At least one person on the UN Security Council is enthusiastic about the possibility of a robust UN peacekeeping force deploying to Somalia.

"I am so excited! I'm over the moon!" South Africa's jubilant U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo told reporters afterwards.

Somalis are also likely to be pleased by the news, because it indicates a firm UN commitment to help alleviate the deteriorating humanitarian and political situation in their country. The African Union also welcomes UN involvement, as its contingent of 2,600 Ugandan and Burundian troops is not sufficient to maintain security as the country slowly opens up a peace process. One reason that this force has remained so deeply undermanned is because neighboring countries are loathe to involve their troops in a regional conflagration; UN peacekeepers from all over the world will not have this problem.

Possible troop-contributing countries may be less ecstatic, however, at the prospect of ponying up additional contributions to the over 110,000 blue helmets already deployed around the world. Other commentators are also likely to question the feasibility of rounding up troops for another UN peacekeeping mission when the force in Darfur remains over 16,000 personnel short of its target size.

These are legitimate concerns, and, in calling for preparations for possible UN deployment, the Security Council is in fact anticipating the difficulty of obtaining peacekeepers. Setting out the conditions for dispatching a peacekeeping mission to Somalia -- while simultaneously pushing for more concerted pressure in broader peace negotiations -- is not mere bureaucratic red tape; it is a prudent recognition that simply throwing in troops that the international community cannot yet provide would not solve either Somalia's political or humanitarian woes. Pragmatism is necessary on deliberations of whether, when, and how UN peacekeepers -- or a coalition under a different guise, which was one of the options laid out in the Secretary-General's most recent report on Somalia -- deploy to Somalia, but to allow the weight of the difficulties of achieving such a deployment to trump the actual needs of the situation on the ground would smack of expediency and perpetrate a great disservice on Somalis.

According to John McCain, Darfur's genocide will be over in five years, if only we replace the United Nations with a "League of Democracies," an international body shorn of pesky non-allies like China and Russia. In a somewhat speculative speech today, McCain laid out the accomplishments that he envisions his administration will have accomplished by 2013.

After efforts to pressure the Government in Sudan over Darfur failed again in the U.N. Security Council, the United States, acting in concert with a newly formed League of Democracies, applied stiff diplomatic and economic pressure that caused the government of Sudan to agree to a multinational peacekeeping force, with NATO countries providing logistical and air support, to stop the genocide that had made a mockery of the world's repeated declaration that we would "never again" tolerant such inhumanity.

One minor problem here. While the U.S. has not indeed exerted sufficient pressure on Khartoum, it has used up a lot of the economic influence that it brings to the table. U.S. companies have not been able to do business in Sudan since 1998, thanks to sanctions that the Clinton administration placed on the regime for supporting terrorism. Additional targeted sanctions are still possible, and the U.S.-based divestment movement continues with full force, but the main source of funding for Sudan's genocidal apparatus is, of course, China (though India and Malaysia also have significant investments). Shutting out China, the most relevant player in Sudan, from the world's premier global institution would effectively close off the best possible avenue through which to pressure Khartoum. Working with China to end the genocide may be difficult and fraught with complications, but trying to do it without Beijing would be well-nigh impossible.

Seemingly everyone and their mother has lately weighed in on the subject of invoking the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as a way of securing aid for Burma's cyclone victims, but I wanted to add two points to the discussion.

First, by and large, the R2P doctrine has been misunderstood or misrepresented in calls to "invade" Burma. R2P is often implied to boil down to a simple equation: if a government is unable or unwilling to adequately protect its citizens, then the international community has a right to forcibly intervene to protect these people. The first part of this conditional is accurate, but the second is a gross oversimplification. R2P does not prescribe invasion any more than the Constitution of the United States mandates impeachment. Military intervention is only one component of the R2P framework, and one of last resort, at that; it is only to be undertaken when a series of specific conditions are met, ensuring that intervention is justified, well-intentioned, practical, authorized by the proper authority (i.e., the UN Security Council), and will not cause more harm than good.

Wielding R2P as a Trojan horse for invasion and regime change, as Robert Kaplan seems to desire, is harmful to the integrity and future viability of the concept, as well as to the more pressing concern of alleviating the Burmese people's suffering. Scott Paul, writing at The Washington Note, explains this point well, in reference to just one commentator with a convoluted understanding of R2P.

Unfortunately, Hiatt (like some others), seems to equate this principle with an international obligation to trample over the sovereignty of Myanmar in one fell swoop. It would be a disaster if R2P were first operationalized in the form of a hastily arranged military intervention in Myanmar, both for the Burmese people, for whom such an intervention could just as easily exacerbate the crisis as bring relief, and for the promise of the R2P concept, which actually outlines out a set of diplomatic and humanitarian options that are intended to avert a military showdown and preserve national sovereignty. For R2P to really grow in importance in a positive way, military intervention must be a last resort.

