by Matthew Lynch

Created on: March 12, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Has the UN (United Nations) forgotten its original mission? As most of us know, the UN was founded after World War II by the allied forces in hopes of preventing and arbitrating future conflicts between nations and make future global scale wars improbable. The UN's infrastructure still mirrors the circumstances of its founding, which has tempered the call for widespread reforms.

Some people want the UN to take more of an active role in the world's affairs while others want it to focus more on humanitarian efforts. There have been an increasing number of calls for increasing the membership of the Security Council to reflect the world's current geopolitical state. Upon ascending to the rank of Secretary, Kofi Annan unveiled a reform plan that would modify the permanent membership of the Security Council to reflect the power structure of today. He also implemented a plan for holding the bureaucracy accountable for their actions, and to make the UN more democratic as opposed to having the five charter members maintain their stranglehold on power. He went even further by establishing an ethics office and also a whistleblower program.

People perceive the UN as being unable to act in a clear and decisively when confronted with crisis. Instances of this would be its unwillingness to deal decisively with Iran's Nuclear Weapons program as well as its failure to prevent the genocides that occurred in Darfur of Rwanda. The UN and its members knew of the impending genocides before it started but did they do anything to stop it, no.

In the case of the killings in Rwanda, the UN did not authorize UNAMIR (United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda) an organized relief operation developed to aid in the implementation of the Arusha Accords, to facilitate cessation of the genocide. In spite of many warnings by Canadian Lieutenant-General RomDallaire, the UN peacekeepers in Rwanda were prohibited from intervening in the genocide except in self-defense. In the weeks leading up to the genocide, the United Nations failed to respond to intelligence reports of Hutu militias stockpiling weapons and discarded plans for a preventative measures. This failure to take actions led to the demonizing of the UN and Western nations by conscientious observers, especially members of the black Diaspora. The genocide was only brought to an end when the Tutsi-controlled rebel army, the Rwandese Patriotic Front, led by Paul Kagame, overthrew the Hutu government and assumed power.

The United Nations was

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