SINCE the end of August, more than half of the 1m Rohingyas in the state of Rakhine in Myanmar have fled across the border to Bangladesh. The flight of the Muslim minority group is the quickest mass departure of people from any country since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Rohingyas are still pouring into makeshift camps, bringing with them stories of how villages were incinerated, children shot dead, women raped and babies tossed into canals. If the exodus continues few of them will be left in Myanmar.

The Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s army, is chiefly responsible for the ethnic cleansing. It is aided and abetted by local Rakhine politicians, while the government of Aung San Suu Kyi has done little to stop the violence. But the UN is at fault, too. Despite having 19 agencies in Myanmar, and several offices and plenty of staff in Rakhine state, it has failed to stop the catastrophe or warn of its coming.

Inside the UN, some officials argue that those in charge of the mission downplayed the treatment of Rohingyas to win the co-operation of Myanmar’s authorities in order to build schools, sanitise dirty water and develop a civil service—“capacity-building” in UN-speak. The special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Quintana, says he was discouraged from visiting Rakhine state by the head of the mission, Renata Lok-Dessallien. The Canadian denies this, but has been recalled to the UN headquarters in New York.

A UN mission, whether a multi-agency presence as in Myanmar or one of its 15 peacekeeping operations, can be a thankless task. Those in charge are constrained by local and international politics. Yet they could do much better. Myanmar is far from the first example of a dysfunctional mission. The UN has repeatedly dawdled in response to atrocities. António Guterres, secretary-general since January 2016, wants to reform how operations are run. The plight of the Rohingya shows how much work he has to do.

Cosying up to the bad guys

The failings in Myanmar are reminiscent of those of the UN’s mission in Sri Lanka at the end of the civil war in 2009 between the government and the Tamil Tigers, a guerrilla group. An internal review led by Charles Petrie, a former UN official, concluded there had been “systemic failure”. Mr Petrie accused the members of the Sri Lankan mission of appeasing the government in Colombo, so that they could promote their development work and receive international aid. Standing up for human rights was often deemed too difficult.

In Myanmar, instead of confronting the government on behalf of the Rohingya, the UN championed a policy of development for all in Rakhine state. That ignored how the delivery of services would inevitably be channelled through, and controlled by, those in power, namely Buddhist Rakhine politicians, the enemies of Rohingyas. A report commissioned by the mission in Myanmar in 2015 pointed out that such an approach would be “more likely to reinforce discrimination than change it”.

The Petrie report chronicled how the Sri Lankan mission recorded all the civilian deaths attributed to the Tamil Tigers, but understated the numbers of civilians killed or wounded by the army—again, to keep the government sweet. This pattern was also apparent in Rwanda in 1994 and in the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), one of the UN’s largest-ever peacekeeping operations, established in 2007. In 2013 Aicha Elbasri, the spokeswoman for the mission, resigned, handing in a list of 16 cases where UNAMID had “concealed” assaults on civilians and even UN peacekeepers.

Ban Ki-moon, Mr Guterres’s predecessor, commissioned another UN review, which upheld five of the complaints. Ms ElBasri, Moroccan by birth, argues that the deceptions were carried out to avoid offending the Sudanese government of Omar al-Bashir, adding that Africans in the mission were keen to defend one of their own. Mr Ban said that the “tendency to underreport” had left him “deeply troubled”. But no one was held accountable, and nobody had to resign. The whistleblower, however, forfeited her job.

Missions need the consent of the host governments to operate; the UN cannot invade. But too often agencies and blue helmets (as in the headgear worn by peacekeepers) are lackeys of autocrats, forming “abusive” relationships with those in power, according to Richard Gowan of Columbia University. This undermines the UN’s claim to moral authority.

The operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a case in point. The UN has deployed peacekeepers there since 1999, and MONUSCO, the French acronym by which the mission is known, now has about 16,000 troops, and costs more than $1bn a year.

