A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Smart Mobs: "A Washington Post article on attempts to present real social problems as tasks to be solved in a video game. For instance, the United Nations' World Food Programme released a game called Foodforce, in which the player must figure out how to feed an island of people."
Magpie: "UN officials are warning that a measles epidemic could hit the survivors of the South Asia earthquake. According to the World Health Organization, the collapse of the devastated region's health system makes it vital that children be vaccinated against the disease as soon as possible."
Feministing: "The United Nations said yesterday that poverty can't be adequately addressed until it takes on social, economic and physical discrimination against women. "Gender apartheid" could scuttle the global body's goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015, the U.N. Population Fund's annual State of World Population report said."
Carpetbagger: "A top United Nations envoy returned from the Darfur region of Sudan recently and had discouraging news: the calamity is actually getting worse: "I found the situation much more dangerous and worrisome than I expected it to be," said [Juan Mendez, special adviser to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan], who just completed his second visit to the region in the past year. "Until last week, there have never been concerted, massive attacks of an indiscriminate nature against civilians" in camps in Darfur. Mendez was prepared to share his findings with representatives on the U.N. Security Council, but was denied the opportunity - by Bush's man at the U.N., John Bolton."
Waveflux: "A few weeks ago, my brother told me that he was leery of the news nowadays because the headlines seemed to be one full-on catastrophe after another. This weekend was no exception. Pakistan took the brunt of the 7.6 quake on Saturday, but India and Afghanistan were also affected. CNN has published a couple of stories about relief efforts, here and here. Initial U.S. reconstruction/relief aid of "up to" $50 million dollars, eight military choppers dispatched, other assets coming (likely from Afghanistan, I'm thinking). UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund) is moving emergency medical supplies, children's clothing, water purification materials, nutritional supplements, and blankets and plastic tarps to northern Pakistan. UNICEF needs donations now."
Insecurity Forum: "From europaworld.org: Annan: Intellectual Breakthrough On Security, Development, Rights - "Beyond specific commitments ranging from strengthening humanitarian mechanisms to reforming UN management, Secretary-General Kofi Annan this week hailed a global mind-change at last month's United Nations World Summit that linked security, development and human rights. "I think in a way we did make a sort of intellectual breakthrough at the Summit, as the Member States accepted, or acknowledged, for the first time the indivisible links between security, development and human rights," he told an Executive Committee meeting of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva."
Stygius: "Via nadezhda's links, Reuters: "Ambassador John Bolton blocked a U.N. envoy on Monday from briefing the Security Council on grave human rights violations in Sudan's Darfur region, saying the council had to act against atrocities and not just talk about them..." Let's take a moment to remember what kind of "action" Bolton prefers in the face of atrocity and genocide."
Trigger Fish: "Mass industrialization has contributed to a perfect storm for avian flu to break out?: "[I]ndustrial chicken operations are growing exponentially thanks to the resettlement of large agribusinesses in search of lower operational costs. Last year in Latin America and the Caribbean, there were over 2.5 billion chickens, nearly 1 billion more than 10 years ago, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. In 2004, according to Worldwatch Institute, Brazil became the world's second-largest poultry producer, just behind the United States. Such expansion of industrial farming in less developed countries usually is accompanied by poor surveillance and control."
"The United Nations Foundation Board announced today a commitment of $1 million to United Nations Earthquake relief initiatives in South Asia. This commitment will help support the UN's immediate response in the affected countries of Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan, build critical communications and logistics capacities, and support the UN's aid coordination role." [Read more]
From the Washington Post: "The top United Nations envoy for the prevention of genocide charged Monday that Arab militias have escalated their campaign of violence against civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan, mounting an unprecedented pair of attacks against camps for displaced families."
"UNICEF warned Sunday that lost and orphaned children were among the most vulnerable survivors of the earthquake in South Asia and would need urgent help to survive in the cold and mountainous areas.
They would need assistance to find surviving relatives and eventually to overcome the trauma of the disaster, David Bull, executive director of the UN's Children Fund in Britain, told the BBC World Service.
