UN Headquarters in New York. Time to push it into the Hudson.
Time to dump the discredited United Nations, that’s the topic of tonight’s Byline.
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I’m starting to think that old proverb was invented for the United Nations.
Especially after they granted North Korea the chairmanship of their
While it started with grand ideas and good intentions after the Second World War, the reality, a reality that cannot be denied, is that the UN is a an organization that cannot claim to uphold the ideals that it expresses nor the ideals we have mistakenly laid upon it.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document adopted by the UN in December 1948 states that:
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
That’s Article 1 of the declaration. It sounds wonderful. It sounds like something we should strive towards.
So does Article 2.
“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
If these are the ideals of the UN and have been so since 1948 why are half the countries granted status at the chat shop and on the cocktail circuit allowed to take part.
Does Saudi Arabia, the country currently prosecuting women for driving, live up to those standards?
What about Iran or Lybia or Yemen?
Yet like North Korea the United Nations gives each of these countries equal standing with countries like Canada that do try to live up to those standards.
This cuts deeply into the credibility of the organization.
Is the United Nations worth dealing with any more?
I’m not convinced.
While they reluctantly agreed to protect people from Ghadafi’s bombing they have done nothing regarding governments in Syria and Yemen that have killed thousands.
They do nothing about the government in Burma or the draconian policies of China that violate the UN’s founding documents.
China welcomed North Korea taking the lead role on the disarmament committee. So did Iran.
No small wonder. According to a UN report, one that China is blocking from release but which is leaking out slowly, Iran and North Korea are working together on ballistic missile technology. They are shipping material and information back and forth through a third country.
That country is believed to be China.
China and Iran welcomed North Korea’s new gig.
So unfortunately did Canada.
The Canadian delegate to the committee, Marius Grinius, is cited as welcoming North Korea.
Thankfully Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird is having none of this.
“North Korea is simply not a credible chair of a disarmament body.”
“The fact that it gets a turn chairing a United Nations committee focused on disarmament is unacceptable, given the North Korean regime’s efforts in the exact opposite direction.
We call on North Korea to pass the chair on to a credible country that will advance the disarmament agenda within the UN. Canada will be immediately reviewing our participation in this committee’s activities.”
Well said.
Maybe now Minister Baird can turn his attention to the rest of the whackiness taking place at the UN. Maybe now is the time for Canada to reconsider its role with the organization that we spent 118 million dollars on last year.
And that’s the Byline.
Categories: Byline
Why is it that we never hear from so-called “human rights groups” that those muslim nations are anti-human rights but instead they choose to attack Israel for protecting itself?
Good article overall but the UN headquarters is located along Manhattan’s east side, on the shore of the East River. The Hudson River is along Manhattan’s west side.
But North Korea needs to make clear that it will live up to its obligations … and we are willing to talk about how North Korea can do that he said.North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is being pressured to adhere to obligations set in a 1994 anti-nuclear agreement. Under that pact Pyongyang agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program in return for aid from the United States Japan and South Korea.