is faltering, blighted by bureaucracy and accusations of retaliation against whistle-blowers( GREAT ).

Launched in December 2005 with advice from U.S. officials, the reform initiative was supposed to protect U.N. employees who exposed wrongdoing. The U.N. pledged this would ensure the "highest standards of integrity."( SURE, I BELIEVE THEM )

Since then, the organization has been hit by numerous allegations of misconduct, from claims that U.N. peacekeepers in Congo traded guns for gold with rebels( UNREAL ) to accusations of corruption by U.N. employees in Kosovo( ON AND ON ).

Instead of a streamlined system to process complaints, the U.N. has set up no fewer than eight separate ethics offices, each with its own guidelines, deadlines for claims and jurisdiction. Other parts of the U.N. also handle allegations of misconduct, including an ombudsman's office( A FARCE ).

"The U.N. isn't serious about cleaning up its act( HOW TRUE )," says James Wasserstrom, a former U.N. official in Kosovo who, after becoming a whistle-blower himself last year, was placed under investigation by the U.N.( WHO'D OF THOUGHT IT POSSIBLE ?) A 25-year veteran of the U.N., Mr. Wasserstrom, an American, was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing and recently filed a retaliation complaint with a U.N. appeals panel.

The U.N., says Mr. Wasserstrom, "uses the whistle-blowing program to get its most ethical staff to stick their heads above ground in order to chop them off( SEEMS TO WORK )."

The U.N. denies this and says it doesn't tolerate retaliation against staff members who report misdeeds. The U.N. is "very, very diligent in pursuing" wrongdoing, says Angela Kane, the organization's under-secretary-general for management. She says there has been a "great culture change" ( WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? AND WHAT WAS THE CULTURE LIKE BEFORE? )in the organization.

The U.N. declined to discuss( NOT A HEALTHY SIGN ) individual cases of whistle-blowers who have alleged retaliation. On the issue of misconduct in general, the organization says that a number of senior officials have been punished after reports of wrongdoing by colleagues.

The system for rooting out misconduct mirrors the organization as a whole -- a sprawling array of fiefdoms( FARCE ). U.S. officials have been frustrated by the plethora of separate bodies monitoring what they hoped would be a unified ethics policy( NECESSARY ).

Canadian attorney Robert Benson says that when he arrived at the U.N. in May 2007 he assumed that his New York-based Ethics Office had jurisdiction over the entire organization. But he soon learned it only oversaw the U.N. Secretariat -- the U.N.'s main administrative body. Assorted agencies and funds opted to set up their own ethics bureaus( I WONDER WHY? ).

"I wasn't a student of the United Nations," said Mr. Benson in an interview. "Would it be better to have one office? Absolutely( COMMON SENSE )."

The U.N. says it has no immediate plans to consolidate the various ethics bureaus, but it is finalizing one set of ethical standards to be followed by all its agencies( KABUKI ).

The U.N. has been dogged for decades by complaints of corruption and lack of accountability. Pressure for change rose sharply after a 2004 scandal over the U.N.-administered oil-for-food program in Iraq. Then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan initiated a series of reforms, including a rule that U.N. officials disclose any gifts worth more than $250. The previous limit had been $10,000. The U.N. also set up( A PR MOVE ) Mr. Benson's office to foster "a culture of ethics, transparency and accountability."

Unlike businesses and other private organizations with operations around the world, the U.N. is not typically subject to national laws and has its own internal justice mechanism. This system, which dates from the 1940s, consists of various ad hoc panels and the appeals board, a tribunal staffed by U.N. officials( A MAJOR CAUSE OF ITS INEFFECTIVENESS ).

A group of legal experts convened by the U.N. in 2006 declared the setup "outmoded, dysfunctional and ineffective( I CAN THINK OF A FEW MORE APPLICABLE ADJECTIVES )." The U.N. promised to replace it with a new system staffed by professional judges( REALLY? ). It is supposed to start up in January but so far judges haven't been appointed( OF COURSE NOT ). The U.N. blames this in part on member states, which delayed approving rules that would govern the new arrangement( KABUKI ).

Reports of Corruption

In February of last year, Mr. Wasserstrom, the American whistle-blower, began making reports to New York about mismanagement and possible corruption in Kosovo's energy sector on the part of senior U.N. officials in the formerly Serbian-controlled region.

