United nations, EU, where are you??

Sez you. But as attractive of a claim as this is to you you have not a shred of evidence to support it.



Feel free to avoid purchasing oil through the Food For Oil program.



Sez you. But as attractive of a claim as this is to you you have not a shred of evidence to support it.

Do your claims come with any evidence? Or should they be taken as seriously as those who claim they have been probed by aliens?

Thanks for that compliment!







:wink:

Dazzling point, Walter.
--------
Links from OFF to AQ.One link ran from a U.N.-approved buyer of Saddam's oil, Galp International Trading Corp., involved near the very start of the program, to a shell company called ASAT Trust in Liechtenstein, linked to a bank in the Bahamas, Bank Al Taqwa. Both ASAT Trust and Bank Al Taqwa were designated on the U.N.'s own terror-watch list, shortly after 9/11, as entities "belonging to or affiliated with Al Qaeda

So -- if the UN is so suspect and so incompetent -- does that mean you won't want it to intervene in Sudan?

(If not, who else are you suggesting should intervene, considering you already said the US shouldn't? And why them?)

Or does it merely mean that you actually still want to entrust the Darfurians to that same incompetent UN - just, you'll use said incompetence as a reason for the US not to contribute anything to the effort?

Commentary > Opinion
from the June 30, 2004 edition

In Sudan's Darfur: action, not just aid

By Joseph Siegle

WASHINGTON – The Sudanese government's genocidal campaign to expunge African tribes from its western provinces ripples with impunity. More than 1 million people have been uprooted from their homes, 30,000 have been killed, women have been systematically raped, children kidnapped to be used as slaves, farms burned, villages looted, and water sources contaminated with decomposing corpses. The brutality punctuates the unmistakable message: Don't come back.
The situation is going to get worse. The approaching rainy season threatens to strand large numbers of the displaced without access to food, medical supplies, and other basic necessities in a barren land soon to be an impassable slop. Aid agencies estimate that 350,000 to 1 million people could die from starvation and disease, conveniently advancing the government's aims while masking culpability - a technique Khartoum has perfected from its decades-long conflict in the south. Besides, time is on the unelected government's side: A prolonged displacement of black Africansprovides the opening for Darfur to be Arabized, as nomadic Arab tribes move into the area.
Obviously, there is cause for international action. But let's be clear about the goal: This crisis is entirely politically generated - and demands a political solution.

Much effort has focused on getting emergency supplies to refugees in the desolate border area with Chad. While meritorious, this is, in effect, treating the symptom. The objective of international engagement on Darfur should be to get the displaced back home - immediately. An early return provides them with a better chance of survival. It gives them access to their salvageable crops, wild foods, jobs, and repairable water and sanitation systems; traditional social and trading networks can also be recreated. Extended exposure to the overcrowded, unhygienic, and insecure conditions in centers for refugees and displaced persons is a recipe for death and despair - not to mention a Herculean challenge for humanitarian organizations. Moreover, once Arab settlers have moved in, resolution becomes far more difficult.

The US and other international actors have called on Sudan to rein in the Arab "Janjaweed" militias responsible and to provide security for the displaced. This is the political equivalent of imploring the fox to guard the henhouse. The Sudanese government has been directly involved in the killings. And it has a long history of sponsoring local militias to destabilize regions of the country and, for that matter, neighboring African countries, with which it is at odds. This "outsourcing" of military operations provides the government a low-cost and plausibly deniable device for advancing its political aims. Counting on the government to ensure the security of a population it wants to exterminate is reminiscent of recent government-sponsored pogroms in Kosovo, Kurdish northern Iraq after the Gulf War, and East Timor.

The upshot: by the predatory and abusive violation of its citizens, the dictatorial government of Omar Hassan al-Bashir, like those of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein, has relinquished its claims of sovereignty in Darfur.

So international efforts should aim at compelling the government to vacate the region, making Darfur a UN protectorate for the moment. A "no-fly zone" should be declared for the region. World leaders have done this in other cases of forced mass displacement - and a less vigorous response in Sudan raises questions of why they turn a blind eye to genocide only in Africa.

The Bashir government has one advantage over the likes of Milosevic and Hussein, however. Khartoum knows how to read the writing on the wall: In the face of overwhelming international condemnation, Khartoum has a history of adapting its egregious behavior. It expelled an increasingly notorious Osama bin Laden in the mid-1990s, made amends with its neighbors when its complicity in the assassination attempt of Hosni Mubarak in 1995 was publicized, and has positioned itself on the side of the US in the war on terror following the Sept. 11 attacks.

