Opinion Where'S Preventive Diplomacy? By DAVID ZOPPETTI	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
予防外交はどうなっているの？ 予防外交はどうなっているのか 筆者は10年ほど前、民族紛争を逃れて コソボ自治州を離れたアルバニア人に 取材したことがある。 現在、深刻化しているコソボ紛争を見ると、 あのころもっと積極的対策がとられていたらと 思われてならない。

About 10 years ago, I did a documentary for Japanese television about people seeking political asylum in Switzerland. Among the people I interviewed were a great number of Albanian refugees from the province of Kosovo.

They had walked for days and days across land and mountains. They had crossed borders at night, carrying their children in their arms after giving them sleeping pills to ensure they wouldn't wake up and draw the attention of border patrols.

They told me they were fleeing from the atrocities committed in the name of "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs. They showed me video tapes of people who had been tortured and killed, of concentration camps resembling those of World War II and of mass execution graves, visions of horror from another age.

The television network for which I worked was not eager to air this footage, nor was it willing to let me go to Kosovo to do a follow-up on the story. "It is too dangerous," they said, "and all of this is not very relevant to Jap anese viewers."

Of course, this decision made me furious at the time. But the real problem is that the entire international community showed a similar attitude toward the crisis in Kosovo. For years, everyone was aware of what was going on there, but nothing was done about it.

Four or five years later, I did another shoot, this time regarding the role of the United Nations during peacekeeping operations in Somalia. This program focused on "preventive diplomacy," a concept introduced by the former general secretary of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in his book "Agenda for Peace."

"Once a conflict erupts somewhere," he explained during a press conference in Nairobi after a visit to Somalia, "it is usually extremely difficult to solve and usually generates huge refugee problems. Peace enforcement and peacekeeping operations are also very expensive and time consuming. Preventive diplomacy should be an option to consider by member countries (of the United Nations) to avoid such situations."

In other words, more should be done at an early stage, when peaceful resolution of conflicts is still possible.

But the concept of preventive diplomacy never really set off a spark of enthusiasm in the international community. The ongoing crisis in and around the Republic of Yugoslavia is tragic proof of this.

And despite great displays of sincerity by politicians, I cannot help thinking that it is basially because a lot of people benefit more from war than from peace, starting with the military, the weapons manufacturers and arms dealers of the world. Meanwhile those who don't benefit are left to deal with all the pain and tragedy left behind.

I wish reality would prove this to be a rather exaggerated and distorted view of things. Unfortunately, it doesn't. This century started with a war in the Balkans and is about to end with another one in the same place. Have we not become any wiser in all these years?

Shukan ST: April 23, 1999

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