thoughts on the UN taken from my bedtime reading

The public has been made to believe that the UN has a life of its own, apart from the member states that in actuality are its very existence. In the eyes of the voting public this makes the worlds politicians seem less responsible for failing missions.

Then they blame people like the former Secretary General Boutrous-Ghali. We have now labeled him as responsible for our failures to intervene in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Haiti. In Mogadishu Boutrous-Ghali was greeted by a hail of stones, and in Sarajevo crowds spat at him and called him “murderer”. All the while his hands were tied by the presidents of Security Council members such as the U.S. and Russia who were protecting their national interests. And yet, we allowed Boutrous-Ghali to credit himself with blame for failure in Rwanda. Hardly seems fair or accurate. In reality, it is the presidents of member-states that decide which missions the UN undertakes and how much to contribute to the efforts. Failure should be on them.

And still…

Clinton proposed a UN operation in Somalia to “restore hope” and provided troops for the first half of the mission. Soon after its failure, he chastised the UN and suggested they ‘learn when to say no’.

Countries are less than supportive of UN initiatives because they are afraid of the precedent it sets. What is to stop the UN from intervening on my soil? So you keep the UN from actually having any real staying power.

“Peace Missions: pursued on a wing and a prayer (a news report from Washington Post: 1993)

In the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the daily 10 am staff meeting is known as ‘Morning Prayers’. As the peacekeepers gather each day to share the bad news on an alphabet of crises from Angola to the former Yugoslavia, they increasingly find themselves with nothing to offer beyond hopeful words.”

The same article notes that the average time to procure a blue helmet or flak jacket for troops is four months. Is it any wonder I am not interested in a peacekeeping job?

Reading all of this really challenged my thoughts, especially about how the UN works at the mercy of its members. I was quite frustrated before I went to bed, so I wrote the following:

Terrified and

Resigned to live in this place that God may have

Forsaken.

I hung my dreams of world peace up long ago, one night with my

Blue helmet.

They wait there dormant and static, while I wait for words like

Equality and Human Rights to mean something to the

already Powerful.

Funny, though, I woke up the next morning laughing with the realization that I had dreamt I was a peacekeeper in constant frustration.