The key for the international community, therefore, is to make sure the writing on the wall is clear in the case of Darfur. Secretary of State Colin Powell's planned visit to Darfur Wednesday is a vital opportunity to drive home this point.

As with the other instances of the international community rolling back ethnic cleansing, decisive action is required: Action from the US - and, indispensably, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the European Union, and the African Union (AU). Politically, all of these actors must unambiguously and forcefully condemn the ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Having violated the terms of membership, Sudan should be prevented from voting in the UN. And its leaders must be held personally accountable. International travel by senior government officials and their families should be barred, their personal assets frozen, and the prospect of war-crimes charges against General Bashir and his ruling clique brandished.

The two black African rebel groups against whom the Sudanese government ostensibly launched its campaign must also be compelled to desist completely from any further aggression - which Khartoum has used as a pretext for their mass murder.

Economically, pending resolution of war-crimes charges, claims can be made against Sudan's oil exports for compensation to the victims in Darfur - as well as to reimburse the international community for the humanitarian resources expended to ameliorate this manufactured crisis. Simultaneously, sanctions against Sudan's oil exports can be instituted. Shippers caught transporting Sudanese oil would lose their tankers and cargo. The skyrocketing premiums on insurance and freight charges would surely add pressure on Sudan's primary customers - China, Malaysia, and South Korea - to curtail these purchases even if moral suasion alone would not.

Security, of course, is the major issue in returning displaced populations. While the AU has 120 peace monitors on the ground, this is inadequate to cover a region the size of France. Closer to 20,000 peacekeepers are required - backed by a UN resolution. Most could come from Africa. However, contributions from other regions would also be needed - ideal candidates being India, Britain, Canada, Australia, and the EU. The US, currently absorbed in Iraq and Afghanistan, should still provide logistical and financial support.

"Never again," is the mandate forever etched into our collective consciousness by the Holocaust. Yet, without an established international protocol for responding to genocide, honoring this mandate is never automatic - as we saw in Rwanda. Preventing it this time depends on a quorum of global leaders acting in unison. By so doing, they can prevent this disaster from becoming a catastrophe and forever staining their places in history.

• Joseph Siegle is the Douglas Dillon fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is coauthor of the forthcoming book, 'The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace.'

Friends, here is a plea of a UNICEF worker just returning from Darfur. If there is a thread on Sudan, someone please direct me to it. If not, let's establish one. The letter includes links and recommendations of action, we can all do a little bit.
Sofia, I hear what you are saying, but it seems to me that before you form such a strong opinion on something, you should study it first. It is a funny contradiction to say that UN should do something and U.S. should not pay - it is an oxymoron. U.S. is a UN member and is already paying proportionaly much less than many other countries (membership fees skipped in many a year, foreign aid embarassingly low...0,07 percent instead of pledged 0.17% of GDP... sounds like not much of a difference. but it is. 55billion dollars worth of a difference, which would just about double the amount of money for aid around the world. if all western countries upped their contributions - some already did - we would have $113 billion for aid.) anyhow, where does this responsibility to help come from? well, in my humble opinion, comes from both our beliefs and our history. if you believe in ideas of liberalism, human rights, universal moral values, well they come with strings attached. we live in affluence, we have a moral responsibility to help those who are dying of starvations, poverty, in civil wars and mass murders. I do feel that responsibility and want my leaders to act accordingly. The history, well, that might be for a separate thread entirely... Many mass-scale conflicts in Africa were introduced with colonial regimes and their administration. Tutsis and Hutus, South Africa, many other countries were plunged into conflicts and violence with an outside help, to say the least. Not all, not everywhere, but there is a responsibility. Even if it wasn't so. Anyho, gotta go to work, here is the promised letter:

June 27th, 2004

Dear family and friends,

As most of you know, I have had the opportunity in the last several months to travel to Darfur to support UNICEF's emergency response to what is being called "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today." It is also being called Genocide.

