UN: Is it Money for More Bureaucracy or the Will to Act that is Needed?

UN human rights commissioner seeks to add rapid response teams -- Plan to reform agency includes doubling of budget Agence France Press / National Post, May 28, 05

GENEVA - UN human rights chief Louise Arbour yesterday released her plan to reform her agency, aiming to boost its role as a watchdog against abuses worldwide.

Ms. Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said she wanted to be able to deploy rapid response teams to crisis zones, aimed to produce a new annual report to help tackle global problems, and needed to double her budget to do it. [. . . . ]

Besides fielding rapid response teams, she said she wanted to increase her agency's worldwide presence through a string of regional and individual country offices.

Ms. Arbour said she would also like to see greater focus on human rights problems tied to poverty, discrimination, conflict, impunity from punishment, lack of democracy and weak institutions -- with an annual thematic report helping to "spearhead new thinking."

It reminds me that Arbour's agency would grow in a fashion similar to Canada's Language Czar's. Diane (Dyane?) Adam travelled the world, reportedly checking on the language capability of embassies a year or so ago. I am guessing that the journey to Beijing had more to do with key provisions on which language the Chinese must push as they gain entree to Canada. Check. Grow your department . . . and you have more employees and therefore have more clout, I am assuming.

As for Louise Arbour's desire to grow her UN agency to combat "lack of democracy and weak institutions", it sounds as though it would parallel our PM's plans (somewhere on this site) to allot aid for the development of democracy and democratic institutions (CIDA figures into this through dispensing of foreign aid, programs, initiatives, investments . . . I seem to remember) in China and Africa.

Increasing the bureaucracy and throwing other people's money at problems seem to be the only answers understood in Ottawa. It does help agencies and foundations and . . . what else . . . to be funded to travel, dispensing 'aid'--or is it advice on how to go about it?--throughout the world.

Remember DART and the tsnunami . . . and funding? There was a problem funding DART but there are always $$$ -- OPM $$$ -- to fund bureaucrats.




CIDA and Louise Arbour's Bailiwick? (from -- "Welcome to the Peoples’ Republic of China on Canadian soil" )

In partnership with federal government departments and Canadian organizations, many of CIDA’s development cooperation projects focus on human rights, good governance and democratic development. They include initiatives on the training of judges, criminal law reform, women’s rights, legal aid and the development of civil society with gender equity as an important underlying theme.

Related and posted here Wednesday, May 25, 05: The Idea of "World Government" Suffered a Setback

For those who saw the World Court as a prelude to World Government, this must have seemed a setback.

What ever happened to the World Court and Milosovic? -- WEAK CASE AGAINST MILOSEVIC HAS HAGUE 'IN PANIC' -- Massacres in Kosovo never happened, say Canadians who investigated mass graves.

It is harder to develop world government if the first major case in your world court . . . just peters out. . . but, undoubtedly, that won't discourage the usual crowd.



Global Corruption Report

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