Since military intervention is not the only way to use R2P, though, invoking it in an accurate and responsible manner could actually perform a significant service to the doctrine. Merely by uttering these three words, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner spurred a discussion of R2P that will hopefully help hasten its integration into commonly accepted -- and enforced -- international norms.

This leads to my other point -- that discussing the concept in the context of a natural disaster may prove more palatable to the sensibilities of the international community than invoking it with reference to a man-made catastrophe. This is not to say that China or other abusive regimes -- cherishing the inviolability of their own sovereignty -- will be at all keener on setting any sort precedent for R2P, but simply to note that the reflexive response to the devastation wrecked by a cyclone is, because the situation is not inherently political, more unconditionally sympathetic than the response to the more complicated, human-generated suffering of armed conflict.

The debate over R2P in Burma, of course, is essentially a political one, as the issue is no longer the death and destruction caused by Nargis, but that caused by the exacerbating and obstructionist tactics of the country's ruling junta. As Gareth Evans, the author of the report establishing R2P, wisely reminds us, intervention in the case of a natural disaster is only even possible under the aegis of R2P if a government's calculated disregard for its citizens amounts to a crime against humanity. The doctrine was not intended as a shortcut for the international community to provide relief in desperate cases of natural disaster.

Nonetheless, as the outpouring of donations following the 2004 Asian tsunami taught us, individuals and governments alike often react more proactively to a single, catastrophic act of nature than to a messier -- even if far deadlier -- humanitarian morass such as that in DR Congo. Again, referencing R2P in light of the cyclone in Burma will not automatically bolster the doctrine -- we must remember that R2P was officially applied to the genocide in Darfur over a year ago, and movement to operationalize the concept has been limited -- but, as the sheer volume of the discussion of R2P that has percolated over the past few days suggests, the test case of Burma has generated a degree of salience for R2P that Darfur has not.

Granted, the paranoid opposition of Burma's government, and those of allies like China, is no less real than that of Sudan's ruling cabal and its powerful allies (once again, read: China); the junta, hidden away in the Burmese jungle, simply prefers a strategy of stifling all communication over one of combative rhetoric. Similarly, Sudan's active obstructionism is just as transparent as that of the Burmese authorities, but -- and this is just a hypothesis -- the case of a government preventing cyclone relief from reaching its citizens seems to shock the world community into an even greater sense of indignation than does the slow and methodical obstruction of aid in a low-simmering, five-year "genocide by attrition."

David Shorr at Democracy Arsenal sees the case of post-cyclone Burma not so much "as an opportunity to assert R2P, but rather as an indication of how far we still have to go." This is true, in that there is certainly a long road ahead before R2P becomes an established component of international relations. However, the extensive attention that has been paid to this humble but audacious doctrine over the past few days could signal an opportunity, as well. Thinking about R2P in a meaningful way -- not, and this is an important caveat, as a simple trigger for invasion -- in the context of a devastating natural disaster could provide an important step in furthering the understanding of what sovereignty and protection mean in the broader and perhaps less "glamorous" array of cases of governments failing to fulfill their responsibilities to their citizens.

From ABC Rural:

The United Nations has hailed the potato as a potential solution to solving the looming global food shortage.

With wheat and rice supplies declining, the UN is encouraging low-income countries to grow more potatoes to cover the food shortfall.

It's also declared 2008 as the International Year of the Potato to try and raise awareness of how important the humble spud is to agriculture and the economy.

The International Year of the Potato also happens to have a fantastic website, from which I learned many facts dispelling my previous assumption that the potato consisted simply of "empty carbs." For instance,

They have the highest protein content (around 2.1 percent on a fresh weight basis) in the family of root and tuber crops, and protein of a fairly high quality, with an amino-acid pattern that is well matched to human requirements. They are also very rich in vitamin C - a single medium-sized potato contains about half the recommended daily intake - and contain a fifth of the recommended daily value of potassium.

Nutritious, delicious, and potentially life-saving.

Will tomorrow finally be the day that ends 20 long years of war and terrorism in Northern Uganda? According to Reuters,

Uganda's fugitive guerrilla Joseph Kony will meet mediators on Saturday on the Sudan-Congo border and may even sign a final peace deal, a rebel negotiator said on Wednesday.

But the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) still wants more details on how Uganda's government plans to use traditional reconciliation rituals to help him avoid prosecution for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

But after spurning the peace process a month ago, ostensibly for very much the same reasons, Kony's credibility -- already at the level of an indicted mass murderer -- is, to say the least, suspect. Moreover, it is unclear how the "peace vs. justice" stalemate has advanced in the last month: the Ugandan government -- and even some of Kony's victims -- are willing to drop the ICC indictments in favor of means of traditional justice, but the ICC insists that Uganda is legally obliged to hand over Kony. Kony is calling for a "workshop" to address the issue, but it is unlikely that he will be appeased by anything less than getting the ICC out of the picture entirely.

