Is there anything that the U.N. does right?
I noticed a story earlier this week, Apology for UN refusal to stop Rwanda genocide. The context for the apology is the twentieth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.
Former New Zealand ambassador Colin Keating issued the rare apology during a council meeting to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the genocide and examine what has been done since to prevent new genocides.The open session elicited praise for the U.N.’s stepped-up commitment to put human rights at the center of its work but widespread criticism of its failure to prevent ongoing atrocities in Syria, Central African Republic and South Sudan.
Keating was the President of the Security Council twenty years ago.
Of course, another U.N. official was in charge of peacekeeping operations at the time one million Rwandan’s were killed. His name is Kofi Annan. Despite his failure to prevent the genocide he was promoted to Secretary General of the United Nations. (There is even a Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Centre in his native Ghama. It’s as if he actually succeeded at his job. The job he’s good at is funding vanity projects.) To be sure Annan apologized for his failure ten years ago.
Two months ago, U.N. diplomat, Lakhdar Brahimi also apologized:
“I am very, very sorry, and I apologize to the Syrian people that…we haven’t helped them very much,” said Mr. Brahimi, the United Nations/Arab League Joint Special Representative, telling a press conference that while no date was set to resume the talks, he presented both sides with an agenda for the next round, “so that we don’t lose another week or 10 days as we have this time.”
And of course, the U.N. continues to do nothing to stop the carnage in Syria as the death toll continues to rise.
In addition to apologies, the U.N. is also good at condemning Israel, by appointing the likes of Richard Falk to judge and condemn the Jewish state. Falk’s successor has not been selected yet, but reportedly it will be Christine Chinkin who decided that Israel was guilty before being appointed to the Goldstone Commission. Though a vetting committed had unanimously recommended an American academic, Christina Cerna, for the post, the Arab League objected to Cerna, because she had not established her anti-Israel bonafides. United Nations Human Rights Council’s president Remigiusz Hencze deferred to the Arab League’s protest and rejected Cerna’s candidacy.
[Photo: WorldIslandInfo.com / Flickr ]
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