United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made a surprise visit to Afghanistan today to meet with top officials.

During a four-hour stay in Kabul, the Secretary General met with President Hamid Karzai, with the leader of the Wolesi Jirga (House of the People), Yunus Qanuni, with the military commander of the International Security Assistance Force, General Dan McNeal and with members of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

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The International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors met two weeks ago for budget negotiations, but could not agree to a funding increase for the agency. To make matters worse, donors have not yet delivered over $35 million dollars in promised contributions. That may not seem like a tremendous amount, but the IAEA's total budget is only $379 million.

In a rare move, IAEA Director Mohammed elBaredei appealed directly to the Board of Governors, which is composed of thirty-five IAEA member states, to urge them to consider the consequences of an IAEA budget that provides for zero-growth. A summary of his remarks (which were only made public last week) is below the jump -- and is well worth reading in full.

elBaredei's plea makes me wonder if we are living on borrowed time. Accidents are bound to happen, particularly as more and more countries seek nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuel. But, as he points out, the agency's ability to respond to a Chernobyl style incident is severely diminished by an overstretched budget. Also, some of the important verification work the agency does in places like North Korea and Iran may be called into question by the ageing environmental sampling technology the agency is forced to use. elBaredei even says that the IAEA must outsource some of its lab work, calling into question the whole principal of neutrality that gives the IAEA its credibility.

The board has until September to finalize the budget, so there is a chance that they may reconsider. The alternative -- an IAEA without the resources to counter, say, nuclear smuggling -- is truly frightening.

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

I do not usually get engaged directly in the discussion of the budget. I would like, however, to share some concerns with you. Needless to say, I am distressed that it has not been possible to reach agreement. This does not augur well for the Agency, in terms of either our function or our credibility.

The budget is essentially a political statement. The basic question is: What kind of Agency do you want to have? You can easily have a mediocre Agency. Or you can have an effective and efficient Agency capable of carrying out the functions assigned to it: functions that are crucial to development and security — indeed to survival.

There is no personal gratification involved in the way that my colleagues and I continue to advocate an increase in the budget. Not a single cent of the increase will go to the staff. We get the same remuneration whether we have a zero growth budget, a 5% increase or a 10% increase. But my colleagues and I cannot sit here and tell you that the Agency is able to fulfil its functions if in fact it cannot.

We can do only what you are able to finance. You could finance a less effective Agency and we will tell you what that would mean — less than credible verification assurance, less than the best safety advice, a less than perfect security function, and less than adequate development assistance.

The External Auditor gave us an absolutely clean bill of health. The high level panel of the former United Nations Secretary-General Annan singled out the Agency as "an extraordinary bargain". The United States Office of Management and Budget, which regularly looks at broader aspects of the UN system from a US perspective, has singled out the Agency as providing 100% value for money. But with all this our ability to carry out our essential functions is being chipped away.

The safeguards function is being eroded over time. Today we cannot consistently do environmental sampling analysis ourselves due in part to the unreliability of an instrument that is 28 years old. We have to rely on a very small number of external laboratories. And this puts into question the whole independence of the Agency's verification system. This is a reality.

In the case of safety, our Emergency Response Centre is far from being adequate for what we are supposed to do in fulfilment of the Notification and Assistance Conventions. If an accident were to happen tomorrow, we would be hard pressed to carry out core functions. This is a reality.

In the nuclear security area where every world leader is saying that it is a number one priority, the External Auditor — your External Auditor--has mentioned that we continue to rely for 90% of our security funding on extrabudgetary contributions that are heavily conditioned and highly unpredictable.

In the Department of Nuclear Safety, which we created after Chernobyl, we continue to have 45% of the staff financed by extrabudgetary funds simply because we don’t have sufficient regular budget funds. This means that we have not much say in their selection. The result naturally undermines the concept of geographical distribution embedded in our Statute.

Both the External Auditor and the Internal Auditor have come to the conclusion that we will not be able to continue to be efficient or effective without integrating our information systems and introducing an Agency-wide system for programme support.

You have therefore to make a fundamental choice: is the Agency going to be demand driven or are we going to work on the basis of so-called zero growth? If you tell us in advance that you have a ceiling, and no matter what the priorities are there will not be more money, then so be it. But then we will tell you that we can do programme items one, two and three but not four or five; and that items one, two and three also will be at best reduced. The concept of zero growth runs counter to the whole concept of an Agency that has been increasingly asked to do more, increasingly asked to carry out activities that are critical to development and international peace and security.

We also have the issue of balance: we have to give equal priority to all activities. There is so much humanitarian work that is needed in developing countries. You have to go and visit to understand what is being done in the area of cancer control or food production. We can continue to do as much as we are doing, or we could choose to do much more. In the verification area, however, we have no option at all. If a country comes and asks us for verification, that is an obligation under our Statute; we have to do it and we can’t do it half-heartedly or cut corners. The problem is that verification is very expensive. If a facility is going to cost $17 million in terms of safeguards equipment, I can't find that money through so-called efficiency gains.

