Talk:Boutros Boutros-Ghali

A news item involving Boutros Boutros-Ghali was featured on Wik.ipedia.Pro's Main Page in the In the news section on 16 February 2016.

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this page is delightfully unfair. the author seems to devote a suspiciously large portion of the article to decrying united states foreign policy. if the author feels that a discussion of culpability for the rwandan genocide is integral to the biography of boutros-ghali, it might have been worth mentioning that current secretary general kofi annan was in charge of the failed peacekeeping operation in rwanda and has since admitted remorse. it might also has been worth mentioning that belgian 'peacekeeping' troops were pulled from the country as soon as the peace needed to be kept and that while the genocide was ongoing, the french supplied weapons to the killers. it is therefore devious to pin responsibility entirely on the united states.

Please don't go deleting huge sections of the article without discussion. If there are POV issues they can be dealt with, but let's try surgery not blunt trauma. —Tkinias 19:25, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Certainly. Let's take it a little bit at a time, starting with the following short paragraph:

Boutros-Ghali's term also saw the end of apartheid in South Africa with the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994. Elections also took place in Angola the same year he took office. However, the civil war continued there, and Boutros-Ghali appeared unable to stop it.

The first sentence is true, but the author does not establish relevance. Many things happened in 1994. Is it meant to imply that BG played some role in the events in South Africa? If so, what did he do? I think the sentence should go unless someone can clarify what, if anything, it has to do with the subject of the article. The second sentence is questionable on the same grounds. After these detours, the third sentence returns to the article topic. We can extract the relevant part of this mess and state: "Boutros-Ghali appeared unable to stop the civil war in Angola." This sentence clearly belongs in the previous paragraph, whose topic is why "Boutros-Ghali's term in office remains controversial."

Now to the previous paragraph:

He was criticized for the UN's failure to act during the 1994 Rwandan civil war and genocide, which ultimately killed about 800,000 people. However, this was primarily due to the lack of support by the US. The Clinton administration, reeling from the recent debacle in Somalia, announced that not only would it no longer participate in peacekeeping but also that no other nation would be permitted to do so either. Under the 1949 Genocide Convention, UN action to avert genocide and deliver humanitarian aid was legally required in Rwanda, but with the State Department's public directives, the 1949 Genocide Convention was ignored. The US's ambassador to the UN, Madeline Albright, studiously avoided any use of the word "genocide." Albright dismissed as "too expensive" Boutros-Ghali's requests to jam Rwandan radio broadcasts, which were every day inciting the population to kill Watutsi. The US rejected support even for the small existing UN military observation force that was already there, having been sent to Rwanda in August 1993, following a peace agreement made at Yirusha, Rwanda after the initial Kigali violence. Later that year, elected transitional President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and the President of neighbouring Burundi, both Hutus, were killed in a plane crash. Enflamed, Hutu unleashed genocide throughout Rwanda, slaughtering the Tutsi minority.

I feel that only the first sentence is relevant to the topic. The second sentence announces a subjective judgment. The third sentence combines irrelevance (the subject is the Clinton administration, not BG) with colorful and dramatic invective ("reeling from the recent debacle"). It's also false, and even silly (other nations did not need to ask the Clinton administration for permission to act in Rwanda - the US does not control the foreign policy of every other country in the world). Similar remarks apply to the rest of the paragraph: they are irrelevant, and constitute a highly biased, POV account of events which are already described in Rwandan Genocide. The author of these remarks seems to be attempting to answer the criticism that BG did not prevent the events in Rwanda, but there is no reason to include such an editorial in an encyclopedia.

Let's see if we can't work out something that's germane to the subject (BG) and NPOV. Physicist 22:01, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I propose something such as the following:

Elected to the top post of the UN in 1992, Boutros-Ghali's term in office remains controversial. He was criticized for the UN's failure to act during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which ultimately killed about 800,000 people, and he appeared unable to muster support in the UN for intervention in the continuing civil war in Angola.

This is concise and germane: it discusses BG and why he has been criticized, and leaves the Rwandan material on its proper page. Does anyone have any comments? If there are no objections, I'll replace the jeremiad with this in a day or two. Physicist 21:39, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That should work. I would also add explicit mention that his reputation gets caught up in the "US vs. the world" polemics (some USians: "BBG did nothing! UN is worthless!" vs. anti-USians: "US crippled UN so BBG couldn't act!"). A NPOV sentence explaining why he has been an important symbol in these arguments would be good. —Tkinias 01:06, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fine. I'm making the change as per discussion. Physicist 21:08, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Why is the name hyphenated between the second 'Botros' and 'Ghali'? This isn't a Spanish-style name (dos apellidos), it's the name of his father and family name. He's Botros Ghali, II (maybe more, since teh whole familt is Botros). --Alif 21:02, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I didn't know about this. "In summer 1995, Annan broke ranks with then-Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, delegating U.N. authority to a NATO general to carry out airstrikes against Bosnian Serbs. The next year, the Clinton administration rewarded Annan by leading an unpopular battle to block Boutros-Ghali's reelection to a second term." [1]

The section on the US's veto of Boutros-Ghali's second term would be more interesting if it contained some pointers to reasons given for the veto, and/or the political context.