October 13, 2005
Katrina and Darfur
(Crossposted from Coalition for Darfur======
When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast last month, the American public was privy to 'round-the-clock media coverage of the disaster, especially of stories relating to the extraordinarily difficult living conditions faced by those who had been unable to evacuate. Thousands of people were left without food or water for days; their homes and cities destroyed, they were left to fend for themselves, trapped in squalid conditions and at the mercy of roving gangs of well-armed criminals.
As it turned out, many of the more horrific stories were later found to be false. Yet for the people of Darfur, the horrors that befell the people of New Orleans have become a way of life.
For more than two years, nearly two million people have been relegated to displacement camps across Darfur, with limited access to food, water and medical attention. They live in makeshift tents that provide little shelter from the elements, and in constant fear of rape, looting and death at the hands of the Janjaweed militia.
An aid worker and blogger known only as Sleepless in Sudan, who has been working in Darfur for six months, has been kind enough to provide this assessment of the conditions in which the displaced are now living ("Sleepless" has chosen to remain anonymous in order to protect herself and the agency for which she works from the very real threat of retribution from the Sudanese government)
People are living inside temporary shelters, covering their branch or wooden huts (those who have been there longer have built mud brick ones) with plastic sheeting from the aid agencies, and even this has often already been torn apart by the rains. Everyone sleeps on the floor, sometimes in puddles - 10 people in a little shelter is not unusual, more is common.While the United States government was blamed for a poor response to the Katrina catastrophe, the government of Sudan is directly responsible for the catastrophe in Darfur. And whereas the state and federal government are now in the process of cleaning up, and will soon begin the process of rebuilding, the devastated Gulf Coast, the people of Darfur currently have no prospects of ever being able to leave the camps because insecurity is still rampant.
Now that the aid agencies are operating in many camps there is regular water supply, there are latrines, there are medical clinics and most importantly, there is a monthly food distribution of staple grains and things like oil - but this does not mean people have it easy. This season has brought many floods and people have lost their belongings or even shelters, huts and latrines sometimes collapsed in the rains, and the food is never enough (and people have to scramble for things like fresh vegetables themselves anyway, as these are not included in the distribution). Malnutrition inside the camps is still high.
Overall, I would say conditions are adequate for survival - though some camps (especially the ones further away from big cities) are a lot worse off than others (Abu Shouk, for example, has dozens of aid agencies, while places just a few hours outside of it have 1 or 2). Whether they are adequate for what you would consider a normal life is debatable - I would say absolutely not, and I have no doubts any American would find them a lot more "unacceptable" than New Orleans.
I suppose the worst part of living in the camps is having absolutely no idea how much longer you will be there (many people have already been there for 2 years) and also constantly having to worry that you will be attacked - Aro Sarow showed us that even large scale attacks and killings inside IDP camps are still a threat. In many camps - Kalma, Tawila, etc. - it is part of everyday life to hear shooting at night, and in nearly all of them it is still very dangerous to wander outside and carry out chores like collecting firewood. Knowing that you are constantly at risk of looting and assault is be an easy thing to live with.
In the last few weeks, there have been a series of attacks on villages and camps that have created several thousand new IDPs. In addition, nearly 40 African Union troops and workers were kidnapped over the weekend and, in a separate incident, five members of the AU force were ambushed and killed. And even if a semblance of peace does ever come to the region, the people of Darfur have nothing to return to, as their villages and homes have been utterly destroyed while their land and possessions have been stolen.
The post-Hurricane nightmare faced by the victims of Katrina has been the reality in Darfur for more than two years - and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
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September 28, 2005
Coalition for Darfur: Anarchy and the UN
Another great post up on the situation in Sudan. On the 65th Birthday of the UN, it should be quite telling that in a nation where they are supposedly active, the reality is that people are still dying and the nation is descending into anarchy.
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As Darfur descends into anarchy, the United Nations appears unable to do any more than express concerns and continue to ask the parties involved to cease their violent attacks.
After rebels attacked and took control of the town of Sheiria last week, the Sudanese army said it was prepared to retake the town, to which the rebels replied that they would "repulse anything from the Sudanese government's army."
The upsurge in violence forced thousands more out of the villages, swelling the ranks of the internally displaced that already numbers nearly 2 million.
