Essentially: There were UN troops on the ground to monitor the ceasefire agreed to (sorta) by the government and rebel forces. The UN's Peacekeeping Office—at that time headed by Annan—wouldn't countenance the extension of the mandate to protect civilians in danger of massacre. Indeed, just communicating w/ NY was a struggle, and Gen. Dallaire at times seemed to be using the media, who appeared to have no such difficulties, to send his messages to HQ. Nonetheless he stuck to his mission, which the UN continued to define narrowly.
However it would be wrong to assign the blame to Annan personally; he was, and is, just a swivel servant. The failure of leadership was, and is, a political one; it took the Security Council forever to wake up and get involved. That is a failure of the USA, Britain, France, China, Russia who have always preferred the UN to be an ineffective talk-shop that doesn't get in the way of their freedom to act without restraint to suit their own selfish ends. Need I mention Iraq?
Canada did have some troops there, as did others, notably Belgium. It was the massacre of some of these troops that finally got the Permanent Members to wake up and do something. I think the whole sorry incident demonstrates—as does a certain recent war—that it is the national leadership of the US and the other powers that is irrelevant in a globalized world. Sadly irrelevant does is not the same as powerless.
It may be that we'll need to replace the imperfect UN as we replaced the League of Nations with a more effective body. Given the track records of Bush, Blair, Chirac, Putin and whoever runs China, I would expect we'll have to wait for them to create same sort of catastrophe that led to the founding of the UN.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists still has the Doomsday clock set at seven minutes to midnight