Balance does not of course mean dollar for dollar. Balance to me means that we have to give equal priority to all the activities of the Agency, but it does not mean that we have to have exactly the same budget for verification and for development activities because the cost for each one is quite different. If, for example, the Agency moved in the future to verifying new arms control agreements, we might have a very large verification budget. Whether you want to have another system for financing verification, this is something for you to decide. Whether you want to have a look at the whole funding of the Agency, again this is something for you to consider. But what I fear right now is an increasing erosion of the Agency’s ability to perform its functions.

The present discussion is not about half a million dollars, or a million dollars, it's about what kind of Agency you want to have. What kind of programme do you want us to deliver? I understand and appreciate that many of you have financial constraints back home. But every Member State has to determine priorities. You have to differentiate between spending on health, on culture, or on defence. Equally, you have to decide on priorities about how much you want to spend on which international organizations.

Every Member State is asked to contribute to our budget. There are major donors and there are so-called small donors. But all States contribute according to their capacity to pay and therefore assume the same pain.

I have to tell you that the proposed budget is one that does not by any stretch of the imagination meet our basic, essential requirements. It is your decision to make but I need to make the implications clear for you because I do not want in the future to see a clandestine nuclear weapon programme in some place, or a safety ccident in another, that we have failed to pre-empt because we did not take the measures that were needed as we have seen in the case of the weapons programme in Iraq and the case of Chernobyl.

Thank you very much.

There was some good news for the Price of Peace campaign yesterday. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee endorsed S-392, which would increase the amount the United States pays in dues to support UN peacekeeping missions. The United States is assessed at 26% of the UN's peacekeeping budget, but over the years has not paid that amount in full, resulting in the accumulation of significant arrearages. If the legislation is signed into law, it would be a significant boon to UN peacekeeping, which requires additional financial resources to keep up with its ever expanding number of missions.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joe Biden summed up the importance of the legislation rather succintly, "At a time when we are seeking a robust U.N. force in Darfur, and are relying on U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, we should pay our dues in full." Hear! Hear!

A senior official from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Iran has called for increased efforts to prevent HIV and AIDS from becoming an epidemic in the country.

"I am very impressed by Iran's social programme and in particular the country's approach to health issues," said Omar Abdi, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director, on Wednesday.

"Iran's experience in these fields can serve as a useful model for other countries and could be central for increased south-south cooperation on social issues."

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Some welcome non-proliferation news: IAEA inspectors are on the ground in North Korea. Five years ago, you may recall, the DPRK booted all inspectors from their country following allegations by the United States that DPRK had a secret uranium enrichment program in violation of the Agreed Framework. Since then, North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon.

According to news reports, the IAEA team is currently in Pyongyang and will visit the country's main nuclear facility in Yongbyon tomorrow.

Marking the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon roundly denounced torture and called on all countries to ratify the international treaty that bans it.

Ban said, "Let us speak with one voice against the perpetrators of torture, and for all who suffer at their hands...And let us build a better, more humane world for all people everywhere."

The Convention against Torture went into force twenty years ago, yet, as Ban said, "even after two decades, this instrument falls well short of universal ratification."

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I sat in on a panel discussion today at the Carnegie Non-Proliferation Conference centered on Europe's efforts toward building non-proliferation regimes. During his presentation, Martin Briens from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs mentioned one of those rarely reported efforts--the EU, as a standard practice, has included non-proliferation clauses in their trade agreements since 2003, basically requiring a non-proliferation commitment from trading partners. Annalisa Giannella, the EU chief diplomat's non-proliferation representative, outlined this initiative in an interview with Arms Control Today. Apparently the Europeans have 90 such agreements--which can basically be viewed as hair-trigger sanctions and make clear the EUs commitment to non-proliferation.

UPI's William Reilly speculates that Sunday's car bombing that killed six Spanish UN peacekeepers in Lebanon may harbinger future attacks on the UNIFIL. "The question that immediately arises is whether this attack signals a change in Lebanon's unfortunate legacy of car bombs that have been used in a series of assassinations going back to late 2004, targeting politicians critical of Syria's role in Lebanon. In other words, has the United Nations become a target?"

One of the car bombings to which Reilly refers was the February 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Harriri, who was often critical of Syrian influence in Lebanese politics. The assassination led to great public outcry, and the United Nations conducted an investigation into the circumstances of his death. During the investigation, all roads led to Damascus and the Security Council authorized a special tribunal to prosecute Harriri's alleged assassins and conspirators.

The targets of the prosecution may very well be the same people who orchestrated Sunday's deadly car bombing. If that is the case, blue helmets may find themselves increasingly in the terrorists' cross hairs as the tribunal moves a head. Scary.

