The U.N. Staff Union which represents over 5,000 members, overwhelmingly voted a resolution of
no confidence in Secretary-General Kofi Annan Thursday over his proposal to radically overhaul U.N. operations. Annan released his proposal on Tuesday.
Problems cited were job outsourcing and lack of job security. The U.N. wants to outsource translating and billing services.
The resolution said "in the future, all staff may be at risk" and expressed "a statement of no confidence in the secretary-general and his senior management team."
The staff revolt is just the latest in series of problems the U.N. chief has been force to confront in recent months, including heavy criticism of his management in the scandal surrounding the U.N. oil-for-food program for Iraq.
Annan has also struggled to deal with allegations of sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers as well as the fallout from corruption charges linked to how the U.N. awards work contracts. (From Fox News)
We must get the U.S. out of the U.N. and take the U.N. up on its charge of leaving our country.
Posted by Walt as Corruption at 2:30 PM EST
No Comments »
U.N. members do not pay a fair and proportional dues. For example Japan and the United States pay the brunt of the yearly dues while the other 180+ countries pay on the average of 1%.
The BBC reports:
Japan has proposed a revamp of United Nations funding to force some Security Council members to pay more.
Presently, Japan pays 19.45% of the yearly U.N. budget, second to the U.S. which pays 22%. Japan is not a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. While permanent members Red China pays 2.05% and Russia pays only 1.1%!
That is not fair!
The Japanese foreign ministry said in a statement that UN dues should "fairly represent member states’ economies as well as their status and responsibility at the United Nations".
Under its 3% proposal, Tokyo’s share of the budget would fall to 15.7%.
Germany, which has also failed to become a permanent member, would see a reduction - from 8.66% to 8.2%. Britain and France would see rises of less than 0.5%, while the US would be unchanged.
Japan’s attempts to get a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council has been blocked by Red China who does not believe Japan has atoned for her part in World War Two.
Just another good reason to get out of the U.N. before our economies are weaken by the U.N.
Posted by Walt as Finances at 12:48 AM EST
No Comments »
The U.N. suggests Israelis, not the Arabs, are the real terrorists!
By Ryan Jones
Jerusalem Newswire
Almost completely disregarding Palestinian Arab aggression against Israel’s Jews, a United Nations envoy has sought to lay the blame for regional conflict at the doorstep of the Jewish state by misrepresenting and exaggerating Israel’s defensive measures and isolated acts of frustration.
In a special report prepared for next week’s annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission, South African lawyer John Dugard charged:
"It seems that settlers are able to terrorize Palestinians and destroy their trees and crops with impunity."
What he failed to mention, however, are the innumerable stoning, shooting and bombing attacks carried out against the Jewish settlers by the hostile Arab population surrounding them. Often those attacks are launched from the cover of olive groves and fruit orchards, prompting frustrated and threatened Israelis to take matters into their own hands.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Walt as Terrorism, War & Peace at 9:10 PM EST
No Comments »
Roman Catholic leaders this week criticized the Danish cartoons that satirized Mohammed. They maintain that there is no right gratuitously to offend people of any religion. But then the Vatican Secretary of State, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, called Muslims to account for the weeks of murderous rioting that followed the publication of the cartoons. "If we tell our people they have no right to offend," Cardinal Sodano said, "we have to tell others they have no right to destroy us." Pope Benedict XVI made the point in his remarks to the new Moroccan ambassador to the Vatican. Morocco is one of the few Muslim countries with diplomatic ties to Rome, and it is considered one of the most tolerant of all Islamic societies. Still, conversion to Christianity is frowned upon, even in Morocco. The Pope told the envoy that peace depends upon "respect for the religious convictions and practices of others, in a reciprocal way, in all societies." Bishop Rino Fisichella, the head of a Catholic university in Rome, was even more pointed: "Let’s drop the diplomatic silence. We should put pressure on international organizations to make the societies and states in majority Muslim countries face up to their responsibilities." He’s right. All of these Muslim countries sit in the UN. And the UN’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights has acknowledged peoples’ right to change their religion since 1948. It’s about time these countries got with the program.
Source: FRC.org
Posted by Walt as Freedom & Human Rights, Terrorism at 7:56 AM EST
No Comments »
Last week, the Heritage Foundation release the following press release. This release reiterates why the U.S. will not support the discredited U.N.’s Human Rights Council resolution on Human Rights. This comes at a time when U.N. personnel are charged with sexual and human rights abuses. This is all the more why we should get out of the U.N.!