Since arriving in Sudan in January I have sent several emails and articles about what is happening in Darfur. Many of you have responded with shock, sadness and encouragement. I can't tell you how much I have appreciated your words of support and solidarity. A number of you also wrote asking what you can do tohelp. Hence this email. I guess my answers are fairly predictable:

1)Speak up
2)Give money
3)Send prayers
4)Forward this email to anyone and everyone you think
might respond

Being in Darfur has been an experience that I find difficult to describe. Utterly tragic and compelling are the words I have used most often. It is such a cliché to say that seeing the immense suffering up close has made a deep impression on me, or that I will not easily forget the children of Darfur. But it is true. And that I continue to be inspired every day by the bravery and commitment of Sudanese colleagues. That I have sat and tried to comprehend the despair of
lives so brutally destroyed, and have also been totally humbled by the incredible resilience of the human spirit.

My mood was somber the day I flew out of Darfur for the last time. I was trying to come to terms with all I had seen and heard, and with leaving so soon. Two things I was certain of: that it had really been my privilege to be there and try to offer some small amount of help, and that I had to find ways to spread the word and do more. So this is a first step.

Some of you may notice that I am sending this letter out on my 30th birthday. Indeed, it is one of the more significant ways I could think of to mark the occasion. It is with great gratitude for the many blessings in my own life, that I am reaching out and asking you to help in raising awareness, attention, funds and hope for a place and people that need is
very much right now.

RAISING AWARENESS AND SPEAKING UP

I think most of you have already been following the situation in Darfur to some extent. But just in case, here are the latest article and op-ed on Sudan from yesterday's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/international/africa/26NATI.html?th

http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html

The International Crisis Group's webpage has good analysis and many links to more information, including
a good "What You Can Do" section with details for contacting elected representatives around the world:
http://www.crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm?id=2700&l=1

Lastly, a link to an on-line petition calling on Colin Powell to "immediately recognize the genocide occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan and move aggressively to bring it to an end -an action that could save more than 1,000,000 lives."
http://www.africaaction.org/newsroom/index.php?op=read&documentid=567&type=15


Does political pressure achieve anything? The first time I read the International Crisis Group's suggestion for the UN Security Council to authorize the use of force to intervene, I thought, "yeah, that seems about as likely as the Sudanese government actually admitting their complicity in the war crimes that have been committed." Then one afternoon in
Khartoum I met with a very impressive Sudanese woman (the first female Minister in Sudan who has been in and out of government as an independent ever since) who has been appointed to the Government's recently formed Commission of Inquiry to investigate violations of human rights in Darfur. She is convinced the commission was set up because of the government's nervousness about suggestions of the need for international intervention. And she fully intends to
report the true story of the horrific abuses being perpetrated with government support.

Although a fair amount of good documentation already exists in reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others, it is worth noting that anything this commission writes will have 10 times more credibility within Sudan, where official denial still reigns (plus it will be in Arabic...). I happened to pick up a Khartoum paper the day before yesterday
and the two top headlines were almost laughable. "Bashir: Ethnic Cleansing Sheer Fabrication," and "Situation in Darfur Under Control, Says top Official." (The top official referred to being the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, an agency riddled with security personnel that is responsible for facilitating (or obstructing) all humanitarian assistance. When a UNICEF team went out to assess conditions in a newly accessible area recently they were told by their minders, "no questions about rape or human rights." Which is interesting when your main counterpart for child protection work within that very ministry is the "Department of Peace and Human Rights." )

But I digress, as usual...my original point was that political pressure doesn't always help the people on the ground right away (which is why I tend to like doing the field work), but ultimately the solutions are political, and international pressure does have an effect. This government is sensitive to its international standing and the increase in pressure
over the last weeks has led to new openings and acknowledgements of the government's responsibility to stop the violence by disarming militias. So let's all hope that the visits of both Kofi Annan and Colin Powell to Darfur this week will succeed in raising the stakes and the response from the Sudanese government in a major way. And if any of my friends
in DC have more specific ideas about where to apply the pressure today to keep the heat on, please share with us all!

THE SCALE OF THE NEEDS

Below is a recent press release from MSF:
http://www.msf.org/countries/page.cfm?articleid=2EC7D4C4-4185-4E3F-99D798DEE06A7A4E

I include this one in particular because it is well written and honest, and because it was on a bumpy road
back from a visit to the teeming Morny camp featured in the report that I first conceived of this email.

My visit that day included stopping by to talk to MSF, the only aid agency with staff staying overnight in the camp. I stood among exhausted looking women holding little cups of special formula to the lips of their emaciated children and thought of the many, many days of hunger and fear that must have come before their arrival to this well run therapeutic feeding center. I talked to the doctors at the clinic about the patterns of violent injuries they see every day whereby the younger women and girls who venture out of the camp to collect firewood and grass tend to be raped, while the older women are just beaten. And I thought with frustration about how the increasing international media attention to the issue of sexual violence didn't seem to be making much discernable difference to women and girls here.