As part of the Carnegie Conference on Non-Proliferation, Russian Alexia Arbatov from the Carnegie Moscow Center, Neil Crompton from the British Embassy in Washington, and Bruno Tertrais from the Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique sat down with Barbara Slavin from USA Today and Glenn Gessler from the Washington Post to discuss the efforts to persuade Iran to give up its pursuit of nuclear enrichment. Their main differences centered on whether UN sanctions had been effective and whether anything short of the threat of force or a serious hit to the Iranian oil economy will force Iran to stop its program. More in-depth coverage of their presentations after the jump.

Crompton, offering "London's perspective," began by stressing how critical this issue is to his government, saying that no less than the credibility of the NPT and multilateral institutions in general and the stability of the Middle East rests on solving this problem. He made the point that there are three things that we should keep in mind when setting a strategy for Iran.

• Iran desires international credibility and will go to amazing lengths to get it.
• Iran has a pluralistic government and a relatively open society with different power centers. We have an opportunity to create pressure from beneath. He listed a string of constituencies to consider, including President Ahmadinejad, the broader political spectrum (specifically Rafsanjani), the Revolutionary Guard, the clerics, parliament, the street, and the technocrats.
• Iran needs things we have, like technology and investment dollars.

The general UK assessment is that Iran acts according to political, not security, motivations, and that there have been signs in the last few months that sanctions are making a difference. According to Crompton, Security Council Resolution 1737 was a shock to Iran, who thought veto-wielding members Russia and China would protect them. And, economic pressures are beginning to kick in. President Ahmadenijad, who was elected on "bread and butter" issues, is feeling the pressure most acutely because "the street" is suffering from the rise in inflation and high unemployment. These pressures are coming from three directions--general economic mismanagement by the government, increased nervousness felt by foreign companies who are slowing investment, and the Security Council sanctions.

Arbatov, not representing the Russian government but also saying that they wouldn't him in jail for his statements, took a different line, offering the following points.

• Iranian capacity shouldn't be exaggerated or underestimated. We need to rely fully on the IAEA assessment
• Because there are various groups jockeying for power in the Iranian elite, it is futile to try to guess Iranian intentions, and those intentions are likely to change over time.
• A united front by the Perm 5 is of the utmost importance, and watered down sanctions simply illuminate our differences.
• There are three principal goals in this process: 1) restoring the IAEA safeguards, 2) stopping uranium enrichment, and 3) stopping the plutonium program. There is no way to achieve all three. Iran will continue with its program unless we directly threaten force or shut down their oil industry, neither of which we are willing to do. The Iranians see America negotiating with North Korea even though they have already tested a weapon (a point that Tertrais later seconded). Given those truths, we should focus on strengthening the IAEA safeguards.
• We need to treat the Iranian program as an arms conrol issue and realize that we will need to compromise. We need to decide what level of compliance we will accept under IAEA safeguards.
• Given the third and fourth points, the US needs to do more to come to common ground with Russia. U.S. positions on Ukraine and Georgia and the missile shield are not helpful. He also suggested, somewhat strangely in the view of this blogger, that Iran is bolstered by U.S. work to build a missile shield because they view it as a concession that our non-proliferation efforts might not work.

Tertrais offered a brief statement, saying that France is committed to UN sanctions. He suggested that President Chirac never really believed in the power of sanctions and said so publicly but that President Sarkozy does. The only question now is whether to go "broader or deeper." France seems to want to make the resolutions as broad as possible. He also suggested that Iran was motivated by "political and prestige" considerations, not its security needs.

This WSJ Op-Ed, "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons," has been labeled as visionary at least a half dozen times by a half dozen different speakers at the Carnegie Conference on Non-Proliferation. It's worth checking out if for no other reason than to see what those in the know in non-proliferation find authoritative.

An expert-group discussion hosted by United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW) has concluded that the number of male trainers in gender training for security personnel must be increased.

With special attention given to UN peacekeepers, international gender experts representing academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, security forces and the UN have provided useful recommendations and practical tips on training delivery, for example on how to challenge gender stereotypes.

Carmen Moreno, UN-INSTRAW Director, said "Many of the security institutions - military, police, peacekeepers - are dominated by men...Knowing more about how differently men and women experience conflict helps security personnel respond better to gender-based violence and prevent sexual abuse."

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The Carnegie Non-Proliferation Conference, a big deal for proliferation wonks, started this morning in Washington, D.C., with a panel entitled, A World Free of Nuclear Weapons. On the panel, former Senator Sam Nunn, now head of the Nuclear Threat Institute, gave a pessimistic view of our future. He posits that we have to be diligent, effective, and lucky in regard to curbing nuclear proliferation. He says that we were lucky during the Cold War, but, in the future, it will be a much more difficult--with the prospect of many new nuclear powers and even more nuclear enrichers and the increased need for nuclear energy that battling climate change will create.

Nunn suggests that a multilateral approach is absolutely necessary. Given domestic and international political realities, "there are not many unilateral actions we can take." However, the U.S. must also take a "unilateral leadership position on a multilateral response." To Nunn this begins with two immediate actions.

First, ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Second, ask ourselves, why is it necessary, 15 years after the end of the Cold War, for the U.S. and Russia to continue to have thousands of nuclear weapons on a hair trigger? Nunn suggests that we need to look at what we're doing to make that necessary.

Stay tuned for a report on "The Security Council's Iran Challenge." I will be at the Conference and sending back posts today and tomorrow.

Six Spanish peacekeepers in southern Lebanon were killed over the weekend in an apparent car bombing. These deaths are the first peacekeeper fatalities since UNIFIL expanded its operations in southern Lebanon following last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah forces. The culprits are unknown at this point. Hezbollah has condemned the attacks. But Fatah al-Islam--the militant group battling the Lebanese army forces in a refugee camp near Beirut--has previously accused UNIFIL of attacking the camp, so it would seem they are the target of immediate suspicions.

These fatalities highlight the unique force structure of peacekeeping in Lebanon. UNIFIL does not quite resemble other peacekeeping missions, where soldiers from South Asian countries typically make up the bulk of the forces. UNIFIL, out of design, is predominantly European. As a condition of the August 14, 2006 ceasefire agreement, the Israeli government demanded that countries with sophisticated military capacities help fill the security void once Israel withdrew its own soldiers. Sending American troops there was a non-starter, so France, Spain, Italy and other European countries stepped up. The deaths over the weekend are a sad reminder of Europe's commitment to help keep the peace in the second-most volatile country in the Middle East.

A new report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) reports that environmental degradation is among the root causes of decades of conflict in Sudan.

Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP, says the report "has shown clearly that peace and people's livelihoods in Darfur as well as in the rest of Sudan are inextricably linked to the environmental challenge."

"Just as environmental degradation can contribute to the triggering and perpetuation of conflict, the sustainable management of natural resources can provide the basis for long-term stability, sustainable livelihoods, and development."

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As previously posted, the House debated the State, Foreign Ops appropriations bill yesterday. Included after the jump are some pertinent moments from the debate.

During debate on Representative Virginia Foxx's amendment to reduce the appropriation for contributions to international organizations by $203,082,000, which failed by recorded vote 137 to 287:

Ms. FOXX. The purpose of my amendment is twofold. First, it would help bring accountability to organizations that have demonstrated limited effectiveness. Second, this amendment would help control the out-of-control Federal deficit...

I wonder what our constituents would think if they knew they were being forced to pay millions for perpetual, never-ending funding increases for organizations such as the International Bureau for Weights and Measures, the International Coffee Association, the International Copper Study Group, the International Hydrographic Organization, the International Lead and Zinc Study Group, the International Rubber Study Group, and the World Organization for Animal Health.

Given the tremendous amount of funding contained in the bill for the United Nations, I am particularly interested in encouraging that body to reexamine its spending habits so it can be more effective at fulfilling its mission....

As most would agree, the purpose of the United Nations is to help promote peace and security throughout the world. However, it has obviously failed miserably in that respect. Iran's nuclear weapons program is still chugging along at a rapid pace, threatening Israel and the entire region. Genocide persists in Sudan. All of the minds at the United Nations can't even agree on a definition for the word “terrorism” in an age where terrorism remains one of the biggest threats to humanity and civilization....

Furthermore, despite the implicit purpose of the United Nations Human Rights Council to promote global human rights, this body has among its membership notorious human rights abusers such as Angola, China, Cuba, Egypt, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Iran serves as the Vice Chair of the U.N. Disarmament Commission, Syria is the Rapporteur of the U.N. Disarmament Commission, Zimbabwe is the Chair of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development, and Sudan serves on the Executive Committee of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees....

And if that wasn't enough, an examination of a ranked list of countries subject to the most U.N. condemnation for human rights violations in 2006 reveals Israel ranking first, having received 135 actions, nearly twice as many as Sudan, the next country listed, and more than the number of actions directed at Iran, China, Colombia, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Syria combined. The United States ranks fourth on this list, having been subject to 38 actions. This indicates that the United Nations is more interested in condemning Israel and the United States than it is in horrendous human rights abusers throughout the world.

Mrs. LOWEY. This amendment fails to realistically address the effect our arrears have on our standing in the world community. At a time when the United States is increasingly relying on international organizations to further our security interests around the world, shortchanging our treaty-obligated contributions to these organizations undercuts our foreign policy goals and undermines our reputation around the world.

It also countermands our new Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's call to pay our dues in full and on time. As of today, the United States is $291 million in arrears at the U.N. for regular budget contributions alone. The United States has chosen to belong to each of these organizations. They leverage U.S. taxpayer dollars and advance a wide range of U.S. foreign policy objectives, including monitoring nuclear proliferation through the IAEA, creating norms for international telecommunications through the ITU, and fending off global pandemics through the WHO....

This amendment has no appreciation of the influence this increasing trend of paying late and underfunding international organizations has on our ability to sway others and it is difficult to justify why our priorities should be given full consideration when we chronically pay our dues late. Paying these international organizations late is counterproductive to achieving United States international security goals. The increasing trend of paying late and underfunding international organizations confounds U.S. demands for better management in them.

