By Dan Jasper, Staff Editor
For nearly a year, Syria has been in a state of unrest that has caused upwards of 5,000 deaths and an immeasurable amount of destruction. For nearly a year, the United Nations, the Arab League, and the world has watched as the regime of Bashar al-Assad has decimated the lives of its citizens and desecrated the principles that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was built upon. For nearly a year, nothing has been done about it.
In the wake of Rwanda, the world declared “never again,” as it had many times before. But this time, it was supposed to be different. The world would wake up and live by a new set of standards, a new set of responsibilities, a new honor code of sorts. The Responsibility to Protect doctrine was supposed to change the way the state viewed its citizens, states viewed each other, and the way the international community viewed conflict. It was supposed to make the world care. But the image above illustrates the failure of the doctrine in Syria.
The inaction of the UN Security Council has cast doubt on the role of the R2P principles in international affairs. Moreover, the Security Council is losing credibility as it fails, again, to take action, and is once again highjacked by the oppressive domestic agenda of Russia and China. What does this mean for the future of international relations? It’s difficult to say. But what is clear is that the structure of the Security Council is inherently flawed, and the functionality of the UN will continue to be impaired by these structural flaws.
But the future of international relations is not what we should focus on at the moment. We should focus on the lives being lost and the freedom of the Syrian people. In a series of youtube videos (some images may be disturbing) a brave Syrian man named Danny Dayem captures the ongoing violence in Homs (the epicenter of the violence in the past weeks) and makes a heartfelt plea for help. I think Danny captures the frustrations of many Syrians in six simple words: “Where the f*** is the UN?” And given the gap between rhetoric and action, that anger is seeming more and more understandable.