Free Republic

NEW YORK, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Up to about a third of the $590 million U.N. fund spent for the Indian Ocean tsunami relief may have gone to pay for overhead. The Financial Times says its two-month investigation showed the money appears to have been spent on administration, staff and related costs. The $590 million was part of the United Nation's $1.1 billion disaster flash appeal. The newspaper also found several U.N. agencies continue to refuse to disclose details of their relief expenditure in spite of earlier pledges of transparency by senior officials. The flash appeal covered the money donated...

Like its cousin, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Rwanda's stunning new genocide museum, perched on a quiet hillside overlooking Kigali, is at its most arresting when it honours the lost children. One installation invites us to consider David, a cute, shy boy, with big round black eyes: David's favourite sport was soccer; he enjoyed making people laugh; his dream was to be a doctor; he was tortured to death; his last words were: 'The UN will come to get us.' Next to David's biography is Ariane's, four, stabbed in the eyes and head; Fillette, also four, smashed against a wall;...

Last Wednesday, Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota and co-chairman of the U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq, called on UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to resign in a commentary published in The Wall Street Journal. While Britain, Germany, France, Russia and China quickly rallied to Mr. Annan's defence, there can be no doubt that the senator is correct: Mr. Annan has to go. As Mr. Coleman argues, "the most extensive fraud in the history of the United Nations occurred on [Mr. Annan's] watch." Over the decade-long run of the oil-for-food program, the UN and several...