A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
El Canche: "By the time you have finished reading this sentence a child, somewhere in the world, will have died as a direct result of poverty. That frightening fact is just one of many contained in the 2005 Human Development Report , presented to world leaders today by the United Nations Development Program. The timing of the report is crucial as next week the heads of state of 175 countries will gather at the United Nations in NY to discuss the urgent and ambitious Millennium Development Goals."
Silent Nation: "Parts of America as poor as Third World - And now there is a UN report to back it up. Sure to be trounced by the US elites, but the findings ring very true for those that have actually studied the issue in detail."
Agonist: "The Independent - Parts of the United States are as poor as the Third World, according to a shocking United Nations report on global inequality. Claims that the New Orleans floods have laid bare a growing racial and economic divide in the US have, until now, been rejected by the American political establishment as emotional rhetoric. But yesterday's UN report provides statistical proof that for many - well beyond those affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - the great American Dream is an ongoing nightmare."
Political Animal: "The final report of the commission investigating the UN's Oil For Food program is over a thousand pages long, but Abu Aardvark has condensed it to eight bullets and a few hundred words. If you want to know enough to hold your own in cocktail party chatter, head over and check it out."
Chuck Currie: "World leaders will gather next week in New York City to mark the 60th anniversary of the United Nations. A joint statement will be issued at the event and many of the world's leaders are arguing that the statement should commit most nations to the goal of spending 0.7 percent of their gross national product on aid to developing nations and referencing the UN Millennium Development goals that include halving world poverty by 2015."
Democracy Arsenal: "Two weeks ago a senior US official reassured me that the UN reform talks would reach an agreement in time for next week's summit, but that there would be tough bargaining along the way. "It's going to get ugly," the official warned. And ugly it has gotten."
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Opinio Juris: "U.S. Secretary of State Rice has made a point of publicly thanking foreign countries for their contributions to the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Here is an excerpt from her news conference: "The United Nations has mobilized their disaster experts. I want to thank Secretary General Kofi Annan for that. Their people are sitting with our people in Washington to plan out UN support."
Chez Nadezhda: "Brian Ulrich makes a very good point in a post at Liberals Against Terrorism about the urban myths that the rest of the world has given the US the cold shoulder. People who should know better are simply making stuff up! The rest of the world is in fact horrified, and offers of official assistance are coming from all over -- as well as charitable contributions. And then there's everybody's favorite whipping-boy, the UN, which has of course offered help -- and they actually know a lot about how to deliver humanitarian assistance in the wake of disasters."
Chrenkoff: Good News from Afghanistan, part 16 - Ahead of winter, the United Nations is starting food distribution: "The United Nations announced launching of food distribution among half a million poor Afghans ahead of the winter season."
Coalition for Darfur: "From Amnesty International and others: "Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam International call on a small number of "spoiler" countries to stop holding the UN World Summit hostage over crucial measures on human rights, security, genocide and poverty reduction. These governments have thrown negotiations on the final outcome text into crisis just days away from the biggest meeting of world leaders in history, September 14-16 in New York."
Democracy Arsenal (David Shorr): "I encourage readers to check out the Stanley Foundation's web pages on UN reform; we have been tracking these issues ever since Kofi Annan launched the current push for reform in late 2003."
GraBlog: "The coverage about Hurricane Katrina and the disastrous response - or to say better - initial lack of it and slow start stirred up even conservative politicians and media [...] According to many people involved, like New Orleans Major Ray Nagin, the US government is moving far too slow, but a long list of countries all over the world, even Cuba, which has not the best relations to the US, offered help, countries like Sri Lanka, Jamaica and Afghanistan(!), which are not among the well-off themselves, offered help, immediate neighbors like Canada and Mexico as well as the United Nations and Europe, OAS and WHO, China, Japan, India and South Korea are offering all kinds of help."
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
UPDATE: Booman Tribune: "The United Nations announced that the United States Government has accepted the world body's offer of help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."
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Melancholy ID: "Judy Cannon argues the United Nations can boast a remarkable list of achievements over the last 60 years."
