Africa's own goal
May 16, 2007
The Financial Times
Original Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/36d8e3e2-0349-11dc-a023-000b5df10621.html

Enemies of the United Nations could not hope for a greater gift than the election of Zimbabwe to chair the UN commission on sustainable development. A more suitable role for one of President Robert Mugabe's henchmen might be to head a commission for sustainable dictatorship: Zimbabwe's lurches on despite the wilful destruction it has visited on its people.
In putting forward Francis Nhema, Zimbabwe's environment minister, for the chair, African governments have inflicted on themselves - as well as the UN - an astonishing blow. The commission, created in 1993, is the UN's main forum for addressing the relationship between development and the environment. Africa's turn to fill its chair - which rotates among regions - offered an opportunity to occupy the moral high ground.
Scientists now widely predict that climate change will be cruellest where it will hurt most: in Africa. The greenhouse gases thought to cause climate change are largely of the industrial world's making. Developing nations are predictably reluctant to foot the costs of others' prosperity. But the case for burden-sharing has no credibility coming from a Zimbabwean government representative.
The debate over climate change is already sharply divided. With Zimbabwe at its head, it will be even harder for the UN commission to forge a global consensus.
This unedifying spectacle in Turtle Bay encourages the view that UN organisations are costly talking shops. It detracts from the reality that good sense can sometimes prevail among African leaders.
Earlier this year African governments were faced with a similar dilemma over Sudan's bid to chair the African Union. Thankfully, they persuaded President Omar al-Beshir to withdraw his candidacy. Thus, the region was spared the absurdity of handing power to someone whose role could have included influencing the AU peacekeepers struggling to contain a conflict partly of his own making.
In the UN forum, however, absurdity has prevailed. Despite the fact that some African governments are tired of the ill repute Mr Mugabe brings to the continent, its leaders are seemingly incapable of taking a collective decision to freeze him out.
The timing of the UN debacle is unfortunate for another reason. It sends a bad signal as talks start to re-capitalise the African Development Bank and replenish funds for the World Bank's International Development Association. Even if the issues are separate, Africa has scored a spectacular own goal.