A Den of Despots

from the June 19, 2007 eNews issue

According to a recent Gallup poll, approximately 66 percent of Americans think the UN is doing a poor job. This most recent assessment of the United Nations' shoddy job performance is the lowest ever since Gallop first began keeping track in 1953. This news is not surprising. What is astonishing is that, despite the United Nations' terrible track record, most Americans think the inept organization should still play a major role in international affairs.

What most people don't realize is that the United Nations has become a safe haven for thugs, war-mongers, and tyrannical dictators. The truth of the matter is that only 89 of the 192 UN member nations have truly free governments. In other words, the majority of the UN is made up of 103 nations that do not give their citizens the same political rights and civil liberties that you and I take for granted. That is according to Freedom House, which has published a report on what it calls "the world's most repressive societies." With the sole exception of North Korea, all of the 17 nations that made the list are current members of the United Nations. Perhaps most alarming is that some of the "worst of the worst" human rights violators have actually been appointed to the UN Human Rights Council.

The United Nations was created to maintain international peace and help solve the world's economic and humanitarian troubles, but the UN has failed time and time again to achieve its main objectives. The UN is plagued by scandal, widespread corruption, favoritism, and financial mismanagement. Furthermore, through its misconduct, negligence, and complacency the UN has aided terrorism worldwide.

In April of 2006 Iran was elected to a vice-chair position on the UN Disarmament Commission, which is tasked with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. The following day Iran announced that it had successfully enriched uranium. Appointing Iran to a position where it can establish disarmament rules to protect its own clandestine nuclear program is either a colossal lapse in judgment or a deliberate attempt by the non-democratic majority to protect one of their own from scrutiny. It doesn't make any sense, unless of course you think like one of 103 nations that control the vote in the UN General Assembly.

One must only examine the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Sudan to understand why the UN has failed to fulfill the primary purpose for which it was created - to promote peace and protect humanity. Hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur have been slaughtered and millions have been forced to flee their homes. The Islamic government that controls Sudan is guilty of genocide, but the United Nations has yet to take decisive action to stop the bloodshed. For the past four years they have done nothing but deliberate, procrastinate, and make empty threats. Why? The UN has failed to act because the status quo serves its interests, because powerful nations like China benefit from Sudan's oil wealth, and because the very leaders who control the vote are profiting from the sale of bullets and bombs.