CNN: "The takeover of Somalia's capital by Islamic militias could lead to a regional conflict unless the international community resolves Somalia's 15-year-old civil war, the top U.N. envoy to the country warned Monday.... U.N. officials are concerned that the increased fighting could create a new humanitarian crisis, and the United States fears the country could become a new haven for the al Qaeda terror network."
In the midst of a long-winded diatribe against Secretary General Kofi Annan, Claudia Rosett manages to assert that no reforms have followed in the wake of the oil-for-food scandal. "Last year, the general hope, and Annan's promise, was that the exposure of Oil-for-Food corruption, and a host of other U.N. scandals ... would lead to genuine U.N. reform," writes Rosett in the National Review Online. "The scandals are still with us. But there has been no major reform." No reform? Please.
Damage to the once pristine habitats of the deep oceans by pollution, litter and overfishing is running out of control, the United Nations warned yesterday. In a report that indicates that time is running out to save them, the UN said humankind's exploitation of the the deep seas and oceans was "rapidly passing the point of no return".
Alertnet: "The United Nations launched a drive on Thursday to "disaster-proof" schools to prevent children being crushed in earthquakes and swept away in floods.
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
Air America Radio notes renewed calls for Guantanamo's closure.
CJR Daily discusses the "Elephant in the Newsroom" known as Guantanamo: "A quick Lexis-Nexis search for "Guantanamo" proves just how inadequate newspapers have been to the task of telling this story. Nearly every article that appears is a breaking news story about a new hunger strike, a court battle over forced feeding, or an organization like the UN voicing concern about the detainees."
Coalition for Darfur links to an AP piece describing "thousands of civilian deaths" documented in Darfur.
Joshua Landis writes: "The new UN investigation into Rafiq Al Hariri's murder is expected to indict Syrian leaders."
Paper Chase says that "UN rights experts call on Egypt to preserve independent judiciary."
Given the scale of killings, rape, looting and destruction of villages in Darfur, Sudan the Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations-backed criminal court said today he anticipates the prosecution of a sequence of cases, rather than a single case, of possible war crimes in the conflict between the Khartoum Government, allied militia and rebels.
Crunching numbers provided by the State Department's annual report on voting patterns in the United Nations, Fred Gedrich concludes that General Assembly member states vote against the United States 75% of the time. So doing, he argues that this voting pattern evidences a chronic anti-Americanism at the United Nations. Alas, he fails to impart a rather significant disclaimer to that figure: it does not include resolutions reached by consensus.
The Pittsburgh Tribune Review devotes Sunday editorial space to Mark Malloch Brown's so-called "hissy-fit" last week. Though the irony is probably lost on the Tribune's editorial board, their brief exposition is Malloch Brown's thoughtful critique of US-UN relations made manifest.