D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 6, November/December 1999, p. 3)

Why then is it so difficult to muster enough political will to implement effective crisis prevention strategies? Recent examples show that the world is still far away from accepting that preventive action is more rational than waiting for the outbreak of a crisis and to act only when it is often too late. A similar behaviour can be observed in dealing with health or environmental problems: people are inclined to cure the symptoms and react to catastrophes instead of taking precautions to prevent the foreseeable disaster. A case in point is the reckless burning of fossil fuels inspite of the widespread acceptance of the assumption that carbon dioxide emissions have a longterm harmful effect on the earth's atmosphere and cause global warming.

In politics, governments often seem to be surprised by the outbreak of a crisis, and they offer this as an excuse for their belated reaction. But in reality, it is not the lack of early warning systems that is leading to the widespread apathy and indifference in pre-crisis situations. Take any of the recent crises in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda or East Timor: in each of these cases it was well known and could be read in the newspapers that trouble was brewing and ethnic tensions were being whipped up by interested political quarters. But in each case, the international community reacted only when the conflicts had already broken out and when the damage had already been done.

One of the reasons for this passive approach is that the legal basis for intervention in conflict situations is still very narrow. The United Nations still operate on the principle of the sovereignty of nations, and unless intervention can be based on the consent of the government in power in the crisis area, the international community remains condemned to inactivity. While it is true that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan would like to limit the sovereignty of regimes which severely violate human rights and commit genocide, a large number of states - some of them with the power of veto in the Security Council - oppose any attempt by Western nations to justify interventions on the grounds of human rights and democracy. Proposals by German foreign minister Joschka Fischer to the UN General Assembly last September to allow intervention on humanitarian grounds as in the Kosovo were promptly countered by his Chinese counterpart Tang Jiaxuan who said that a state could only protect human rights if its sovereignty was not infringed upon.

This limits the possibilities for extending the role of crisis prevention and peacekeeping by the international community. As a result, the Russian war in Chechnya, which in many ways is similar to the Serb role in the Kosovo, is left as an internal matter to the government in Moscow - just as so many other conflicts between neglected minorities and their respective central governments from Kurdistan and Tibet to Sudan and the Congo.

Another reason for international passivity in face of major crises is lack of money. The United Nations are not adequately equipped for an international peacekeeping role. As we have just seen in the case of East Timor, it takes the UN far too long when a decision for intervention has been approved by the Security Council to recruit military or police contingents from member states and to get them to the scene of conflict. This is why German NGOs are demanding to strengthen the capabilities of the UN to react more speedily to emerging violent conflicts. There are also proposals to provide the Secretary General with a well-trained and permanent international police force as a rapid intervention force which could have prevented a conflict such as the one in East Timor from breaking out.

But even with more money and improved institutions, it will hardly be possible to deal with all the internal crises the world over. There are just too many of them, and they are getting more and more violent as the disparities in wealth and incomes are growing and conflicts over scarcer resources are getting more acute. A successful peace policy must, therefore, start with the root causes of conflicts - poverty, uneven distribution of power and resources, lack of political and human rights. At the turn of the century which opens the door to a new millenium, we are just at the beginning of establishing a new global order building the appropriate institutions. The concentration of development cooperation on crisis management and peace building is a step in the right direction, but it will take a long time before concrete results will be achieved.