As the violence was raging, even the UN's own Special Representative Jan Pronk, a man who tends to see everything in Sudan through rose-colored glasses, was forced to admit that the violence was spiraling out of control. He was joined by the US government, which stated that the "uptick in violence ... is of concern to us" and the UN's genocide advisor, Juan Mendez, who acknowledged that Khartoum had done little to disarm militias or end the "culture of impunity" that exists in Darfur.
Pronk went on to state that the UN must give the Sudanese government and rebels an ultimatum to compel them to reach some sort of peace
agreement and even made the startling admission that, thus far, the UN has utterly failed to deal with Darfur
Pronk said that when the Darfur conflict began U.N. humanitarian officials agitated for the Security Council to take up the conflict, which it refused to do.Pronk was quoted elsewhere as saying
A "massive force" was needed [in 2003] then to guarantee security but instead several thousand African Union troops and monitors had to carry the burden. And now the council needed to plan for how to keep the peace in case a peace deal was signed.
He said the war situation in Sudan was "everybody’s failure" and could have been avoided if the international community had acted quickly.Of course, the international community did not act quickly, nor are they acting quickly now.
How could the present day situation have been avoided?
"I think there should have been intervention in 2003," Pronk said, adding that while the occurrence of genocide in the country was debatable, "There was mass slaughter of people. It needed humanitarian intervention."
In fact, while Darfur burned, the BBC reported that American and British intelligence officials, along with representatives of the UN, China and 12 African nations were in Khartoum discussing cooperation on counter-terrorism operations in the region.
Hosting the conference is part of a sustained diplomatic push by Sudan to shake off its pariah status ... When the opportunity for this second regional conference on counter-terrorism came up, Sudan competed for the right to host it ... The decision of the CIA to agree to come to Sudan shows the pragmatism of the intelligence community against the continuing political desire of America to punish Sudan for what has happened in Darfur.Khartoum continues to work to "shake off its pariah status," with Sudanese Ambassador Khidir Haroun Ahmed publishing an op-ed in the Washington Times today claiming that "After two decades of brutal civil war, Sudan is emerging as a reminder that engagement, dialogue and intensive diplomacy can resolve seemingly intractable problems and permit a country to look to the future with optimism."
Meanwhile, the violence and anarchy Khartoum unleashed is now spilling over into neighboring Chad, a country that is already host to an estimated 200,000 refugees from Darfur
A group of unidentified armed men in military uniform crossed into Chad from Sudan early on Monday, killing 36 herders and stealing livestock, the Chadian government said.The violence, in addition to threatening the people of Darfur, is also threatening the relief work that sustains them, as U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland noted yesterday
"If it (the violence) continues to escalate, we may not be able to sustain our operations for 2.5 million people requiring life-saving assistance," he said, adding: "In Darfur, it (aid distribution) could all end tomorrow. It is as serious as that."As Eric Reeves never fails to remind us,
in December 2004, Egeland warned that 100,000 people could die a month if humanitarian organizations are forced to suspend operations in Darfur.
Despite all of this, Pronk still managed to recently declare that progress was being made on implementing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the North and South and on efforts to reach peace in Darfur.
Such a statement is utterly feckless and shameful.
As Gerald Caplan, author of "Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide," wrote last week
But what we are learning from Darfur, which we never remotely imagined, is that even naming a genocide is an utterly inconsequential exercise in hot air ... despite the apparent concern of many western leaders, despite the pressure from elements of civil society, the catastrophe in Darfur is explicitly allowed to continue ... As always, everything takes precedence over the suffering and death of hundreds of thousandsAfter two years, 400,000 deaths, and an estimated 3.5 million now entirely dependent on humanitarian aid, it must be stated that the UN and every one of its member nations have failed the people of Darfur and, in all likelihood, will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
of distant, exotic others. It won't be the last time."
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September 22, 2005
Coalition for Darfur: Decent into Anarchy
Crossposted from Coalition for Darfur. More updates on the deteriotating condition there that the new and improved UN is still failing to do anything about.
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One week ago, experts and observers warned that Darfur risked "sliding into a perpetual state of lawlessness." At a time when Khartoum and the Darfur rebels were preparing to meet in an attempt to move the essentially non-existent peace process forward, IRIN was reporting
Banditry and continuous attacks by armed groups on humanitarian workers, Arab nomads and villages in Darfur have increased significantly over the past weeks and threaten to destabilise the fragile ceasefire in the volatile western Sudanese region.The "fragile ceasefire" has never really existed
and fears of "perpetual" lawlessness are misplaced considering that Darfur has been essentially lawless for more than two years.
