Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

nic group. In that sense, mass rape as practiced in the camps was part of a genocidal campaign.
And not only this, for by rendering raped Muslim women as “untouchables” and
unfit for marriage within Bosnian society, the Serbs were also reducing the available pool
of women from whom the next generation of Muslims would be born. Thus, while increasing
the number of Serb children, the rapes were actually reducing the number of Muslim
children in the future. Rape warfare practiced with such attention to rationale and execution
could, under no circumstances, be classified as an addendum to war; indeed, it was
a policy.
Rapid Action Force. A genocide rapid action force is, in theory, a special force that
would be trained and on-call especially for those situations that appear to be moving
toward crimes against humanity and/or genocide. Some scholars have recommended that
such a force be composed of volunteer troops under direct UN command, and thus not at
the beck and call of individual states.
Currently, no rapid action force, whose express purpose is the prevention or intervention
of genocide, exists. However, numerous scholars (e.g., political scientists, international
relations specialists, and those in the field of genocide studies) and practitioners
(e.g., with the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations dealing with human
rights atrocities, and military analysts) have put forth ideas in regard to the development
of such a force and have addressed such wide-ranging issues as its constituent components,
possible oversight bodies, cost, size, funding, how such a force would be manned, its’ command
structure, when and how it would be deployed, and so on.
In his Agenda for Peace (1992), UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (b. 1922)
suggested the need for “peace enforcement units” (not antigenocide forces or a rapid
action force, per se) that would be more heavily armed than regular peacekeeping forces,
for the purpose of monitoring and enforcing cease-fires and/or peace agreements.
In 1994 Hans van Mierlo (b. 1931), the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, advanced the
proposition of having the United Nations establish a UN legion, or full-time professional
military force—which he referred to as a “fire brigade.” The purpose, he told the UN
General Assembly, would be to rapidly deploy a force in order to prevent, or at least minimize,
genocidal tragedies as that which befell Rwanda in 1994.
The Commission on Global Governance put forth the idea of establishing a
ten-thousand-person UN volunteer force that would be available to intervene in a
timely and effective manner in the earliest stages of a conflict.
Later in the decade, Brian Urquhart (b. 1919), the former Undersecretary-General of
the United Nations, called for a permanent UN volunteer military force of some five
thousand UN volunteers.
There are numerous prototypes of rapid action forces already in existence (some of
which were created and disbanded once their tasks had been completed, and none of
which had the special purpose of the prevention and intervention of genocide), and the
successes and weaknesses of the latter will need to be examined prior to devising such a
force for the express purpose of the prevention and intervention of genocide. One such
rapid reaction force was established in May 1995, in response to the Bosnian Serb attack
on the Bosnian city of Tuzla, a UN-declared “safe area” in which hundreds of UN peacekeepers
were taken hostage. At the time, French president Jacques Chirac (b. 1932) suggested
the need for the creation and insertion of a rapid reaction force (RRF) to protect
the UN peacekeepers and to end the siege of Sarajevo. A RRF, Chirac argued, would be
RAPID ACTION FORCE
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