Yesterday, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution urging the United States to drop its long-standing embargo against Cuba...for the 17th year in a row. In what an L.A. Times editorial termed one of "New York's rites of autumn," the lopsided vote -- 185 countries voted in favor, three opposed, and two abstained -- demonstrated the international consensus that U.S. policy toward the communist Caribbean island only grows more archaic by the year.
One need not agree with the GA president's rather silly statement that Cuba is "a champion of the values that the world needs for the survival of the human species" to concur that sustaining an embargo that only harms the Cuban people and does not even let Americans travel to the country makes little to no policy sense. Here's the New America Foundation's Steve Clemons on how easy it would be for the next president to improve the U.S. relationship with Cuba:
If this year's vote is any indication, the United States is not getting any more support for its outdated embargo as the years go by. One more country than last year voted for the resolution, and the Marshall Islands flipped to the "abstained" column -- leaving only Israel, Palau, and the United States sticking with this Cold War relic.
(cross-posted at On Day One)
The UN has found a creative and effective way to transport sick patients in the harsh environment of Darfur.
To date, sick people in need of transportation to the nearest clinic have had to endure an uncomfortable ride atop a camel or on the back of an open horse-drawn cart, exposed to the searing heat of the sun. But the UN refugee agency has stepped in by donating a covered wagon, with padding inside, and a donkey to pull the "ambulance." It's not the height of comfort but has been welcomed by the 750 refugees from Chad and the Central African Republic who reside in Mukjar, West DarfurThis is possibly an even better use for a donkey than the famous literacy-promoting "biblioburro." (Image from flickr user SPANA Charity under a Creative Commons license.)
Our week long panel discussion of ideas the next president can adopt to help promote human rights continues with a suggestion from On Day One user RustNeverSleeps:.
The United States should join the international criminal court. The court's four ongoing investigations in Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur and Uganda show that the court can work to prosecute war criminals. If the United States helps the ICC, the court can become even closer to its goal of deterring future war criminals.David Kaye, Eric Schwartz and Suzanne Nossel respond below the fold.
A major city in Eastern Congo is under siege. News reports describe Congolese Armed Forces retreating from the provincial capital Goma in advance of a rebel assault, lead by a renegade army general named Laurent Nkunda. Upon seeing the government forces retreat, tens of thousands of civilians have begun to flee. All that stands between Nkunda's forces and Goma are Pakistani and Indian peacekeepers, which are already engaged with Nkunda's forces on this and other fronts.
Local's are understandably upset that the peacekeeping force had not done enough to stall the rebel advance. Protests outside the UN compound turned violent earlier this week as residents of Goma hurled rocks at the compound in frustration. Unfortunately, the peacekeeping mission cannot repel this attack without reinforcement.
It needs help. Fast.
Blue-helmets, though, are not set up for rapid deployment. What may be required is outside intervention by a global power. There is precedent for this. In 2003, French special forces led Operation Artemis which rescued the city of Bunia, capital of the the nearby Ituri province. 1800 special forces, operating under the EU flag, rescued the city and repelled marauding militias. They withdrew within three months and were replaced by a beefed up UN peacekeeping force.
Something similar may be what is required to prevent mass atrocities from being visited upon Goma. The question is, who, if anyone, is willing to step up?
(Photo: "Streets of Goma" from Flickr user Amalthya)
From his influential corner, Refugees International president Ken Bacon breaks down the two presidential candidates' differing outlooks toward the UN. He also offers a compelling case of why the United States -- under either a Republican or Democratic administration -- should revamp its support for the UN, which has too often flagged in the past eight years.
Not only is the U.S. sometimes slow to pay its dues to the UN, but it is also hundreds of billions of dollars short of meetings its obligation to pay its share of UN peacekeeping operations that have been so important in helping to restore order in places like Liberia. [snip] There are many things to criticize and to change at the UN, but for all of its frustrations and foibles, it remains the best-positioned organization to craft multi-lateral solutions to trans-national problems, such as climate change and nuclear proliferation, as well as difficult regional issues involving conflict, refugee flows and disaster response.Well said. You can see why the UN is so important to Ken when you check out the top three priorities that he thinks the next president needs to focus on, starting On Day One of the next administration.
