Is the UN a Joke?

The latest appointment seems to indicate as such:

Quote:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1782043.ece
ZIMBABWE may have left 700,000 of its citizens without accommodation by bulldozing their homes, caused millions more to starve after violent land seizures that destroyed farming and so mismanaged its own economy that it has the world’s highest inflation. But it has been chosen to head a United Nations body charged with promoting economic progress and environmental protection.

Western countries and human rights organisations were outraged yesterday by the choice of Zimbabwe to chair the UN commission on sustainable development. The British government condemned Zimbabwe’s election as “wholly inconsistent” with the body’s aims.

The chair traditionally rotates among regions of the world. It was Africa’s turn this year and the continent chose Zimbabwe as its candidate. “We really think it calls into question the credibility of this organisation to have a representative from a country that has decimated its agriculture, that used to be the breadbasket of Africa and can’t now feed itself,” said Daniel Reif-snyder, the US deputy assistant secretary for environment.

“For Zimbabwe to lead any UN body is preposterous,” said Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, an independent nongovernmental organisation.

Not only has the regime of Robert Mugabe persistently used violence to repress all criticism, raping, torturing and beating opponents, but it has also turned development back by decades. Once the most affluent country in Africa, Zimbabwe now has the world’s lowest life expectancy. According to the World Bank no country has seen its economy shrink so much in peacetime.

Some people have proposed a "League of Democracies" to try and counter UN dominance of international affairs. Should America continue to fund the UN despite its blatant corruption?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/arti...7/213527.shtml

Quote:

UNITED NATIONS -- In a scathing final report documenting massive corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program, investigators Thursday accused more than 2,200 companies, and prominent politicians, of colluding with Saddam Hussein's regime to bilk the humanitarian operation of $1.8 billion.

The 623-page document exposed the global scope of a scam that allegedly involved such name-brand companies as DaimlerChrysler and Siemens AG, as well as a former French U.N. ambassador, a firebrand British politician and the president of Italy's Lombardi region.

It meticulously detailed how the $64 billion program became a cash cow for Saddam and more than half the companies participating in oil-for-food _ at the expense of Iraqis suffering under U.N. sanctions. It blamed shoddy U.N. management and the world's most powerful nations for allowing the corruption to go on for years.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-253es.html

Quote:

The United Nations is under increasing attack by critics in the United States and other countries. At the heart of the organization's mounting problems is an almost total lack of accountability, which gives rise to suspicions of wholesale corruption. Existing evidence indicates that corruption and mismanagement go beyond the routine fraud, waste, and abuse of resources that mark all public-sector enterprises.

UN budgets are shrouded in secrecy, and the actual performance of the myriad bureaucracies is translucent, if not opaque. There is no reliable way to determine whether the various and often competing specialized agencies (at least two dozen UN agencies are involved in food and agricultural policy) are doing their jobs, and many UN activities, even if they are of some value, can be carried out better and more efficiently by other groups. Other activities should not be undertaken at all.

Available evidence coupled with the United Nations' unwillingness to undergo a thorough audit raise serious questions about its mission and the means used to carry it out. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's rationale that the world body is accountable to all its 185 member-states is meaningless. Such an amorphous standard of accountability is akin to saying no one is responsible.

The United Nations is in dire need of reform, starting with a comprehensive, independent audit. Even if a complete audit were performed, however, there is no guarantee anything would be done about the problems identified. And radical change may not be possible, no matter how obvious the need. Given all the earlier, failed attempts to put things right, even on a limited basis, optimism about meaningful reform may be an exercise in wishful thinking.

http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomli...management.htm

Quote:

An entire chapter of the Volcker committee’s interim report is dedicated to a review and analysis of the U.N.’s internal auditors (IAD) and their work on the Oil for Food program. The findings were unsurprising:

“The Committee finds that the resources committed to audit the Programme were inadequate. … The Committee finds that several important aspects of the Programme were not reviewed by IAD. These include many elements of the oil and humanitarian contracts, including price and quality of goods. The Committee finds that the view held by IAD staff that the contracts were beyond their purview was erroneous. IAD had the means and duty to examine these contracts… A thorough audit of these aspects could have uncovered or confirmed the various kickback schemes employed by the Government of Iraq in relations to the Programme.”

So explain to me why anybody should front the bill for an organisation that propagates crap like placing Libya on the head seat for Human Rights and Zimbabwe for Sustained Development. Regardless of the opposition by several member states, the fact that so many of them are willing to delegitimise the whole shebang is proof enough to me that we shouldn't be tolerating their bullshit.

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"Red Stick Diplomacy"

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I'd support a Global Forum, if not an actual legislative body, as legislative as the UN actually is.

How ya doing, buddy?