Imagine Al Capone as the director of the FBI.
Via The Australian:
ZIMBABWE may have left 700,000 of its citizens without accommodation by bulldozing their homes, caused millions more to starve after violent land seizures that destroyed farming and so mismanaged its own economy that it has the world¿s highest inflation. But it has been chosen to head a United Nations body charged with promoting economic progress and environmental protection.
Western countries and human rights organisations were outraged yesterday by the choice of Zimbabwe to chair the UN commission on sustainable development. The British government condemned Zimbabwe’s election as “wholly inconsistent” with the body’s aims.The chair traditionally rotates among regions of the world. It was Africa’s turn this year and the continent chose Zimbabwe as its candidate. “We really think it calls into question the credibility of this organisation to have a representative from a country that has decimated its agriculture, that used to be the breadbasket of Africa and can’t now feed itself,” said Daniel Reif-snyder, the US deputy assistant secretary for environment.
“For Zimbabwe to lead any UN body is preposterous,” said Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, an independent nongovernmental organisation...
Yeah, when I think development I think Zimbabwe! And when I think human rights, the absolute first thing that comes to mind is Sudan!
International politics and the inclusion of states wholly unable to live up to it's lofty and commendable Charter have reduced the UN from the idealistic 1945 vision to a much more realistic (and sad) geobureaucracy. The UN has come to suffer from it's devolution of standards and is heaping more dirt upon it's geopolitical coffin.
More at FP Passport.
4 comments:
Mugabe accused Australia of "financing terror" by funding opposition groups. How delightfully ironic.
Did you see "The Last King of Scotland" (another horrific African dictator)?
Indeed the epitome of irony, eddie.
Adam I haven't seen The Last King though friends tell me Forest Whitaker earned his Oscar for his depiction of Idi Amin.
It was a really great film. I usually tend to hate "Africa through the eyes of idealistic white guys" kind of films--because said character is usually tacked on to make room for a megastar. But this one was an exception---you really needed to be an innocent observer to be slowly drawn into the world of Idi Amin.
I've seen the Barbet Schroeder documentary about Idi Amin as well--Schroeder follows Amin around with a camera in proto-realitytv style. It was so damning that Amin threatened to kill French citizens unless Schroeder made cuts to the film. Even after Schroeder had left Uganda, Amin had some way of getting to see the festival version of the documentary before Schroeder planned to release it.
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