By A. Barton Hinkle
10/21/2005

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Below is an excerpt from a column from The Richmond Times Dispatch:

Let's review some of the latest UN-related developments.

"Report Finds UN Isn't Moving to End Sex Abuse by Peacekeepers," reported The New York Times earlier this week. The report from Refugees International finds "a 'boys will be boys' attitude in peacekeeping missions [that] breeds tolerance for exploiting and abusing local women."

Such exploitation is so widespread it has generated the phrase "one-dollar UN girls" -- a dollar often being the going rate for sex with barely pubescent girls in Congo, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, and elsewhere. (Sometimes the going rate is a soft drink or some milk. Sometimes there is no going rate, because there is not even a pretense of consent.) The Refugees International document follows another report earlier this year by Prince Zeid Raad al-Hussein, Jordan's ambassador to the UN. Al-Hussein said the UN reaction to his findings in March was "utter silence."

...

In Sudan, the death toll from the continuing genocide climbs toward 1 million -- more than the 800,000 who died in the Rwandan bloodshed a decade ago, in which 100 times as many people died as in the subsequent slaughter in Srebenica that was the worst European massacre since WWII.

...

NONE OF this should be read as suggesting that the UN does not take the abuse of human rights seriously, of course. It does. There is even a formal procedure for registering complaints of human- rights abuses under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The country with the most complaints registered against it under the Covenant (116) is Canada. Such seriousness about human rights is evident also on the UN Human Rights Commission, whose members include such champions of individual liberty and conscience as Libya, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Syria, and -- yes - - Sudan.