U.N. Security Council Seeks to Head Off Mass Atrocities in Burundi
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Version 0 of 1. UNITED NATIONS — Spurred by fears of mass atrocities, the United Nations Security Council on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution that calls for a bolstered international presence in Burundi but stops short of sanctions against those who incite violence. The resolution, drafted by France, condemned the latest killings and called for urgent talks between the government and opposition forces. More than 200 people have been killed in Burundi since April, when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced that he would run for a third term, a move many regarded as unconstitutional. The president won and has rebuffed calls to start talks with opposition forces. The reputation of the United Nations was badly singed by its failure to stop the genocide in neighboring Rwanda in 1994, and then again by its failure to stop the killings in Sri Lanka in 2009. It is under enormous pressure to prevent another outburst of mass killings, especially along ethnic lines. The Security Council action places the onus now on Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to recommend in 15 days how the United Nations presence can be bolstered in Burundi, including the possibility of deploying peacekeepers. One option, diplomats said, would be to send some United Nations troops from the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, to temper what could be a regional tinderbox stoked by longstanding ethnic divisions. “The Security Council must do everything in its power to prevent a countrywide conflagration, with possible regional implications,” the French ambassador, François Delattre, told reporters after the 15-to-0 vote. “The Council must fully embrace its role of prevention — and its duty — and not let the genie of ethnic violence out of the bottle.” The British ambassador, Matthew Rycroft, said the council should be prepared to consider imposing sanctions — a prospect that has already been questioned by Russia as ineffective. The resolution left open the possibility of “appropriate measures” in the future, without specifying what they could be. The United Nations closed its peacekeeping mission in Burundi in 2006, a year after the civil war there ended; it had a smaller mission there to strengthen government institutions and protect human rights that closed in December 2014. Also on Thursday, the heads of the African Union, European Union and United Nations issued a statement that called for talks between the government and the opposition, warning of the fallout to a region that has witnessed years of debilitating conflict. The three organizations said they were “alarmed by the widening divisions, the threat for many more lives and a deep regional crisis.” |