There will doubtless be much that President Trump will want to highlight when he addresses the United Nations tomorrow. The world is awash in troubles. But he should take time to alert the organization that the U.S. will not tolerate misuse or diversion of U.S. taxpayer dollars. New evidence of the troubling links between Hamas and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) continues to be exposed — including aid being diverted to make weapons, hostages being held in UNRWA facilities, and UNRWA employees engaging in terrorist attacks. But the failures that have plagued UNRWA are far from unique. They are replayed again and again in countries across the world, where humanitarian assistance intended to save innocent lives is being diverted by nefarious actors to take those lives instead.
Case in point: A new trove of documents uncovered by the Washington Post reveals that Sudan’s authoritarian regime built a secret stockpile of chemical weapons using chlorine that had been supplied to the country by UNICEF, CARE, and the Red Cross to provide safe drinking water for Sudanese civilians. Cellphone video taken by senior Sudanese officers shows weapons tests in the desert “producing plumes of green-yellow vapor,” and intercepted communications between regime officials indicate that the country’s security forces had stockpiled as many as 290 chemical munitions — some of which were reportedly used against rebel forces.
Comments