Washington, Feb. 24, 2006—Anne Bayefsky, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI, and Brett Schaefer, Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs at the Heritage Foundation, today issued the following statement on yesterday’s release of the text of a resolution establishing a new Human Rights Council by U.N. General Assembly President Jan Eliasson, intended to replace the discredited U.N. Commission on Human Rights:
Yesterday’s resolution on the proposed United Nations Human Rights Council is a bitter disappointment to friends of democracy and allies in the international protection of human rights. The United States would do the legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt, the first Chair of that commission, as well as countless oppressed and abused people around the world, an enormous disservice by agreeing to this proposal.
The United Nations’ record on promoting basic human rights has come under well deserved criticism in recent years. Members of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), the U.N.’s primary human rights body, include some of the world’s worst human rights violators, such as China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Even Secretary-General Kofi Annan has acknowledged, “The commission’s declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Walt as Freedom & Human Rights at 11:41 PM EST
No Comments »
Cross-posted from the Sean Hannity website
UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has called for meetings this week in the Security Council on allegations of corruption and sex abuse in U.N. peacekeeping missions, reigniting a dispute between the world body’s power players and a group of developing nations.
The Group of 77, which includes 132 mainly developing countries and China, is accusing Ambassador John Bolton of encroaching on the U.N. General Assembly’s turf by holding meetings on the allegations in the Security Council, which has five permanent and 10 rotating members.
The Group of 77 maintains the allegations should be handled by the General Assembly, where its members constitute a strong majority.
The United States this month holds the rotating Security Council presidency, and Bolton is insisting on holding meetings Wednesday and Thursday on the allegations.
At the heart of the struggle is what Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday is the General Assembly’s feeling "that its power and its influence is being diminished." The dispute comes at a crucial moment when the 60-year-old United Nations is debating major reforms and investigating new allegations of corruption.
Last week, two U.S. congressmen, Republican Henry Hyde of Illinois and Democrat Tom Lantos of California, accused the Group of 77 of trying to mask corruption and block attempts to overhaul the world body.
While some angry members of the group refuted the allegations and were outraged at the sharply worded letter, South African U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, whose country chairs the Group of 77, said Tuesday it would not respond because the group deals with governments — not legislative bodies.
Nonetheless, Kumalo read a statement at a press conference expressing the Group of 77’s support for reform of the United Nations and stressing that "the voice of every member state must be heard and respected during the reform process irrespective of the contributions made to the budget of the organization."
He also told reporters "the notion that is implied in all these debates and letters, that somehow developing countries are tolerant to corruption, to theft, to fraud … is very far from the truth."
The Security Council has become the dominant U.N. body because it deals with issues of peace and security and its five permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — have veto power. In the General Assembly, the 191 members each have one vote and there is no veto.
In the reform debate, Bolton has repeatedly stressed that the United States pays about 22 percent of the regular U.N. budget and 27 percent of the U.N. peacekeeping budget, and he has a responsibility to U.S. taxpayers to ensure that their money is spent wisely.
But Kumalo shot back Wednesday that even though three countries pay more than 50 percent of the budget combined and more than 100 combined pay less than 10 percent, the United Nations is an intergovernmental organization, not a corporation with A stock and B stock — "and we are all assessed on our ability to pay."
Under the U.N. Charter, the General Assembly is responsible for the U.N. budget and oversight of the operations of the U.N. Secretariat, which Annan heads.
The letter from Hyde and Lantos was a rebuttal to a Feb. 6 letter from Kumalo to Annan protesting the U.N.’s handling of an audit that alleged widespread corruption in contracts for U.N. peacekeeping missions worldwide. The audit was leaked to the media in mid-January, prompting U.N. Undersecretary-General Christopher Burnham, an American, to brief the press.
Kumalo said Tuesday the Group of 77 was upset because its members called for the audit and asked that it be given to the General Assembly. He said its members still haven’t been briefed on it and Bolton has now called Wednesday’s meeting to deal with the issue in the Security Council.
"That’s encroachment," said Kumalo.
Bolton disagreed, saying the Security Council authorizes U.N. peacekeeping operations and has a right to hold meetings on abuses — as does the General Assembly.
"I think the Security Council is going to be the more likely body to take decisive action," Bolton added.
The U.N. corruption inquiry expanded last month to include more than 200 investigations and led to eight U.N. staff members being put on paid leave. Any criminal wrongdoing discovered in the inquiry will be turned over to federal prosecutors in New York.
The U.N. instituted a policy of zero tolerance of sex abuse and zero contact last year following an investigation that found U.N. peacekeepers in Congo had sex with Congolese women and girls. Sex abuse has been reported in peacekeeping missions from Bosnia and Kosovo to Cambodia, East Timor, West Africa and Congo.
Source: Sean Hannity website
Posted by Walt as Corruption, Finances at 12:09 PM EST
2 Comments »
