Judging by the ineptitude it displays with such reckless abandon, the world has become a laughing stock to itself.
I am among millions who have lost faith in hundreds of non-governmental organizations worldwide, including large entities like the United Nations, that adopt a particular cause and pursue it with vigour only to scamper back into their little havens when their efforts come to naught.
What is the United Nations for?
My understanding is that the United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are “facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace”.
The UN was founded in 1945 “to stop wars between countries, and to provide a platform for dialogue”.
The UN contains multiple subsidiary organizations to carry out its missions.
But what we have yet to see is how seriously member states take the UN. There are no punitive measures that are taken, should a member state go against the accepted and recommended UN path.
As a result, the UN has become a laughing stock because none of its members take it seriously.
It is appalling to see highly respected academics being appointed as UN emissaries and then see them dispatched to trouble spots around the world, only for them to be humiliated by those governments that might have become a great concern to fellow nations.
Obviously, I am personally interested in how Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe manages to thumb his nose at every country in this world, including organizations to which we belong, and still get away with it without so much as an admonishment.
In 2005, the Mugabe Government shocked the world when they mercilessly carried out a campaign to demolish housing structures nationwide, code named “Operation Murambatsvina” (Drive Out the Trash).
This operation, which left thousands of urban families homeless, was widely condemned, “with an international humanitarian and human rights organization estimating that 700 000 people were left homeless”.
On Tuesday Mugabe recalled Operation Murambatsvina and said, “It was not the intention of government to deliberately deprive the poor of their homes but the clean up exercise was carried out in a spirit of the desire to provide the poor with affordable, durable and better housing.”
The real reason behind the inhuman operation, however, was “to disperse urban voters who had overwhelmingly voted for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change”.
In June 2005, Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary General, appointed Tanzanian academic Anna Tibaijuka as his Special Envoy to study the impact of the Mugabe’s campaign to evict informal traders and people deemed to be squatting illegally in certain areas.
Tibaijuka was ill-treated and carried out her duties under the most extreme of conditions, deliberately imposed around her by Mugabe.
At the same time, even the sleepy African Union dispatched their own envoy to Zimbabwe and this one, not as determined as Tibaijuka, had no chance at all.
He was kept under house arrest in a hotel in central Harare until his visa expired.
In spite of the hardships and ill-treatment she received, Tibaijuka concluded her report, saying that “while purporting to target illegal dwellings and structures and to clamp down on alleged illicit activities, Operation Murambatsvina was carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering”.
Since social progress and human rights are some of the aims of the United Nations, what do they do when a member country abuses citizens?
Does the UN exist to chronicle the evil that certain dictators commit then go home to bed?
Surprisingly, there was nothing done even about the abuse that these two diplomats were subjected to by Mugabe. Nothing was done about anything at all.
So, in the absence of punitive measures or some sort of sanctions, how does the UN expect to reign in the world’s errant regimes so as to achieve its aims?
Last Wednesday, the United Nations’ torture investigator, Manfred Nowak, was refused entry into Zimbabwe, although he had been requested for by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
Nowak was detained overnight at Harare Airport before being deported and put on a plane to South Africa the following morning.
“I have never in any other country been treated in such a manner,” Mr Nowak, who had planned a week-long fact-finding mission, told the BBC’s World Today programme. “This is a major incident because you can’t on the one hand invite a special rapporteur to meet the prime minister and on the other hand somebody gives an order to the immigration police not to let me in.”
The government’s excuse in deporting the UN envoy was that they were busy with SADC Foreign ministers who were swarming into Zimbabwe to try and save the unity government from collapsing.
Incidentally, Zimbabwe’s Foreign Affairs minister, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, was at the airport to welcome the ministers from the SADC Troika while, at another door, Nowak was being bundled onto a plane back to South Africa.
One would have hoped that an organization as large as the United Nations would have in place, safeguards and punitive measures to apply on those member nations that violate UN regulations.
Is it okay then for the UN to stand by and watch while a murderous senile old goat murders people, destroys farms and retards food production to stimulate famine only for the UN to go on an international campaign to raise funds to feed starving people in Zimbabwe?
Do these organizations appreciate those who cause crisis after crisis so that they can go to donors to raise funds for the victims?
This impotence pervades most organizations which appear to just want to make noise then forget about the whole thing as they move to the next issue.
Sadly, disasters are a prerequisite to successful fundraising and organizations know that.
In Botswana, as elsewhere, human rights organizations carefully pick which persons, cases or causes to fight for.
There are some individuals and cases that generate more attention (read funds) than others. That is why we see lawyers for human rights putting maximum effort to defend some journalist in one town while, in the same country at the same time, another journalist languishes in jail with virtually no one, except his mother and father, trying to assist their off-spring.
Countless times, we are told about UN, SADC and AU “observer missions” that spend taxpayers’ money to observe elections in some countries. Some churches even assemble their own observer missions too.
But even if all these witnesses write damning reports about those elections, nothing is done. It is just noise.
End of the matter until elections elsewhere.
SADC member countries have signed endless protocols, including SADC Guidelines on Democratic Elections but how many of SADC member states implement them? And has SADC ever made any noise about it?
SADC had its observers in Zimbabwe during last year’s elections. They did not find anything to praise but everything to condemn yet they found non-committal words to say.
Later it was SADC that overturned the people’s electoral voice and forced an unworkable agreement on our nation. They kicked away the winner and begged the loser to give a little power to the winner.
The result of SADC’s skewed and evil agreement is what we see in Zimbabwe today. SADC armed Mugabe with moral support.
SADC cannot even police itself and those who created it never meant for it to be anything more than an excuse for presidents to stretch their legs at the expense of the poor citizens.
“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.”