In a new report, the ENOUGH project proposes the option of offering Kony exile -- while using ICC indictment as a credible stick to end his nefarious influence in the region. ENOUGH is rightly skeptical of Kony's intentions, and the report prioritizes restoring peace and security over securing a formal peace deal with Kony, which, in light of his past unreliability, seems a very sober strategy.

In addition to its tense border dispute with Ethiopia, Eritrea is involved in a heated geopolitical standoff with its significantly smaller neighbor to the south.

The tiny port nation of Djibouti, a key U.S. ally in the Horn of Africa, has urged the U.N. Security Council to take immediate action to prevent a conflict with its northern neighbor Eritrea.

In a letter to the council president circulated Tuesday, Djibouti's Foreign Minister Mahmoud Ali Youssouf said Eritrea has launched a major military buildup on their border overlooking critical Red Sea shipping lanes.

It is not yet clear how the Security Council will respond to Youssouf's appeal, and Djibouti is as yet unsatisfied with the mediation from the Arab League and African Union. According to Djibouti's president, the Eritrean and Djiboutian armies are each massed along the border, and "the situation is explosive." With Russia and Georgia also -- at least rhetorically -- sparring over the region of Abkhazia, yet another regional confrontation over territory is clearly not in the UN's interests. In the border spat with Ethiopia, though, Eritrea's government did not exactly welcome the continued presence of UN peacekeepers, eventually forcing them out of the country by withholding necessary fuel supplies. In that case, the UN had even ruled that the disputed border territory at hand belonged to Eritrea, so one can only imagine how the country would react to UN involvement in a case in which its claim to Djibouti's land seems much more dubious.

Another sign of UN success in West Africa. From the UN News Centre:

The United Nations mission in Sierra Leone has made "significant progress" in supporting the Government to consolidate peace in the country, by strengthening the security sector, by promoting human rights and the rule of law, and by helping prepare for upcoming elections, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in a new report.

However, Mr. Ban also cautions that the "the country continues to experience political tension along ethnic and regional lines" and cites high unemployment, poor economic and social conditions, and the rising price of food and gasoline, as other factors which "have the potential to derail the peace consolidation process."

This update on the improving situation in Sierra Leone follows similarly encouraging news out of neighboring Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire. As Ban's prudent warning suggests, however, these transitions toward peace and democracy in West Africa do not come unaccompanied by serious lingering problems and potential pitfalls. After easing violent societies into stability, the UN faces perhaps the even steeper challenge of consolidating these gains and ensuring that former war zones become politically and economically sustainable. That's why the peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, scheduled to withdraw in September, will be replaced by a peacebuilding office.

These peacebuilding efforts will be funded out of the UN's relatively new Peacebuilding Fund, created in late 2006 to provide societies transitioning toward peace with "a crucial bridge between conflict and recovery at a time when other funding mechanisms may not yet be available." Despite the enormity and importance of its work, though, the Peacebuilding Fund has received less than a third of the money it needs to operate -- including zero contributions from the United States.

Nigerian rebels who have been attacking oil facilities in the Niger delta have claimed that they are mulling a ceasefire proposed by U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama. From Reuters:

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has launched five attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta since it resumed a campaign of violence in April, forcing Royal Dutch Shell to shut more than 164,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).

"The MEND command is seriously considering a temporary ceasefire appeal by Senator Barack Obama. Obama is someone we respect and hold in high esteem," the militant group said in an e-mailed statement.

The prospect of an end to violence in the volatile region is certainly welcome, but there's one minor hole in the rebels' claim: as Matt Yglesias points out, the Obama campaign does not recall its candidate making any such appeal.

Writing at The Plank, Dayo Olopade provides this interesting observation.

At the time--unlike past attacks--MEND seemed to be courting American attention: "The ripple effect of this attack will touch your economy and people one way or the other and (we) hope we now have your attention," the group said last month.

Well, oil is $120/barrel--looks like you've got it. The direct link to Obama, however, seems suspect. He did attempt some high-level suasion during January's election crisis in Kenya, but I'm doubtful his grueling schedule these last six weeks has left much time for Skyping with MEND. It is notable that even the hint of the "Obama touch" has a band of saboteurs rubbing their chins about an end to a longstanding conflict.

True. And if this mysterious ceasefire appeal does indeed induce the rebels to cease their attacks, while the Obama campaign may not mind taking credit, the greatest beneficiaries will be the Nigerians suffering from violence in this oil-rich region.