Echidne: "Remember how the radical cleric Pat Robertson said that he wants to see Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, assassinated? Now Chavez has said this in return: "I announce that my government is going to take legal action in the United States ... to call for the assassination of a head of state is an act of terrorism." Chavez said in a televised speech. The fiery left-wing critic of Bush's foreign policy who frequently charges the U.S. government is plotting to kill him, called Robertson "crazy" and a "public menace." He said Venezuela could seek Robertson's extradition under international treaties and take its claim to the United Nations if the Bush administration did not act."
Demlog: "Iraqi negotiators finished the country's new constitution Sunday without the endorsement of Sunni Arabs who helped prepare it, dealing a blow to the Bush administration and setting the stage for a bitter campaign leading up to an October referendum. The 15 members of the Sunni panel said they rejected the document because of disagreements over such issues as federalism, Iraq's identity and references to Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath Party. Sunni Arab negotiators also said in a joint statement that they had asked the United Nations and Arab League to intervene."
Martin Stabe: "Canada flexes Arctic muscles - For those who have missed it, the NATO allies Canada and Denmark are in a border spat over a tiny, remote island off Greenland north of the Arctic Circle. The RCN has been conducting "Arctic sovereignty patrols" in the nippy region. In July, the RCN planted a flag on Hans Island, and the Canadian defense minister Bill Graham later made an unannounced visit, prompting protests from Copenhagen, which dispatched its own naval ships to region. Before things got ugly, the two countries decided to settle the dispute at the United Nations."
Clarity and Resolve: "Jihad In the Balkans - I get the feeling that things may once again get very ugly in the Balkans when the U.N. leaves."
TPM Cafe (Steve Clemons): "The End of Diplomacy? - This from a thoughtful piece by Anne Penketh in The Independent: "Mr Bolton is at the UN with a mission. At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama famously decreed the end of history. We could be witnessing the end of diplomacy." America in the past has generally demonstrated capacity to be a great leader of others -- a planning nation, a strategic nation, a complex systems integrator in war and peace -- but now the obsession with doing things alone is a rejection of leadership and guarantees future weakness."
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Stygius: "In what is, frankly, a brilliant essay, nadezhda mounts a "defense of John Bolton," in the wake of my and others' reaction to Bolton's undercutting of the draft proposal at the center of the upcoming UN Summit. It's a long piece, but the central point seems to be that--beyond the sheer quantity of proposed US changes--the document had so many proposals so utterly incompatible with US positions (on, say, the ICC and the Kyoto Treaty) that it is unbelievable it survived so long in its current form. It's more than possible that the document, apparently shepherded by UN General Assembly President Jean Ping, was designed to highlight faultlines between the developed and developing world when it comes to development policies."
Think Progress: Just three weeks after his recess appointment, Bolton is reversing the work of U.S. negotiators and is seeking to "scrap much of a draft plan for comprehensive UN reform just weeks before it is to be adopted at a world summit."
Policy Busters: "The 2005 World Summit, to be held from 14 to 16 September at United Nations Headquarters in New York, is expected to bring together more than 170 Heads of State and Government: the largest gathering of world leaders in history. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take bold decisions in the areas of development, security, human rights and reform of the United Nations. The agenda is based on an achievable set of proposals outlined in March by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his report In Larger Freedom (www.un.org/largerfreedom)."
Dogooder: "Poor countries to miss 2015 health goals - WHO - "Most poor countries will miss global targets to reduce child mortality, improve maternal health and reverse the toll of AIDS and other diseases by 2015, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Monday. Health is at the heart of the U.N. Millennium Declaration, adopted by 189 heads of state in September 2000, which set out a roadmap of eight goals to be reached by 2015. Using 1990 data as baselines, they aim to reduce poverty and hunger, tackle gaps in health services, education and boost access to clean water."
In the Bullpen: "How the free world gets rid of Iran's nuclear threat though is the question of the decade. If they choose to go after Iran militarily, with what army will they do so and how will they attack targets in which they do not have certainty where they are in Iran. Russia and China have already stated they are not in favor of war in Iran (no kidding as both nations are providing Iran technology and engineering expertise) and would then veto any such action in the United Nations Security Council. Both nations could very well veto any sanctions proposed by the Security Council. Fine mess we're in boys."
