The UN thus became a recurring feature of 1990s Balkan gallows humour. In a typical example from 1993, someone put a placard reading ‘safe zone’ on a fence surrounding one of the many makeshift cemeteries proliferating in the hills around Sarajevo. Comedy sketch groups lampooned the so-called ‘peacekeepers’ in blue helmets brought in to secure a nonexistent peace. The sentiment is even enshrined in a Sarajevo monument to a giant can of expired meat, the kind distributed as humanitarian aid during the years-long siege of the city, with a sardonic inscription on its plinth: ‘Monument to the International Community by the grateful citizens of Sarajevo.’
Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the UN has not yet had an occasion to be subjected to such lurid displays of humiliation – but it has proved useless yet again. In fact, the UN’s impotence became clear even before the invasion began.
