Happy UN Day everybody! On this day in 1945, the United Nations officially came into being. 63 years later, what do we have to show for it? Well, a lot.
There are millions of people alive today who did not die from a preventable disease because of the United Nations and its agencies. Some diseases have been basically eradicated from the face of the earth. Consider polio. In 1988, when the UN-sponsored Global Polio Eradication Initiative began, there were 350,000 cases of polio in the world. Today? Fewer than 1,500. This success comes on the heels of the global eradication of smallpox by the World Health Organization almost 20 years earlier. Today, UN agencies are on the front lines on the fight against HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB and other less well known but equally deadly conditions like obstetric fistula.
The UN is also the last refugee and hope for the world's most vulnerable populations. The United Nations World Food Program fed over 85 million people in 80 countries last year. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees is the only advocate for all of the 67 million refugees and internally displaced. UN Sponsored war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Cambodia are the last only hope for justice for victims of the world's most heinous crimes.
The list goes on.
In a blog post extolling the virtues of celebrity diplomats Nicholas Kristoff recently mused, "Bono knows G-8 poverty policy issues better than I do." Well, it seems that Kristoff will not have to travel too far to glean insights from the U2 frontman. Radar reports
Like Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter before him, New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal sees something special in a certain teensy Gaelic man who refuses to remove his sunglasses. That's right, the Timesman announced last night his first acquisition for the paper's Op-Ed pages for 2009: Bono. Yep, Bono. The activist-creator of Zoo TV will pen between six and ten pieces for the Grey Lady next year, Rosenthal told students Wednesday night at Columbia's School of Journalism.This is a very exciting development. In hiring Bono the most influential paper in the United States has essentially committed itself to consistent coverage of the global poverty beat. I, for one, hope he uses it as a bully pulpit. A new president and congress will face a multitude of pressures stemming from the global economic crisis. And there are already disturbing signs that the global anti-poverty agenda may suffer in light of this crisis. Also, it is becoming more and more clear that American action alone cannot solve this crisis. International cooperation--particularly among the G-8 -- has already proven to be a necessity. As Kristoff says, there are few on this planet who know as much about the G-8 poverty agenda as Bono. Next time they meet to discuss the economic crisis, we need someone with a megaphone speaking up for those worst affected by it. Bono is our man.
When I poked fun about the difficulty of identifying pirate ships, I was merely being flippant. Because Somali fishermen and Somali pirates use similar boats, though, and as there's typically only about a 15 minute window to act before pirates actually board a ship -- throwing the whole situation into a legal morass -- the job of a pirate-fighter is not easy. Says NATO spokesman James Appathurai: "This is a very, very complicated thing to do...pirates don't identify themselves with eye-patches and crooked-hands, it isn't always immediately obvious that they are pirates."
And I don't see any skull-and-crossbones flying, either. Appathurai also reflects on the potential of the multi-national force working together in the Gulf of Aden.
"There will be a number of very competent and very effective military ships coordinating with each other as appropriate to provide presence, to provide deterrence and where necessary and possible to intervene." "I don't know how the pirates will react to this."My guess is, not well. International cooperation may stop the pirates, but it's unclear if it will make them any less popular with the ladies -- even without the hooks and eye-patches. (Image from flickr user meophamman under a Creative Commons license.)
Last weekend, nearly 117 million people in 131 countries stood up as part of a UN-led campaign to draw attention to the Millennium Development Goals. This year's STAND UP Against Poverty shatters last year's record setting participation. The UN News Center has more on the events:
Over 8,000 events were held around the globe, from Afghanistan and Burundi to Thailand and Uganda, as part of the "Stand Up and Take Action against Poverty" campaign held from 17 to 19 October. "We are very proud that there has been such a massive citizen response for the Millennium Development Goals and against poverty," Salil Shetty, Director of the UN Millennium Campaign, which initiated the project, told reporters in New York today. Nearly 117 million people - close to 2 per cent of the world's population - took part in Stand Up-related events, breaking the Guinness World Record for the largest social mobilization ever on a single issue. Another 5 million people took part in events that were not submitted before the Guinness deadline. This represents a huge increase over 2006, when some 23 million people stood up against poverty, and 2007, when that number grew to almost 44 million.The photo above comes from an event in Yerevan, Armenia. Check out STAND UP's photo page for more action shots.
Following the war between Israel and Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the Security Council authorized the expansion of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, UNIFIL. Two years on, the mission has contributed to the maintenance of a ceasefire and has taken on humanitarian tasks like removing unexploded ordinance left over from the war.
This video is the first installment of a ten part series that is meant to explain UNIFIL to a Lebanese audience. (The host is Lebanese actor Rafic Ali Ahmad). To an American audience the video looks a little campy, but it is an interesting example of a peacekeeping mission's efforts at 21st century public diplomacy.
