[ April 24, 2024 ]
This is so long overdue. It took a deadly pandemic ……
Sixty years ago democracies, both nascent and well established, comprised the majority of the founding nations of the UN. The members of the General Assembly were strategically aligned primarily along what would become the lines of the Cold War. America was confident that the UN would be an organization which would work in tandem with American national interests in promoting the welfare of humankind and the basic rights of every human spirit. How wrong we were. In numerous polls, a majority of respondents expressed doubts about the effectiveness of the United Nations and embraced scenarios under which the organization would be “scrapped altogether.”
UN’s Irrelevance in Corona Crisis Invites a Rethink of the World Body
Story continues below advertisementBy Benny Avni, Special to the Sun | April 9, 2020
“If there was no United Nations we’d have to invent one” is an overused Turtle Bay cliche worth examining now, as the UN is MIA in the face of the worst global crisis since its founding 75 years ago.
As a pandemic threatens the globe with loss of life on a biblical scale and economic collapse, a behemoth that fancies itself as “the world body” is nowhere to be seen.
Start with the Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, who immediately sprang to “action,” vaingloriously calling for a global ceasefire to enable the world to focus on the pandemic. No major combatant heeded his call. So, next, he asked member states to fund a $2 billion UN-based initiative for a global humanitarian response. That fund is yet to materialize.
The Security Council, the UN’s most prestigious body charged with ensuring global peace and security, is also yet to respond. It failed to unite behind Mr. Guterres’ global ceasefire and couldn’t even muster a generic statement on the pandemic: China opposes any reference to the origin of an outbreak that America insists calling the “Wuhan virus.”
Instead, pre-coronavirus pet issues dominate the UN.
This week Mr. Guterres issued a policy brief on the impact of Covid-19 on women and girls — even as the New York Times reported Wednesday that in this city the virus “is killing men at twice the rate of women.” More men than women are infected and die globally, as well, but Mr. Guterres has been promoting women’s issues ever since his 2016 election bucked a global clamor for a woman UN chief.
Other specialized bodies also use the virus to promote pet issues. UNICEF calls to protect children, even as covid-19 hardest hit are the elderly. UNRWA pleads for funds to help Gazans face the virus, although there have only been a handful of corona cases in the Strip.
Then there’s the World Health Organization — the UN body that, if it worked well, would be the global clearinghouse for all things corona. Instead, WHO has hindered action, contributed to the spread, and, in the process, raised the ire of America, its top funder.
WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has, justly, drawn most of the criticism over initially denying Covid-19 was pandemic and stating no human to human transmission was possible.
Mr. Tedros, an Ethiopian microbiologist and expert in respect of malaria, is more a symptom than the disease. This week he warned critics against mixing politics and health issues. Yet, as amply demonstrated by Mr. Tedros successful China-backed 2017 run to head the health organization, WHO is all about politics. He was elected despite glaring shortcomings.
Starting his career as a Communist rebel against the government, Mr. Tedros’ political career soared, eventually making him foreign minister. Earlier, as health minister, he whitewashed findings of an Ethiopian cholera outbreak. Yet, he became the first non-medical doctor to head WHO, where, as one of his first acts, he named a buddy, the notorious Robert Mugabe, as “goodwill ambassador.”
No wonder cronyism, rather than health considerations, marked WHO’s response to the current global pandemic. Mr. Tedros’ bowed to Communist China’s incomplete contamination reporting, praised Beijing’s health authorities’ response, and condemned travel bans.
During a Wednesday press conference, Mr. Tedros complained about the government and people of Taiwan that, he said, are attempting to “discredit” him. Huh? Taiwan was almost alone issuing early warnings — including in a letter to WHO — about the novel virus’ potential devastation. Mr. Tedros and his lieutenants brazenly dismissed the warnings.
“Birds don’t know borders,” Taiwanese officials told me years ago, when SARS, or avian flu, devastated east Asia. That argument symbolized democratic (and medically-advanced) Taiwan’s campaign for WHO membership. But Beijing, which considers Taiwan a runaway province, vehemently fights against even a symbolic Taiwanese participation in UN-affiliated bodies.
The UN Charter’s first words, “we the peoples,” is a riff off its America’s constitution. Now — in President Trump’s words — it’s gradually becoming “China-centric.” Ever so symbolically, Turtle Bay’s iconic halls have all but emptied out in March due to social distancing, just as China assumed the rotating presidency of the Security Council.
The UN’s sprawling, uncontrollable, and overly politicized bureaucracy is paralyzed facing a global crisis of the kind it was founded to fight. That invites a rethinking of the whole project.
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18 Comments
4 years ago
We need to get out of the UN. De fund it, eject all members from our country and demolish the headquarters in new York. Never, never, never heed anything that the UN has to say.
4 years ago
Reply to
idahobob
Don’t demolish the buildings.
Retrofit them as a Veterans Center and housing for Veterans and their Dependents.