I also went and visited the brand new temporary classrooms that UNICEF had recently constructed. It absolutely made my day to see hundreds of children proudly carrying their new exercise books in little homemade book bags made from scraps of cloth and to see the brand new volleyball net strung up. 4,000 primary school children had been admitted to classes in Morny when the new schools opened the week before. 8,000 more had registered and couldn't be accommodated. There is still much work to do.

The other image I had in my mind as we drove back from Morny that afternoon was a photo I had seen the day
before of a beautiful nine year old girl crouching against a tree with a very far away look in her eyes. The person who showed me the picture said that she had been gang raped by a group of men the day before and pointed out to me the dried blood stains on her skirt. Wondering about that girl and the help that she might or might not receive, and about the impact of this experience on her future, I was also thinking about how child protection work is about so much more than
delivering (also desperately needed) food and plastic sheeting.

My area of work-looking out for children who have been separated from their parents, restarting education as
a way of restoring some sense of normalcy to severely disrupted lives, creating opportunities for recreation and play that help children to express themselves and start to heal from the terrible experiences they have had-is not always considered lifesaving. But I will argue for it every time as a core emergency intervention.

GIVING MONEY

I will tell you that before today, I have only rarely made a personal financial contribution to the program that I have been hired to run, nor directly asked my friends and family to do so. This time, with Darfur, I am doing both. It is just something I feel is necessary. Whatever we manage to raise together will be a small part of what is needed. But it will carry all of our love and make a difference for the children who are reached, and that is something that you come
to appreciate more and more when you see and interact with those individual children in person.

When I leave Sudan at the end of July, I will leave behind $2000 from my monthly salary to support recreation activities for 1000 more children in the camps. I would like to invite you to add to that-whether $10 or $10,000. Some examples of what your money can buy:

$100 buys one of the recreation kits we have put together with enough footballs, volleyballs, skipping ropes, colored pencils, notebooks, paints, etc. for 50 children.

$700 buys construction of one temporary classroom/tent for 130 children to attend school (in double shifts).

$2888 buys the classroom, mats for the floor, blackboard, text books, school supplies, teacher training, latrines, and a water hand pump for the same 130 children

(As of this week, 45,980 children have started attending school in 320 temporary classrooms erected by UNICEF throughout Darfur. 100 more classrooms are planned in the next month, but the current budget for school construction finishes there. Many camps, and many, many children have not been reached.)

To make it easy I am including websites where you can donate. (If anyone would prefer to give more directly,
let me know and I can give the money here and have you reimburse me later.) I am partial to the four organizations below-having worked for all of them, except MSF, who I especially like for their great, front line work-but would want you to donate wherever you feel most comfortable. So the last link has a list that includes additional organizations working in Darfur.

UNICEF:
http://www.unicefusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=duLRI8O0H&b=50755

International Rescue Committee:
http://www.theirc.org/

Save the Children:
http://www.savethechildren.org/index1.asp

Medecins Sans Frontieres
http://www.msf.org/

There are others doing good work and listed on the
website below:
http://www.crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm?id=2756&l=1

The one thing I ask is that if you do choose to donate, you send me an email letting me know much you have contributed so that I can tally the collective response to this particular appeal and let you all know its impact.

I don't think there is anything left to say except THANK YOU.

yours,
Catherine

PS Several photos attached. The one of the burned village and the woman with the young boy are compliments of Mr. Sune Gudnitz, former UN OCHA Humanitarian Officer.

PPS Also below are three stories from children at one of UNICEF's activity centers. They will probably make you want to say some prayers. And, truly, truly, I believe those prayers are just as important as all of the above.

ABBAKAR (boy) 17 years
He is from a village called X and he says they were poor farmers. They grew sorghum, millet, groundnut and vegetables. His village was attacked eight months ago and the attackers cut down their crops to feed their camels and horses. They fled and hid in a sorghum field and later went up into the mountains for safety. They went for five days without food. He has been told that his grandmother and sister are alive but they cannot go back for them and his two brothers
and cousin are presumed dead. He says he misses his friend and two brothers the most. When asked about
the camp, he said that this doesn't feel like home, but there are not options.