Sudan Watch: "UN news service via ReliefWeb reports Antonio Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is in Khartoum and plans to visit some of the camps which now house hundreds of thousands of the more than 6 million refugees and internally displaced people who fled Sudan's civil strife."
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Oxblog: "A front-page story in the WaPo reports that "traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and is not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined." In the case of Iran ... is it simply nationalist pride that prevents cooperation with UN inspectors?"
Open Democracy: "The UN and Baghdad: two years on - Kofi Annan pays tribute to the 22 people killed in the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad on 19 August 2003. Among them was head of the UN mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and openDemocracy columnist Arthur Helton. Gil Loescher, Arthur's friend and co-columnist who was badly wounded in the attack, bears witness and looks ahead."
First Draft: "Looks like our new ambassador to the UN has thrown a monkey wrench into the UN reform process at the last minute: "The United States has launched a last-minute drive to scrap much of a draft plan for comprehensive U.N. reform just weeks before it is to be adopted at a world summit, Western diplomats said on Wednesday."
Global Voices Online: "Sub-Saharan Africa - Displaced people in the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur have written to the United Nations, calling on officials to prevent further delays in peace talks between government and rebel forces, writes aid-worker Sleepless in Sudan."
Sudan Watch: "A BBC report today says Tony Blair has been urged to use his influence to increase support for an international deal to stop genocide: "The charity Oxfam has praised the UK's commitment to the deal but hopes the PM will persuade less willing states. The pact, which would oblige countries to intervene when there is evidence of genocide in another nation, is to be tabled at a UN Summit next month. Final negotiations over the agenda for the UN's meeting in New York - set to be the biggest ever summit of world leaders - will begin with Oxfam seeking to safeguard the proposals for international cooperation to respond to mass killings."
TBogg: "So, how long before the 101st Fighting Keyboarders turn their, um, Keyboards of Rage, on Colin Powell: "A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state's presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "the lowest point" in his life."
TT Children: "On Front line of Niger's war against hunger, Unicef wields porridge and Syringe - UN News Service - On the front line of the global battle to stop starvation in drought-stricken Niger, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) stands armed with a life-saving porridge for undernourished children and syringes to vaccinate against killer diseases."
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Blogicus: "Mike Sackett, the World Food Programme's Regional Southern African director, has revealed that 8.6 million people in southern Africa need food aid up to harvest in April 2006. Over 4.3 million of these are in Zimbabwe."
Mercury Rising: "The Next Time Somebody Mentions "The Oil-for-Food Scandal" we should make it a point to bring up this: "Both Republicans and Democrats appeared taken aback by the volume of cash sent to Iraq: nearly $12 billion over the course of the U.S. occupation from March 2003 to June 2004, said a report by Rep. Henry A. Waxman."
Water Well: "Water shortages will leave world in dire straits - More than half of humanity will be living with water shortages, depleted fisheries and polluted coastlines within 50 years because of a worldwide water crisis, warns a United Nations report out Monday."
Coalition for Darfur: "Kofi Annan to Visit Starving in Niger - From Reuters: "U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will visit Niger next week to highlight the impact of food shortages affecting millions of people in the West African country, Niger government officials said on Wednesday."
Gateway Pundit: "Zimbabwe is planning to resume the "Cleanup" of illegal vendors weeks after it stopped the controversial practice: Zimbabwe last month declared an end to its controversial demolitions of shantytowns, dubbed "Operation Restore Order," after a critical U.N. report said the operation had destroyed the homes or jobs of at least 700,000 people.... The government has asked for help from the international community including the United Nations to build new housing for thousands of homeless residents."
News Nuclear: "UN convenes scientists to study nuclear power plant risks from natural disasters - Seeking to prevent nuclear power plant disasters from being unleashed by natural calamities, the United Nations atomic watchdog agency is organizing an international scientific workshop in India this month to re-examine risks from events such as last December's catastrophic tsunami in the Indian Ocean."