4 years ago
The Crimes of Tedros Adhanom
WHO’s Tedros Adhanom Should be put on Trial for Crimes Against Humanity
https://www.roughestimate.org/roughestimate/the-crimes-of-tedros-adhanom
4 years ago
WHO: The Wuhan Health Organization
4 years ago
Reply to
TD
Trump should just tell China:
1.)if North Korea doesn’t denuke in 6 months, – He will recognize Taiwan like he did Jerusalem.
2.)He will tell the people of Hong Kong to hold a referendum on #HEXIT
3.)Recognize Tibet
4.)He will get Boris Johnson and the rest of NATO to do the same.
By the time he’s done, China won’t have a country left.
4 years ago
Reply to
TD
Interesting points you raised. I think it is clear that war with China and its expansionist ambitions is unavoidable. The PLA need to be eradicated and replaced with true democracy.
Trump is definitely not the man for the fight. He is a showman who talks tough but he’s been antiwar for a long time. You need a leader with brass balls who doesn’t shy away from battle and conflict.
You’d need to go after the Dem party as well, because there are many traitors who will try to oppose you. The main reason we’re not wiping out our enemy Islam today is because of those treasonous individuals that pretend to be patriotic while they support Iran, Hamas and other terrible groups.
4 years ago
Reply to
Ban Islam
“You need a leader with brass balls who doesn’t shy away from battle and conflict.” ? ? ?
China will be defeated by castrating them Economically . . .
Trump had already begun the process, which is likely why the Wuhan Virus was released on the world. The Communists & their Globalist Allies took this opportunity to stop the incredible rising US Economy & the pending collapse of the EU. This was their last hope . . . the UN & WHO played right along . . . long past time they were defunded and allowed to die!
4 years ago
Reply to
Charles Martell III
Every Citizen can hasten the Economic Castration by addopting an A-B-C strategy.
Anywhere
But
China
for all purchases going forward.
Everything from cheap disposables up to High End Electronics and Luxury Automobiles.
When Boardrooms start seeing inventory form China piling up in warehouses they will instruct Buyers to seek elsewhere for comparable goods.
4 years ago
Reply to
Charles Martell III
They have needed to be gone for a long time the sooner the better .
4 years ago
The UN is largely a leisure and travel club for elite cronies of government heads so they can get all expenses paid living in Manhattan to shop and eat, free from legal liability, plus expenses paid travel to attractive resorts around the world. All with no requirements to do anything.
4 years ago
Reply to
Tatanka
The executives live and travel in luxury that the Royals would be envious of, while the front line peace keeper troops are treated like s–t.
4 years ago
yep, the un is past its best before date
4 years ago
The UN quickly became useless shortly after its formation with the majority of countries just being pawns of the Soviet Union. It is a worthless organization that appoints the worst Human rights abusers to its Human Rights Council, such as Saudi Arabia and China. It spends most of its time issuing motions against Israel while the corrupt Islamic countries always get a free pass.
4 years ago
Why the US continues to be the largest funder of the UN defies all reason. All it has accomplished is to allow totalitarian states (Communist China) to gain political leverage and influence that we used to prevent through war.
Remember the Nazis? Modern Germans are well behaved puppies that get along with their neighbors. You can thank the Russian Army and allied carpet bombing, not the UN.
Today, China, not Russia, is the greatest threat to the health and safety of mankind since the Nazis. They are a totalitarian state and a member of the nuclear triad that enforces censorship and bans religion. Its Communist Party rules with an iron fist over 1.5 billion citizens and at least 200 million foreigners under its political sphere. None of these people have any privacy, civil rights, free speech, freedom of religion, or due process.
We lost over 400,000 Americans fighting the Nazis, liberating Europe and the concentration camps. Going to war with China is not the answer and nobody wants that but why are we OK doing massive business with a Chinese regime that puts Muslims in prison, and supports No Korea’s concentration camps for political prisoners.
If this is what we’ve become, we are no better then them.
It’s time to declare economic war on China. We need to move our supply chain elsewhere (India, Central and S America), and bring our critical manufacturing home including pharmaceuticals.
4 years ago
Evict the UN out of that nice building and re-purpose it into the Trump Presidential Library.
4 years ago
Now is a very good time to Cut Funding to ~all~ UN Chartered NGOs.
In addition, it’s a good time to get the UN out of the USA.
Kick them out and turn the UN Headquarters into a Veterans Service Center and housing for Veterans and their Dependents.
4 years ago
Reply to
Public_Citizen
Any thing we can do for the Vets should be done that’s for sure excellent idea .
4 years ago
Reply to
Bill Kay
We can put in a Hospital, Long Term Care Facilities, and all levels of Assisted Living in one facility that would turn what is currently a liability into a place the Nation and its Citizens can be proud of.
All the rest of the facility can be remodeled into regular apartments/townhouses for able bodied Veterans and their Dependents and Survivors.