RIHAB (girl) 12 years
Her father was killed when militias attacked her village. The rest of the family fled into the sorghum fields but the janjawid caught up with them and took all their possessions. They killed her little sister in the fields. She used to care for her 3 year old sister and feels very sad about her death. Now she is in the camp with her mother and the rest of her
family.

JAMAAL (boy) 13 years
His village was attacked 6 months ago. He saw his brothers being beaten as he fled. He also saw a neighbour killed in front of him. He has three brothers and three sisters, but at the camp he only has one brother with him. He got separated from his family during the attacks and it is believed that his father is dead. He found his mother in X before
moving to this camp. When asked what he would do if he had all the money in the world, he said he would
build a massive house for people to live in.

This one not about Sudan, but about the UN and the US:

Today in the newspaper, front page story: the US is threatening it will suspend all financial support to the World Health Organisation and UNICEF.

Why? Endemic corruption? Incompetence? Nah ... its because they work together (obviously) with another UN agency, UNPFA (sp?) - to which the US already suspended its contributions earlier - because it doesnt implement an anti-abortion policy.

So two global health/aid organisations, doing such noteworthy work that even Sofia supports them, are cut off by the world's largest country because they work together with a sister organisation that doesn't implement the administration's anti-abortion policies. Never mind that UNICEF works on childrens' health, vaccines, education, etc - well, you can read above about the temporary classrooms UNICEF recently constructed in war-torn Sudan - all laudable goals that have nothing to do with abortion ... ideology rules.

I get so very mad at this stuff. I mean, each country is entitled to its own priorities and stances. Even if Bush doesnt want to fund any reproduction-related UN activities because of his ideological beliefs, I'd frown (imagine we were all to start deciding which parts of our taxes we wanted to pay and which ones not - hey, I dont like the Iraq war, I wont pay the part of my taxes that goes to defence, you hear?) -- but I could at least still see the argument. This is just vindictive.

They're not entirely alone in their battle against UNPFA policies - they're allying with the Vatican and orthodox Muslim countries . But they are pushing it the furthest.

UNICEF

WHO

Is Bush's religious fundamentalism any different that of Islam's, the Vatican or any other religious cult?? No, all want you to live to their rules and beliefs.

UNFPA




That, what nimh reported above, started quite some time ago - with lies:
Abortion row threatens UN funds

KHARTOUM, Sudan, June 30 — Sudan tried on Wednesday to play down the extent of the human disaster unfolding in its western Darfur region, but two high-powered visitors, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations, received hints nonetheless of the dire state of affairs.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/01/international/africa/01SUDA.html?th

Talking about how many hints one needs ...

US Deputy Secretary of State Armitage: "terrible travesties" are going on in Sudan, but "whether it is genocide in fact, is something that we discuss with the other international partners."

In fact, the Sudanese government should "knock it off", but err, no, we have no plans of doing much beyond just telling them so at the moment: "We'd like to get this situation stopped and stabilized right now so we don't have to go to an international stabilization force."

I mean, after all, Sudan was a rogue state when it was hosting Al Qaeda, but "I don't think it's a rouge regime any longer" ...

Excerpt from interview with Armitage by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt:



Anyone need a wake-up call?

This site [N.B.: PDF-file!] provides access to the full text of [UK, an EU-member] House of Commons Research paper 04/51 which was published in June 2004. It examines the conflict in Sudan. A background history to the conflict and civil war in Sudan is provided and the response of the international community to the humanitarian crisis analysed. Appendices contain maps of the region.

Nimh,
Are you saying then that these organizations cant do their jobs without US money?

As was pointed out earlier on this thread,the US is NOT the majority contributor to the UN.Our dues are not even half of the money the UN gets.
Therefore,if we dont pay,it shouldnt make a dent in their operating budget,should it.

So you wouldn't mind at all, too, if your salary was shortened by that amount?

