{"id":1545,"date":"2019-07-02T17:14:31","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T17:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freerohingyacoalition.org\/en\/?p=1545"},"modified":"2019-07-02T18:05:32","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T18:05:32","slug":"the-un-has-failed-the-rohingya-in-myanmar-now-it-should-take-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freerohingyacoalition.org\/en\/the-un-has-failed-the-rohingya-in-myanmar-now-it-should-take-responsibility\/","title":{"rendered":"The UN Has Failed the Rohingya in Myanmar. Now it Should Take Responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By <\/em>Maung Zarni | Published by <\/em>The Wire<\/a> on June 30, 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United Nations recently accepted a 36-page report that examined the body\u2019s systemic failures in the country.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United Nations recently accepted a 36-page report<\/a> that examined the body\u2019s involvement in Myanmar from 2010 to 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report<\/a>, by former Guatemalan foreign minister and UN executive Gert Rosenthal, acknowledges that there were \u201csystemic failures\u201d in how the UN responded to the crisis in Myanmar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rosenthal report (dated May 29, 2019) finds that the UN response was \u201cdysfunctional\u201d in Myanmar, and that its leadership and conduct was \u201crelatively impotent.\u201d These organisational failures were a result of various officials pursuing their own narrow end, often with conflicting approaches and interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the absence of the Security Council\u2019s political backing has weakened the UN position, Rosenthal has gauged that the organisation could have done more to address persecution of Rohingya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It could have, for instance, restricted Myanmar\u2019s access to international markets, investment and finance. Instead, both UN\u2019s Myanmar Country team<\/a> under the Resident Coordinator and the Secretary General and his senior executive team in New York made policy decisions that sent the wrong signal that the UN would continue to conduct its operations in a business-as-usual fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, the expansion of the UN Development Program<\/a> (UNDP) into a \u201cfully-fledged\u201d country development program, emboldened Myanmar to scale up its systemic persecution of the Rohingya community in the west.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rosenthal report finally admits to what several generations of survivors of Myanmar\u2019s genocide against Rohingya Muslims have always known through collective and individual experiences: that the UN has failed them not simply since 2010, the report\u2019s cut-off year, but since the first wave of Myanmar\u2019s genocidal destruction in 1978.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not the first-time that the UN\u2019s own diplomats and officials have assessed its failures in cases of atrocity, which includes war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2012, former Assistant Secretary General Charles Petrie, who served as UN resident coordinator in Myanmar from 2003 to 2007, reached a similarly damning conclusion<\/a>: that the UN failed to effectively and properly discharge its mandate of protection and reconciliation in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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People belonging to Rohingya Muslim community sit outside their makeshift houses on the outskirts of Jammu May 5, 2017. Image: Reuters\/Mukesh Gupta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The UN\u2019s official admission of its failures in Myanmar is welcome. But it is disturbing that that the world\u2019s foremost inter-governmental organisation working to maintain international peace and security remains incapable of heeding the lessons of the past and self-correcting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deep scepticism is called for<\/a> when Secretary General Antonio Guterres promises to implement Rosenthal\u2019s recommendations. When he was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, he was told in a meeting held by Myanmar\u2019s then president Thein Sein that the country\u2019s government intended to confine Rohingya to camps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Myanmar\u2019s intention to commit international crimes had therefore been clear to United Nations leadership since 2012 \u2014 yet no
effective action was taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The organisation should have done more, including establishing an early warning genocide mechanism, creating an emergency response team and plan, and working with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict<\/a> and the Office on Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect<\/a>. They did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the report, the United Nations also went back and forth on whether to even use the word \u201cRohingya,\u201d a term the Myanmar government has tried to erase from use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Secretary General Ban Ki Moon had used the term in a speech in 2016 \u2014 but UN officials have, since then, used the phrase \u201cMuslim minority,\u201d thereby proving to be complicit in the government\u2019s attempts to strip Rohingya of their identity and rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rosenthal report inspires no confidence that this system will change. The Secretary General\u2019s mandate for Rosenthal seemed to preclude the essential question of the UN\u2019s own accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report itself says, \u201cthe consultant was not asked to evaluate the conduct of entities or individuals in the mode of personal or institutional accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For an internal assessment report to merely point to the systemic failures without apportioning any responsibility to those
within the organisation entirely evades the central issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rohingya activist Nay San Lwin who coordinates campaigns and media relations told<\/a> Al Jazeera English<\/em>, \u201cthe system failed because individuals didn\u2019t fulfil their obligations. This is blaming the system to avoid accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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"The system failed because individuals didn't fulfil their obligations," said Nay San Lwin, an activist with the Free Rohingya Coalition. "This is blaming the system to avoid accountability." \u2014 #Rohingya<\/a> #Myanmar<\/a> #UN<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/MX0bULPtAC<\/a><\/p>— Ro Nay San Lwin (@nslwin) June 28, 2019<\/a><\/blockquote>