When leaders say something about anything

‘Something must be done’ is a phrase that should haunt the international community and particularly those who purport to lead it.

It most famously came into vogue in the early 1990s as the former Yugoslavia, most especially Bosnia, was being murderously hacked to pieces, and Rwanda was descending into - then actively implementing - genocide. In both cases ‘something’ was done through the UN. In Bosnia a vast peacekeeping mission was sent to protect not the vulnerable citizens but rather the humanitarian aid delivered to the besieged inhabitants of the six notorious enclaves of Muslim inhabitants, including Srebrenica. In Rwanda a mission that had been sent to stop weapons reaching the rebels was actually withdrawn once the genocide started.

Ominously, the phrase has been heard again in the past few years with regard to Darfur, where more a quarter of a million people have lost their lives and two million have been displaced while the international community has been wringing its hands and debating an appropriate ‘something’ - which, after years of inaction, turned out to be a totally inadequate monitoring mission run by the African Union. If the benighted people of Darfur hold out a bit, this mission may be replaced by a stronger UN mission sometime this coming autumn, but then again, maybe not. As Zimbabwe rapidly spirals down into catastrophe there are some murmurings of ‘something’, though the international community seems to have accepted the get-out clause of not shaming African leaders.

The wretched people of Zimbabwe who are left and cannot escape - millions have fled - will just have to make do with a heated war of words over whether theirincredibly corrupt president can or cannot attend an EU-Africa summit. Maybe that too is ‘something’. (See Page 17.)

Another region in which it has long been muttered that something must be done is the Palestine-Israel conflict. In truth, and in striking contrast to Africa, a lot is constantly done on the humanitarian side of the conflict: whether through the EU, the UN, individual nations or non-governmental organisations, a vast amount of aid goes into the Occupied Territories. But it is the political area in which there is a desperate need for something to be done - and the irony is, that now there may be the very first stirrings of activity, there are many sour faces all around.

Conventional wisdom on the conflict suggests that only US leadership and involvement can move anything. Both because it is the patron of Israel and because, as the world’s only superpower, it has the credibility and ability to guarantee a settlement. There are a few points to make about this wisdom. First, that the responsibility for any conflict should always rest with the sides, not with any external factor, however important or powerful. Second - and not withstanding the first - the appalling decision of the Bush administration to disengage from the conflict way back in 2001 and effectively to bar any direct intervention by any other international party, undoubtedly aided its downward trajectory in the past six years. This was why the formation known as the Quartet - comprising the US, Russia, the UN and the EU - came into being, since it was really the only option the other three had to get a foot in at the door. And third, following the Iraq invasion, and then its support for Israel in the Lebanon conflict last summer, the US has lost much of its credibility in the region.

Possibly in recognition of the above, possibly as no more than a sop, the Bush administration has now appointed Tony Blair as the Quartet’s envoy - a move which has apparently dismayed other members of the group, not least Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, who apparently wished it to be known that Blair was not to be considered an EU representative, since that was his slot. And in order to quell the discord, Blair’s mandate has been watered down to the most basic aid functions rather than a full political role.

This is an excellent example of how ‘somethings’ become doomed in the international world. Instead of intervening for the benefit of those afflicted, the discussion becomes about the benefit of those intervening. Something must be done about this disgraceful reality; perhaps, at the very least, international leaders should be barred from ever saying ‘something must be done’.

• Ilana Bet-El is an academic, author and policy adviser based in Brussels.

‘Something must be done’ is a phrase that should haunt the international community and particularly those who purport to lead it.