But this situation has been building for so long now, there can be no excuse for the international community and the United Nations has failed to do whatever has been necessary to ensure peace, and more importantly protect the people who are now currently suffering.
For too long, what has been going on in DRC has been largely ignored and the long standing ineffectiveness of the United Nations mission in DRC has been overlooked. When the world was focussing on the wrongs of the American soldiers with respect to the Abu Ghraib prison controversy in Iraq, the abuses committed by UN soldiers in DRC were totally glossed over. When they finally did make the news, the UN downplayed the significance. But abuses are abuses and this reflected a severe lack of judgement and responsibility of the UN towards the DRC mission.
Several years on and the chickens have come home to roost. The UN's commitment and deployment in DRC although seemingly large in number (I believe 17,000 was the latest number) was woefully short of what was required for such a large area and for such a violent conflict.
It is time the United Nations ponders upon it's role in the world. If it is to address conflicts, then deployments must be whole hearted and not taken demonstrations. It's failure to ensure that the peacekeeping force in DRC was effective in doing it's job - peacekeeping - has now exacerbated the problem severely and left the UN looking totally impotent. It has lost the goodwill and respect of the every people it was mean to protect.
The UN has been made to look foolish in the DRC, but in the scheme of things that doesn't really matter. What does matter is people. The people the UN is meant to safeguard. A human catastrophe has been allowed to take place in the DRC on the UN's watch. For that to have happened is disgraceful...
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