An example of this detrimental effect is seen at the World Health Organization which reports that the arrears owed by the United States are preventing well-managed budgets and resulting in programs not reaching optimal effectiveness for a year or more after they were planned to be fully operational.

Further, other dues-paying countries take note when the United States fails to honor its commitments in these international organizations. As a result, our influence on making budgetary and policy decisions in them is lessened.

For example, the U.S. consistently wants the Food and Agriculture Organization to increase its capacity to set worldwide food and plant standards, yet it is very difficult to justify why U.S. priorities for the FAO should be given full consideration when the U.S. is chronically paying its dues there about a year late.

Ms. FOXX. The U.N. is an ineffective and corrupt organization and our continuing to provide much of its funding implicitly endorses that corruption and ineffectiveness. If we put this to a vote of the American people, they would say, fund nothing of the United Nations. Keeping this at level funding is the right thing to do.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Well, here we go again, cutting a multilateral account that allows us to hold our head up high in the international community as we organize the international community in the global war on terror in favor of unilateralism.

To fight the war on terror, we must be multilateral and not unilateral. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Khalilzad said pay our dues on time and pay it in full. Every time there's a crisis that confronts our country, we run to the U.N., we run to the international community demanding their involvement to help provide security for the American people.

Mr. WOLF. I rise in opposition to the amendment. Everyone has frustrations. I think the U.N. could do certainly a lot more on Darfur and many of the other things. They stood by and frankly didn't do very much in Rwanda, either. But what this amendment would do, I think, is people have to look at it. This would actually cut NATO fees, and NATO is sort of the backbone of what we're doing in Afghanistan and many other places, but particularly $41 million out of this fund goes to NATO.

Also, on the World Health Organization with regard to avian flu and things like that, this is not the time to do that. Also, there is another issue that I have personally made a cause, of funding the war crime tribunals to bring people to justice. This would cut the war crimes tribunal in Rwanda where over 800,000 people have died between the Hutus and the Tutsis and that whole issue. Also the former Yugoslavia where after the genocide that took place, Milosevic was brought to the court.

So for those reasons, I understand what the gentlelady is trying to do. But I think this would be the wrong place to kind of do it, from NATO and IAEA and the World Health Organization and the war crimes tribunal.

During debate on Representative Scott Garrett's amendment to reduce funding for international organizations by $20 and transfer the money to anti-terrorism programs, which failed by recorded vote: 192-232.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Despite the fact that the world is in the throes of the violence of terrorism, the U.N. has done so very little to fight this threat on humanity.

The U.N. marks progress against terrorism by how many committees they have formed and how many documents have been signed. We need a world body that does not consider an expanded bureaucracy as success. We need a world body that is a partner in the war on terror.

Instead, the U.N. spends its time passing toothless resolutions on counter terrorism that even countries such as Iran, Libya, and Syria can support. These nations will continue to funnel money to terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Mahdi Army knowing that there will be absolutely no repercussions from the U.N.

If the U.N. is unwilling to join the fight against terrorism, we should reallocate our dollars, reallocate a portion of the funds intended for them to programs which are truly working to bring real peace to the world.

Mrs. LOWEY. This amendment would cut $20 million from the contributions for international organizations. The question posed by this amendment is straightforward: Do you want to take funds away from an account that is saving lives every day around the world?

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last year told Senate appropriators that U.N. peacekeeping was an example of the benefit of empowering partner nations, and it would cost the United States taxpayers almost eight times as much.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. What we are trying to do is not, as in a subsequent amendment where we will be taking funds from the peacekeeping mission, which is what the gentlelady was referring to here, instead is to take money from the U.N. international organization line and redesignate those $20 million to join us in the fight against terrorism.

Mrs. LOWEY. I do think that your offset, taking money from U.N. dues, is actually unwise and not a very good policy decision.

Many people have criticized the U.N., want to disband the U.N., want to cut off dues to the U.N., and then when we need the U.N., they wonder: What are we going to do if we didn't have a United Nations?

I look forward to working with the gentleman from New Jersey in strengthening the committees of the U.N. and working together to face the tremendous challenges we have internationally. So I support the gentleman's concerns about nuclear nonproliferation, and I look forward to working with the gentleman; but I strongly oppose taking the money from U.N. dues.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, let me be clear, we are in opposition to the gentleman's amendment. I understand that the gentleman is going to withdraw his amendment, but let me be clear, the various international organizations for which this account is designated and the dues that we pay not only to the U.N. but to other member organizations that our country is a part of, believe me when I tell you, the State Department has made it very clear in each of those organizations that we are in a global war on terror and our contributions to those organizations, part of our mandatory obligations to those organizations for which the gentleman seeks to cut funding, would quite frankly undermine our ability to maintain our own status within those international organizations as we try to direct the global war on terror...