UPDATE: Apparently MEND rebels have set their eyes on another American politician to broker peace -- former president Jimmy Carter (as well as possibly UN Messenger of Peace George Clooney). What's more, Carter, who attempted to mediate the region's conflict nine years ago, seems inclined to accept.

The UN's ambitious renovation project has, predictably, attracted the attention of bloggers questioning the cost of the building and the value of the UN in general. Writing at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey thinks that the construction of the new building poses a broader question.

The renovation really isn't the issue here...Either the UN is a worthwhile use of American funds or it isn't. If it is, the renovation doesn't make it less so, and the building obviously needs a lot of work...

True, but this is not the entirety of the matter. Of course the construction of a new building doesn't make the UN less of "a worthwhile use of American funds." Renovation of its headquarters doesn't make it more deserving of American funds either. The relevant point here, which needs to be made more emphatically, is that, if the is UN indeed "worthy" of U.S. funding -- which we here at UN Dispatch firmly believe it is -- then it affirmatively needs a new building in order to continue its mission.

Ed also objects to the cost of the renovation, calling it "a rather expensive project even for the United Nations." This, however, neglects to mention the reason that the building's costs have expanded -- namely, because the U.S. has dragged its heels throughout the process, raising pedantic objections as the costs of construction continued to rise.

For those who oppose the UN, the real point in highlighting the costs of the replacing the old building -- which even Ed admits is in decrepit condition -- is to call into question the entire notion of supporting the international organization. According to Ed:

If the UN isn't a worthwhile expense, then the renovation makes no difference, either. One has to wonder why nations don't simply put their money towards the programs that actually deliver benefits and forego the fancy building and standing bureaucracy that adds little to the benefit of anyone...

The problem here is that, in order for the programs that Ed lauds to be able to function, they need to be able to operate out of, yes, a building -- and preferably one without asbestos. The people working in the 39 floors of the UN Secretariat are not simply faceless bureaucrats; they are the individuals that make the UN machinery run, and that, though they are far from the field, enable many life-saving programs to thrive.

So if the building isn't necessary, then what is?

What the UN needs is an overhaul of its membership, its leadership, its bureaucracies, and the HRC [Human Rights Council] most of all. Unfortunately, it's easier for everyone to renovate the building without considering the cancers within it.

Critiques of the UN -- its members, leaders, bureaucracies, etc. -- can be legitimate and constructive. Assuming that constructing a new building to meet fire and safety codes precludes pursuit of reform in these areas, however, is misguided. It will be very difficult for reform to succeed if there is no place to house the fruits of that reform. The U.S. should take the lead on both of these initiatives -- reforming both the UN's headquarters and its substance -- rather than balking at funding programs that the U.S. itself calls for. Ed is right to remind us that the building can be no more than the Member States it contains -- but that doesn't make the building any less necessary.

Caught between Hamas rockets and an Israeli blockade, Palestinian refugees in Gaza are bearing the brunt of a tense geopolitical standoff. For the second time in a week, the UN has been forced to halt its provision of food aid to 1.5 million Gazans due to a shortage of fuel caused by the blockade.

Unlike the situation in Eritrea, where the Eritrean government withheld fuel out of animosity for UN peacekeepers, Israel is not deliberately trying to starve the UN of fuel. Nor, of course, is it expressly targeting Gaza's refugee population. Rather, the motivation of the blockade is to deter Hamas -- which an Israeli official accuses of "deliberately holding up supplies for its own political reasons" -- from launching rocket attacks into southern Israel. Yet the UN special envoy to Gaza, while condemning Hamas' attacks, also identified Israel's blockade as effectively "collective punishment."

Apportioning blame in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is inevitably a politically contentious endeavor. While both sides surely deserve censure, in this case it is ultimately unproductive. The ultimate losers in this battle are the million-plus innocent Gazans who rely on humanitarian relief, and both Hamas and Israel should recognize that these civilians will require some degree of cooperation to ensure that their dire needs can be met.

Security Council countries took a turn at word interpretation yesterday, somewhat ambiguously invoking the need for "realism" in negotiations between Western Sahara and Morocco, which has occupied the desert territory since 1975. What this means in reality -- no pun intended -- is that outright independence is likely off the table for Western Sahara. The Security Council renewed the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force that has maintained a ceasefire there since 1991, but the Council's president in April, South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, objected to what he perceived as powerful countries' bias toward Morocco in the dispute.

"This council has made a mistake. They sent a wrong message to Morocco, thinking that they will always support Morocco," Kumalo told reporters after the vote, adding that he nevertheless voted in favor because he still held out hopes for the negotiations.

In a statement to the council after the vote, he said the reference to realism could set a precedent in other conflicts, such as that between Israelis and Palestinians, that the principle "might is right" would hold sway.

