What? The Morally Bankrupt UN?

According to a coalition of Canadian organizations, the conservative government should be prepared to inform the world whether Canada intends to pull the welcome mat out from under United Nations human rights experts.  Who would disagree?  It is time, and long past time that the current, Conservative-led government take a good, hard look at actually informing the UN that its various human rights commissions are not particularly welcome to drop by and have a chat.

Just as the Government of Canada announced it will no longer support the work of the United Nations World Tourism Office, reacting to its recent appointment of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe as co-
Ambassador for next year, it should also politely remove itself from the list of countries that has extended a rote standing open invitation to UN human rights groups to visit.  The pretense that they are engaged in serious and good work only encourages them.

And they require no encouragement from Canada, since they receive more than ample encouragement from the human-rights-abusing countries that, as standard procedure, are appointed through faux 'elections' to sit on their boards, representing their pious attitudes on human rights as they perceive them, being practised in countries other than theirs. 

The indelible fact that their own lapses in human rights protections and their oppression of their citizens is a reality, is of little evident moment.

So much for trust and credibility of the United Nations, its minions and its countless offshoots, all making pretense to representing the world community in its zeal to reform those countries where human rights are upheld, as opposed to those where oppression, violence and persecution are common, everyday occurrences weighting the lives of their populations with untold misery.

But for people like Alex Neve, Flora MacDonald, Ed Broadbent, Warren Allmand and others, that Ministers of the Crown deigned not to meet with the UN right-to-food rapporteur, Olivier De Schutter, was a disgrace.  The 'open invitation' that most countries extend by default to UN Special Rapporteurs to visit, is interpreted by them as a need for diplomatic courtesy, requiring the government to applaud any assaults on its governing integrity.

Amnesty International Canada and Food Secure Canada, signatories to the letter co-signed by over 100 organizations and addressed to Prime Minister Stephen Harper as an open letter, assailed him, and called on him to apologize for his government's "unprecedented attacks" on envoy Schutter during his late unlamented 11-day mission to investigate Canada's 'dismal record' on food security.

The Prime Minister would never use such plain parochial language as "take a hike", either to UN envoys, or to internal critics, but the rest of us, who take exception to their attitudes, certainly can.