Last week, the World Food Program reported that "security levels deteriorated in Darfur during the reporting week." This week, the WFP reported that "despite precautionary security measures, attacks on commercial and humanitarian vehicles continue in Darfur."
And as the UN was expressing
its concern "about the recurrent attacks carried out by armed men and gangs in Darfur states, which target civilians and commercial vehicles hired by relief organizations," Norwegian Church Aid was reporting that "relief convoy has been raided at gunpoint by bandits in Darfur for the second time in a short period. The security situation in Darfur shows signs of deterioration"
A growing problem is also that aid convoys are now being ambushed with increasing regularity by bandits on horses and camels. Norwegian Church Aid vehicles have been raided at gunpoint twice in a matter of weeks ... The field teams who travel most often through the western and southern parts of Darfur regularly encounter en route, and are often chased by, heavily armed men riding on horses and camels. Since the aid operation began just over a year ago, security has presented a great challengeAnd the violence continues.
for the agencies. Yet whereas assault, exchanges of fire and attacks on villages were previously politically motivated, much of the violence seems now to be criminal in nature.
Just yesterday, it was reported that 40 were killed in fighting after an attack on the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement/Army by "armed nomadic tribesmen" [aka "the Janjaweed"]. This was followed by another report that 80 government soldiers had been killed by the SLM when they captured the town of Sheiria in a surprise attack in retaliation for earlier
government attacks on rebel-held territory.
The attack on Sheiria put at risk some 33,000 civilians who rely on humanitarian assistance after staff from three NGO's were withdrawn due to the fighting. And for good measure, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) "reported that the security situation in the Kalma camp housing displaced persons has further deteriorated with a large number of security incidents, including some 60 reported
attacks on women over the last week alone."
All of this took place while the sixth round of peace talks were being held in Nigeria.
It has now been more than a year since the United States declared the situation in Darfur a "genocide" - and the security situation on the ground is now even arguably worse. While government-orchestrated attacks on civilians have diminished, mainly because "there are not many villages left to burn down and destroy," the rampant insecurity in all likelihood still qualifies as part of Khartoum's genocidal campaign to "deliberately [inflict] on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
The genocide is not ending and the situation is not improving. The people of Darfur have, for all intents and purposes, been abandoned.
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September 14, 2005
Coalition for Darfur: A Meaningless Pledge
From Coalition for Darfur.--------
Some are hailing the inclusion of language regarding a "responsibility to protect" in the draft declaration on UN reform to be discussed during the three-day summit being held in New York.
The "Responsibility to Protect" is, according to the seminal report on the topic
[T]he idea that sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their own citizens from avoidable catastrophe, but that when they are unwilling or unable to do so, that responsibility must be borne by the broader community of states.The report, and the idea, were generated by the international community's ignominious failure to intervene in situations such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The thinking was that it was necessary to shift the debate away from a "right to intervene," which carries serious implications for the cherished idea of national sovereignty, and toward a "responsibility to protect" those people in danger.
After much debate, compromise and rewriting, the final text included in the draft declaration came out looking like this
The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapter VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the UN Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case by case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to help states build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assist those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.Nowhere has the Security Council or the UN member states actually pledged to do anything. This section carries no legal obligations; rather, it merely reiterates that the UN has a responsibility "to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity," which is something they already an obligation to prevent under the Genocide Convention.
Note also that it doesn't say that the UN has a "responsibility to protect" but rather a "responsibility ... to help protect" those at risk. That is a big difference.
As such, it is a little difficult to share Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin's excitement
But a Canadian-inspired initiative highlighting the world's responsibility to protect threatened people and prevent genocides is a clear move forward, Martin said.Considering that there is "another Rwanda" currently taking place in Darfur, why are we to expect that suddenly the UN is going to take seriously its "responsibility to protect"? Has the UN failed to act thus far solely because it lacked this one resolution? The UN has resisted acting on Darfur for two years and there is absolutely no reason to believe that this recognition of a theoretical "responsibility to protect" will have any impact on the legal or political concerns that have thus far prevented action.
The doctrine "essentially says that if Rwanda occurred today that the United Nations would act," he said, referring to the genocide that took an estimated 800,000 lives in the African country in the mid-1990s.
