UN's Louise Arbour is Human Rights Catch-All, As War Crimes Go Unpunished in Congo

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN:  News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, May 31 -- The balance or choice between human rights and peacekeeping has been on display this week at the UN.

            On May 31, Louise Arbour, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, briefed the Security Council about her recent trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its smaller neighbors, Rwanda and Burundi. Afterwards she held a press conference, fighting through questions about calls to boycott Israeli academics in order to describe "appalling" sexual violence and pervasive impunity, and the UN's attempt to raise funds to map violence and war crimes in the DRC from 1993 to 2003. She noted that this time frame predates the International Criminal Court, making memorialization of abuses all the more important (and almost an end in itself).

            Inner City Press asked Ms. Arbour about a particular militia leader in Eastern Congo, Peter Karim, who after killing a UN peacekeeper and kidnapping seven others was rewarded with a colonel's post in the Congolese Army.  Ms. Arbour called this "unfortunate," saying that Karim and other notorious militia leaders have been "emboldened, further empowered and seem to be continuing their predatory practices against civilians." While saying that at least there should now be a review of these militia leaders' "suitability" for military service, Ms. Arbour said "if this was the price for peace, it looks like a heavy price that has not brought... peace."

            So what about these grants of immunity, Inner City Press asked, noting the UN's own involvement in abuses in the Congo. Ms. Arbour said there have been both de jure and de facto grants of immunity, which she hopes the International Criminal Court could "trump." Video here, from Minute 5:14 to 8:49.

Peacekeepers on UN lawn, May 30, 2007

News Analysis: As with the Human Rights Council, Ms. Arbour has too much faith in the ICC for some tastes, since that Court's indictments of five leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda have yet to be executed, even as UN officials, from previous humanitarian chief Jan Egeland to current Great Lakes envoy Joaquim Chissano meet open with the LRA's Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti. 

            Ms. Arbour previously provided a passionate answer to Inner City Press' questions about the LRA, click here for that story, but none of the UN human rights machinery in Ms. Arbour's control has since then been deployed on this topic. Nor is it clear when Ms. Arbour's office, which Egeland's successor John Holmes has said will be given access to Somalia, will in fact begin any on-the-ground fact-finding there. Ms. Arbour, it is acknowledged, has no army to gain access to Mogadishu. But nor should she allow her office and credibility to be invoked as a shield by the UN's heads of peacekeeping and humanitarian affairs, along the lines of "I gave at the office."

            On May 29, Inner City Press asked UN Peacekeeping's Jean-Marie Guehenno about the amnesty deal given to Peter Karim after his killing and kidnapping, and recruitment of child soldiers. Mr. Guehenno cited to Ms. Arbour's mapping project, as if that were a response.

            Similarly, OCHA's John Holmes went to Mogadishu but did not meet with the leaders of the Hawiye clan, which has faced a form of ethnic or tribe-based cleansing in south and central Somalia. When Inner City Press asked Mr. Holmes if he should have met with the clan, and with the Ethiopian forces engaged, as a European Union memo alleges, in war crimes, Mr. Holmes responded to saying at least the UN-supported Transitional Federal Government has agreed to let Ms. Arbour's office in. But will they, and she, ever get in?  We'll see.

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