UNIFIL commander: Israel violating 1701

Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Aug 15, 2008

Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Maj.-Gen. Claudio Graziano on Thursday accused Israel of violating UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that brought an end to the Second Lebanon War.

During a press conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Graziano cited the IAF forays over Lebanon and the village of Ghajar, which he called "a permanent violation of 1701" and "a permanent area under occupation."

A further violation, according to Graziano, was Israel's failure to provide maps of all the locations where it dropped cluster bombs during the 2006 war.

In contrast, he said that the UN enjoyed excellent cooperation with Hizbullah and with the local Lebanese people.

"At this moment Hizbullah is one of [the] parties that agrees with 1701," he stressed.

Graziano asserted that apart from UN troops, Lebanese soldiers and hunters, no one was armed south of the Litani River.

"We have seen hunters, we saw somebody moving with one weapon and he was arrested, but we never met anybody [else] moving with weapons," he said.

He conceded that his soldiers were not trying to prevent weapons smuggling from Syria as demanded by the UNSC because the Lebanese government had not requested such action.

The UNIFIL commander emphasized that Israel's numerous allegations regarding violations of the UN resolution were being investigated.

Aid workers 'abuse kids as young as six'

Taken from Yahoo News, May 27, 2008
By By David Clarke, Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - Sexual abuse of children by aid workers and peacekeepers is rife and efforts to protect young people are inadequate, said a report published on Tuesday.

The study by Save the Children UK said there were significant levels of abuse in emergencies, much of it unreported and unless the silence ended, attempts to stamp out exploitation would "remain fundamentally flawed".

Accusations of sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers and aid workers around the world have increased in recent years and the United Nations is investigating claims against its soldiers in hot spots such as Haiti, Liberia, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The report said while the U.N. and some non-governmental organizations were stepping up efforts to address the problem, a global watchdog should be established this year to monitor attempts to tackle abuse and champion effective responses.

Save the Children based its findings on visits last year to Haiti, Southern Sudan and Ivory Coast.

It held 38 focus group discussions with 250 children and 90 adults, followed up by in-depth interviews with some and desk-based research.

The study found a huge range of exploitation and abuse: children trading sex for food, forced sex, verbal sexual abuse, child prostitution, child pornography, sexual slavery, sexual assault and child trafficking.

The focus groups identified children as young as 6 as having been abused, although most were aged 14 to 15.

U.N. peacekeepers were identified as the most likely perpetrators by 20 of the 38 groups, although a total of 23 humanitarian, peacekeeping and security organizations were associated with sexual abuse in the three countries.

"All humanitarian and peacekeeping agencies working in emergency situations, including Save the Children UK, must own up to the fact that they are vulnerable to this problem and tackle it head on," said Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is "deeply concerned by the Save the Children UK report", U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters in New York later on Tuesday.

"The abuse of children by those sent to help is a significant and painful issue and one that U.N. peacekeeping has and will continue to address candidly, comprehensively and robustly," Ban said in the statement read by Montas. "Even one incident is too many."

YOUNG GIRLS
More than half of the participants in the study identified incidents of sexual touching and forced sex. Of these, 18 and 23 percent respectively recalled 10 or more such incidents.

"They especially ask us for girls of our age. Often it will be between eight and 10 men who will share two or three girls. When I suggest an older girl, they say that they want a young girl," a 14-year-old boy who works at a peacekeeping camp in Ivory Coast told the Save the Children research team.

And the report said official U.N. statistics appeared to underestimate the scale of abuse, probably because so much of the exploitation was not reported by victims.

"Clearly there is a significant disparity between the low levels of abuse cited in these statistics and the high levels suggested in field investigations and other evidence," it said.

Save the Children said there were many reasons why abuse was not reported: fear of losing material assistance, threat of retribution, stigmatization, negative economic impact, lack of legal services, resignation to abuse, lack of information about how to report abuse and, crucially, lack of faith in a response.

Anecdotal evidence from all 38 focus groups suggested there was an endemic failure to respond to reports of abuse.

"Many U.N. agencies and NGOs working here feel they cannot be touched by anyone," said an aid worker in Ivory Coast.

(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau and Megan Davies at the United Nations; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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It is very depressing to read that those in charge of looking after some of the most vulnerable people in the world have been abusing their position. These children are going through enough as it is...poverty, hunger, illness, loss of loved ones...and now this - the people who committed these crimes should be sent to prison for life.

