The picture that critics paint of foreign activists imposing their will on local communities is also something of a caricature. What the global human rights community did was to reach into Chad and empower an existing group that lacked resources, expertise, and a voice in a still autocratic country. The politicians who 'accepted' Pinochet's self-amnesty hardly exercised freedom of choice in this regard. In today's world, no country can resist outside influences. The bloody regimes in Chile and Chad benefited from the support of friendly governments and international investment.
Justice plays an inconsistent role on the international stage.
For the Balkans and Rwanda, the United Nations Security Council has taken the dramatic step of creating powerful regional tribunals that may disregard the immunity of officials and heads of state, present or past. Victims of past abuses in those locales at least have the solace of witnessing some war criminals answer for their crimes. This spring, citizens of Sarajevo woke to the news that French troops had seized a key henchman of the notorious Radovan Karadzic. In Sudan or Angola, where the suffering has dwarfed that in the Balkans, international justice is nowhere to be seen. In international law, like cases are decidedly not treated in a like manner.