Sufficient in this bill are the resources to advance democracy activities and demining activities, but by cutting aid to international organizations and contributions, cutting our contribution, our mandatory contribution to those organizations, is something that I believe the chairman and the majority would reject.

Contributed by Sean-Paul Kelley

This really is an important story that deserves wider coverage. Microlending is very profitable. In the past those profits have always been plowed back into the local community to be used to lift even more people out of poverty. But that may be changing:

Scott Jagow: There's a big conference in Europe today on microfinancing. That's when you give people, usually women, in developing countries very small loans to help them run a business. It might be something as simple as selling crafts on the street. But some of the world's largest banks are attending this conference. They want to get into microfinancing. Michaela Walsh founded Women's World Banking back in 1975. I asked her why the big banks want a piece of this.

Michaela Walsh: It can be a very profitable business. It is more labor-intensive than say commercial credit. Our role is to make sure that microfinance doesn't become consumer credit.

Is there a possibility that big banks will come in a depersonalize what has been one of the world most successful ways of alleviating poverty and empowering women? Yes:

Michaela Walsh: Personally, I have always had a concern that small loans that are given in a local community, whether it's rural or urban, and when paid back there needs to be some kind of a guarantee that those profits and those benefits are reinvested in that local community and not just computerized and centralized in a capital city or in a global network. Recently Harvard University and two other universities did a study saying that because the large banking institutions have the capacity to get out more loans, that we ought to put more and more money into the big institutions. My concern about that is we need to make sure those loans are not consumer loans and that they are going to be shared with local women's institutions to ensure that woman are making the decisions about how to run microfinance in the most effective way to serve the largest number of clients.

The big banks will turn it into a credit issue and then have even more wage slaves, globally too!

From a legal stand-point, UN sponsored "ad-hoc" war crimes tribunals in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and the former Yugoslavia have been valuable tools for testing and codifying the limits of laws that govern armed conflict. Through sheer necessity and much effort, these courts, for the past decade or so, have defined what constitutes a "war crime" punishable under international law.

Yesterday, a new category of war crime was given sound legal footing when the Special Court for Sierra Leone handed down the world's first conviction of military commanders accused of recruiting child soldiers. The court (which tries cases stemming from Sierra Leone's brutal 11-year civil war) convicted three men of recruiting and using child soldiers under the age of 16.

It's worth noting that the ruling comes near the 11-year anniversary of a similarly landmark moment: on June 28, 1996 prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia issued ground-breaking indictments in which rape was treated as a crime of war. Prosecutors won that case in early 2001, with a ruling establishing rape as a crime against humanity.

With yesterday's ruling on child soldiers, the progression of international humanitarian law steadily marches on.

The United Nations food relief agency has appealed to Kenyan authorities to allow assistance for more than 100,000 people to be trucked into Somalia, where deliveries are being hampered.

One hundred and forty WFP-contracted trucks carrying the food left the Kenyan port of Mombasa and were unexpectedly stopped at the Northeast Kenyan border crossing of El-Wak since they first started arriving there on 25 May.

WFP Somalia Country Director Peter Goossens said "The Kenyan overland route was chosen because of major problems with sea routes to Somalia plagued by pirate attacks."

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Today the House continues to consider the State, Foreign Ops Appropriations bill (streaming video), which includes funding for UN peacekeeping. House Appropriators added $195 million for peacekeeping in committee to help address U.S. arrears (which could reach $1 billion this year). That funding could possibly be under attack, and there will likely be many amendments offered that address issues of diplomacy and multilateralism.

As you may recall, the President's budget request shorted U.S. funding for UN peacekeeping in FY 2008 by $500 million and failed to address $569 million in already existing arrears, threatening to put the U.S. more than $1 billion into arrears before the end of the year. In comparison to the Department of Defense budget (over $450 billion not including the supplemental spending for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan) this may not seem like much, but it represents 20% of the UN's total peacekeeping budget for 2008 and forces the UN and troop-contributing nations to face resource shortfalls for critical operations in Darfur, Lebanon, and Haiti. Moreover it leaves key allies--notably India, Kenya, Pakistan, and Bangladesh--who send troops and ship equipment in support of new U.S.-supported UN peacekeeping operations holding unpaid invoices and threatens to further damage the U.S. image abroad.

The Free Republic, in its traditionally understated way, highlights an Investors Business Daily editorial excoriating Ban Ki-moon for making the connection between climate change and the Darfur conflict. "The new U.N. secretary general invokes a Twinkie defense," says the editorial. "Excusing Islamofascist genocide in Darfur by blaming it on global warming. Forget the Chinese weapons. According to Ban Ki-moon, your SUV is responsible."

The Atlantic Monthly ran an excellent feature on this topic two months ago. Darfur, which is composed of the three provinces in Sudan's west, enjoys little natural wealth. It is a vast, unforgiving, and arid place. But it was not always as arid as it is today. As the Atlantic Monthly piece by Stephan Faris explains, southward expansion of the Sahara desert toward Darfur is a relatively recent phenomenon.