Republic of T: "More on the growth of child prostitution in Iraq, which I posted about earlier: "A United Nations report has revealed that an alarming number of young teenage boys in Iraq are being forced into prostitution by street gangs or poverty due to the ongoing conflict in their country."
Sudan Watch: "A report by the Press Association in this morning's Scotsman says UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has accused Sudanese rebels of increasing abductions, extortion and banditry in a "descent into lawlessness" that has intensified insecurity in Darfur."
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Chrenkoff: "Nearly half a million Iraqi children will benefit from upgraded sanitation facilities at schools across the country this year as a result of United Nations (UN) initiatives aimed at raising a new generation of educated Iraqis to help their country rebuild from war."
Feministing: "According to a new report from UNICEF: "About 20 percent of children in Afghanistan die before their fifth birthday, girls being particularly vulnerable. Girls' enrollment in secondary schools is less than 10%. Female illiteracy rates as high as 85%. In some parts of Afghanistan, maternal death rates are as high as 6,000 per 100,000 women." These statistics have led UNICEF to declare a state of "acute emergency" for women and children living in Afghanistan."
Booker Rising: "Haiti Election Doubts - Haiti's planned election timetable is looking increasingly doubtful as officials say there are problems with finance, and violent clashes between police and supporters of former President Jean Bertrand-Aristide continue. Despite a United Nations stabilizing force having been present for more than a year, violence continues. The UN's representative in Haiti fears that armed gangs could disrupt the election process."
Coalition for Darfur: "Oxfam on the Genocide Agreement - I mentioned this yesterday, but I finally found the official Oxfam press release... The current draft wording on the 'responsibility to protect is below': 118. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the efforts of the United Nations to establish an early-warning capability. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the obligation to use diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, including under Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. 119. We invite the permanent members of the Security Council to refrain from using the veto in cases of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. 120. We support the implementation of the United Nations Action Plan to Prevent Genocide and the work of the Secretariat to this end."
Crooks and Liars: "James Wolcott - "Roger L. Simon I don't consider a liberal hawk. Because he isn't. He isn't much of a liberal of any kind. Instead, he typifies a subset of bloggers who day-in, day-out bash the UN (particularly over the "oil-for-food" scandal") while saying damn near nothing about the billions of reconstruction money lost or stolen in Iraq and the sweetheart deals for companies like, yes, Halliburton; who dump scorn regularly on the ACLU and minimize the brutalities at Abu Ghraib..."
Democracy Arsenal: "Responding to my post of yesterday, in which I made the point that France had intervened without UN authorisation in the civil war in Cote d'Ivoire, KB says that "when the French deployed in 2002 it did so at the request of the legitimate government of the IC and therefore didn't need UN say so."
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Washington Note: "Perhaps John Bolton is modeling himself on Andrei Gromyko, the famous "Mr. Nyet" who said 'No' more often than anything else starting in 1946 when he went as the Soviet Ambassador to the U.N. followed by nearly three decades as the USSR's Foreign Minister."
Suburban Guerrilla: "Unimaginable - So sad: "What little food they had ran out a long time ago and if they were "looking well fed" as their president has said, it was on leaves and plants. But yesterday the dispossessed of Guidamonji were the first to benefit from the start of the long-awaited UN aid distribution in Niger."
Hidden Nook: "With the United States delegating the potential Persian nuclear crisis over to Europe, Iran it seems has disregarded the world's viewpoint over it's nuclear activities. Europe, realizing that they are losing control over the situation are threatening to bring Iran before the United Nations. But with nothing more than paper and words backing the their threats, Iran is calling the world's bluff by publicly insisting that it's nuclear activity is only for "peaceful" means."
Coalition for Darfur: "From IRIN: "Heavy rainfall and ongoing insecurity are slowing down the delivery of humanitarian assistance to many parts of the strife-torn western Sudanese region of Darfur, aid workers warned on Wednesday. "It is a nightmare to move food; the rains are much worse than last year," Diego Fernandez, head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) field office in Kabkabiya, in the west of North Darfur State, told IRIN."
