"More than 250,000 child soldiers are still participating in armed conflicts around the world and tens of thousands of girls are being sexually exploited by combatants, a senior UN official said.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict, told the UN Security Council: "Since 2003, over 14 million children have been forcibly displaced ... and between 8,000 and 10,000 children are killed or maimed each year by land mines." [More]
Alertnet: "U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Israel on Tuesday to investigate what he termed the "apparently deliberate targeting" by Israeli defense forces of a U.N. observer post in Lebanon. The Israeli air strike killed four U.N. military observers who were part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, U.N. and Lebanese officials said."
As I survey the commentary on the current crisis in Israel and Lebanon from traditionally anti-UN media outlets like Front Page Magazine and the New York Sun, it has become clear that UN critics have a decidedly polarized view of the United Nations' role in armed conflict. According to these critics, anything less than the full support of the military objectives of one party to a conflict is evidence that the United Nations supports the opposing side. So if the Secretary General and his staff do not lend support to the Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon, then they must be Hezbollah sympathizers.
From Media Matters: "During his July 20 interview with U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly repeatedly lashed out at the U.N., putting Bolton in the position of defending the U.N. and its Security Council. O'Reilly called Security Council actions "a joke," accused the U.N. of not being "able to do anything," and declared that "I just think the whole place [the U.N.] is a rat's nest." In response, Bolton -- who, before being appointed ambassador to the U.N., had made comments that were harshly critical of the organization -- criticized some U.N. actions but defended many others, attempting to explain what was "worthwhile" about U.S. involvement with the U.N."
"Every day 1,200 people, half of them children, are killed in the conflict-hit Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) because of violence, disease and malnutrition, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a report issued today.
The report, Child Alert: DRC, also states that more children under age five die each year in the African country than in China -- a country with 23 times the population. It draws attention to the appalling fact that the total countrywide death toll every six months is similar to that for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more than 230,000 people in 12 countries." [More]
"With Kofi Annan's term due to expire at year's end, the U.N. Security Council is starting the search for a new secretary general. Asian nations insist it's time for someone from their region to hold the post." [Audio link from NPR]
"The United Nations is considering dispatching envoys to Syria and Iran as part of a diplomatic push to end fighting between Israel and Hizbollah, Western diplomats said on Monday.