"We know that children in an earthquake situation are vulnerable to injury, cold, hunger, distress, illness, exploitation and the loss of their active education, separation from their families," he said." [Read more]
"Following a massive earthquake in Pakistan that affected also Afghanistan and India, the United Nations is working with the governments of those countries on an emergency response." [More]
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Mobjectivist: "Finally, someone noticed the lack of balance in the so-called Iraq Oil-For-Food (OFF) scandal stories over the past few years... as of June of this year, the geniuses at Powerline blog had contributed a total of 26 stories on oil-for-food but none on peak oil/oil depletion."
Scrutiny Hooligans: "I heard on NPR this morning that the Shiite/Kurd coalition reversed themselves and returned to the original rules regarding this referendum. *loud sigh of relief* It appears that the U.N. still has some oomph in this regard. Here's to you, Kofi, for helping to defend democracy where others might seek to subvert it."
Hit and Run: "With the president's opponents always ready to call him a dictator, I feel compelled to tamp down the Chicken Little panic over totalitarianism created by President Bush's suggestion that he might use the military to quarantine areas hit by the avian flu. [I]t wasn't Bush who first raised the possibility (at least not in public). He was replying to a question about the possibility.: "...during my meetings at the United Nations, not only did I speak about it publicly, I spoke about it privately to as many leaders as I could find, about the need for there to be awareness, one, of the issue; and, two, reporting, rapid reporting to WHO, so that we can deal with a potential pandemic. Obviously, the best way to deal with a pandemic is to isolate it and keep it isolated in the region in which it begins."
In the Bullpen: "Yes...the nuclear program that "doesn't exist" won't be used for "peaceful purposes only" it seems. From the Washington Times: "Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has placed the military firmly in control of his nation's nuclear program, undercutting his government's claim that the program is intended for civilian use, according to a leading opposition group. ... "The military under the new president is firmly in control of the nuclear program and the nuclear negotiations with the United Nations and the West," said Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the NCRI's foreign affairs committee, in a telephone interview yesterday."
Moquol: "Iraq Parliament Reverses Rule Change: "Iraq's National Assembly voted on Wednesday to reverse last-minute changes it had made to rules for next week's referendum on a new constitution following criticism by the United Nations and a boycott threat by the Sunni minority." This story doesn't do a great job of explaining the sham Khalilzad and the US and the Iraqi government were trying to pull on the Iraqi people. You can see the writer's agenda as well, describing the system set up to ensure minority and regional representation as a "loophole." But the UN did their job (funny how they keep seeming to do that despite being mocked and belittled at every turn by the US) and shamed the Iraqi government into restoring the rules everyone had agreed to."
Norwegianity: "Via Daou I encourage you to read Kofi and the Scandal Pimps, and if you're a wingnut, I double dare you to read it."
Penraker: "After loads of jibber jabber about how Sunnis in Iraq hate the new constitution, we finally have some data. The Iraqi Center for Development and International Dialogue (partially funded by the United Nations) says: "Although support for the constitution was particularly high in the northern Kurdish areas and southern regions dominated by Shi'ites, Mr. Hafedh said it topped 50 percent even in central provinces known as the heartland of Sunni unrest -- a sign, he said, that the Sunni-Shi'ite split is not as wide as many fear."
Voice in the Wilderness: "It seems that -- surprise! -- the Afghanistan elections have been found to have been, as Carlotta Gail of The New York Times puts it, rife with "significant incidents of fraud." In Monday's paper, she writes: "Whole districts have come under suspicion for ballot box stuffing and proxy voting, said Peter Erben, the chief of the United Nations-assisted Joint Election Management Board. He said ballot boxes from 4 percent of the 26,000 polling places - about 1,000 stations - had been set aside for investigation on suspicion of fraud and other irregularities. (Read the entire article.)"
UN News Service: Criticizing changes that the Iraqi Parliament made on Sunday to rules for this month's constitutional referendum as "patently inappropriate," Secretary-General Kofi Annan called today's reversal of the decision "very important," but said the transition process in the war-torn country has not "worked as we had hoped."
Selected summary of United Nations related news and events
UN Legal Counsel urges action to complete comprehensive terrorism convention
Security Council Strongly Condemns Deadly Weekend Bombing in Bali, Indonesia
UN Ship Safe in Somali Port After 100-day Hijack
U.N. Security Worker Shot Dead in Somalia
U.N. Eyes Iraq Voting Law Changes
Bush Weighs Strategies to Counter Possible Outbreak of Bird Flu