U.N. Misogyny Central

The United Nations started off with good intention back in 1945. The first Secretary-General was the aptly named Trygve Lie, a black Norwegian, and the organisation has not looked back since it first sat on that slippery slope to slide down into Perdition.  It has gone far, fast. And it is time, perhaps for it to be wound up. The Donald has already started to apply the financial brakes but I fear it is far too late. Our Oz Furrin Minister continues as her predecessors have since the beginning to stick a hose-pipe of Oz taxpayers' monies into the UN coffers.

There was much talk of the UN, Oz and furrin aid in the bars today. Most agreed that Kofi Annan and Ban Ki Moon were laughing at us.

Oz as a founding member of the UN, has been an active participant in UN institutions for 70 years.  Australia held the first Presidency of the Security Council in 1946 and provided the first military observers under UN auspices a year later, to Indonesia during the independence struggle.

Oz (Australia, for those not so familiar) is the twelfth largest financial contributor to the UN. Australia contributed more than US$87 million in the years 2004 to 2006, with a regular budget of US$22.9 million, peacekeeping costs of approximately US$60 million, and over US$4 million contribution to International Tribunals. 

It does not look so much for a wealthy spot like Oz, but that is just the tip of an iceberg. There are all the 'Agencies' too, into which far more is poured.

Australia’s core funding to United Nations development agencies supports the United Nations’ efforts to progress the Millennium Development Goals. Australia’s official development assistance delivered through UN agencies in 2013-14 was more than $601 million; with $94.4 million going to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and $109.2 going to the United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Australia’s contribution to the UNDP created 6.47 million jobs of which over half were for women, provided 'enhanced social protection' - whatever that means - in 72 countries, delivered life-saving anti-retroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS to one in seven of all people being treated worldwide, assisted electoral work in 68 countries, improving access to justice and legal aid in 117 countries, and assisting 36 countries fulfil their human rights. 

Our contribution to UNICEF delivered feeding programs to over 2.4 million children suffering acute malnutrition, vaccinated 35.9 million children for measles, provided 24.3 million people with access to clean drinking water, gave 7.4 million people access to toilets, and provided safe learning spaces and psychological support to 2.5 million children in emergency situations. 

A point to note is that the rulers of the countries to which such assistance flows do not care a jot. Most of the money does not reach the people but go to 'employing' others to appear to help. And into fat-cat pockets. The UN Lifestyle has to be paid for by someone. Some of the recipient nations are quite able to fund huge militaries for themselves - far bigger than Oz's - and even Space programs. Clean water for their people? Not their priority. 

Our Government hands money out like clean water and even takes direction from pop-celebrities, with Minister Bishop spending like a lush in a seedy bar in which the men won't shout her.

All very good as far as a 'compassionate' but gullible nation, administered by political half-wits  goes. 

Right from the start Oz has tried 'Peace-keeping' and helping folk as best they could, and we still occasionally provide such forces.  

Usually it is part of a much larger coalition as we are small in defence forces.  Other countries send 'peace-keepers' too. The UN pays - from our monies - 'Peace-keeper' forces, usually seconded from African and South American armies. The UN picks up their 'per diem' pay rates which are usually far above what they get paid in their own countries.  We shall come to their effectivness in a moment.

Australia also supports the World Health Organisation, International Atomic Energy Agency, International Labour Organization, United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime and United Nations Environment Programme 

and UN Women.

There is an emphasis on Women. 

Of course.

And on Climate.

Of course.

Our Foreign Minister Julie Bishop loves to take money from the Oz taxpayer and give it away. We rarely if ever get any detail as to its effect. For instance:

Climate change: Julie Bishop announces Australia's $200 million contribution to UN Green Climate Fund

The Federal Government has announced it will contribute $200 million to an international fund designed to help developing nations tackle climate change.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced the funding at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru.

 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-10/bishop-200-million-to-green-climate-fund-at-un-climate-summit/5956676

The money, which will be paid over four years from Australia's aid program, will go to the UN's Green Climate Fund (GCF), which aims to fund projects in poorer countries.

"Our pledge to the Green Climate Fund will facilitate private sector-led economic growth in our region ... with a particular focus on investment, infrastructure, energy, forestry and emissions reductions," Ms Bishop told the conference.

"I welcome the fact that participating countries have delivered on undertakings to capitalise the Green Climate fund and with Australia's contribution have reached a significant total in excess of $10 billion to date.

Just a snippet there. I wonder if some went to paying for the $32,000 dress she wore recently at a 'Charity Ball'. I hope it kept her micro-climate just so. An average working chap in Oz would have to work 6 months to earn that much.  Some wanted to talk about this great UN Climate scam but there were other matters spoken about too.

But to the ladies.  The ladies do like to dress up. And the ladies have recently been taking to the streets about how they are treated. They don't like 'sexual' innuendo, 'offence', groping, raping etc. They don't like domestic violence.  Heck. Who disagrees? The first two are maybe pushing their luck a bit, calling for a getting heads rolling over trivia, but the more serious stuff is, well, serious.

But when it comes to the Oz taxpayer funding it.... !!

Mary Wakefield was sitting calmly, sipping a fine wine while letting loose.

