Yearly Archives: 2005

A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary

Opinio Juris: “U.S. Secretary of State Rice has made a point of publicly thanking foreign countries for their contributions to the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Here is an excerpt from her news conference: “The United Nations has mobilized their disaster experts. I want to thank Secretary General Kofi Annan for that. Their people are sitting with our people in Washington to plan out UN support.”

Chez Nadezhda: “Brian Ulrich makes a very good point in a post at Liberals Against Terrorism about the urban myths that the rest of the world has given the US the cold shoulder. People who should know better are simply making stuff up! The rest of the world is in fact horrified, and offers of official assistance are coming from all over — as well as charitable contributions. And then there’s everybody’s favorite whipping-boy, the UN, which has of course offered help — and they actually know a lot about how to deliver humanitarian assistance in the wake of disasters.”

Chrenkoff: Good News from Afghanistan, part 16 – Ahead of winter, the United Nations is starting food distribution: “The United Nations announced launching of food distribution among half a million poor Afghans ahead of the winter season.”

Coalition for Darfur: “From Amnesty International and others: “Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam International call on a small number of “spoiler” countries to stop holding the UN World Summit hostage over crucial measures on human rights, security, genocide and poverty reduction. These governments have thrown negotiations on the final outcome text into crisis just days away from the biggest meeting of world leaders in history, September 14-16 in New York.”

Democracy Arsenal (David Shorr): “I encourage readers to check out the Stanley Foundation’s web pages on UN reform; we have been tracking these issues ever since Kofi Annan launched the current push for reform in late 2003.”

GraBlog: “The coverage about Hurricane Katrina and the disastrous response – or to say better – initial lack of it and slow start stirred up even conservative politicians and media [...] According to many people involved, like New Orleans Major Ray Nagin, the US government is moving far too slow, but a long list of countries all over the world, even Cuba, which has not the best relations to the US, offered help, countries like Sri Lanka, Jamaica and Afghanistan(!), which are not among the well-off themselves, offered help, immediate neighbors like Canada and Mexico as well as the United Nations and Europe, OAS and WHO, China, Japan, India and South Korea are offering all kinds of help.” READ MORE