If the UN and its members truly believed in the "responsibility to protect," they would be protecting the people of Darfur, not writing resolutions vaguely promising to act when Darfur-like situations arise in the future.
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September 6, 2005
DailyIllini: Best. Ambassador. Evar!
I forgot to put up a link to my DI column that ran Sept. 2nd. Here it is.
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August 31, 2005
Coalition for Darfur: What It Is All About
Here's the weekly Darfur post.
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Last weekend, the blog Blue Girl, Red State wrote a post about a regular blog commenter who went by the name "Shameless Hussy."
Blue Girl reports that "Shameless Hussy" went to Darfur in June as a humanitarian volunteer and was traumatized by what she saw
WhatThis post receive a fair
she dealt with daily goes beyond the pale...beyond the nightmares of
most people; Children with all four limbs hacked off right above the
knee or below the elbow. Twelve year olds who died in childbirth after
being gang-raped by the Janjaweed. Women who gave birth to rape-babies
who were then cast out by their families for shaming the family name,
leaving only one avenue of survival for themselves and their children
after the camps: Prostitution.
What is f**ing her up is the
desperation, and the fact that she worked herself to death for over a
month, and she still didn't really save anyone. Now that she's gone,
it's like she was never there. Even the ones she helped keep alive, she
didn't save. You try dealing with that reality.
And women are
the preponderance of victims. Men do not leave the villages to go to
the countryside to gather firewood and other necessary items of
sustenance. Women venture out, even though every time they leave their
villages, they are at horrific risk of being beaten and raped and
disfigured. The reason they go instead of the men? The women are only
attacked, the men are killed.
amount of attention within the blogosphere (as far as posts about
Darfur go) mainly due to the fact that Kevin Drum
linked to it. And while getting bloggers to pay attention to Darfur, if
only for a minute, is a minor miracle, it is worth asking why it takes
a post about traumatized aid workers to generate any interest in
genocide.
This situation in Darfur has existed for over two
years and, if people were interested, they could find accounts of
death, disease, rape and torture occurring there on an almost daily
basis. 400,000 people have died and nearly 3 million have been
displaced and yet nobody - not politicans, not the media, not bloggers
- really seem to care.
To anyone who has been paying attention,
the atrocities witnessed by "Shameless Hussy" are, sadly, well-known.
If her story generates concern for the people of Darfur, then for that
we should be thankful. And if people who were moved by it are really
interested in Darfur, then they should start reading the analyses
produced by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Eric Reeves and the International Crisis Group, supporting organizations like Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, Save Darfur and STAND, reading blogs like Passion of the Present, Sudan Watch, the Coalition for Darfur, and Sleepless in Sudan and demanding that their elected leaders do something about it.
Our
thanks goes out to "Shameless Hussy" and all those who sacrifice to
help those in need. But we must keep in mind that Darfur is not about
them - it is about this
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August 24, 2005
Coalition for Darfur: Genocide and Statistics
Cross-posted from Coalition for Darfur Genocide and Statistics Last week, International Studies Quarterly published a study by Matthew Krain, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the College of Wooster, examining "the effectiveness of military action on the severity of ongoing instances of genocide and polititcide." According to the press releaseThe study reveals that only overt military interventions that explicitly challenge the perpetrator appear to be effective in reducing the severity of the brutal policies. Military support for targets, or in opposition to the perpetrators, alters the almost complete vulnerability of unarmed civilian targets. And these interventions that directly target the perpetrators were not, on the whole, found to make matters worse for those being attacked ... He finds that even military intervention against the perpetrator by a single country or international organization has a measurable effect in the "typical" case. When a single international actor challenges the aggressor, the probability that the killings will escalate drops while the probability that the killings will decrease jumps. Each additional intervention by another international actor raises the chance of saving lives.In the introduction to the study, Krain notes
Policy makers faced with situations like those in Rwanda or Bosnia, Kosovo or Darfur, are forced to rely on past experience with interventions in other types of internal conflicts, often with disastrous results. This study is a step toward a better understanding of the effectiveness of potential responses by the international community to genocides and politicides.Krain goes on to examine various intervention methods of dealing with on-going genocides and politicides (the "impartial intervention model," the "witness model," the "bystander model," etc...) and notes that not one of them is capable of reducing the severity of such situations. After conducting a statistical analysis of the various models, Krain concludes
Policy maker concerns that intervention on the behalf of target populations will escalate the killing appear to be unfounded. The only overt military interventions that appear to be effective in reducing the severity of genocides or politicides are those that explicitly challenge the perpetratorHe then discusses his finding as they relate to Darfur, writing
Intervention against the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed within the first year of the genocide would likely have had a measurable effect on the severity [2003] of state-sponsored mass murder in the following year.Kraine does not claim that military intervention is the "only" option. In fact, he notes that "policy makers have a range of options available to them in the face of an ongoing genocide or politicide" and that his study "only examines one of those options." Keeping that in mind, it is hard to argue with Kraine's basic conclusion
If actors wish to slow or stop the killing in an ongoing instance of state-sponsored mass murder, they are more likely to be effective if they oppose the perpetrators of the brutal policy.
