"Did you see the speech? Rather silly wasn’t it. A bit of a ramble, often incoherent, and at the end of it I was asking myself several questions. Why did I waste my time listening to this man again? What exactly is the point of him? How did he ever become leader in the first place? What will it really take to get rid of him?
I am talking about Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary General. As the Middle East and North Africa faces seismic changes - not to mention, as I write this, unbelievable violence and carnage in Libya - the man we should be looking to for leadership and solutions has again proved to be an irrelevance. If you think that’s harsh, you should read a report from the UN’s own internal audit office which recently warned that his leadership was “drifting into irrelevance.”
Let’s take a quick look at Ban Ki-moon’s recent work. As Tunisia fell, he had absolutely nothing to say. When Egypt fell, he had absolutely nothing to say. When Muammar Gaddafi sent fighter jets to bomb his own people, and fly in death squads from North Africa to continue his murderous reign, what did Ban Ki-moon (and by definition the UN) do? Erm, nothing.
Well, actually, to be fair to him, on Monday he did at least call Gaddafi, the guy he had been cozying up to at the G8 leaders’ summit last March.
Hours later, Gaddafi appeared live on television vowing to do a Tiananmen Square on his own people.
Good work, fella.
While Libyans have been begging the outside world to come and rescue them – or at least put in a no-fly zone to stop them being bombed – Ban Ki-moon has talked about holding a security council meeting. No such meeting has happened. It took him four days to even string together a vaguely worded statement condemning Gaddafi’s actions.
On Thursday 24 February, as massive global effort was underway to evacuate foreign citizens from Libya, the
- UN boss vowed “to monitor the situation closely.”
Let’s stop being nice about this. Ban Ki-moon is the eighth UN Secretary General, and surely the very worst of the lot.
Though ironically, he may turn out to be the most significant. Thanks to his failure to resolve or influence any recent world crisis (especially in the Arab world), many nations are rightly now wondering what exactly is the point of the United Nations. Does anyone take any notice what it says anymore?
Having been founded in 1945 as a replacement to the League of Nations, the UN’s official mandate is “facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and
- achievement of world peace.”
It all sounds very fancy, but does it actually mean anything? Israel, as an example, has ignored 47 – yes 47 – of the resolutions the UN has passed against it, yet is still one of the 192 member states. The most recent of these was Resolution 1860 on January 9 2009, calling for “a full cessation of war between Israel and Hamas.”
Like Ban Ki-moon’s call to Gaddafi on Monday, nobody’s listening anymore.
Former US president George Bush completely ignored the UN’s wishes when he stormed into Iraq in 2003. The UN’s only notable contribution to the conflict in Iraq was its oil-for-food programe, which was exposed in 2005 as being
- riddled with corruption.
So where does all this leave Ban Ki-moon? There are two issues here, the UN and him. Little has changed at the UN since 1945. Now would be a good time for member states to look at the set up, structure and authority of the UN – and what can be done to rescue it from its current status. Yes, I know the UN does some great work on the humanitarian front,
- but maybe that is all it should be employed to do.
As for Ban Ki-moon, he will be up for re-election next year. During his last campaign, his official bio claimed he was fluent in both English and French. When he completely failed to answer questions in French during a Paris press conference, he rather embarrassingly told reporters: “My French perhaps could be improved, and I am continuing to work. I have taken French lessons over the last few months. I think that, even if my French isn't perfect, I will continue to study it.”
I suspect he will soon have plenty of time to perfect his French."
via Lucianne.com
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