Boutros Boutros-Ghali
It would be iterating the obvious to aver that with the passing of Boutros Boutros-Ghali at the ripe age of 93, the United Nations has lost its first Middle-Eastern secretary-general. Yet more critical than the nationality must be the fact that he had led
Succinctly has Ban Ki-moon, the current UN secretary-general, summed up his contribution: “He brought formidable experience and intellectual power to the task of piloting the United Nations through one of the most tumultuous and challenging periods in its history.”
Thus it was that Boutros-Ghali was the first UN Secretary-General to organise a mass humanitarian relief effort after famine struck the Horn of Africa in the early 1990s.
The “dark continent” is now in ferment as is the Arab world to which Boutros-Ghali belonged, more specifically Egypt.
In the aftermath of his passing, one is inclined to wonder whether Africa and the Middle East can expect a similar UN intervention towards peace.
He was also in office at the end of the first Palestinian uprising or intifada against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. As an Arab, he was praised generally for his role in helping to bring the violence to an end, however temporarily.
While it would be uncharitable at this juncture to harp on the controversial aspects of his tenure, his term in office coincided with the war in Yugoslavia, during which he had ignited an international controversy with the contention that though he was not trying to play down the horrors taking place in Bosnia, there were other conflicts in which the “total dead was greater than here”.
The UN was less than robust in its response to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 when as many as a million Tutsis and Houthis were killed in sectarian violence. Indeed, a conflict that raged for three months had led to the death of an estimated 20 per cent of the Rwandan population.
In 1993, the US intervention against the Somali rebel leader, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, led to the death of several hundred Somalis and 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu.
Two decades after his tenure, the UN all too frequently conveys the impression of dithering in the face of geopolitical complexities. More accurately, an individual’s efforts can be almost ineffective, however astute his diplomatic acumen.
The world body today cries out for collective initiative as an embodiment of international will. This, in a word, is the transition that the United Nations has undergone since the conclusion of Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s term.