Early this morning, suicide bombers coordinated an assault on five offices in northern Somalia. Among the offices attacked was the United Nations Development Program headquarters. There were causalities. The official UN statement is here. The New York Times' Jeffrey Gettleman is on the story.
Al Qaeda's leadership has been explicit with its disdain for the United Nations and its desire to see the UN attacked. In Somalia, al Qaeda is backing a hard line militant group in its struggle against the weak Somali government and urging that group to resist United Nations mediation efforts. Today's attack is added to the sad list of terrorist attacks on the UN, including the bombing of UNDP offices in Algiers in December 2007 which killed 11 and the suicide bombing of the UN compound in Iraq in 2003, killing Sergio Vieiro de Mello and 23 others.
Terrorists target the United Nations because they are so threatened by it. In places like Somalia, the United Nations is the only viable path toward peace and reconciliation, good governance, rule of law, and economic development. These are clearly the conditions under which al Qeada could not thrive, so they and their affiliates attack UN humanitarian workers so as to intimidate the UN out of the country. How should the world respond? It seems that the first thing we need to do is make the protection of humanitarian workers a higher priority. On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq bombing Samantha Power said it best. "We cannot return to a pre-8/19 world any more than we can return to a pre-9/11 one. Neither the blue flag nor the red cross is enough to protect humanitarians in an age of terror. But five years after August 19 we owe it to those who died -- and to those whom humanitarians have saved -- to do far more to protect the protectors."
Bad news on multiple fronts out of the Democratic Republic of Congo:
Hundreds of furious protesters hurled rocks at a United Nations compound in eastern Congo on Monday in frustration that peacekeepers have not halted the rebel advance that is sweeping the countryside.If it wasn't clear before -- and since rebel leader Laurent Nkunda started launching attacks in August, it has been -- then the demise of January's ceasefire (widely misreported as a "peace agreement") is now fully transparent. The eruption of violence has exposed the difficulties -- and contradictions -- faced by the UN peacekeeping mission there (MONUC), which Refugees International articulated in a press release today.
Deployed with the challenging mandate to protect civilians and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance, MONUC has also been charged with the supervision and enforcement of the buffer zones between the Congolese national army (the FARDC) and the rebel group CNDP led by self-proclaimed 'General' Laurent Nkunda. Contradicting this role as neutral intermediary is MONUC's responsibility for working alongside the FARDC in operations against the FDLR, the rebel movement led by the remnants of the Rwanda genocidaires who fled into DRC in 1994. These conflicting roles, coupled with a lack of military and civilian resources, and a shameful lack of political support, have placed MONUC in an impossible situation.The alphabet soup of armed elements is testament enough to the tensions in the region, but the real problems hamstringing MONUC have been the international community's insufficient investment -- in both resources and negotiations -- and the excessive expectations laid on a peacekeeping mission that was given a nearly impossible mandate. Out of this, along with all sides' continued interest in a military solution, some frustrated and suffering eastern Congolese have begun to scapegoat blue helmets. And if the situation weren't bad enough, the rebels have also taken the "unprecedented" step of seizing a national park full of critically endangered gorillas.
In case you missed it, Sunday's New York Times Travel section featured the announcement of the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria, a partnership between tourism industries launched by, among others, the UN Foundation. Participating businesses will now have to meet at least these standards, ensuring that the economic, social, and cultural weight of tourism is brought to bear for important environmental and anti-poverty initiatives. Check out the criteria here.
by Adele Waugaman
Abundance and scarcity -- this dichotomy is increasingly framing the most important global challenges of the day, particularly in the midst of the ongoing global financial crisis. So, it was with great interest that I attended the Pop!Tech conference last week bringing technology to bear on that theme.
Pop!Tech was packed with mobile innovators with cool projects. For instance, Erik Hersman is working on Ushahidi.com, a project using "crowd-sourced" data to populate maps of violent outbreaks in volatile environments. Ushahidi was recently used in Kenya during the post-election violence. And Ken Banks presented FrontlineSMS, which provides free software that can be downloaded from the web to harness the power of text messaging to power work of NGOs and humanitarian groups. Already FrontlineSMS has been used by UNDP in Aceh as part of the post-tsunami reconstruction efforts and in Malawi to power a healthcare network, among other projects.
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