Maybe it’s time that aid workers and peacekeepers are vetted properly before they are allowed to work with people, particularly children. Soldiers who act as peacekeepers need to be trained and vetted. This sort of abuse has been happening all over the world, not just in Africa – countries like Bosnia, Iraq, where the UN and allied forces have been patrolling, soldiers, aid workers, NGO’s and mercenaries have been reported caught with raping civilians, some soldiers have been infected with Sexual transmitted diseases. These abusers seem to think they are immune from prosecution but hopefully they will all be captured and punished.

US accused of using aid to sway votes in UN security council

This is an old article that I completely forgot to post but is very relevant on how the United States operates at the United Nations...

Taken from The Observer, UK, Sunday December 17, 2006
Heather Stewart, economics correspondent

The US uses its aid budget to bribe those countries which have a vote in the United Nations security council, giving them 59 per cent more cash in years when they have a seat, according to research by economists.

Kofi Annan, the outgoing UN Secretary-General, expressed his frustration at the power the US wields over the UN in his parting speech last week. In a detailed analysis of 50 years of data, Harvard University's Ilyana Kuziemko and Eric Werker provide the clearest evidence yet that money is used by the council's richest member to grease the wheels of diplomacy.

Anti-poverty campaigners reacted angrily to the findings. 'Aid should go to the people who need it, not as a political sweetener,' said Duncan Green of Oxfam. 'In recent years most rich countries have been making progress on this, but showering bribes on developing countries just because they sit on the UN security council is clearly a step backwards.'

Charities often complain that the US uses its aid as a political tool, and this new evidence of what the authors call 'vote-buying' will raise fears about whether the surge of aid money that was promised at last year's Gleneagles G8 summit will be fairly spent.

Ten of the 15 seats on the security council are filled for two years at a time, by rotation.

Kuziemko and Werker found that, in years when they have a seat, countries get an average of more than £8m extra in foreign aid from the US.

'I don't think it's surprising this goes on; but I wonder whether countries being aware that it goes on might have some salutary effect,' Kuziemko said.

Countries with a security council seat also receive an average of £500m extra from the UN itself, most of it channelled through its children's fund, Unicef, over which the US traditionally has been able to exert control. President George Bush recently provoked controversy by appointing a close political ally, former Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, as Unicef's chief.

When there is a controversial vote in prospect, the premium for countries with a security council seat is even higher. US aid surges by as much as 170 per cent, bringing in a £23m windfall, while the UN spends an extra £4m.

'Some countries serve on the security council during relatively calm years, whereas others, by chance, are fortunate enough to serve during a year in which a key resolution is debated and their vote becomes more valuable,' the authors say. They highlight controversial resolutions over issues including the Korean War, Suez, the Falklands and Kosovo - though the period they study does not include the notorious 'second resolution' over the invasion of Iraq, which never came to a vote.

David Woodward, of the New Economics Foundation, who is writing about the paper for a forthcoming edition of the Lancet, said the findings suggest the UN should be radically reformed.
'As long as one country wields such influence, there will always have a degree of control over what goes on, and they will be likely to abuse that.'

'The biggest obstacle, in both the IMF and the World Bank, as well as the UN, is that the countries that now have power can use that power to block reform - and they do.'

Private equity funds risk destabilising poor countries: UNCTAD

Taken from Yahoo News, Tuesday, October 16
By William French, AFP

Private equity funds are an increasing force among global investors but their short-term approach risks destabilising some developing countries, the United Nations trade and development agency said on Tuesday.

Private equity funds were involved in 889 merger and acquisition deals in 2006, some 18 percent of the global total and worth a record 158 billion dollars (111 billion euros), the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in its "World Investment Report 2007."

Overall, global foreign direct investment (FDI) reached 1,306 billion dollars in 2006, up 38 percent and close to the record 1,411 billion dollars set in 2000.

Investment growth occurred across all regions of the global economy, from developed countries to the developing world and the "transition" economies of Southeast Europe and the former Soviet Union, the report said.

Mergers and acquisitions remained the driving force behind FDI and private equity's growing role in this field merits serious study given its different investment strategy, UNCTAD said.

"We need to understand the role and the behaviour of the private equity funds more," UNCTAD director general Supachai Panitchpakdi told journalists.

"To me, they do not look like long-term investors," he said.

Private equity groups specialise in raising cash from private investors and banks, which they then use to buy underperforming publically listed companies, which are taken private, restructured and re-sold, often at great profit.

Britain and North America are the most important regions for fundraising and investments by private equity firms but continental Europe and Asia are gaining ground, the UNCTAD report said.

The largest private equity takeover to date is the 45 billion dollar purchase of Texas utility TXU by a consortium including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Texas Pacific Group and major Wall Street banks including Goldman Sachs.

"Private equity funds have typically shorter time horizons than public companies engaged in buyouts as they are inclined to look for options that offer quick returns," the UNCTAD report said.

Supachai warned that the short-term investment strategy inherent in private equity deals "can sometimes destabilise countries if they are overly dependent on these equity funds.

"They dismantle companies and sell plants ... unlike the kind of greenfield investment we like to see," he added.

"Greenfield" investments are projects such as new power plants or factories constructed from scratch.

UNCTAD said that growing competition in the private equity market and the soaring cost of investments casts some doubts as to the sustainability of the high level of their FDI activity.

Private equity funds have long been criticised by trade unions and left-wing politicians for so-called "asset stripping" and a cavalier attitude towards the workers in companies they acquire.

Two years ago, Germany's Social Democrat party chief Franz Muentefering, currently the government's labour minister, famously likened the investment funds to "locusts" for allegedly stripping companies of their most valuable assets and then moving on.

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It is true that Private equity firms are nothing but asset strippers. Their main aim is to make money in the short run. Unfortunately that is the life we live today, everybody looking after themselves and not others as a famous economist once said... in the long run we are all dead!

Israeli Defence Force Probes 'Incidents' With UN Observers Off Lebanon Coast

Taken from Harretz, Isreal
By News Agencies

Israel has investigated complaints against its army regarding two incidents involving UN peacekeepers off the coast of Lebanon, an IDF spokesperson said on Saturday.

The army said it had handed peacekeepers its findings from an investigation into the April 30 incident between one of its naval vessels and the German ship.

The Israeli source said Israel had handed peacekeepers its findings from an investigation into the April 30 incident between one of its naval vessels and the German ship. Another incident involving several Israeli fighter jets that approached the frigate last Wednesday was "being checked," the source said.

The source said no complaint had been received regarding a third incident mentioned by the German spokesman, said to have involved Israeli forces and a Swedish speedboat.

Israel's military spokesman's office would not comment on any of these incidents, but said Israel coordinates with international troops in Lebanon that were expanded under a truce that ended Israel's war against Hezbollah guerrillas last year.

"Any irregular incident is checked and resolved with the cooperation of both sides," a military spokeswoman said.

On Friday, a German spokesman confirmed a report from the Rheinische Post daily which stated several Israel Air Force fighter jets made an approach towards the German frigate Niedersachsen off the Lebanese coast on Wednesday.

The paper added that on April 30 the Niedersachsen had signaled it was "ready for combat" on board when an Israeli speedboat approached the vessel traveling at around 30 knots without initially identifying itself.

One day earlier, IDF forces approached a Swedish speedboat that was also part of the UN group, the report added.

The German spokesman gave no further details.

A series of incidents in October between German UN peacekeepers and the IDF in the region prompted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to apologize for what he described as the "misunderstandings" that had occurred.

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It's not the first time Israel has attacked/ threatened to attack UN forces. Many peacekeepers and observers have died or been injured due to the Israeli aggression. Blame the incident is usually due to communication problems by Israel with the UN - Yeah right! Billions of dollars worth of arsenal are sent to Israel for free or a reduced rate (to defend themselves) yet they use these weapons to attack neighbouring countries as well as UN peacekeepers. During the Second Lebanon war over three thousand Lebanese died and the country was reduced to rubble - thanks to the Weapons we send to Israel. We seem to easily forget in June 8, 1967, while in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula, USS Liberty was attacked and damaged by Israeli forces; 34 crewmen were killed and 173 wounded. Considerable controversy surrounds this attack. Germany recently provided Israel with two nuclear capable submarines - let’s hope the Germans are not the first to be the experimented with the nukes.