In response to today’s column on the The Odious UN, a reader sent me two interesting links. The first is to the following story from New Zealand about how the UN stinks at disaster relief. Here’s how it opens:
While the United Nations appears to be adept at having meetings, the organisation is hopeless on the ground say career foreign service officers in tsunami-affected regions.
As news media are increasingly dominated by footage of US, Australian and regional military forces actually delivering aid to stricken survivors of the Boxing Day tsunami, UN officials are carping about housing in major cities far removed from the front lines and passing around elaborate business cards.
Organising to organise seems to be the word of the day for the UN, say career US foreign service officers anonymously, who fault the international organisation for taking credit where none is due and proving hopeless at actually delivering relief.
The second link is the anonymous blog run by foreign service officials The Diplomad which has some fun first hand evidence of the UN odiousness.