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August 17, 2005
Coaltion for Darfur: Plagued by Techincalities
Crossposted from Coalition for Darfur
Last week, David Loyn of the BBC wrote about the crisis in Niger and
asked "How many dying babies make a famine?"
Famine is a troublesome word with a very specific meaning to the professional aid community.The debate over "famine" is much the same as the debate over "genocide" in DarfurIt is usually taken to define a situation in which a high proportion of the general population are vulnerable to death by hunger-related disease.
This describes a much more intense situation than the loose way that famine is generally understood - and the pictures of starving babies in Niger certainly look like "famine" to the outside world.
In technical terms Niger's President Mamadou Tandja may be right to say that this is not a famine.
"For those who are dying from acute malnutrition and related diseases, the debate about whether there have been enough deaths to justify the famine label, and the extent to which this exceeds the normal hungry season mortality rate is not helpful.Last September, the US declared that genocide was taking place in Darfur, but three months later, the report (PDF file) of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur concluded that it was not, though it also stipulated"Avoiding the famine label has often been convenient for those seeking to justify slow or failed responses."
The conclusion that no genocidal policy has been pursued and implemented in Darfur by the Government authorities, directly or through the militias under their control, should not be taken in any way as detracting from the gravity of the crimes perpetrated in that region. International offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide.But the press responded, not with headlines reading "Massive Crimes Against Humanity in Darfur," but rather with headlines such as "U.N. report: Darfur not genocide."
But the point was essentially moot, as one thing quickly became clear: overwhelming evidence of massive crimes against humanity could not get the world to act, nor could a genocide declaration. In fact, it seems that nothing could prod the global community to act to address the situation in Darfur, be it genocide, quasi-genocide, or "merely" crimes against humanity.
As Loyn reports of Niger, warnings of an impending food crisis have been raised since November, but nobody paid attention until it was too late
They did not respond to the requests on paper as they did to pictures of dying babies.The reverse is now occurring regarding Darfur. It has become, in the words of Eric Reeves, a "genocide by attrition," and the world has stopped paying attention.
Last month, the UN reported that violence in Darfur had diminished over the past year, mainly because militia have run out of targets after destroying hundreds of villages.
As Reeves has written, the genocide in Darfur is now
[M]ore a matter of engineered disease and malnutrition than violent killing. In other words, disease and malnutrition proceeding directly from the consequences of violent attacks on villages, deliberate displacement, and systematic destruction of the means of agricultural production among the targeted non-Arab or African tribal groups became the major killers.It is entirely possible that Darfur will not begin to receive sustained coverage again until this "genocide by attrition" has taken the lives of tens of thousands more and footage of dying babies in Darfur begins to show up on the nightly news.
And then, in lieu of actually addressing that problem, we can have debate about whether or not this new situation meets the technical definition of "famine."
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August 10, 2005
UNSCAM: Half of Companies Contracted in UNSCAM Paid "Surcharges" or Bribes
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August 8, 2005
UNSCAM: Admissions of kickbacks made
Wizbang has the latest.
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July 15, 2005
Memo to the UN
We designed it. We paid for it. We built it.
Posted by John Bambenek at 10:18 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 28, 2005
It's Not the Lack of Evidence...
US suspected of keeping secret prisoners on warships: UN official
Quote:
The UN has learned of "very, very serious" allegations that the United States is secretly detaining terrorism suspects in various locations around the world, notably aboard prison ships, the UN's special rapporteur on terrorism said.
While the accusations were rumours, rapporteur Manfred Nowak said the situation was sufficiently serious to merit an official inquiry.