The desertification of Darfur has pit traditionally agrarian "black African" tribes in competition for arable land with nomadic tribes of ethnic-Arab herders. Of course, that alone is not sufficient to explain the accusations of genocide. Rather, when ethnic Darfuri tribes launched a rebellion against the central government in Khartoum in 2003, the government recruited and armed militias drawn from ethnic-Arab tribes, with promises that the land would be theirs. The fact that the two groups competed for natural resources in ways they had not in previous generations made the government's strategy to recruit militias that much easier.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Washington, DC yesterday in an effort to seek support for reducing the U.S. deficit in peacekeeping dues.

"He's meeting with congressional leaders, mostly talking about peacekeeping funding," said Deborah DeYoung, information officer for the United Nations Information Centre in Washington.

"He's been here twice before this year, and probably be coming back and forth a good bit. It's a new era, and he's keen to get to know people and keen to let them know his priorities."

The timing of Ban's trip coincided with the Better World Campaign--which gave the House of Representatives a petition on Tuesday signed by 32,000 people from all 50 states urging Congress to pay off $569 million in arrears.

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By Antonio Guterres, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees

Today, on World Refugee Day, I am joining southern Sudanese refugees as they return home from Uganda to begin rebuilding their lives after decades of conflict. Although largely unreported, with help from the UN, refugees are starting to return to southern Sudan from refugee camps in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, and the Central African Republic. Others are returning from exile in Libya and Egypt, as well as from other parts of Sudan itself.

The repatriation of these refugees is a ray of hope here in the epicenter of one of the world's great displacements, but, clearly, so much more needs to be done. Over the last few days in Sudan, I have seen firsthand the stark reality of forced displacement as well as some of its possible solutions.

The massive displacement in Darfur represents only a portion of the almost 40 million people worldwide who have been uprooted and forced to flee violence and persecution, and in the future we are likely to see even more people on the move. Many of them will be searching for economic opportunity and better lives or escaping environmental degradation and natural disasters. Others will be forced to flee failing states wracked by violence and persecution. But in most instances, people are fleeing a combination of these factors, compounding one another to provoke a perfect storm of loss and dislocation.

Hopes that globalization would naturally bring steady growth while also narrowing the gap between rich and poor have not been fulfilled. While global trade and wealth have indeed increased, the gap between the world's rich and poor is widening, driving more people to move and to fall prey to unscrupulous groups who engage in human smuggling and trafficking--a business worth billions of dollars a year.

Climate change and environmental damage lie behind increasingly frequent natural disasters with dramatic human consequences. Different models of the impact of climate change all present a worrying picture of human displacement. East Africa offers a stark example. All predictions are that desertification will expand steadily, making it difficult for people to earn a living and provoking further migration. All of this is happening in the absence of international capacity and determination to respond.

People are also fleeing war and persecution. Even when we have plenty of early warning, the international community has repeatedly failed to prevent conflicts. Instead, agencies like mine are left to deal with the human consequences. Prevention is possible, more effective, and cheaper. But it requires wisdom, political and diplomatic effort, and an investment in eliminating the root causes, including the social and economic ones.

Sudan's Darfur crisis is a good example of the complexities. The conflict has political roots, but is also fueled by increasing competition between traditional herders and farmers for scarce resources, especially water. When this is linked with political tensions, the results are explosive.

It is time to recognize that we are facing what is nothing less than a new paradigm of displacement in the 21st Century, with a plethora of push factors driving people from their homes on an unprecedented scale. There are no easy answers, but, while the international community grapples with the root causes of displacement, it must pay more attention to protecting the vulnerable and building opportunities for their futures.

Today, June 20, is United Nations World Refugee Day. And for the first time since 2002, the number of refugees and displaced persons around the world is actually increasing. According to a new report (pdf) by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, the number now approaches 10 million people, a 14 percent rise in the over last year's figures. Sadly, the dramatic increase is largely due to the war in Iraq, where an estimated 1.5 million people have been forced to find refuge in neighboring Jordan and Syria.

Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), has has condemned the murder of Iraqi journalist Sahar Hussein Ali al-Haydari. This death follows the murder of two female Afghan journalists in recent weeks.

"In only a few days, three women journalists have been brutally murdered...These pioneering women were targeted because they devoted their energy and courage to help bring about democratic change in their societies...I trust these particularly heinous crimes will not go unpunished."

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports taht at least 106 journalists and 39 media workers have been killed in Iraq since 2003.

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UN Dispatch recently sat down with Congressman Donald Payne, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health on the Committee for Foreign Affairs, to discuss malaria, the priorities of the Subcommittee, and UN peacekeeping. The transcript follows.

UN Dispatch: As the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, why have you chosen to focus on malaria?