Kumalo also complained that the resolution drafted by France, Russia, Spain, Britain and the United States omitted any reference to human rights, a sensitive subject for Morocco. He said such an omission was a case of double standards.

I can't help but notice that Kumalo's examples conspicuously did not include Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe's faltering government has long benefited from South Africa's protection. If it is "realistic" to downplay the prospect of Western Saharan independence, then surely it is equally so to acknowledge the electoral defeat that even Zimbabwe seems ready to admit. For South Africa to continue to shield Mugabe, then, would represent an entirely unambiguous "case of double standards."

Move over, Arnold -- there's a new "Terminator" in town. And this one's not heading to the gubernatorial halls of Sacramento, but to the courtrooms of The Hague.

A Congolese warlord known as "the Terminator" is being sought for prosecution, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague has revealed.

The arrest warrant for Bosco Ntaganda, was issued in 2006 but not made public and he is still at large.

He is accused of conscripting children under 15 to fight in hostilities in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo between July 2002 and December 2003.

Interestingly, the ICC said it had not publicized its arrest warrant for Ntaganda earlier because this may have "hindered the court's investigations." This illustrates an important dynamic in the Court's work -- and one that we have previously highlighted in reference to Uganda. Simply put, the ICC is better able to achieve its mission of bringing justice and accountability to a region when peace has already been secured. Whereas northern Uganda fell agonizingly short of a landmark peace deal, a ceasefire in eastern Congo was signed in January. Even as this peace still needs to be consolidated, now seems to be the time to begin the process of bringing to justice those who inflicted such untold misery on the innocents of eastern Congo.

Visiting Washington a little over a month into his new job as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Afghanistan, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide -- whose candidacy only emerged after renowned British negotiator Paddy Ashdown's was shot down by the Afghan government -- is being received with wide open arms here in the U.S. After speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace today -- where he cited the confidence that the "highest authorities of the U.S. administration" have in him -- Eide will be meeting with the top levels of the U.S. foreign policy brass: Secretary of State Rice, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and even President Bush.

The red carpet being rolled out for Eide is indicative of the importance that the administration has recognized in an increased role for the United Nations in Afghanistan. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad testified to this importance himself, in a New York Times op-ed last month, in which he praised the nomination of Eide and outlined the roles that the UN should be fulfilling in Afghanistan.

The expanded responsibilities that Khalilzad envisioned for the UN in Afghanistan line up closely with those identified by Eide: coordinating civilian and military efforts, ensuring that resources for aid are spent effectively and with appropriate oversight, combating corruption in the Afghan government, and strengthening the country's police and justice systems. Eide has consistently emphasized that international involvement in Afghanistan must be seen not solely through a military lens, but as a broader political project; while he expressed confidence that the U.S. has increasingly adopted this perspective, it remains crucial for the U.S. to see beyond the military situation of the country.

The U.S. will also need to back up its warm reception for Mr. Eide with concrete support for the UN mission that he leads. For the administration to saddle Eide with increasing responsibilities, yet fail to provide the necessary resources, would be both hypocritical and counterproductive. To demonstrate its commitment to the UN's role in Afghanistan, the U.S. Congress should begin by approving the $53 million in the FY 2008 supplemental funding bill designated to fund the UN's political missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and could follow by paying up on its long-standing back dues to the UN regular budget, out of which missions like the one in Afghanistan are funded.

As if the violence on the ground in Somalia were not enough -- thousands of civilians have been forced to flee after renewed clashes in the capital, Mogadishu, recently -- the coast of the country is facing increasing danger from -- yep, you guessed it -- pirates.

These are no fanciful swashbucklers, though. The pirates have recently captured various European cargo ships, luxury yachts, and fishing boats, holding their crews and passengers hostage for one goal -- money. The attacks on the high seas, then, are not merely a re-enactment of the ancient art of piracy; rather, they are deeply connected to the instability and suffering that have long run rampant on the mainland.

Many of the pirates are formerly struggling fishermen fed up with the country's situation -- a fact that they did not hide from their captives. The BBC reports:

They frequently took the trouble to tell us that they hadn't had a proper government for about 17 years, that there were no government agencies and, as a result, they were obliged to rob to survive," says Captain Darch [of a captured Danish vessel].

Worse, though, these are not merely a few isolated fisherfolk looking to make a buck (or a euro) by, shall we say, expanding their business. Forces on land with the potential to further destabilize Somalia's conflict have noticed that this piracy could provide them with a reliable source of funding.

"Businessmen and former fighters for the Somali warlords moved in when they saw how lucrative it could be. The pirates and their backers tend to split the ransom money 50-50," [BBC reporter Mohamed Olad Hassan] says.

