The news website reports that the United Nations received a rebuke from a human rights panel attached to its peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, which described the panel’s efforts to make the mission accountable for rights violations as “a total failure”. The 49-page report by the Human Rights Advisory Panel, part of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo – UNMIK – is very critical about the way the mission acted, including failures to investigate human rights violations, disappearances and killings, as well as negligence in the mass lead poisoning of Roma at United Nations camps. The report’s conclusions are a potential source of embarrassment for the United Nations, which regularly assails governments for a lack of accountability and defends victims whose human rights have been violated in conflict zones around the world. “Due to UNMIK’s unwillingness to follow any of the Panel’s recommendations,” the report said, the panel’s own work had “obtained no redress for the complainants.” “As such, they have been victimised twice by UNMIK: by the original human rights violations committed against them and again by putting their hope and trust into this process,” it said. UNMIK officials commented on the report, which was published in June, saying that they value the work of the panel and added that the panel was not a tribunal. In the conclusions of the report, it is noted that the Panel “has concluded its mandate after eight years of issuing opinions and recommendations, proclaiming the process a total failure”.