I'll start by admitting that Hillel Neuer of UN Watch is one of my heroes. Yet again his organisation is exposing the blatant politicising and hypocrisy of the UN Human Rights Council. Despite the frequent highlighting of this subversion of truth and morality over many years the UN has done practically nothing. Recent events in Libya have forced its hand but its response has been sclerotic, doing as little as it feels it can get away with.
However, this phenomenon of subverting the truth and supporting the enemies of truth is not just the prerogative of one part of the UN but pervades the entire edifice subverting its integrity. Bodies such as the Security Council, General Assembly, International Court of Justice, the economic and social council and the secretariat are highly politicised. Jobs in the secretariat are awarded not on merit but on who knows whom and where they come from. Far from being a source for good, as its creators intended, the UN is now an edifice which props up dictators, hate mongers and human rights abusers. Some may argue it does some good in such areas as disaster relief and aid to poor countries. Indeed it does but vast amounts of the aid finds its way into the pockets of those for whom it was not intended.
The most damming defence of the UN was made recently by Lord David Hannay who used to be UK permanent representative to the United Nations. Whilst admitting that the UN wasn't perfect and faced some 'challenges', he felt that despite its imperfections it was the best that could be done and that it would be impossible to create such a body from scratch today. In effect he argues that because it is not possible to come up with anything like it that would be better then we should keep what there is no matter how bad. Further he advocates that the body should be given even more funding over and above the $30bn odd it already receives, (that's $4 for each man, woman and child on the planet), of which over $2bn comes from the UK tax payer. Clearly he wants this vast political bureaucracy the swell and become even more bloated.
What the UN 'turkeys' don't seem to realise is that their behaviour over the past decades has reduced their credibility to near zero. The body has squandered the huge amount of respect in which it was once held and is doing nothing to regain it. Indeed it acts to further its own downward spiral.
An exception is the BBC which regards the UN as near deity.
Will the UN disappear? Get real - of course not.
But what we can do is treat it as the useless body it has become. No longer should its utterances be taken as the font of all wisdom and truth. No longer should its pontifications be treated as unbiased and politically neutral. No longer should it be the judge of the veracity of its own and others’ actions. In short, the stamp of UN approval or disapproval of action or inaction is neither the hallmark nor judge of morality, truth or wisdom.
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