14
Between 1992 and 1996 some three million Russians had fled the other republics for Russia.
15
Between 1994 and 2000 Kagame was the country’s vice president and minister of defense. He became president in the spring of 2000.
16
Critics believed that Ogata created a false dichotomy between withdrawing and remaining, instead of creatively responding to the bind in which UNHCR found itself. They say UNHCR should have insisted on moving the camps deeper into Zaire to cut down on violent cross-border raids, or it should have cut off aid in certain camps to see whether this might prompt those who had committed no crimes during the genocide to return to their homes, leaving the guilty in Zaire to fend for themselves.
17
The corridors UNHCR proposed would run from Goma to Gisenyi, Rwanda; Bukavu to Cyangugu, Rwanda; and Uvira to Bujumbura, Burundi.
18
The 1974Yugoslav constitution had given the province of Kosovo self-governing powers comparable to those of Serbia and the country’s other five republics. In 1989, however, Milošević stripped the province of its autonomy and put it under Serbia’s jurisdiction. For clarity, I will refer to “Kosovo” and “Serbia” as if they were separate geographic entities, when in fact Kosovo was a province within Serbia.
19
Montenegro and Serbia were close allies, which then jointly made up the “Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.”
20
UN officials present that day still dispute who actually arrived first and won the bet.
21
In 2007 French president Nicolas Sarkozy named Kouchner as his foreign minister.
22
The UN system uses five escalating security phases to describe the prevailing conditions in a country and the commensurate requirements for staff: Phase I, precautionary; Phase II, restricted movement; Phase III, relocation; Phase IV, program suspension; Phase V, which can be declared only by the secretary-general, evacuation.
23
Annick Roulet had gotten married in 1999, and her married name was Stevenson.
24
The question of whether Vieira de Mello could have become secretary-general ignites great debate even today. Since it was in fact Asia’s turn to nominate a secretary-general in 2006, those who believed Vieira de Mello would be appointed assumed that national rivalries in Asia would prevent them from reaching a consensus and that Vieira de Mello would be chosen to break the stalemate. Others thought that, having waited several decades for its turn, Asia would never forfeit the chance to appoint one of its own, and Vieira de Mello would be chosen a decade down the line.
25
The “Responsibility to Protect” or "R2P” was a concept introduced in December 2001 by the independent Commission on State Sovereignty and Intervention, cochaired by Gareth Evans and Mahmoud Sahoun, and composed of former diplomats, politicians, and public intellectuals. In September 2005, 150 countries in the General Assembly unanimously endorsed the new norm.
26
The organization’s largest program (which later became the most notorious) was the Oil for Food Program. In 1996 the Iraqi government, under severe sanctions, signed a deal with the UN Secretariat allowing Iraq to sell its oil to finance the purchase of food and medicine.All told, the program, which the UN monitored, was used to fund the delivery of some $31 billion worth of humanitarian supplies, while another $8.2 billion remained in the production and delivery pipeline.
27
Iraq’s elections were held in January 2005, and the constitutional drafting committee was appointed by the elected parliament. Their draft constitution entered into effect after it was approved by a majority in all but two of Iraq’s provinces.
28
By coincidence, the person in charge of all of UN security, a sixty-year-old Burmese named Tun Myat, was named to the post after serving as humanitarian coordinator in Iraq from 2000 to 2002. Because of his perceived special knowledge of Iraq, those on the Steering Group who had never visited the country or the region almost never challenged him.
29
By September 23, there would be forty-nine internationals in Baghdad and forty-seven in northern Iraq.
Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World Page 81