Media Network Weblog: "Representatives from fourteen national broadcast companies from across the Asia-Pacific region gathered at UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok today to launch a co-production initiative to raise awareness about the impact of HIV/AIDS global health risk through the creation of media content. The initiative was organised through a cooperative arrangement involving the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), UNDP's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP), UNAIDS, UNICEF, UNDP Regional HIV Programme, MTV International and the Kaiser Family Foundation. This innovative and timely partnership will produce a series of made for television programmes to raise awareness of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic."
MoJo Blog: "Darfur Won't Go Away - The ICG's John Pendergast - who was interviewed a while back here at Mother Jones-had an important op-ed on Darfur yesterday that kicks down the idea that the genocide will somehow just go away on its own: "The crisis in Darfur is deepening, not abating. New numbers from the United Nations reveal that 3.5 million Darfurians are in need of emergency aid, a sharp increase over what the misguided optimists expected. Mass rapes continue; lifesaving humanitarian aid is frequently blocked; and impunity for those responsible remains intact." (Via Coalition for Darfur, which is also essential reading for the ongoing crises in Congo and Niger.)"
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Baghdad Dweller: "Iraqi news agency launches - Iraq is to get its first independent news agency run and staffed by Iraqi journalists and backed by Reuters and the United Nations. The launch of the agency is aimed at providing breaking news to local, regional and international media and is expected to help strengthen professional journalism, facilitate social dialogue and promote democracy in the war-torn country."
Chrenkoff: "Good news from Afghanistan, part 15 - Long forgotten - or worse still, destroyed - historical heritage of Afghanistan is finally being preserved and looked after. For example, "experts from the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO, are back on the ground in western Afghanistan. They're working with local authorities on a $1 million project to preserve the crumbling, centuries-old minarets in Herat and Jam, which are in danger of collapse." And this: "The Government of Japan and the United Nations (UN) decided to extend assistance of a total of 3,660,415 US dollars (approximately 402.64 million yen) through the Trust Fund for Human Security for the project "Improving Human Security by Rebuilding Urban Communities" to be implemented by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) in Afghanistan..."
Doug Ireland: "A growing number of Iraqi boys are being forced to join the commercial sex trade -- many forced to do so by criminal gangs through threats and violence, intimidation, and blackmail in a country where "honor killings" of youths who engage in same-sex relations by their families is encouraged by Sharia law and religious fanaticism; and some out of poverty in a country where official government figures for youth unemployment at 48 % (although the real figure is undoubtedly much higher). All this is confirmed by a new report from the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs' Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)."
Hit and Run: "InstaPundit guestblogger Michael Totten offers some odd political advice to the Democrats: "As far as I'm concerned, social liberalism is the best thing the Democratic Party has going for it. They should keep that and drop the pacifism and isolationism instead..." The strange thing is the use of the word "isolationism." Just last year the warbloggers were warning that Kerry would submit America's foreign policy to a nefarious "global test." The man and his party were damned for their excessive faith in the United Nations, multilateralism, and the power of the well-crafted treaty. And now they're supposed to be isolationists?"
Matthew Good: "There is little doubt in my mind that a conservative element within the Canadian Armed Forces is attempting to seize on the ambiguity provided by The War On Terror to reverse Canadian military priorities.... Being that Canada is not in Afghanistan under the banner of the United Nations, such a commitment would make Afghanistan one of the longest of its kind in Canadian military history. And with that commitment will come the usual - increased military spending and an intensified recruiting campaign. In short, the national, and positive, promotion of militarism."
Syamak Moattari: "World Water Week 2005 - Experts from 100 countries will present innovative water sanitation and development solutions in advance of the United Nations' five-year review of progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Delegates will present examples of how problems of poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and gender inequality can be solved with water and sanitation as the key entry points.'
Washington Note: "Now that John Bolton has his Credentials... TWN is thinking of asking for an interview with him. We will probably get rejected, but I would like to discuss with him -- in a serious way -- what his vision is for the United Nations and how it converges or diverges from those in America who despise the institution. They are the ones -- on the whole -- who supported him. Is he going to abandon his base?"