Posted on 02/23/2006 11:11:11 PM PST by jedi150
Why the UN needs reform In 1991, the members of the United Nations threw their collective efforts behind the attempt to guarantee peace and to bring free elections to Cambodia.
To one of the world's most abused, tragic nations, the UN sent its biggest, most expensive peacekeeping force in history. In about two years, some 20,000 UN troops passed through the unfortunate country, proving again the cliche about too many cooks spoiling the broth _ except that the ''broth'' was the nation of Cambodia. The peacekeeping mission turned into a travesty which failed to suppress the Khmer Rouge, tripled the number of prostitutes, infected the nation with a previously unknown Aids epidemic which still rages today. The armed, military peacekeepers wore 6,500 anti-flak jackets, spent .5 billion, and used 300,000 condoms. It resulted in the documented waste of tens of millions of dollars by corrupt UN officials and members, and the outright ripoff of tens of millions more. Yesterday, the UN got around to debating this problem and a dozen others like it, and the result was a scandalous sidetracking of issues and breakdown of decorum, which further harmed the UN and, of course, provided no relief for Cambodia. In brief, the United States, which is the current chairman of the Security Council, set an agenda item to debate corruption and misbehaviour of UN peacekeeping missions. For this, non-members of the Security Council, led by Malaysia, blasted the Americans and the Council in general. After all, said Ambassador Hamidon Ali, the General Assembly has the right to debate and criticise corruption and peacekeeping missions. Rather than organise a debate in the General Assembly, where every UN member sits, Malaysia and its supporters spent the past week taking severe umbrage at the ''encroachment'' of the big powers on the powers of the Assembly.
The shame of such spats is that Malaysia and its outraged allies have no shame over the total lack of debate, discussion or reform in the 13 years since the formal end of the Cambodia peacekeeping mission. If the Security Council was somehow procedurally wrong to hold peacekeeping up to public disclosure, the General Assembly and its noisy complainers have been ethically bereft and diplomatically uninterested in serious, harmful scandals which have hurt many people. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, United Nations peacekeepers and civilian staff are documented to have raped, committed paedophilia for pornography rings and actually had a programme of sex for food for hungry children. In Bosnia, where Malaysia had an important troop presence and a clean public record, other UN peacekeepers soaked the UN member taxpayers for .3 million in an oil supply scam. UN peacekeepers somehow failed to prevent the worst massacre of our times in Rwanda. In Somalia, the commercial telephone rate was the equivalent of 250 baht a minute, but the luxurious UN offices insisted, for some reason still unknown, on paying the ''UN discount rate'' of 425 baht. When the UN peacekeepers left Cambodia after two years _ 150 of them with Aids _ the Khmer Rouge remained a military threat and the Cambodian People's Party subverted the free but undemocratic election.
The effect of the US-mandated examination of peacekeeping abuses and corruption by the Security Council remains to be seen, but is likely to be small. For that, one can largely thank the selfishness of other countries, too busy protecting their supposed territory to do anything about the scandal of UN corruption in the recent past. Ironically, no recent UN event shows how much the world body needs to embrace reform as this unseemly spat that centred on a charge the Security Council was doing too much about corruption.
John Dauth, Australian ambassador to the UN for the past four years, returned to Canberra last week and called the world body ''rotten to the core''. That is a little harsh, but Mr Dauth's criticism was not. No debate worth the name takes place in the General Assembly any more, because countries and blocs are too busy protecting their turf. The decision by Assembly leaders, including Malaysia, to protest about the Security Council, instead of doing their job to investigate abuse, shows how badly reform is needed.
Reform is not at all what is needed. Termination is what is required!
Bolton has accomplished more in the months he's been there, than that whole corrupt POS UN has in decades.
The UN doesn't need reformed. It needs eradication.
Getting the US out of the UN--indeed starting a "new" UN (composed of Western style democracies)--would be a fitting legacy for Bush. The UN has become the Dorian Gray of modern diplomacy. Outwardly maintaining a benign facade that hides the corrupt, rotting, maggot-eaten corpse within. Unfortunately, I doubt this will happen.
This is the only realistic solution. Never actually "kill" the UN, just let it (in Newt's words) "wither and die on the vine." Establish a new organization (a la NATO) of members with free and just governence (I hope we qualify) and defer more and more to it for decisions that affect the world.
If only it would have happened when he was here!
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