He provided no concrete evidence of graft. But in communications with the Office of Internal Oversight Services, the U.N.'s main investigative unit, Mr. Wasserstrom passed on information relating to a proposed new power plant known as Kosovo C. This included claims that U.N. officials were taking kickbacks. He says he had "no way of knowing if the information was true or not, but it was at the very least very worrying and needed to be investigated."

At the time, Mr. Wasserstrom was the head of a U.N. office in Kosovo that monitored the electricity utility and other publicly owned enterprises. He also alleged that the U.N. Kosovo mission was colluding with local politicians to undermine the independence of publicly owned enterprises.

The OIOS declined to comment( OF COURSE ) on the outcome of an investigation into the corruption and mismanagement concerns raised by Mr. Wasserstrom.

At the same time that OIOS was looking into Mr. Wasserstrom's allegations, the U.N.'s personnel department in Kosovo announced what it said was a long-scheduled decision: Mr. Wasserstrom's job was about to be eliminated( COINCIDENCE ).

Facing unemployment, he signed a contract to work as a private consultant for Kosovo's main airport and the region's telecommunications agency. Senior U.N. officials in Kosovo -- the same people he wanted investigated -- accused him of violating procedure and placed him under investigation for conflict of interest.

Detained at the Kosovo border by U.N. police in June last year, Mr. Wasserstrom says he had his American passport seized and car searched. His apartment in the Kosovo capital Pristina was also searched. Investigators sealed off his office, confiscated his computer and placed a "wanted poster" at entrances to the U.N. mission's Kosovo headquarters. It featured a mug shot of Mr. Wasserstrom and an order barring the American from the premises. Official U.N. documents on the matter reviewed by The Wall Street Journal confirm this account( HARD TO BELIEVE ).

Cleared of Wrongdoing

"They treated me like a common criminal," says Mr. Wasserstrom. After an investigation lasting nearly 11 months, he was cleared earlier this year of any wrongdoing. Mr. Wasserstrom in the meantime filed a retaliation complaint with Mr. Benson's Ethics Office in New York. The U.N. says that 45 people similarly complained of retaliation over the 12 month period up to this July and that 18 of these cases warranted preliminary review.

In a letter to Mr. Wasserstrom in April, Mr. Benson said that while some of the measures taken against him "appeared to be excessive" and involved "investigative failures," a detailed study of his treatment by U.N. investigators "did not find any evidence that these activities were retaliatory( WHERE'S A FILE ON THIS INVESTIGATION? )."

Mr. Benson says he's not allowed to comment( THEN HOW DOES ANYONE KNOW WHETHER THEY'RE DOING A GOOD JOB OR NOT? ) on individual cases. The OIOS, which investigated Mr. Wasserstrom's claims, says that retaliation is a "very specific type of conduct" and differs from other forms of mistreatment. In response to written questions, it did not address Mr. Wasserstrom's case directly but noted that "abuse of authority and harassment" can( OR CAN'T ) also flow from "interpersonal problems" and other issues unrelated to retaliation.

Going Outside the System

Arguing that the U.N. can't police itself properly( OBVIOUS ), a few U.N. employees have sought legal redress for grievances outside the U.N. system.

One of these is Cynthia Brzak, an American U.N. staffer in Geneva. Ms. Brzak has been battling the organization since 2004, when she complained of sexual harassment by her boss, Ruud Lubbers, who was then head of the U.N.'s refugee agency.

The OIOS investigated and, in an initially secret report, found "serious acts of misconduct." The then-secretary-general, Mr. Annan, however, told Ms. Brzak in a letter that her complaint could not be "sustained." The OIOS report was leaked to the media. Mr. Lubbers, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing, stepped down in 2005.

Ms. Brzak in the meantime complained that she was suffering retaliation -- including threats to fire her -- as a result of her initial complaint. She found an American lawyer to take the matter outside the U.N. and into the U.S. judicial system.

A New York district court in April dismissed her suit, saying it agreed with the U.N.'s defense that the court couldn't delve into a matter because of the international organization's immunity( HOW NICE ). Ms. Brzak has appealed.

The "only hope of accountability," says Ms. Brzak, is "to pierce their immunity( THAT'S IT )." Until that happens, she says, "they will set up ethics offices and set up layers and layers of fog that you have to fight your way through just to go nowhere."

Write to Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com and Steve Stecklow at steve.stecklow@wsj.com"

The UN is in fact culpable in the Congo and Kosovo by allowing such disgraceful behavior, and deluding people under stress that they're being protected. The UN needs Herakles, or human decency, to clean it out.