Will the UN Save Darfur?
Recently the UN announced that a 26,000 member peacekeeping force had been agreed upon to be deployed to Darfur. Sounds like good news right? Well, not if you start reading the fine print. First of all the force won’t even be on the ground until next year and the ability fill a 26,000 member force is dependent on UN countries volunteering forces to participate in the UN operation. For those not familiar with UN peacekeeping, many of the soldiers involved in UN peacekeeping are not there to actually help the country they are deployed too. They are actually there to collect a paycheck because UN peacekeeping pays better than what they would make in their home country’s military. Thus soldiers from third world nation’s make up the vast majority of UN peacekeepers:
Top Countries Who Provide UN Peacekeepers
Pakistan – 10,173
Bangladesh – 9,675
India – 9,471
Nepal – 3,626
Jordan – 3,564
Uruguay – 2,583
Additionally, countries that are host to UN peacekeepers prefer having soldiers from third world nations because they are ineffective. So it is a win-win for everyone involved because the peacekeepers are making a bunch of money while the country they are supposedly providing peacekeeping for is not impacted by their presence, and the UN gets to claim they are doing something and request more funding. UN peacekeeping is often nothing more than a self licking ice cream cone. A self licking ice cream cone is not something that will do anything to help the people in Darfur.
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