A Dangerous Time to Be a UN Staff Member

John Boonstra - March 16, 2009 - 12:27 pm

In Somalia, four UN staffers were abducted by armed gunmen. In Sri Lanka, Tamil Tiger rebels have pressed UN workers and their family members (including a 16-year-old girl) into forced military service. The former is unfortunately still run-of-the-mill for lawless Somalia, despite the hopeful prospects of the country's new government. The latter is another sign of disrespect for UN blue in Sri Lanka, as well as of the Tigers' increasing desperation, as they are forced into an ever dwindling territory by the Sri Lankan military (itself also a culprit of unconscionable human rights violations).

These incidents are particularly salient reminders, but the danger of working as a UN staff member in unstable parts of the world -- that is to say, most of the places where the UN works -- is a constant fact of life for these brave individuals. From doing nothing other than helping their host country's nationals, UN staffers (the vast majority of whom, it bears reminding, are themselves citizens of the country in which they work) can be targeted by disruptive elements simply for what they represent (the "international community") and for the attention that attacking them will almost certainly raise. What such spoilers don't seem to realize is that this attention will inevitably backfire on their cause, exposing them as truly uninterested in the fate of their country, which they purport to be fighting for, but which UN workers are only working to improve.

UPDATE: Hostages in Somalia released.

(image of UN World Food Program workers in Somalia)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1) Subscribe to these comments

Mullai @ Mar 31st 2009 2:06PM

Thanks for bringing up the issue of human rights of Women and girls. As you are aware Sri Lankan military is massacreing innocent civilians (100 killed every single day, and more than 200 injured every single day).  If I just take the casulty of women and girls, shells from the Sri Lankan military killed a pregnant woman by cutting her abdomen and fetus came out. Sorry to gross you out, but that is the truth and reality. I could email you the pictures, if you have the stamina to look at those pictures. Born and unborn children are killed everyday. Latest picture cameout from the conflict zone showed a RPG shell penetrated the leg of a women and fortunately it did not explode. Amazing doctors saved her life, by amputating the leg. Medical facility in the conflict zone is another story - surgery done without anesthetics.

Why UN is silent? You could read Inner City press reports from Mr. Mathew Lee to get answer to this question.

I read a comment here that LTTE prevented a UN staff from leaving and recruited to fight against army. First, if this is true, it should be condemned in strongest voice. But what UN does not know (or pretending to ignore) is that hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and girls are killed every single day. UN could not see this humanitarian crisis, but could single out an incident with LTTE. I am having very difficult to even imagine that UN is a world body which is supposed to be neutral. UN should protect lives and help the suffering people where ever in this world, but in case of Sri Lanka, UN seemed to be on the Sri Lankan government side and ignoring the humanitarian crisis where civilians are getting killed every day by the Sri Lankan military.

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