Since 2016, the UN has failed to prevent violence that has forced over 1m people to flee their homes. Troops get away with defining their operating boundaries conservatively. Perversely, they are rewarded for not using their kit, as they are reimbursed for equipment returned in good condition. Meanwhile MONUSCO cannot easily get rid of underperforming civilian staff, partly because of pressure from trade unions but also because of the complex way in which UN headquarters imposes its choice of recruits on the mission.

Standing idle

Another $1bn-per-year mission, UNMISS, has done almost nothing to prevent the descent into civil war and famine since South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011. The 12,500 peacekeepers have a mandate to protect civilians, but have failed to do so. In August 2016 aid workers were raped, beaten and robbed by South Sudanese government troops just minutes away from the main UN compound in Juba, the capital. Despite desperate phone and text messages from the victims, the 2,000 or so troops never stirred. “[The blue helmets] are supposed to protect civilians,” admits a UN official in South Sudan. “But they don’t. Something is upside down. It’s not working.”

One reason for the failure is that the mission asks permission from the government before it sends out troops, fearing that otherwise politicians will obstruct the delivery of food and medicine to the starving and the sick even more than they already do. But since it is often the government carrying out the massacres, permission is often refused or delayed.

Fired up, not ready to go

The UN argues that, despite the manifest failings of these missions, it is better to have them than not. The mere presence of its troops can sometimes deter attacks, and even if blue helmets are reluctant to go out and help civilians, at least the civilians can huddle in and around its bases for protection, as in South Sudan.

The UN has no mandate to impose its will independently on a country. All peacekeeping missions are authorised by the Security Council, and subject to approval by the General Assembly, giving China and Russia ample room to minimise the scope of missions in the interests of their clients and allies.

Such was the case in Sudan. China has considerable economic interests here, and it struggled for years to prevent any outside intervention in Darfur. Eventually, in 2007, it did concede to sending in UNAMID, but only after ensuring that the mission could cause Mr Bashir as little inconvenience as possible. The offer of Western troops was kept to an absolute minimum, denying UNAMID the sort of kit and operational efficiency that might have made a difference.

Another reason why, when the call goes out from New York, peacekeeping generally attracts troops from poor countries (see chart), is because the pay is relatively high. But they are typically risk averse. Some forces commit crimes. Another whistleblower, Anders Kompass, exposed allegations of sexual abuse of young children by troops in the Central African Republic in 2015.

Rather than take on the difficult task of improving peacekeeping operations, Mr Ban tried to encourage reporting of abuses of human rights. That way, the theory went, countries could avoid the crimes which would lead to the intervention of troops in the first place. His main initiative, “Human Rights Up Front”, required all staff to take responsibility for reporting abuses. But in Myanmar this policy has failed at first contact with the enemy.

Remaking the peace

Mr Guterres has a chance to do much better. For example, he could increase the annual budget for the human-rights office ($190m), which is dwarfed by the $12bn that the UN spent on development. He could have heads of mission report to him, not to UNDP, so as to reduce the risk that human-rights abuses are ignored by officials who rely on local politicians’ support for their pet projects.

Mr Guterres has said he wants the UN to do more before the blue helmets have to wade in. In recent years it has tried to mediate between factions in several countries. Sometimes it has staved off all-out war, thus avoiding the need for peacekeepers. Kofi Annan, a former secretary-general, rescued Kenya from a descent into further violence after disputed elections in 2007, for example; a team helped to stabilise Guinea after a coup in the west African state in 2008; and the UN also brokered a deal in Madagascar in 2011.

Building on these successes, Mr Guterres has called for a “surge in diplomacy for peace”, and has set up a “High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation”, which includes such luminaries as Michelle Bachelet, the president of Chile, and Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Jaw-jaw is, of course, better than war-war. But as the failure in Myanmar shows, the UN still has a lot to learn about keeping the peace.

Clarification (October 30th 2017): The original version of this article said that $12bn was spent on the UN Development Programme. In fact, that was the sum spent on all development by the UN.