Since when were rumors meritorious of anything? Does this mean the UN wants to put the US under investigation for every piece of unfounded propaganda Al Qaeda puts out? There is no evidence but the "seriousness of the charge" demands an investigation.
Ok, here's a charge... Kofi Annan beats his wife. Can we get an investigation please?
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June 17, 2005
Friday Fax - Calls For Major Reforms at the UN
At first I thought it was talking about the US federal bureaucracy, but then I realized there is even something worst than a federal agency when it comes to staff sitting around doing nothing collecting paychecks and never being held to account on actually producing anything...
The bigger the bureaucracy, the more waste there is.
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US Panel Calls for Major United Nations Reform in Scathing Report
A bipartisan task force of the Untied States Congress released a report on Wednesday stating that that the UN is in "urgent" need of "sweeping reforms." The report finds "tragic failures" in peacekeeping, a Human Rights Commission that is "a blot on the [UN's] reputation," "systematic hostility" towards Israel, and poor management with "bloated staffing" and a lack of accountability and transparency. The report endorses the UN Secretary-General's proposed reforms in his recent "In Larger Freedom" while also suggesting additional reforms.
The Task Force on the United Nations is one of seven ongoing US investigations of the UN, and is chaired by Newt Gingrich, Republican former speaker of the House of Representatives, and George J. Mitchell, Democratic former majority Senate leader. The US, as the "largest donor to the United Nations system, contributing 22 percent of the regular budget and nearly 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget," has a significant interest in UN effectiveness. The U.S. "paid an estimated $3.845 billion in contributions to the UN system in 2004."
The report notes that the Oil-for-Food program, "flawed by a combination of incompetence, gross mismanagement, and alleged corruption and criminality," created a "rare opportunity" for major UN reform, and the U.S. should "bring its considerable diplomatic leverage to bear to take advantage of this opportunity."
According to the report, the UN is weighed down by a "deadwood of useless programs" because once programs are mandated, they "face little scrutiny and can live on forever without having to justify their existence." The report recommends the creation of an independent audit committee, as currently "there does not appear to be an effective system to monitor results nor to link those results back to budgetary decisions."
The UN also has a "heavy load of staff who lack the skills or the motivation to perform their duties, or whose duties are no longer necessary," and there is a "high level of discontent, distrust and pessimism among staff concerning the integrity of the organization." "Morale is dismal," according to the report.
The report recommends that the Human Rights Commission "be abolished" because it has become "so distorted" that "countries with appalling, even monstrous, human rights records . . . could be seated there." To replace the Commission, the report endorses Kofi Annan's proposal for a Human Rights Council as "a body ideally consisting of democracies committed to upholding and promoting the highest standards in human rights."
The report also says that the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) be "reoriented towards a useful function." ECOSOC has been "greatly weakened" by the addition of more "autocratic governments," and currently has "scant impact on its mandated issues" of "fundamental human rights," "social progress" and "larger freedom." Its deliberations are often "redundant," as ECOSOC "hashes and rehashes pronouncements and resolutions, including those espousing ideas antithetical to US interests." Moreover, the General Assembly's committees "largely replicate" the purposes of ECOSOC.
Copyright 2005 - C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute).
Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required.
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Phone: (212) 754-5948 Fax: (212) 754-9291
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June 3, 2005
UN to Middle-Class: You Bad People Should Leave Your Homes and Live in Huts and Caves
Urban dwellers mainly cause global warming, but see little of it
According to a UN report, officials at the United Nations are caught up in the frenzy of hatred towards the middle-class. They believe that in America, the possibility of owning your own home is to blame for every social evil, including global warming. The UN is parroting out the same loathing of surburbia that has come out of the elite for years. After the tsunami the UN was clamoring how heavily populated areas would cause massive casualties in the event of a tsunami (they were busy telling people to move into UN controlled refugee camps while the US was on the ground feeding people).
While the US is working to solve world problems and make progress, it appears that the UN is the largest stalwart advocating people to return to poverty and disease and lay their hopes in an ineffective organization to help them.
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May 9, 2005
UN - Official Rape Record Holders
I read this from QandO a few days ago and have been meaning to comment, just haven't gotten there. The number of allegations of sexual abuse made against UN personnel more than doubled from 2003 to 2004, most of those complaints are against UN peacekeepers (i.e. Sex-for-Food). Many include complaints from minors. There are some who say we need the UN... well can we get it without all the rapists please?
Posted by John Bambenek at 5:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