The UN is addressing both of these problems, fortunately. The Security Council is drafting a resolution to allow countries to pursue pirates into Somalian waters, and Spain -- one of whose ships was recently captured -- has pushed for creating a UN anti-piracy force. To deal with the persistent violence on land, the Secretary-General's Special Representative in Somali, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, has pledged that the UN will continue to work to bring the various warring factions together for peace talks.

In an interview with Campus Progress, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power asks a very pertinent question -- and provides an impressively on-the-mark answer that bears repetition:

What is the United Nations? The United Nations is going to reflect the priorities of those 192 [member] countries. We've got to get some number of those countries to take 21st century challenges seriously. Then you'll see the United Nations as an organization follow suit.

It won't work to start by saying, "Oh, the United Nations needs to take failing states, repression, and genocide seriously." That's like saying a building needs to take certain things seriously. The United Nations will start taking those thing seriously when the member states within it reallocate resources appropriately.

One of those member states, of course -- and the one best positioned to provide resources for the UN's ambitious endeavors -- is the United States. Yet the U.S., instead of providing the support that would help the UN achieve its goals, deeply underfunds the world body and even chastises it for not taking stronger action on crises like Darfur.

If you haven't read Power's new book yet -- which, as she describes it, is about not just the United Nations, but about how citizens and governments address complicated global challenges -- then I strongly urge you to check it out.

As Bill Durch pointed out in his launch of the UN Dispatch/FP Passport online salon, UN peacekeeping is, on the whole, experiencing a tremendous period of growth. Lest we assume that this is unrestrained growth, however -- a criticism levied by UN skeptics who bemoan what they perceive as an excessive number of UN mandates -- it bears reminding that, as I've argued before, the most successful peacekeeping missions are those that are able to decrease their presence. Responding to David's comment, the UN, despite the overall expansion of its responsibilities around the globe, has indeed shepherded a number of peacekeeping missions toward this mark of success.

I wrote previously about Cote d'Ivoire's transition toward a peaceful drawdown of UN peacekeepers. Now, visiting the neighboring West African country of Liberia, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pledged continuing support for that formerly war-torn nation, as the 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping force there gradually begins its carefully structured process of withdrawal. While problems of poverty, corruption, and an inadequate justice system still trouble Liberia, UN peacekeepers have had remarkable success calming the country's civil war, bringing its former dictator to justice, organizing its historic elections, and helping to restitch the fabric of its society. The withdrawal, moreover, is timed according to specific benchmarks and the requirements of Liberia's situation.

The mission's chief, Ellen Loj, said drawdown, agreed in UN Security Council resolution 1777 in 2007, is planned meticulously so as to "minimise all potential security threats to the state".

AFP also gives a snapshot of the mission's achievements:

Between November 2003 and October 2004, 101,495 fighters were disarmed and demobilised, with 90,000 resettled back into civilian life, mission statistics showed.

More than 500,000 displaced persons have also returned, while UNMIL has trained 3,662 new police agents who are gradually assuming their roles.

A total of 358 presidential guards, 139 prison guards, 37 immigration officers and 210 customs officials have also been groomed for duty.

The UN peacekeeping force has helped rebuild 3,000 (1,875 miles) kilometres of roads and worked on some 300 projects to restore and repair schools, health centres, wells, courts and police stations.

Most indicatively, the mission inspires confidence in Liberians, even as it begins its drawdown:

"As long as the UN forces are here, I don't see why we have to worry about the possibility of destabilisation," Moses Gbartu, a traditional chieftain in the country's north told AFP.

"I thought there was going to be confrontations during disarmament, but UNMIL showed prudence, vigilance and strictness," added shopkeeper Miattah Duago.

UN peacekeepers are not going to disappear from Liberia overnight -- this round of troop withdrawals will still leave around 12,000 blue helmets there in October -- and problems are likely to remain during this period, and persist after the UN's departure. Increasingly, however, Liberia's institutions will assume control of these problems, and the UN's role there will increasingly shift to one providing political and humanitarian support. In the world of peacekeeping, results may come in fits and starts, and only manifest themselves slowly, but it is important to appreciate the positive signs along the way.

Very disturbing news out of Darfur, from The Guardian:

The World Food Programme is to halve food rations for up to 3 million people in Darfur from next month because of insecurity along the main supply routes. At least 60 WFP lorries have been hijacked since December in Sudan's western province, where government forces and rebels have been at war for five years. The hijacks have drastically curtailed the delivery of food to warehouses ahead of the rainy season that lasts from May to September, when there is limited market access and crop stocks are depleted.

Instead of the normal ration of 500 grams of cereal a day, people in displaced persons' camps and conflict-affected villages will only get 225 grams from next month, the UN agency said yesterday. Rations of pulses and sugar will also be halved, giving people barely 60% of their recommended minimum daily calorie intake.

