"Blood on the UN's hands: Assigning duties and apportioning blame to an intergovernmental organisation

Global Society

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 21-42

  Erskine, Toni ^a  

^a ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ETHICS; INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION; UNITED NATIONS;

EID: 1642357612     PISSN: 13600826     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/1360082032000173554     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Linda Melvern, "The Rwandan Blood on the UN's Hands", The Observer (3 September 2000), p. 19.
2. Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2000)
3. Nicholas Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), ch. 7
4. Bruce D. Jones, Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001)
5. Michael Barnett, Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002)
6. Daniela Kroslak, "The Responsibility of Collective External Bystanders in Cases of Genocide: The French in Rwanda", in T. Erskine (ed.), Can Institutions Have Responsibilities? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 159-182.
7. Onora O'Neill, in "Who Can Endeavour Peace?", Canadian Journal of Philosophy, suppl. 12, Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, and Disarmament, David Copp (ed.) (1986), pp. 41-73,
8. Peter French, Collective and Corporate Responsibility (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), p. 46.
9. "Assigning Responsibilities to Institutional Moral Agents: The Case of States and Quasi-states", Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 15, No. 2 (October 2001), pp. 67-85 (pp. 69-72);
10. David Wiggens, "Locke, Butler and the Stream of Consciousness: And Men as a Natural Kind", in Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 161.
11. Keith Graham posits the existence of what he calls "invisible collectives", in "Morality, Individuals and Collectives", in J.D.G. Evans (ed.), Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Problems, supplement to Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 1-18 (p. 9).
12. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 215-224, 21-22.
13. Michael N. Barnett and Martha Finnemore make this observation in "The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations", International Organization, Vol. 53, No. 4 (1999), pp. 699-732.
14. Thomas G. Weiss, David P. Forsythe and Roger A. Coate, The United Nations and Changing World Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001), p. 13.
15. Kofi Annan, "United Nations' Kofi Annan is in Britain" (BBC Interview, 19 June 2001).
16. Charter of the United Nations, Articles 10, 11 and 12.1, available: .
17. Chris Brown, "Moral Agency and International Society", in Can Institutions Have Responsibilities?, op. cit., pp. 51-65 (p. 60).
18. Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35 (1998): Srebrenica Report, available: ,
19. Secretary-General's Statement on Receiving the Report on the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, available: .
20. Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2001), pp. 87-98
21. Rosalyn Higgins, in Problems and Process: International Law and How We Use It (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 46,
22. Reparation for Injuries Suffered in the Service of the United Nations, ICJ Reports (1949).
23. Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 647-670;
24. Peter Mananczuk, Akehurst's Modern Introduction to International Law (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 92-96.
25. Frances V. Harbour, "Collective Moral Agency and the Political Process", in Can Institutions Have Responsibilities?, op. cit., pp. 69-83.
26. Virginia Held, "Can a Random Collection of Individuals be Morally Responsible?", Journal of Philosophy, Vol. LXVII, No. 14 (1970), pp. 471-481.
27. Larry May and Stacey Hoffman, "Introduction", in Larry May and Stacey Hoffman (eds.), Collective Responsibility: Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Ethics (Lanham, MD: Savage, Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), p. 7.
28. Anthony Lang Jr, "The United Nations and the Fall of Srebrenica: Meaningful Responsibility and International Society", in Can Institutions Have Responsibilities?, op. cit., pp. 183-203.
29. "Secretary-General Reflects on 'Intervention' in the Thirty-fifth Annual Ditchley Foundation Lecture", UN Press Release (6 May 1998), SC/SM/6613.
30. Hannah Arendt, "Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility", in Collective Responsibility, op. cit., pp.