The role of stakeholders in international conflict resolution and United Nations decision-making

¶ … international politics and relations in the current era, which define how communities and geographical regions relate to each other, have evolved over a period after time. The human history has been a roller coaster ride, full of violence, bloodshed and genocides. The term genocide refers to a planned and organized destruction against a national, ethnic or religious group.

In every geographical area, there are people from different ethnic, religious and social backgrounds and from different mindsets and school of thoughts. In general, one of the groups remains in the majority while the others remain in the minority. Both the majority and the minority groups have their own respective points-of-view which they aspire to enforce; however, since the majority has the numerical strength, they consider it their natural right to be in the powerful position. In some cases, it had been observed that the minority manages to take over the powerful position; however, it always remains under a threat of being overthrown by the majority. While the inhabitants of any geographical territory have always had a tendency to indulge into some kind of a conflict, the responsibility of maintaining the rule of law, discipline and stability lies on the shoulder of the nation's leadership.

When a deadly international conflict broke out in the twentieth century in form of the First World War, one constructive step that was taken by the nations who were party in the war was the formation of an organization that had the capacity to restore peace in the destabilized regions and can help seeking peaceful solution between the states that were stuck in conflict situations (Destexhe 1995). This organization was then known as the League of Nations. Initially, the aim of the organization was to resolve international conflicts in a peaceful manner. The primary focus was on seeking solutions to conflicts pertaining to geographical and territorial changes resulted due to colonization. However, as international politics evolved and more countries joined in, the League of Nations expanded its mandate to a broader spectrum of activities and emerged as the United Nations Organization. Since then, the United Nations is known for giving political, military, financial and economic assistance to nations that are in any sort of distress or conflict. The United Nations Organization has been a key player as a decision making entity in times of geographical and political conflicts between states. Throughout the history and up to the current age of globalization, the decision making process is always influenced by the people of the state, it political leadership, the foreign stake holders and the super national organization such as the United Nations Organizations (Long & Mills 2008). How these stakeholders and forces influence the decision making process depends on the culture followed in the respective political, administrative and supranational organization. Like any other organizational culture, this culture is also defined by the set of values, norms and belief systems prevalent in the organization and among its people.

This paper evaluates the role of various stake holders along with the supernational organizations like the United Nations Organization in influencing incidents such as the Rwanda Genocide of 1994. The paper analyzes, within the context of management, that how internal and external stake holders influence various decision making processes and make way to provoke or prevent such incidents that may affect history, politics, and human lives across geographical boundaries.

The background of the Rwanda Genocide dates back to the pre-world war colonial time. The Rwandese population is dominated by the dark skinned Hutus, while the white skinned Tutsis constitute the minority of the population. However, when the territory was taken over by the Belgian colonial power, the Tutsis were given an upper hand on ethnic grounds while the Hutus were pushed down to slavish conditions. After the Second World War the colonial powers found it difficult to maintain their power in their colonies, and the rise in nationalist and revolutionary ideas resulted in a series of independence of various colonies. Rwanda was one of them. After its independence the Tutsis were overthrown to be replaced by the Hutus however, the new government was installed on dictatorial lines. The Tutsis, many of whom were forced to seek refuge in neighboring countries, due to Hutu atrocities against them, created insurgent groups to invade the new territory. The government supervised Hutu militias and the Tutsi insurgents were ready to for a deadly clash at any time. As a result, the case was referred the United Nations so that it can assist in restoring peace. The United Nations, in turn, sent a peace mission to supervise the peace agreement in Rwanda, under the leadership of a Canadian military man, Lieutenant Dallaire.

Power and Politics of Organization

The reason why super national organizations such as the United Nations organizations are able to influence, provoke, generate, and prevent incidents like Rwanda Genocide is the power and position these organizations hold in the international politics. Countries around the world are dependent on the United Nation to a great extent, when it comes to strengthening their foreign relations with other countries, or getting their conflicts resolved. The United Nations Organization is well aware of this fact. Moreover, the United Nation itself is an institution which is made up of many member states, which means all those countries have a stake in the organization. The permanent members such as the United States of America are the major stakeholders, of the United Nations. Although it is not a written regulation, however, it has been a practice of the United Nations that they are influenced by the permanent members to a great extent and the Security Council keeps in view the interests of these permanent members before taking any decisions.

