Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

UNITED NATIONS TRANSITIONAL AUTHORITY IN CAMBODIA
United Nations Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide. On July 12, 2004,
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (b. 1938) informed the UN Security Council that he
had chosen a human rights advocate, lawyer, and former political prisoner from
Argentina, Juan E. Méndez (b. 1944), as his first Special Adviser on the Prevention of
Genocide. Méndez had been president of the International Centre for Transitional Justice,
a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that helps countries emerging from conflict
or misrule to hold human rights violators accountable for their crimes.
The express role of the adviser is to act as an early warning mechanism for the
Secretary-General and the Security Council vis-à-vis potential situations that could
develop into genocide and to make recommendations to the Security Council about how
the United Nations can prevent such events. Méndez’s appointment follows an earlier
pledge by Annan, as the tenth anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide approached, to
designate an official to collect data and monitor any serious violations of human rights or
international law that have a racial or ethnic dimension and could lead to genocide.
On May 29, 2007, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Francis Deng of
Sudan as the new Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities,
thus succeeding Juan Méndez. Previously, Deng had served as the Director of the Sudan
Peace Support Project based at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington,
D.C. He was also a research professor of international politics, law, and society at Johns
Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Between
1992 and 2004, Deng served as Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Internally
Displaced Persons.
United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). UNTAC was a military
force established by the UN Security Council on February 28, 1992. The authority
was created for the purpose of ensuring the implementation of the so-called Paris Agreements,
formally called the Agreements on the Comprehensive Political Settlement of the
Cambodia Conflict, signed on October 23, 1991. UNTAC was assigned the responsibility
of promoting and safeguarding human rights in Cambodia, maintaining law and order,
organizing and conducting free and fair elections, and overseeing the repatriation and
resettlement of refugees and displaced persons (of which there were some four hundred
thousand), and heading up the overall administrative structure for the country. Notably
missing from UNTAC’s mandate was anything in regard to bringing the Khmer Rouge to
justice for the genocide and other crimes against humanity they had perpetrated between
1975 and 1979.
According to the agreements, the Supreme National Council of Cambodia (SNC) was
reorganized as the legitimate government as the country moved towards a recovery of its
sovereignty after the departure of the occupying Vietnamese and the administration they
had imposed on the country in the wake of the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge
(1975–1978). The SNC delegated to the United Nations such powers as were necessary
to guarantee that the agreements—which had been negotiated over several years, amid
ongoing factional violence—would be honored by all parties. UNTAC was the body
authorized to oversee this process.
The special representative of the secretary-general, and head of mission, was Yasushi
Akashi (b. 1931) of Japan and the force commander was Lieutenant-General John
Sanderson (b. 1940) of Australia. At its peak, UNTAC had a strength of some
twenty-two thousand civilian and military personnel, from thirty-two countries.
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