There was a “systemic failure” of the UN in dealing with the situation in Myanmar ahead of a deadly 2017 military crackdown, because it did not have a unified strategy and lacked UN Security Council support, according to an internal report.
The crackdown drove more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh.
UN investigators have said the operation was executed with “genocidal intent” and included mass killings, gang rapes and widespread arson.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Myanmar denies widespread wrongdoing and says the military campaign across hundreds of villages in Rakhine State was in response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.
“Without question, serious errors were committed and opportunities were lost in the UN system following a fragmented strategy rather than a common plan of action,” wrote former Guatemalan foreign minister and UN Ambassador Gert Rosenthal in a 34-page internal review, seen by Reuters prior to its publication on Monday.
“The overall responsibility was of a collective character; in other words, it truly can be characterized as a systemic failure of the United Nations,” wrote Rosenthal, who was appointed earlier this year by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to look at UN involvement in Myanmar from 2010 to last year.
He said senior UN officials in New York could not agree on whether to take a more robust public approach with Myanmar or pursue quiet diplomacy and that conflicting reports on the situation were also sent to UN headquarters from the field.
The world body struggled to balance supporting the Burmese government with development and humanitarian assistance, while also calling out the authorities over accusations of human rights violations, Rosenthal wrote.
“The United Nations system ... has been relatively impotent to effectively work with the authorities of Myanmar to reverse the negative trends in the area of human rights and consolidate the positive trends in other areas,” he said.
“The United Nations’ collective membership, represented by the Security Council, bears part of that responsibility, by not providing enough support to the secretariat when such backing was and continues to be essential,” Rosenthal wrote.
The Security Council, which visited Rakhine State last year, has been deadlocked with China and Russia pitted against Western states over how to deal with the situation.
Human Rights Watch said the report was disappointing, given the scale of the Rohingya crisis, for not identifying specific UN officials responsible for the failures.
“The report now looks increasingly like a check-the-box exercise by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, designed to show commitment to accountability when in reality it accomplishes exactly the opposite,” Phil Robertson, the group’s deputy director for Asia, said in a statement.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Rosenthal’s report was due to be sent to all 193 members states.
“Its conclusions and observations have been fully accepted by the secretary-general, and he will work very closely with the senior leadership to make sure they’re implemented,” Dujarric said.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS