Your U.N. at Work -- II

May 19, 2007
The Wall Street Journal
Original Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117953998019308415.html

The United Nations is a strange place, and if you don't believe us, consider the recent leadership elections in two of its signature bodies.
The Commission on Sustainable Development, whose brief is economic development and the environment, closed its two-week session in New York last week with the election of its chairman for the coming year. The winner -- over the objections of the U.S. and Western European nations -- was Zimbabwe.
It's hard to think of a worse economic model. Zimbabwe used to be known as the breadbasket of Africa but is now experiencing serious food shortages and the world's highest inflation rate of 2,200%. The African Development Bank says Zimbabwe's economy contracted 5% last year, compared with an overall growth rate of 5% on the continent.
Meanwhile, at the Disarmament Commission last month, Iran was elected to serve as vice chairman with Syria as rapporteur. Both countries are on the U.S. list of terrorist-sponsoring countries. Iran is currently defying U.N. sanctions over its nuclear program, and its election occurred on the same day that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted in Tehran that his country had begun industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel.
These episodes don't reach the level of the multibillion-dollar Oil for Food corruption or the tens of millions of dollars that appear to have been handed to North Korea by the U.N. Development Program, but they are emblematic of how the global body works. It's a shame the U.S. didn't respond to the outcome of these two leadership elections and walk away from both of these useless U.N. outfits.