Watch the rest of the series.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro fears, with good reason, that the triple whammy of the financial crisis, global food shortage, and climate change will jeopardize countries' abilities to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Not so fast, the Bush administration has admirably responded.
From President Bush:
"America is committed, and America must stay committed, to international development for reasons that remain true regardless of the ebb and flow of the markets."And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:
"Some will ask the inevitable question in these troubled times: 'How can we afford it?'" she said. "I would ask instead, 'How can we not afford it?'"Secretary Rice's point should be sharply compelling -- given the benefit to national security that so-called "soft" power brings -- but in an election, the first question appeals a little too easily to voters. This is likely why Senators Obama and Biden have already admitted that their plans to double foreign aid will have to be "delayed," while the McCain camp has been murky on the subject. The Bush administration will not be the one determining the level of foreign aid over the next four years, but even here, the rhetoric may overshadow the substance. While the United States still gives over $20 billion in development assistance -- more than any other country -- it cut this budget by 3.5% in 2007. Still, both campaigns could do well to listen to a little lameduck optimism here.
Okay, so fighting pirates is not that easy, even for NATO.
"From a military standpoint, we certainly are limited by what we can do," [NATO Admiral Mark Fitzgerald] told Reuters news agency. "How do you prove a guy's a pirate before he actually attacks a ship?"Hint: those guys that captured the Ukrainian ship with 33 tanks, who demanded a $20 million ransom, brought it down to $8 million, conducted an interview with The New York Times, threatened to blow the ship up, changed their mind, and are now threatening to execute the ship's passengers since they've run out of food and water? They're pirates. Russian warships are bearing down, and they seem more likely to use force to free their countrymen aboard the Ukrainian ship. The situation is certainly urgent, and even though Somali "freelance coast guards" have had some success freeing a vessel from pirates, violence is not necessarily the way to go in this case. Russia, NATO, and the U.S. will have to all cooperate, and rapid diplomacy will likely prove more effective than shooting first -- even if we know who the pirates are.
It is looking more and more likely that the first case before the International Criminal Court may never come to trial. What happened is this: when building the case against Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo (who is accused of some truly heinous acts) the court's prosecutor used classified information provided to him by the United Nations. Nothing wrong with that. But it is a tenet of international and customary law that the accused has the right to review the evidence used against him. This means that the prosecutor is obliged to turn over evidence that may be exculpatory.
The problem here is that the evidence the United Nations provided to the prosecutor was classified, so the defendant has not been able to review potentially exculpatory evidence. In response to all this, Lubanga asked that his case be thrown out. The court initially ruled in his favor, but the prosecutor appealed that decision. Yesterday, the appellate court of the ICC ruled in favor of Lubanga, but ordered a new hearing as to whether or not Lubanga should be unconditionally released from custody. International law scholar Kevin Jon Heller of the excellent Opinio Juris has more on the significance of this decision.
Clearly, the court is young, so there was bound to be rough patches early on. To its credit, this turn of events does show that the various organs of the court (i.e. the Office of the Prosecutor and the judges chambers) operate distinctly from each other, with the judges offering a check on the prosecutor's power. Contra many critics of the court, the prosecutor is accountable. Still, this is pretty disappointing turn of events for those of us who were eager to see the prosecutor prove himself during this first trial.
UPDATE: Wasil Ali of the Sudan Tribune writes in "I don't see any reason for disappointment. The appeal chamber decision is really outdated since it did not consider the events that happened after July. The prosecutor submitted all evidence to trial chamber last week in unredacted format and some of that (93 135 documents) directly to defense. This will comply with what the judges have asked since they wanted unfettered access to it and the ability to review and determine what needs to be shared with defense. My guess that the trial will commence soon. Even the judges last week said that it was submitted "under potentially satisfactory circumstances."
Even if I reported some not-so-bad signs for UN deployment in Darfur a bit prematurely, it seems that the beleaguered peacekeepers there are finally getting some reinforcement.
For months, one of the most desperate needs of the Darfur force (UNAMID) has been what are called "Formed Police Units," or FPUs. These units are basically entire contingents of 100-plus police officers, all from the same country and all having trained and operated together. In UN missions that draw from a multitude of countries, with varying levels of training and equipment, being able to deploy these unified FPUs -- around displaced persons camps, villages, and humanitarian supply lines -- is a major asset.
The Security Council resolution outlining UNAMID envisioned 19 FPUs, and until last week, only one had deployed. In quick succession, though, 130 Indonesian officers and then 147 Nepalis have arrived in Darfur, tripling the crucial FPU presence in just a week.
In the meantime, however, a report released by the Secretary-General today underscores the prevailing insecurity in Darfur. According to the S-G, the situation is so bad that effective UNAMID operation remains impossible unless all parties renounce a military solution and commit to a peace process. And this is something that, unfortunately, all the FPUs in the world could not achieve.
(Image of a UN police advisor at an IDP camp in Darfur, from the Genocide Intervention Network)