Congressman Payne: Well, as you may know malaria kills more people than any other disease. The thing about malaria is that many times people get it; they get cured from it; but then they get it again. And tremendous numbers of children die--millions die--over the course of years. It's something that is certainly preventable. That's why we feel that preventable diseases should be the ones that we attack first. So, there is a tremendous amount of attention out that has been drawn. We are talking about nets that are treated so that the insects are killed. We are talking about having medication available. We also need to talk about sanitation and water, where many times these mosquitoes fester, and so we can start to eliminate where they are multiplying. We have a real coordinated approach to malaria. I think finally the world has decided that malaria is a disease that we need to focus on and we need to concentrate on. It is something that's preventable, and I am very pleased at the new attention that has been given to the war on malaria.

UN Dispatch: What other Global Health challenges do you hope to address through the Subcommittee in the near future, and what role do you think the UN might play in those initiatives?

Congressman Payne: Well, as you know, HIV/AIDS is certainly one of the big pandemics that's still killing so many people. We've had hearings on HIV/AIDS. We were pleased that the U.S government has actually doubled it's commitment over the next five years. It was $15 billion over the first five years and there would be reauthorization in 2009 for the next five years. And so we are looking forward to the $30 billion that the President pledged for HIV/AIDS, and, of course as we know, it's now the fund for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. So, we know that all of these diseases are sort of interrelated, and so that's one of the areas that we are certainly looking to work on. 2015 is the year that the millennium challenges will take in. We are looking to halve abject poverty by that date. We are looking to increase potable water by that date and improve on sanitation as I mentioned as we discussed malaria before. And recently the resistant strain of TB that we heard about right here in the United States is another area in which we are going to recommend higher amounts of money in order to combat. want to get higher amount of funding in order to fight against. The U.N is actually just an organization that brings them all together.

Lee: As I understand that you attended the Subcommittee on International Organizations hearing yesterday on U.N peacekeeping. What is your stand on the arrears issue?

Congressman Payne: I really believe that the United States has a responsibility to pay up the $600 million that we are in arrears plus the additional $500 million. It appears that we are about $1.2 billion back. U.N peacekeeping operations save the U.S a tremendous amount of resources, financial and in terms of manpower. Considering Haiti alone, if we had U.S. troops in Haiti rather than UN troops, the cost would be 5 or 6, 7 times as much as it is with the UN being in Haiti, as an example. And I believe that we should pay our arrears. As you know the U.S. reduced its percentages [for the UN regular budget] over the years, and we are moving to try to even reduce it more. That's not fair. Actually Japan pays 19% and U.S pays 21%. It is supposed to go by GDP. Our GDP is not just a couple of percentage points more than Japan, so Japan is paying more than its GDP dictates. So I think we have to be responsible in what our government has done, and it has been irresponsible. I hope that with changes in the political leadership of the House and the Senate, we can really start to reengage with the U.N to actually work as a partner more so than what we've done in the past six to eight years. We need the UN, and the UN needs the U.S. So we are partners together and that's our goal going forward to try to pay up our arrears and to beg better partners to the UN than we have before.

Cluster bombs are bad news. Small bomblets packed into artillery shells explode over a target, spewing golf-ball sized mini bombs far and wide. The problem is, not all of the bomblets explode on impact. Some are duds. And much like landmines, the unexploded sub-munitions lay dormant until disturbed. If a child, for example, picks up an unexploded bomblet it may blow up in her face. Like landmines, cluster bombs continue to kill and maim long after hostilities have ended.

So far, efforts to control the use of cluster bombs have been disregarded by the United States, which argues for their military utility. But the United States government may have just had a change of heart. The Associated Press reports today that the American delegate to the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons, which is meeting in Geneva this week, has agreed to participate in negotiations on cluster bombs. American officials have said they are not seeking an outright ban, but are open to regulating the use and manufacture of cluster bombs. This, at least, is an improvement over a previous policy of simply ignoring international efforts on cluster bombs.

A new study by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) reports that pervasive sex discrimination is impeding African women's success in business.

The study, entitled "Lessons from Success Stories of African Women Entrepreneurs," called for initiatives beyond microcredit schemes while pointing out that women continue manage businesses which generate employment and tax revenue despite limited government support, negative social environments, institutional discrimination and lasting gender inequalities.

The study is based on the experiences of women entrepreneurs in Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda.

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Matthew Lee, the UN blogger and author of Innercity Press, and I square off on Blogging Heads TV. We discuss Kurt Waldheim's legacy, the so-called "Cash for Kim" brouhaha, Darfur, UN Peacekeeping and the prospects of United Nations reform. Enjoy.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called on governments, communities and families to increase efforts to prevent child trafficking.

UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman noted that every year globally, about 1.2 million children are trafficked. "Children are trafficked into prostitution, into armed groups to serve as child soldiers, to provide cheap or unpaid labour, and to work as house servants or beggars."

Trafficking exposes children to violence, sexual abuse, severe neglect, and HIV infection, she pointed out, while violating children's right to be protected, to grow up in a family environment and to have access to education.

UNICEF called for punishing the perpetrators of human trafficking, which generates an estimated $9.5 billion a year and fuels other criminal activities.

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