UN-necessary

The Middle East is awash with violence. Africa is mired in poverty, hunger, and war, all while struggling to combat the raging AIDS epidemic. The people of North Korea suffer under the rule of a dictator as murderous and genocidal as Stalin. Human rights abuses are still widely documented in China. You would expect the United Nations to be concentrating its human rights efforts in these areas. But the latest country that has drawn its ire is, in fact, Canada. Last Monday, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a statement telling Canadian parents and schools not to spank their children. How much money was spent, how many meetings were held to debate this vitally important issue?

Meanwhile, in March, the Cuban government sentenced nearly 80 human rights activists, including outspoken poets and journalists, to lengthy terms in prison merely for voicing their opinions. What else, if not this, constitutes a fundamental breach of human rights? And yet, Cuba's position on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights was renewed for another term the very next month. This appalling failure of the committee's mission would perhaps be less surprising if a country like Libya were not its chair, and China, Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia not voting members.

The absurdity does not end there. In 1999, an independent inquiry concluded that the UN was responsible for the failure to halt the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, in which 800,000 people were murdered. The UN mandate for Rwanda was far too weak to have any possibility of stopping or even slowing the genocide. The inquiry also concluded that the lack of political will in the Security Council and among member states was a key reason for the failure of peacekeeping.

Another report, this time by a collection of children's rights groups, blames the UN security council for its failure to enforce its own resolutions in the Congo. Though it has passed 18 of these resolutions, it "has contributed to the lack of protection of civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo by failing to vigorously hold accountable those parties that violate relevant resolutions," according to the report. Many more examples could be given, but the point has been made. The United Nations, well-meaning in its original intent, has proven ineffective in enforcing respect for human rights. In the majority of cases, nothing is done other than the passage of unenforceable declarations. When a real mandate is written, it is often not followed. The political will, the motivation, the drive to rescue oppressed peoples from their rulers is simply absent.

This is why the United States was morally justified in ridding Iraq of Saddam. The arguments against unilateral action -- that it sets a risky precedent, inflames anger against the US, and its cost -- are valid ones, but faced with a timid, indecisive security council, the Iraqi people had no other hope. Had the United States not intervened, would the United Nations have enforced its own resolution about disarming Saddam, which it had failed to enforce over the preceding decade? Would Saddam's brutal repression of his own people have even been on its agenda? Judging by its track record, somehow, I don't think so. Taking action was a bold move, obviously a controversial one, but had the UN had its way, Saddam would still be in charge, and the country would not now be in the process of reconstruction. At least Iraqi mothers still have the right to discipline their children as they see fit.

Ilya Lozovsky is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major.