Somalia: The Missed Opportunities

By 1992, starvation, disease, and death had engulfed Somalia and its people. Plagued by the violence of civil war, Somalia had become a country with few resources and great despair—electricity, communications, transportation, health services, and food were all in short supply.

As disaster befell the country, the international community proved unwilling or unable to provide the humanitarian and peacekeeping assistance that was desperately needed. The result, contends Mohamed Sahnoun, UN special…