EL FASHER, Sudan There were only donkeys milling around in a soggy, trash-strewn lot Thursday afternoon when the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, and his entourage arrived at what was supposed to be a crowded squatter camp here in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan..
Gone were the more than 1,000 residents. Gone as well were their makeshift dwellings. It seems that hours before Annan's arrival, local authorities had loaded the camp dwellers aboard trucks and moved them down the road..
"Where are the people?" Annan was overheard asking a Sudanese official who was accompanying his tour of Darfur, a region in western Sudan where the government has been accused of unleashing armed militias on the local population in order to quell a rebel uprising..
Al Noor Muhammad Ibrahim, minister of social affairs for the state of North Darfur, explained that the camp on Annan's itinerary no longer existed. He said the government had relocated residents from the Meshtel settlement the evening before, sometime after UN officials had paid a visit at 5 p.m. Wednesday in preparation for a stop by Annan..
"It's not because the secretary general of the United Nations is here that we moved them," Ibrahim insisted as incredulous UN officials looked on. Ibrahim said the conditions had been too grim for the people there and that humanitarianism, not public relations, had motivated him to act. "We did not like seeing people living like that.".
Annan, never leaving his vehicle, stayed mum as visibly agitated aides argued with Sudanese authorities about the sudden relocation. The government urged Annan to visit another settlement, a nearby camp with far better conditions where Secretary of State Colin Powell toured during his brief stop in Darfur on Wednesday..
But Annan bypassed the Abushouk camp, which has become a regular stop for visiting dignitaries and is known widely among aid workers as the "tourist camp.".
In meetings with Annan earlier on Wednesday, Sudanese authorities had insisted that the situation in Darfur, which the United Nations has labeled the world's worst humanitarian crisis, had been greatly overblown by the international community..
At the Meshtel camp that was abandoned when Annan arrived, UN officials had planned to give Annan a firsthand view of the grim conditions facing many of those driven from their villages in Darfur..
The million or so displaced residents of Darfur have gathered in more than 100 settlements across the vast region, which is as large as France. Aid agencies have begun offering food, water and shelter in some of the camps, reducing the desperation..
But there are only 300 international aid workers, 50 of whom work for the United Nations, in all of Darfur, said Jan Egeland, the UN under secretary for humanitarian affairs..
The task they face is huge. A million or more residents, most of them farmers who grow their own food, now live in makeshift homes far from their land. More than 100,000 others are living in rugged refugee camps across the border in Chad. Even in normal years, between 20,000 and 30,000 people die in Darfur from preventable diseases like malaria, cholera and diarrhea. UN officials expect far more people to die this year, with residents clustered together in camps and the rainy season already begun..
With too few aid workers and not enough assistance for all, at least 50 camps in Darfur are receiving no humanitarian assistance at all, Egeland said..
Meshtel was one of those until it disappeared..
Earlier in the day, Annan had visited a more established settlement outside El Fasher where more than 40,000 have congregated, known locally as Zam Zam. He plopped down on a straw mat to hear some elders plead for more aid. He inspected a UN-sponsored well. And he joined a group of 50 women under an acacia tree to hear the day-to-day struggles they face since being chased from their homes..
It was at the discussion with women that Annan's entourage again found itself butting heads with the local authorities. Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid, the minister for humanitarian affairs, wanted to join in the open-air event, as did other government officials. But aides to Annan said they wanted the women to speak freely and that it was best if Hamid and the others stayed away..
After much give and take, the authorities agreed, but they stood nearby nonetheless as one woman described how 20 camp dwellers had been raped by militia men during the attacks on their villages. Annan put his hand to his heart and said: "No one is going to force you to go home without security. As long as you're in this camp, we'll do everything we can to protect you." The women, in unison, praised Allah..
The New York Times

If you cut it by less than half, it won't make a dent?

What Walter said.

Thanks to Thok for posting this on another thread about Sudan / Darfur:

---

The hard facts :



SOURCE

"The U.N. Children's Fund, the World Health Organization, the Sudanese Ministry of Health and several relief groups are carrying out a measles immunizations on more than 2 million children in Darfur.

_UNICEF and relief organizations have opened 18 centers to aid severely malnourished children in Darfur and many more are needed."

Note, WHO and UNICEF - the same organisations the Bush admin now wants to cut off from its contributions ... because they work together with another agency that doesn't implement the Bush line on abortion.

Such scruples, eh?

Sorry I'm a bit late on this but regardless ... The fact that the US can manipulate history to a nation that is going to war or int he midst of a civil war is something that needs to be assessed in the full impact of a democracy and ethics. And as such the nation cant have it both ways - it cannot have influence on the world and turn it's back to 80 percent of the humanity in suffering - it quite simply comes with the terriroty of being the world's police. In the evolution of humanity towards rule of law, human rights - leadership decides who counts - making some pretty serious decisions as to who is more human and who is less so. As such the whole of humanity has to be perceived as an entity that requires those who have civility to support them and those who are oppressed to move towards that same goal and not stay within their own confines and not pick and choose who deserves intervention and capabilities of this nation.