As mentioned earlier supranational organizations and strong stakeholders within the organization have power to influence major decisions and outcomes. The term power under management theory refers to ability to make things go the way one wants. In general there are three power bases, namely Coercive, Utilitarian and Normative Power (Etzioni, 1968). The most prominent power base in the case of Rwanda Genocide was Coercive and Normative Power. Coercive Power base involves making someone comply with one's wishes by force. On the other hand, normative power refers to a belief system under which the members of the organization believe that the organization has the right to control their behavior.

Both these power bases, Normative and Coercive were evident in Rwanda's case at various instances. For example, influential members of the United Nations such as Belgium, France and the United States, played a major role in influencing United Nation to withdraw its peacekeeping force from Rwanda. This was an example of Coercive Power where these strong stakeholders easily pressurized the United Nations to deviate away from the objectives it had set. Similarly, when Dallaire's assistance request were being processed slowly by the United Nations, an intervention by a Tutsi lobby played a major role in speeding up the process. This implies that the United Nation's power is greatly overshadowed by its stakeholders and their strong political pressures and lobbying makes it difficult for the United Nations to keep in line with its organizational objectives.

Leadership

General Dallaire was leading the peace keeping force that was sent to Rwanda. Leadership has a key role to play in success and failure of any organization. Here Dallaire had a double test to take. His leadership was being tested in a cross cultural setting. He had to supervise a peace mission in a foreign land where two different cultures wre face off with each other. Dallaire tried his best to handle the situation. The management theory suggests that a leader must possess the confidence and courage to face challenges and take initiatives. Dallaire had possessed this skill well. However, his leadership skills were sabotaged by his superior, that is the United Nation. He did not get the required support and assistance that was necessary for the successful implementation of his mission.

The mandate of the delegation sent by the United Nations was to monitor the implementation of the peace process and prevent any further violence in the Rwandese territory. However, the militias sponsored and supervised by the Rwandese government were in constant process of triggering ethnic violence. Although Dallaire was assigned a leading position in the peace delegation, however, he was not given the required authority to take the necessary decisions. This was something that contributed in the greatest violence of the twentieth century (Long & Mills 2008).

One thing which Dallaire lacked as a leader was the skill to engage with both the cultures, Hutus and Tutsis, and create an alliance and built a trust relationship with both the parties. However, this needed some time which Dallaire was not allowed.

Dallaire's leadership skills could have been useful for the United Nations if the superiors would have shown considerable support. Under contemporary management theory it is important that superiors delegate responsibilities to lower hierarchy levels, however, it is also important that the superiors give the necessary decision making power to the person on ground. This is important because the person on ground is directly dealing with the situation and being dependent on asking for superiors consent over and over again may result in delays in important decision making.

Managing Conflict and Negotiation

The efficiency of organization is best tested when conflicts arise and negotiations have to be made. The situation gets more complex if the conflict involves clash between different cultures. In this case conflict management was the primary objective of United Nations and the organization was playing a mediator's role as a super national authority. Under such circumstances both leader and mediator are responsible to keep the conflicts at mediator level. However in organizations where politics and protecting personal interest of stakeholders are given preference over organizational goals, stakeholders do try to deliberately provoke conflicts rather than preventing them.

Analysis in Management Context

Putting the Rwandese Genocide case in context of leadership and management, it could be concluded that United Nations laid back attitude towards the problem had a lot to contribute in the mass destruction. Throughout the study of the Rwanda Genocide, a strong power culture and a weak role culture demonstrated where the responsibilities of people like Dallaire, who were in more critical positions were overshadowed by the strong power cultures demonstrated by the UNO bureaucracy and the Rwandese presidential forces (Long & Mills 2008).

The United Nations, if determined to put the political interest at the back seat, could have taken solid steps to resolve the problem. However, the world's largest supranational organization failed to deal with the political pressures and avoided to term the humanitarian disaster as genocide. By the time United Nations recognized the severity of the problem and declared the region disaster struck, 800,000 lives were already lost. Again, it showed that United Nations deviated from the goals and objectives it had set for the organization to achieve (Totten & Sherman 2005).

