Taking Exception to United Nations' Failures

The promise inherent in the creation of the United Nations from the League of Nations which had not resulted in the kind of international cohesion of member-nations upholding the standards of universal human rights and a collective move toward encouraging world peace, seemed at one time closer to its inception than at present, to hold promise as the world's unified Chamber of Good and Justice. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the staunch pledges to uphold standards of decency, equality and defence against outbreaks of war, gave comfort, but produced too few accomplished results.

Peacekeeping forces over the decades offered a band-aid solution to warring neighbours whose predations upon one another warranted United Nations attention, led to the stationing of various-named UN forces with titles such as the United Nations Emergency Force, United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, United Nations Disengagement Observer Forces, United Nations Operation in Somalia, Unified Task Force, United Nations Protection Force, United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda, to name but a few.

The promise inherent in their being situated in places of conflict, as solutions to conflict merely by their presence as blue-helmeted peacekeepers representing the world body's pledge to promote peace and forestall war, was supposed to result in a cessation of conflict. But it rarely did. And the peacekeeping forces of the UN, whose presence was meant to pacify, were given no means and had no orders to intervene in conflicts to physically halt those conflicts.

When conflict broke out, despite the presence of the peacekeeping forces with their prestigiously yet fraudulently blue berets recognizable the world over, those blue berets knew enough to swiftly withdraw and look on helplessly as human beings indulged in what they've always done best; slaughtering one another on the barest of pretexts relating to sovereignty and national survival in pursuit of enlarging geographic territory and resources.

The various committees held in such high esteem, struck by the United Nations to further the interests of respect for human rights were too readily corrupted by the very countries whose own records were dismally brutal sitting in judgement of their counterparts who made every effort to ensure equality provisions among their populations. When such an organization is overtaken by a dry rot of hypocrisy and corruption the question begs itself: why respect its presence? Why become a part of it?

Bodies purporting to represent the highest achievement of human endeavours in maintaining justice, decency and assuring respect, integrity and security for all those reliant on those standards to be upheld, are eventually identified as hollow shells when they continue to fail at their own self-directed missions. Canada, a country whose current government clearly identifies sham from the authentic, has made it clear it sheds no tears in being bypassed for a seat on the revolving Security Council.

Now, for the first time in its history, another country which was in fact unanimously elected to the Security Council, has chosen in high dudgeon at the very failures in judgement and justice that it has itself been part of in the past, to spurn that seat. Saudi Arabia stands on its very own standard of principle; its ox has been gored, when it hasn't in the past, minded others' oxes being gored. That the UN has failed to produce any meaningful direction to halt the killing in Syria has offended the Saudis.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the Gulf States are swimming in treasury from oil extraction. They have purchased for their militaries the very latest technologies in armaments that money can obtain. They squandered the opportunity to move in with a well-provisioned collective force to defuse a brutal civil war in the expectation that Western sources would pick up their responsibility in the region. Then take umbrage that The UN, the U.S., NATO will not defy the Security Council votes of China and Russia siding with their arch-enemy Iran.

Canada has taken steps to bypass the corruption of UN agencies in various ways. Reacting to the incompetence of the UNRWA's recognized connection to Gazan terrorists it chose to withdraw its funding from the Agency and give food aid directly to Palestinians through the Palestinian Authority; exchanging one grossly corrupt agency for another just slightly less corrupt, to filter funding through to those requiring it.

In the matter of boycotting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka on the principle of abhorring the "reported disappearances, and allegations of extra judicial killings. It is clear that the Sri Lankan government has failed to uphold the Commonwealth's core values, which are cherished by Canadians", the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has placed its actions directly in reflection of its principles.

And so with the United Nations, where Prime Minister Stephen Harper has seen fit to meet with useful organizations, both involved in trade and in furthering the human rights of the most vulnerable in society while visiting New York, preferring to bypass the opportunity to address the General Assembly of the United Nations, as a pro forma salute to its grand majesty of a world body whose purpose has been perverted and defamed by its very own failings.