Rogues, despots, terrorists and shattered ideals -- the movie version

WHEN the United Nations Charter was signed in 1945, it promised to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

Sixty years later, the United Nations is at a crossroads. Never have the organization’s ideals and institutions been under greater strain and scrutiny.

What follows is an abridged version of the arguments made in our new documentary film, “Broken Promises, The United Nations at 60.” It is a call for the United Nations to live up to the goals and objectives of its charter.

Origins

Silver, the film’s narrator: The United Nations was created in a moment of extraordinary moral clarity after World War II. Its founding members had distinguished between good and evil, between the aggression of the Axis powers and their own roles as liberators.

Jed Babbin, former deputy undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush: The promise of the U.N. Charter is wonderful. It says that only nations which abide by international law, which respect each other’s borders, which renounce aggression and respect human rights, only those nations could possibly be members of the U.N.

Dore Gold, Israel’s former U.N. ambassador: Franklin Roosevelt’s idea, as stated in his speeches, was that the U.N. is supposed to nip aggression in the bud. To do that, you have to be able to discern who is the aggressor and who is the victim of aggression. But what you find is that the U.N. is completely unable to do that.

Natan Sharansky, former Soviet political prisoner who immigrated to Israel: Something is deeply wrong with this organization -- it’s refusal to recognize the difference between free societies and fear societies.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), whose family fled Cuba when she was a child: The United Nations sees no distinction. Every country is as equal as any other, even if they enslave their people, even if they prosecute people who speak their minds, even if they allow no political dissent -- you have an equal place at the table because we’re all sovereign countries.

Human rights

Silver: When created in 1946, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and its universal declaration were historic pronouncements of the expected rights and freedoms for men and women in all member countries. Today, however, the commission includes some of the world’s worst human rights abusers.

Babbin: When you see the commission having such stalwarts of human rights as Cuba, Sudan, Libya, Communist China dominating the Human Rights Commission, it is both outrageous and it is literally a fraud on the world.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, the largest U.S.-based human rights organization: We have been very outspoken about the commission’s limitations. Today, roughly half of the state members of the commission are there not to promote human rights but to undermine the work of the commission, to try to defend themselves and others of their ilk.

Ros-Lehtinen: So you have the worst human rights violators actively lobbying their colleagues so that their country could be chosen as a member of the Human Rights Commission, so that their country could then not be sanctioned for their human rights abuses.

Silver: Cuba has long been criticized for political repression by human rights activists. Despite this, it was reelected to the commission in 2003. Shortly afterward, Castro jailed 75 pro-democracy activists. Some were sentenced to up to 28 years in prison. Their only crime was speaking out against the government.

Israel

Silver: In Sudan, executions, detentions without trial and slavery are daily occurrences. Yet the Human Rights Commission has targeted one country with one out of every four resolutions -- Israel.

Roth: I think it’s to the great shame of the commission that it has not devoted anywhere near as serious attention to either the suicide bombers launched by Palestinians or to the severe repression that takes place in many Arab states surrounding Israel.

Silver: In 1974, the U.N. invited Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat to speak to the General Assembly. It marked a turning point for the U.N.--and for its relationship with Israel. Arafat’s organization had been recently involved in international terrorism -- most notably at the Munich Olympics, where the PLO faction Black September slaughtered 11 Israeli athletes.

Gold: Arafat is not asked to renounce terrorism as a precondition. He walked in with his kaffiyeh, with his sidearm underneath his coat, and addressed the General Assembly. The most interesting thing Arafat says in that speech is, “If this was the original U.N. of 1945, I would not have been invited here. But obviously this is 1974. It’s a different U.N.”

Silver: Nearly 60 years after it first suggested a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, the U.N. remains on the sidelines in the peace process. It has, however, condemned Israel’s security fence without mentioning the Palestinian suicide bombings that led to its construction.

Rwanda

Silver: Hutus and Tutsis have a long history of conflict in Central Africa. But in 1993, the Arusha peace accords promised an end to the fighting. The U.N. Security Council sent 2,500 military personnel to Rwanda in a “Chapter 6” mission to aid the peace process. The U.N. force commander was Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire.

Dallaire: A Chapter 6 mission means you are there because both sides want peace. We are there as a referee, and we assist both sides in making sure that they play by the rules.

Silver: Dallaire soon learned that there were Hutu extremists who wanted to undermine the peace process. On Jan. 11, 1994, Dallaire sent a fax to the U.N. headquarters in New York, requesting permission to raid a Hutu arms cache.

Ken Cain, former U.N. legal affairs worker now critical of the organization: Dallaire was aware that a genocide was being planned and many vulnerable civilians were going to be killed.

Silver: Dallaire received a reply the same day from the desk of Kofi Annan, then head of U.N. peacekeeping. Dallaire was told not to raid the arms cache and, furthermore, to avoid any course of action that might lead to the use of force.

Dallaire: The U.N. worried about us getting dragged into it and wanted us to act according to the mandate (Chapter 6 mission). It didn’t have a mandate to take on operations.

Cain: So in the face of genocide, clear evidence, Gen. Dallaire was told not only not to intervene, but that his job was to protect the image of impartiality of the U.N.

Silver: As Rwanda collapsed, the Security Council voted to withdraw 90% of Dallaire’s forces, leaving him with less than 300 peacekeepers. Troops from Italy, Belgium and France were ordered to evacuate their foreign nationals, but did nothing to stop the killings.

In 100 days, between 800,000 and a million people -- mostly Tutsis, died at the hands of the Hutus.

Bosnia

Silver: In July of 1995, the world’s first U.N. “safe area” became the site of Europe’s worst massacre since World War II. It happened in the Bosnian village of Srebrenica -- and was a turning point in the vicious war between Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims in the former Yugoslavia.

Hasan Nuhanovic: I am a survivor of the massacre in Srebrenica. In the beginning of the war, I escaped from my hometown because we knew that we were going to be killed if the Serbs catch us.

The U.N. base at Srebrenica (guarded by Dutch troops) was a safe place. Being inside meant you live, being outside meant you die. It was very simple.

Silver: On July 9, 1995, the Serbs took 30 Dutch peacekeepers hostage. With Serb troops tightening the noose around Srebrenica, panic took hold. Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic delivered an ultimatum -- 5,000 people, mostly men and boys, had to be expelled from the base.

The Dutch agreed.

Nuhanovic: U.N. Dutch battalion authorities gave me a megaphone and told me to tell the crowd to start leaving the base in groups of five.

There were executions of several groups of men and teenage boys in front of the base, and the Dutch saw it all. The question is how could the Dutch continue to expel people knowing what was happening in front of the base. And this question has never been answered.

I saw the Dutch battalion deputy commander sending my family out, and that’s the last memory I have about my family.

Silver: In five days, Serbian forces slaughtered over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, mostly men and boys. Initial reports from the head of the U.N. mission in Bosnia made no mention of the atrocities.

The End

Silver: The regrettable conclusion is that in its most crucial promises, to protect human rights and protect peace and security, the U.N. has failed.

The very nature of the world body is that any nation with a flag has a seat at the table.

Babbin: The rogues and terrorist and despots and dictators who run the show are not going to give up control. And they outvote us, they can veto things. You can’t fix the U.N. because its members don’t want it to be fixed.