The WFP said that while Sudan's government provided security for convoys on the main supply routes, the escorts were too infrequent, given the huge demand for food at this time of year. "Attacks on the food pipeline are an attack on the most vulnerable people in Darfur," said Josette Sheeran, the agency's executive director. "With up to 3 million people depending on us for their survival in the rainy season, keeping WFP's supply line open is a matter of life and death. We call on all parties to protect the access to food."

Sheeran's exhortation painfully underscores the urgent need for a larger and more robust peacekeeping force in Darfur. The parties responsible for disrupting WFP's supply lines -- government and rebel forces, as well as opportunistic bandits -- are not going to police themselves, as severing -- or appropriating -- humanitarian aid is often, perversely, the exact purpose of these groups. Protecting humanitarian supply lines, then, is one area in which a neutral peacekeeping force can have an immediate impact -- even before Darfur's sputtering peace process can achieve a sustainable political solution.

At a Global Day for Darfur event here on the Mall in Washington last Sunday, Amnesty International and Tents of Hope had set up an evocative display of little baggies containing the amount of food that each Darfurian in an Internally Displaced Persons Camp receives each day. The small piles of lentils and flour were not much, and halving even that meager amount bodes very poorly indeed for the future of Darfur's displaced.

At a press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday afternoon, President Bush sought to explain why stronger action has yet to be taken vis-a-vis Darfur.

We shared our deep concern about the people in Darfur. And I -- I share frustrations that the United Nations-AU peacekeeping force is slow in arriving. I made the decision not to put our troops in there on the expectation that the United Nations, along with the AU, could be effective -- and they haven't been as effective as they should be, and we'll continue to work to help them.

The slow deployment of UNAMID -- the peacekeeping force scheduled to reach full deployment in Darfur over three months ago -- is indeed frustrating. But the argument that Bush is making here -- a myth that he has promulgated before -- is deeply disingenuous. The alternative to a slow-deploying UN force was never sending U.S. troops into Darfur; this option was simply never on the table. No U.S. troops have been available for this kind of peacekeeping mission -- let alone those in Liberia, Congo, Lebanon, and the other various war zones where the UN is deployed -- nor would sending U.S. troops to these places, or to Darfur, necessarily have been a good idea. As Condoleezza Rice reminds Bush in Nick Kristof's imagined rendition, "you can't invade a third Muslim country, especially one with oil."

No, the alternative to U.S. troops in Darfur was, is, and will continue to be putting an effective UN peacekeeping force on the ground there, which the U.S. has been in the most opportunistic position to ensure. By failing to provide more robust support for UN peackeeping, to invest a deeper commitment in Sudan's tortured peace processes, and to exert more concerted pressure on Sudan and its enablers, the U.S. has consistently watched opportunities for peace and protection in Darfur sail by. Faulting the UN for a slow-deploying and under-resourced peacekeeping mission is a bit like blaming one's shadow. If the U.S. is going to cast stones at the UN, it would do well to remember that the UN is no more than its Member States, and that the U.S., with the huge amount of influence and funding that it brings to the world body, may well end up looking to itself, with a stone in its hands.

Yet President Bush continues to present this false dichotomy: unilateral U.S. military action, for which the American population largely has no stomach, versus a failed UN mission, which the U.S. can conveniently scapegoat for the continually deteriorating situation in Darfur. The media should call the administration out on this self-exculpatory tactic, and the U.S. should discard its smoke and mirrors and work honestly with the international community to achieve real, tangible progress in Darfur.

A very newsworthy press release from the Better World Campaign:

The Better World Campaign delivered today to the U.S. Congress a letter signed by 80 organizations calling for payment of U.S. debt to the United Nations, which at the beginning of this year amounted to more than $2.8 billion to the UN's regular budget and peacekeeping accounts. The debt makes up 25 percent of the UN's annual budget, and is ten times the amount owed by any other nation.

"This letter clearly shows that the American public wants the U.S. to keep its word at the UN and stop going it alone," said Better World Campaign Executive Director Deborah Derrick. "This Congress can begin the process of repairing U.S. financial standing at the UN when it takes up the President's FY 2008 Supplemental Funding Request in the coming days," she added.

The President's FY 2008 supplemental request, expected to be taken up by the Congress the week of April 21st, includes $334 million for the UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, Sudan, and $53 million for the UN's political missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. has called on the UN to take a greater role in these missions, but has not fully funded them.

For 80 organizations to sign on to a letter to Congress, the "ask" must have pretty universal appeal. Paying U.S. dues to the UN enjoys this kind of traction for very legitimate reasons: paying these dues makes sense, improves U.S. standing in the world, and is firmly in the U.S.'s interest. To emphasize these points, Better World Campaign -- the sister organization of the UN Foundation, Dispatch's sponsor -- has launched its "Don't Go It Alone" campaign, highlighting the effectiveness of working through the UN and the pressing need for the U.S. to follow up on its funding commitments.

