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“UN Scandal” - the two are so frequently linked that either used alone sounds like half a word. The organization is a scandal. It has all the trappings of an imperial government; it operates above the law, is accountable to no one, and serves itself at the expense of the governed.
The UN’s most prominent scandal remains the Oil for Food scandal, simply for the sheer size of the theft and brazen disregard for the people the UN was charged with protecting. The UN opposed toppling Saddam because it would end the Oil For Food money, not because of any higher moral ground.
The Iraqis not being tortured and murdered by Saddam were being slowly starved by greedy UN diplomats. But somehow, the UN still enjoys global credibility. Everywhere the United Nations goes, rape, murder, theft and scandal follow.
In 2005, the head of the UN’s budget oversight committee, Vladimir Kuznetsov, was indicted in Manhattan on charges of money laundering and bribery. Kuznetsov’s ‘cut’ was openly deposited into his UN staff credit union account.
The United Nations said it would launch an investigation after the London Daily Telegraph reported allegations that U.N. personnel have abused children in southern Sudan.
If these were U.S. troops, it would be proof that Bush is Hitler, and America is evil. Since we’re talking about the U.N., though, it’s just one of those regrettable incidents that can’t be helped, really.
There have been as many reports of U.N. peacekeepers and personnel, notably in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Sudan, committing crimes ranging from rape to forced prostitution of women and young girls as there have been UN peacekeeping missions.
In the Congo, the UN ‘peacekeepers’ who weren’t raping children were enriching themselves by selling guns for gold – to the very groups they were there to disarm.
The UN insisted that it be the lead agency in distributing the $200 million in international aid to the Burmese victims of Cyclone Nargis.
This week, under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, John Holmes, called a news conference to announce the UN’s latest scandal. It seems that the UN ‘lost’ about $10 million so far. And the UN has yet to get any actual aid to the Burmese people, three months after the disaster.
The UN is hopelessly, incredibly, unbelievably corrupt. Measurement by its record of success vs failure is difficult without a record of success to go back to.
It is the reason North Korea remains a threat after 50 years. And it is the reason why a terrorist nation such as Syria can be given a seat on the UN’s Human Rights Council. The UN is buried under scandals. It has Oil-for-Food scandals. Smuggling scandals. And theft scandals.
Yet the UN continues to operate as an imperial global government, running roughshod over the weak like the tyrants of old. UN peacekeeping missions — with their record of robbery, rape and pillage — inspires terror in the local citizens they are supposed to protect.
Every year, the UN holds a ‘moment of silence’ in penance for its failure to act in Rwanda, even as the Islamic-Sudanese genocide against the Darfur Christians rages - for five years and counting.
The UN either inspires great faith or mass delusion — it is hard to say which. But it must be one or the other. Because it still exists.
