In this documentary, Paul Cowan delivers unprecedented access to the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping, and the determined and often desperate manoeuvres to avert another Rwandan disaster, this time in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the DRC). The film cuts back and forth between the United Nations headquarters in New York and events on the ground in the DRC. We are with the peacekeepers in the ‘Crisis Room’ as they balance the risk of loss of life on the ground with the enormous sums of money required from uncertain donor countries. We are with UN troops as the northeast Congo erupts and the future of the DRC, if not all of central Africa, hangs in the balance. As Secretary General Kofi Annan tells the General Assembly at the conclusion of The Peacekeepers: «History is a harsh judge. The world will not forgive us if we do nothing.» Whether the world’s peacekeeper did enough remains to be seen.
Related
The Peacekeeping Quagmire (Richard Gowan)
Peacekeeping Quagmire Gowan report
Searches in ProQuest through UCM
Reevaluating peacekeeping effectiveness: does gender neutrality inhibit progress?
The known knowns and known unknowns of peacekeeping data
Can the U.N. Keep the Peace? (Special PBS)