As reported yesterday, while in Washington this week Ban Ki-moon asked Congressional leaders to lift the so-called "peacekeeping cap" that Congress imposed on US contributions to the UN peacekeeping budget back in 2000. Since then, the US has been assessed at a rate higher than what it pays, resulting in constant budget shortfalls at the UN.
This is a long and complicated saga, but here's the elevator pitch version:
The United Nations is taking some hits over a disturbing Daily Telegraph report alleging that some peacekeeping officials in the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) have sexually exploited children in southern Sudan.
"The United Nations plans to become more deeply involved in efforts to end the Lord's Resistance Army's reign of terror in northern Uganda, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday.
The LRA, which says it wants to rule Uganda according to the biblical Ten Commandments, has become notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors and abducting thousands of children as fighters, porters and sex slaves.
About 100,000 people have been killed and nearly 2 million more driven from their homes and into camps in 20 years of brutal war waged by the group in northern Uganda, the U.N. Security Council said two weeks ago." More
In the New Republic online, Peter Beinart has written a not-to-be missed essay touting the successful nation building strategies the United Nations has been quietly developing without much fanfare here in the United States.
In the course of a two and a half hour press conference, Sudanese President Omar al Bashir rejected UN command of a hybrid AU-UN force for Darfur, saying he would only accept African Troops under African leadership. Bashir also gave an impossibly low mortality estimate - 9,000 - as the number of people who have died as a result of the conflict in Darfur. These comments could be a serious setback to the quick deployment of an effective peacekeeping force to Darfur.