Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

Catez Stevens, one of our Homespun Bloggers, is in New Zealand. The strength of the blogosphere in general and our diverse group in particular shows through with the story of The Children of Darfur which you’ve probably not seen before.

Darfur has certainly fallen off the radar screen, hasn’t it?

The UN has defenders who feel like they have the intellectual horsepower to take Roger L. Simon to task for writing things about the Oil for Food scandal.

Here are the topics they say Simon should be covering instead. Each is a link on their site, and the text immediately below it is a quote from the text of that site:

Tackling the threat of transnational organized crime
A major U.N. conference began here Monday urging the international community to tighten the noose around organised crime syndicates and terrorism networks by combatting them together.

Maybe they can start by looking into the Secretariat first.

Shipping supplies to millions of Iraqi schoolchildren
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) shipped 5,612,257 student kits, 201,416 cartons of chalk, and 5,106,885 school bags for primary and intermediate-level schoolchildren in Iraq from the start of the Iraq War in 2003 through November 2004

I think Smash did better than that on his own.

Controlling the Marburg virus
Medical teams trying to stamp out the worst recorded incidence of Marburg virus in Angola are beginning to get the deadly outbreak under control as cooperation from stricken communities improves, the U.N. health agency said Saturday.

What isn’t said is that the UN provides only oversight, and no hands-on support.

Building thousands of homes for tsunami victims
UNDP in cooperation with UN-Habitat will spend $36,1 million to build 9,000 houses for Aceh tsunami survivors. UNDP will contribute $10 million to the joint fund. To start the program, UNDP has launched another program to sort out tsunami garbage, to find materials that can be used for the housing construction.

Sounds pretty stingy to me.

Partnering with the private sector to meet humanitarian needs
UN humanitarian officials call on international community to learn from tsunami

Ahhh…. Let’s get together and talk about how other people should be doing more.

Reducing child mortality rates
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reduced child mortality significantly over the past decade and has expanded its mandate to cover protecting youngsters from exploitation, the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the consequences of extreme poverty, outgoing Executive Director Carol Bellamy said today.

Nothing like patting yourself on the back as you leave your golden office suite, is there? No mention of USAID or Rotary International as being key players in all this.

Rehabilitating Iraq’s marshlands
The Ministry of Water Resources is coordinating the work of numerous non-governmental organisations, U.N. agencies and others, with financial support from Canada, Italy, Japan and the United States.

Is that the same Iraq where the UN didn’t want us to go, and from whence they departed quite hastily? I wonder when they found the time to restore the marshes?

Eradicating polio
Local health departments, working with UN agencies, have run an aggressive media campaign for every household in the country to have their children under the age of five immunised.

Nothing like repeating the topic above. Same response.

Rebuilding lives in Afghanistan
More than 3.5 million Afghans have returned to their homeland since the end of 2001, when the Bonn Agreement set Afghanistan on the long and bumpy road to political stability and socio-economic development. UNHCR has been part of that process since its beginning, with staff and offices all around Afghanistan to assist the millions displaced by the decades of strife and war.

The Bonn Agreement? After the US eliminated the Taliban, the UN began discussion on The Creation of an International Commission of Experts to study how to deal with refugees returning. Most probably made it back before the commission was even formed.

Fighting the global malaria epidemic
United Nations Foundation Challenges Donors To Help Raise $500,000 for Malaria Efforts in Africa

This is certainly what the UN does best–issue challenges for fundraising.

Curbing the world’s most hazardous pollutants
As part of a United Nations-backed effort to rid the planet of some of the worst pollutants tied to cancer, birth defects and immune system damage, 800 government officials and observers from 130 countries will gather next week in Uruguay for the first meeting of a treaty banning the world’s most dangerous pesticides and chemicals.

Perhaps I was a bit hasty in that last response. THIS is really what the UN does best–call a meeting.

Improving global disaster and emergency response
Multi-Partner Conference Explores Ways to Engage Private Sector in Coordinated Response to Disasters; President Clinton Addresses Group

Yet another conference. This one will solve all the World’s problems because they invited Bill Clinton.

Building a sustainable future
UN-backed ecological report warns of potential new diseases and ‘dead zones’

Yessiree! We have a report!

Realistically, I can endorse the work of the World Health Organization as a force in eliminating and preventing disease–when the Secretary General allows them to do real work. Most of their money and all of their drugs come from–THE EVIL WEST!

But if that is the best they can do to defend the UN, I’d say they’ve pretty much shown that organization is indefensible.