My french may be a bit rusty, but I can't help but think that the outrage in this Martin Peretz post is a bit misplaced. At issue is a Ban Ki-moon interview in Le Monde in which Mr Ban says (roughly) that the United Nations should be more responsive to the needs of its member states.
Any casual UN observer knows that this is a wholly uncontroversial statement. It is perhaps the equivalent of a new football coach saying he looks forward to working with his players.
As Congress prepares to switch majority parties in January, it may be useful to think about how this shift could affect US-UN relations. Initially, perhaps the most identifiable consequence of the election may be that it delivered a death knell to Congressional threats to force United Nations reform by withholding UN dues.
"Norway, Iceland, Australia, Ireland and Sweden rank as the best five countries to live in but Africa's quality of life has plummeted because of AIDS, said a U.N. report released on Thursday.
The United States was ranked in eighth place, after Canada and Japan, in the report that rates not only per-capita income but also educational levels, health care and life expectancy in measuring a nation's well-being.
"Panama got 164 votes in the 192-member UN General Assembly, more than the 120 needed to win a two-year term starting Jan. 1 on the UN's most powerful body. Venezuela got 11 votes, Guatemala got 4 and Barbados got 1." More
"Global warming is threatening archaeological sites from Peru to Egypt as well as natural wonders such as the Caribbean's largest coral reef, a U.N. report said on Tuesday.
Heritage sites linked to thousands of years of civilization "may by virtue of climate change very well not be available to future generations," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program." More
"The United Nations has welcomed a probe by Sri Lanka's government into a series of extrajudicial killings and disappearances amid a new chapter of the island's civil war, but is concerned it could be hampered.... The government announced on Monday the probe into a series of killings, including the assassination of the foreign minister and dozens of troops and civilians by suspected Tamil Tiger rebels, as well as the massacre of 17 aid workers which Nordic truce monitors have pinned on the security forces." More
Despite its proximity to American shores, the conflict and UN peacekeeping operation in Haiti receives little media attention in the American press. Seldom is the question asked: "Could the United States be doing more in Haiti?"