The United Nitwits Turns 60

And reform is not on the agenda:

Nowhere is this failure more grievous than in the U.N.’s record on human rights. First, there’s the dysfunctional Commission on Human Rights. Annan admitted earlier this year that the commission has “cast a shadow on the reputation of the U.N. system as a whole.” That conclusion, however, should have come long ago. For years the commission has allowed repressive governments to hijack its agenda, quash criticism of gross human-rights abusers, and vilify the state of Israel. According to Freedom House, 15 of the 53 commission members should be ranked as “unfree” nations. Even Sudan, accused of genocide, remains a member in good standing.

The U.N. response? Its outcome report ignores the flagrant mendacity of the Human Rights Commission. It calls for the creation of a human-rights council, but leaves the details to future negotiations. The authors obviously reached no agreement on even minimal criteria for membership — unable to suggest, for example, that nations under U.N. Security Council sanction for human rights violations be barred. It’s not even clear if the new council would continue to pass country-specific resolutions to name and shame the worst violators.

Second, there’s the problem of the exploitation and sexual abuse of refugees. It’s bad enough that U.N. “peacekeepers” are notoriously unable to protect women in U.N. camps in western Sudan (where leaving the camps for food invites rape). It is utterly contemptible that U.N. peacekeepers themselves are part of the problem: With the apparent complicity of U.N. officials, they’ve created a predatory sexual culture that’s gone unchallenged for at least a decade.

Late last year, Kofi Annan finally admitted that there were 150 allegations of abuse by U.N. peacekeepers and staff in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They involve U.N. military and civilian personnel from Nepal, Morocco, Tunisia, Uruguay, South Africa, Pakistan, and France. The victims are defenseless refugees — many of them children — who’ve already been brutalized by years of war. The charges, still being investigated, come four years after another U.N. report found sexual violence against refugees in West Africa to be “endemic.” As Amnesty International puts it, rather aptly: “Even the guardians have to be guarded.”

The U.N.’s latest response? The summiteers in New York made no direct reference to the scandal, preferring a passionless pass-the-buck recommendation: “We…urge those measures adopted in the relevant General Assembly resolutions based upon the recommendations mentioned above be fully implemented without delay.” Urging, however, is not the same thing as acting. There have been no calls for an independent investigation of the Congo sex scandal, no meaningful steps to prevent further abuses, and no effective system of accountability.

Unaccountable government is of course the dream of the Left. The inherent corruption of the UN should provide stark warning of what will happen if the globalists get their way, and why John Bolton and other UN cynics are so desperately needed today.