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Dec. 2, 2011

The latest from the UN

Editorial

It emerged last week that Syria has been appointed to a United Nations committee that, among other things, oversees human rights at the global level. Syria was elected to a second term on UNESCO’s Committee on Conventions and Recommendations, which examines “communications ... relating to the exercise of human rights.”

Syria, whose government has killed at least 3,500 of its own citizens in the past few months and that has been repressing its entire population for generations before this, will now contribute to the world body’s efforts on human rights. The lunacy even led the agency’s executive director to break protocol and criticize the Syrian appointment, a rare, if welcome, voice of reason in a world turned upside down.
This and other recent (and not so recent) abominations undermine the truly great potential of the United Nations. What will it take – what truly unavoidable moral atrocity has to happen – for the UN to be reformed to cultivate the best human potential instead of rewarding its worst?

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