The UN’s Food Politics 
By Hillel C. Neuer
September 6, 2004
UN Watch
http://unwatch.org/pbworks/NationalPost_OpEd.html http://unwatch.org/pbworks/NationalPost_OpEd.html 
When the United Nations selected Marxist demagogue Jean Ziegler as the first Special Rapporteur on the right to food, none were more taken aback than the Geneva parliamentarian's countrymen, who long suffered his anti-Western diatribes. With his new post, the man once described as Switzerland's Noam Chomsky promised to turn a new leaf and seek consensus. But Ziegler, elevated to a global platform, would do no such thing.
Instead, our planet's ostensible hunger-fighter has systematically neglected the world's recognized food emergencies in order to focus his energies on assailing the United States and, especially, Israel, which, he insists, starves Palestinians and inflicts their children with some form of brain damage. Because Ziegler continues to mock the very terms of his mandate, the UN, to retain any credibility, must now terminate it.
To be fair, Ziegler is hardly alone in pursuing the usual two scapegoats. Consider the annual Joint Statement of the UN Special Rapporteurs, issued on June 25, whose first order of business was to knock the United States. Citing prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, the experts pledged to monitor violations, each within the framework of his or her mandate. (The precise role to be played by signatories such as the Special Rapporteur on toxic wastes, or the Independent Expert on structural adjustment, will be interesting to see.) The second, harsher segment thrashed Israel, alleging sundry violations in its contest with Palestinian terror, and demanded an international protection force. A third part, as if to prove they could contemplate other issues, articulated concern for migrant workers.
And mass rape, widespread killing and ethnic cleansing in Sudan? Oddly, these violations eluded the combined expertise of the UN's rights experts.
Nor do the rapporteurs stand out from the larger UN human-rights apparatus. At this month's opening of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, nobody seemed the least perturbed when Halima Warzazi, outgoing Chair, concluded her remarks by, first, chastising America and, second, asking the audience to reflect on how Israel might remind them of Nazi Germany. Ms. Warzazi, who in 1988 blocked UN censure of Saddam's gassing of Halabja, similarly declined to speak for those in Sudan.
And yet, when considering abuse of mandate and bias at the UN, none compares to Professor Ziegler.
First, contrary to the terms of his appointment, Ziegler routinely pronounces himself on matters bearing no connection to food. Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, he declared that any U.S. military response would bring apocalyptic consequences, and the end for the Afghan nation. Later, to justify his interventions denouncing the allied campaign, Ziegler concocted alternating food objections, declaring, for example, that allied forces were prohibited from making food drops (a fallacious proposition under humanitarian law).
Similarly, we are told that the entire Arab-Israeli conflict falls under Ziegler's purview because violations of the right to food stem from the occupation. Never mind that even the Palestinian Applied Research Institute does not dispute that the nutritional status of Palestinians in terms of caloric intake per capita improved during [Israel's administration since 1967].
More recently, when Ziegler sent a letter to Caterpillar, Inc., warning it not to sell equipment to Israel -- a demand promptly adopted by the Arab Boycott Office in Damascus -- he dutifully inserted right to food arguments. Yet the letter was plainly Ziegler's effort to enlist in a pre-existing political campaign. In doing so, Ziegler flouted international law prohibiting economic coercion, flowing from Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, and may be guilty of a felony under U.S. anti-boycott laws -- for which UN immunity would not apply, since he was acting far outside his mandate. At a recent Palestinian conference, Ziegler boasted of yet a further letter: a demand to the European Union that it sever its Association Agreement with Israel. How many others he has written is anybody's guess. The identity of their target is not.
When Ziegler does deign to deal with food, his priorities defy rational explanation. In all of 2003, the West Bank and Gaza was the only place in the world to which he dedicated a special mission, capped by a 25-page report excoriating Israel. Its thesis: Israel is provoking hunger and starvation.
The truth is that, in the November, 2003, comparison of selected refugee populations by the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition, the West Bank and Gaza ranked lowest in nutritional risk. In this regard, the prevalence of underweight children is the most meaningful cross-country comparable indicator. According to the UN's 2003 Human Development Report, the age-adjusted percentage of underweight children in the West Bank and Gaza (3%) is the lowest rate compared with any state in the Arab Middle East, East Asia, the Pacific, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America (except Chile). But a country like Yemen (46%) has never been cited in a single Ziegler press release, nor has North Korea (60%) targeted in a single Ziegler boycott letter.
There are 35 countries or territories currently on the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's food emergencies list; the West Bank and Gaza has never appeared. Search Ziegler's Web site, reports, infinite media interviews and press releases, however, and there is not a single statement for the hungry of listed states like Burundi, Congo, or Liberia, let alone blame for any party. Yet type in West Bank and Gaza, and one turns up dozens of pronouncements, with Israel cast as perpetrator of state terror and war crimes. In the rare instances where Ziegler does criticize other governments, he suddenly dons the gloves of ginger UN diplomacy. Hence Darfur is merely a cause for concern; the role of the Khartoum regime in atrocities only alleged; and all parties (including the rape victims?) are urged to respect the right to food.
In July, my organization, UN Watch, delivered a brief to the Commission on Human Rights urging that the recidivist rapporteur be removed for breach of his duties of impartiality, objectivity and non-selectivity. Consequently, according to Le Temps (Geneva's newspaper of record), Ziegler is now lobbying embassies for support, while Kofi Annan may become seized of the matter. The credibility of his institution is at stake.
Hillel C. Neuer is executive director of UN Watch in Geneva.