ON OUR FILIPINO PEACE-KEEPERS I sympathize with the families of our Filipinos who serve on the UN Peace-Keeping Forces (Blue Helmets). But it is certainly not proper to ask the UN to guarantee their safety and to spare them from combat, neither is it reasonable to demand that our government repatriate them expeditiously. Contributing to the UN Peace-Keeping force is one of our Charter obligations as a member of the UN. Switzerland became a UN member fairly recently because of its position of neutrality in respect to armed combat in the past...and it was correctly argued that, if in every armed combat, Switzerland was to remain neutral, it would not be able to fulfill its obligations under the UN Charter. The Security Council sometimes does take sides -- as when it prevents incursions into the territory of a State that seeks its protections from aggression and the violation of territorial integrity. I will pray for our peacekeepers, but as a professor of international law, I cannot join the calls for their repatriation because they have a duty to fulfill under our treaty obligations. Pacta sunt servanda.
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 14:53:29 +0000
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