MONUC, the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is typically -- and accurately -- described as, at over 17,000 uniformed personnel, the largest such mission currently deployed. What is less frequently considered, however, is the sheer size of the ground that these 17,000 peacekeepers have to cover. Just take a look at a map.

DR Congo is about the size of Western Europe. With that perspective, it's easy to understand why the Secretary-General, in his most recent report on the mission, worries that it risks becoming "stretched to the limit" as it transitions almost entirely to the eastern part of the country. Indeed, at a press conference in New York yesterday, the Secretary-General's Special Representative to MONUC, Alan Doss, confirmed that 92% of the mission's forces were now deployed in eastern Congo -- a crucial repositioning that will help the mission build on January's ceasefire in the volatile region.

Even in just two of Congo's smallest provinces, though, UN peacekeepers still have to patrol an area the size of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg combined. Speaking today at the Wilson Center, Mr. Doss made the telling analogy that MONUC's task of patrolling one of these provinces, South Kivu, is equivalent to having one police officer cover all of Manhattan, plus a sizable chunk of Brooklyn.

We often don't appreciate how tall of a task UN peacekeepers in remote, expansive , violent locations face. Give that statistic to a police officer in New York City, though, and I imagine s/he'll appreciate it a whole lot more.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says it is. South Africa, this month's president of the Security Council, however, doesn't think so. From the AP's Edith Lederer:

[South Africa's] U.N. Ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, insists that Zimbabwe is not on the agenda because the matter is being dealt with by the Southern African Development Community.

SADC leaders held a summit in Zambia that ended before dawn Sunday with a weak declaration that failed to criticize the absent Mugabe. The declaration called for the expeditious verification of election results in the presence of the candidates or their agents "within the rule of law," and urged "all parties to accept the results when they are announced."

South Africa has traditionally been criticized for not pushing Mugabe harder on reform, so punting the issue entirely to a regional organization seems a little suspicious. Kumalo, however, seems to recognize that such a pressing concern -- the stalemate could possibly lead to the end of the Mugabe's 28-year reign -- likely can't avoid mention at such a prominent Security Council meeting, particularly when the U.S., Britain, and France, have all indicated that they intend to discuss Zimbabwe.

'Those are huge countries,' Kumalo said. 'They can raise whatever they want to raise and all I have said was that we don't expect Zimbabwe to be discussed tomorrow (Wednesday). But they can raise anything.'

This is not just a power move by the "huge countries" of the West, of course. At a meeting dedicated to improving the UN's cooperation with regional African organizations, it seems only appropriate to discuss how the UN, AU, and SADC can work together to ensure that Zimbabwe's election results are determined freely, fairly, and transparently.

Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony revealed the answer my question from last week, namely by choosing not to reveal himself. Hopes for peace in northern Uganda were dashed over the weekend, as Kony opted to stay put in his remote Congolese jungle hideout, instead of venturing to the Sudanese border to sign a long-anticipated peace deal with the Ugandan government. Despite the buildup, Kony's nonappearance was ultimately unsurprising, as his commitment to the bedraggled peace process was always undermined by his powerful antipathy to the prospect of facing ICC prosecution. Nonetheless, this comes as an unfortunate blow to the people of northern Uganda, many of whom, even including Kony's victims, have even been willing to drop ICC jurisdiction in the interest of peace.

While the Ugandan delegation officially remains committed, and cautiously hopeful about, the stalled peace process, the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, has also branded Kony as "not serious." Museveni is likely engaging in a bit of spin, taking advantage of Kony's defection to play up his own image as the one committed to peace, but there is a good deal of truth in his characterization of the rebel leader. The LRA's own top negotiator, David Matsanga, an admitted opponent of Museveni, resigned out of frustration with Kony's tactics, which he described to Voice of America.

"I have decided that I can no longer tolerate the type of tricks that are involved in the LRA by the leadership. When general Joseph Kony tells me that I want to sign this agreement on this date, and then he doesn't turn up. He doesn't even call me to tell me that he is not going to be in such and such a place, so that I can tell the world and other people not to come."

An even more ominous sign coming out of the LRA camp -- and a fate that Matsanga has thus far avoided -- is the killing of nine rebel leaders in an apparent conflict over whether or not to sign the agreement. The idea of suspending ICC indictments becomes increasingly distasteful when a group -- a listed terrorist organization, mind you -- is willing to kill its own members in a debate over peace.

For all intents and purposes, many analysts have argued, the conflicts in Chad, Darfur, and the Central African Repu