It is also evident that the United Nations allocation of resources was also highly mismanaged. The mandate and objective of the organization is to work towards restoring global peace, stability and social welfare. On the contrary, the United Nations spends large sums of money on extravagant buildings and on giving luxurious perks and fringe benefits to people on top diplomatic and bureaucratic positions. However, it allocates little resources to satisfy the requirements of the workforce that is working on the ground. It was clearly evident that the United Nations repeatedly rejected Dallaire's request of capital assistance on account of financial constraints, but the organization was not ready to cut on its extravagant bureaucratic expenditure.

The United Nations also gave little importance towards motivation of its employees and human resource. The United Nations failed to put Dallaire's forceful leadership skills to its best possible use. Instead, it demoralized and demotivated a self-motivated leader like Dallaire and repeatedly hindered his urge to take initiatives in order to achieve the targets. Dallaire was not working for personal interests, but was ready to take initiatives that reinforced the mandate that the United Nations undoubtedly had. However, the United Nation itself avoided and overlooked its organizational objectives and it seemed that it deliberately created a situation that led Dallaire's determination into a failed plan (Cook 2009).

Analyzing Dallaire's leadership skills, it is evident that although Dallaire's team failed to prevent the massive destruction, however, despite of being a leader Dallaire cannot be fully blamed for the mission's failure. This is because although Dallaire was the commander of the troops, his superiors, which were the United Nations bureaucrats did not allow him the liberty, resources and authority to take the necessary decisive actions. It must be noted that the kind of mission Dallaire was assigned to, did require him to have special powers and authorities (Normand & Zaidi 2008). However, the United Nations although made him the captain of the ship and gave him management responsibilities, but the resisted giving him authority and resources that were necessary to carry out that management process effectively and efficiently. In spite of constant reminders that Dallaire sent to the United Nations to remind them of the severity of the situation, the United Nations kept on declining his requests (Long & Mills 2008). Even with such extreme pressures, at one point in time Dallaire decided to go beyond his mandate and work towards the achievement of the desired goal. However, his plans were again hindered by the United Nations and his determination was demoralized by a further cut down in budgets followed by a withdrawal of the peacekeeping mission from the Rwandese territory altogether.

As far as the decision making process is considered, the first blunder that was made by the United Nations was not to delegate the decision making authority to the person who was in command to manage a critical workforce on ground in a critical situation of humanitarian crisis. Dallaire, the person in command had to report, ask and wait for United Nations consent and feedbacks even on petty matters, which made the process a time consuming one. To top that up, United Nations own procedures and decision making process proved out to be an extremely slow task. Even in times of critical situations the United Nations showed a laid back attitude and procrastinated in decision making process that made the crisis more severe.

It is also argued by many analysts that United Nations deliberately used this procrastination strategy in order to avoid getting into political deadlocks with other member nations (Melvern 2004).

This was another weakness reflected on part of an organization as big as the United Nations. Its attitude made it evident, that the United Nations pursued a policy of avoiding conflicts and challenges that it faced rather that facing and dealing with them and work towards achieving sound and workable solutions (Frey 2009).

Conclusion

In case of the Rwandese Genocide, the classical theory was more prominent. United Nation did show little interest in transferring authority to Dallaire. Its objectives were successfully sidelined by stronger stakeholders.

Finally, there is no doubt that the incident of Rwanda which claimed the life of 800,000 innocent men sets the perfect example of organizational failure. It proves that when organizations appoint leaders with a set of responsibilities given to them but with no authority to fulfill those responsibilities, it not only results in leadership failure but it's the failure of the whole organization. The incident is evident of the fact that when organizations appoint honest and sincere leaders but fail to follow or implement their decisions due to the influence of some people, than this forms the basis of organizational conflict and failure (Long & Mills 2008). In the case discussed above, Dallaire was given responsibility but unfortunately the decisions taken by him to fulfill those responsibilities could not be implemented due to the fact that United Nations faced diplomatic, political and bureaucratic pressure from United States and other powerful members of the United Nations to send an army of just 2600 men, which in any case was a decision not worth of implementation (Totten & Parson 2009). It did nothing but claimed the lives of innocent men in the name of Genocide. United Nations failed to manage its members and council officials. It played a role of biasness which is an example of ill-managed organization and planning (Barnett 2002). United Nations could have resolved the matter by taking its permanent members into confidence on the recommendations given by Dallaire as he was leading the delegation and was aware of the ground reality in Rwanda. Therefore, to conclude it can be said that organizations need managers with good leadership skills, which in this case was not reflected by UN officials (Jones 2008).