I should really stop reading anything that has to do with the UN. The security council still can't hammer out a resolution concerning the events in Israel and Gaza which is not worth the paper its printed on in any case. The Arab league version only asked for the blockade of Gaza to be ended. Maybe if they say pretty please with a cherry on top. No mention of the constant rocket fire hitting Sderot, Ashkelon and the Negev. You would think fair is fair. The UN is all about making a secure world to live in. No country comes with any agenda do they? So now that a demand to stop the rocket fire has been added to the resolution Libya suddenly has to phone home for more instructions. The other 14 members of the security council have all signed on. Libya stands alone unwilling to sign on. No Arab country is going to sign something that says rockets fired at Israel is wrong. As far as they are concerned any violence toward Israel is justified. And they say the US is biased toward Israel. I need a 12 step program.
Submitted by Carol
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I guess that every organization is only as good as its members, whatever its charter might say.
The U.N. is merely a reflection of the governments that belong to the organization, nothing more and nothing less. It's not a magic wand that will make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It cannot take a collection of regimes that are largely anti-Western in their orientation (or at least not pro-Western), or that have economic and political incentives to lean in a pro-Arab direction, and then expect such a grouping to miraculously coalesce into a sage, balanced and effective force in the world. That's too much to expect.
If I were you Carol I'd give up relying on the UN, not just reading about them. Whatever the motivations were for the creation of that organisation it is long past its use by date.
I think we (and by that I mean the entire world) places far too much expectation on this bunch of people. None of them are elected to their positions (not that I think elections are a magic bullet but at least in most instances the very process of having fair elections will weed out some of the bad guys). Many of the UN delegates are ex-politicians or ex-senior bureaucrats in their respective countries who were incompetent and/or corrupt and had to be moved out of the spotlight in their own countries. They are far from being the best or the brightest yet we expect the most from them. Silly us.
There's a book called Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures by 3 UN employees (a lawyer, a social worker and a doctor) and it gives a brilliant insight into the workings of the organisation as the three tell of their various postings. It doesn't tackle the Middle East (none of the three were ever posted there) but the stories about UN screw-ups in Cambodia, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and the heart-wrenching account of what happened in Rwanda were enough to make me realise that if we're looking for solutions to what troubles our world we HAVE to look somewhere other than the bumbling, corrupt mess that is the UN.
Cheers, Bernadette
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