‘Peacekeepers’ abuse the girls in their care, yet no one is ever punished

Victims are silenced and then sidelined, often sacked. And the #MeToo gang doesn’t seem to care

Last week, women working for the UN became the latest to join the #MeToo gang, and for all the eye-rolling silliness of some of #MeToo, I was pleased. The UN is in many ways a seedy closed shop. 

It spends zillions promoting gender equality worldwide but in practice it’s a very different story. 

The women of the UN describe a culture of abuse (including rape) after which victims are silenced and then sidelined, often sacked.

 https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/01/peacekeepers-abuse-the-girls-in-their-care-yet-no-one-is-ever-punished/

I’m delighted they spoke out, but what puzzles me is why it stopped there. On Saturday, thousands marched around New York City to draw attention to the unjust treatment of women. 

So why didn’t those ladies of the UN — why didn’t all the thousands of righteous feminists on Manhattan Island — descend on the UN HQ tower in Turtle Bay to protest, not at their own treatment but at the continuing abuse of the most vulnerable girls in the world at the hands of UN ‘peacekeepers’?

It first occurred to me in 2008 — long after I should have known better — that the UN might not always be a force for purest good. I was visiting Liberia as it pulled itself back together post-war, and for a few days anyone in a blue beret seemed to me a hero. 

I remember the line of white Toyotas in the car park of Monrovia’s most popular seafront café. I remember the officers of the UN sitting still as spiders in the heat, watching young Liberian girls doing cartwheels. On a hill in the city where hucksters sold ‘tribal’ masks, I saw a fat man get out of a UN Land Cruiser, take a very young Liberian girl by the hand and lead her down a side street.

Home schooling? I was keen not to be unfair. 

It was only after I got home that I read a Save the Children report into the seamy side of the aid effort in Liberia and Sierra Leone and found out how common it was for UN officials (and other NGO workers) to insist girls ‘paid’ for help by putting out. 

The Liberian girls, when questioned by Save the Children, had said they’d assumed that sex for food was the official deal. Their parents hadn’t complained, because food was in short supply.

The scandal in Liberia wasn’t an anomaly; it was a template. In Kosovo, underage girls and boys were kidnapped and tortured for the entertainment of UN workers. In 2014, French troops in the Central African Republic set up a rape-for-food initiative. Last year an Associated Press investigation discovered that 100 Sri Lankan UN peacekeepers had run a child-sex ring in Haiti for a decade. 

No one was sacked, of course.

In the past 12 years there have been almost 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by UN personnel.

Those sainted secretary-generals, first Kofi Annan then Ban Ki-moon, both promised ‘sweeping’ reforms but nothing fundamental changed because no system was put in place to make sure that perpetrators were punished. They still get off scot-free.

In 2016, Anders Kompass, a UN director who’d exposed the horrors in the CAR, and been suspended for his pains, resigned. He said: ‘The complete impunity for those who have been found to have, in various degrees, abused their authority, together with the unwillingness of the hierarchy to express any regrets for the way they acted towards me, sadly confirms that lack of accountability is entrenched in the United Nations.’

All those women marching and shouting last Saturday: ‘Trump must go! Women against Trump!’ It’s far from clear to me that Trump has been worse for women worldwide than Kofi or Ban Ki. Any decent secretary–general should, in response to mass accusation of child rape, have changed the whole doggone set-up. 

Instead they just talk a good game and carry on.

Here, just a few months before the Guardian investigation, is Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN undersecretary–general for gender equality and empowerment of women, with a great example of UN hot air: ‘We need to have all women empowered to speak, their rights and bodies respected, and behaviour established and entrenched as normal that lets no one off the hook. No more impunity.’

I like to set this beside a statement from Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, guardian of the guardians: ‘The UN keeps saying their policy is “zero tolerance” yet what we see from the top down is the opposite: a neglect of the women and children who are abused by peacekeepers and a policy of giving impunity to the abusers.’

Why don’t our new outspoken feminists take on the UN? 

Why is it so oddly impossible to imagine it happening? 

Perhaps because #MeToo is now a clique with codes and rules. There are official away-day outfits (pussy hats) and sanctioned hate figures like Harvey and the Donald. Maybe guys who win Nobel Prizes for peace are simply not on the #MeToo hit list. But just think of the (justified) outrage if this sort of eye-watering abuse was discovered to be currently going on in the Catholic church, or in the Republican party.

Empire is so taboo these days that some of the most right-on college kids can’t even discuss it. Oxford students have threatened to boycott a course which weighs the good and bad in colonialism. The irony is that the UN presides over atrocities that quite match the most gruesome acts of imperialism and happen for the same reason. Good guys and bad guys are created by the culture they inhabit. If you give untrained men too much power over young girls; if you remove accountability and transparency and if none of the world’s marching activists seem to care, it won’t end well.

I have some sympathy for the kind-hearted who would give help to the poor, but how that help is provided matters. When it is provided at all.

The UN is a disastrous organisation. Started well: deteriorated fast: plumbed the depths of corruption, back-handers, lining the pockets and providing influential positions to the henchmen of dictators and nations that are the antithesis of peaceful cooperation.

Time it was shut down.

It is an affront to Oz folk that their monies are coerced from their pay packets and disbursed by sychophants to the corrupt UN.

Have a long cold drink.

Pax