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At UN, Human Security Called Pretext for Invasion,
Jordan Prince Speaks of Right to Protect
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at
the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
May 22 -- Human security, what is it good for? Said otherwise,
how could this buzzword, the subject of an all-day debate in the
General
Assembly, be used or misused by those defining it? Expressing
succinctly what a
number of other debate participants said, Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz of
Cuba spoke
of "attempts by some to impose and implement ambiguous concepts... that
would turn them into easily manipulated instruments to justify any
action and
attempt against the sacred principles of sovereignty." The keynote
speaker
Prince El-Hassan Bin Talal of Jordan,
at an abbreviated press
conference following the morning's debate, spoke of Darfur and wanting
to go in
under the "Right to Protect." Actually, its the Responsibility
to Protect, but who's counting?
The President of
the General Assembly cut off the
press conference before taking questions on the meaning of the term,
much less
the other issues swirling around him -- click here
for that.
hUmaN security in the DRC: there are a range
of views
Not running
away from the media was human security expert Andrew Mack, who at a
press
conference on Wednesday acknowledged that the calculation of deaths
caused
indirectly by war is highly inexact, and that the UN's credibility has
been
undermined. He stopped short, however, of adopting the position for
example of
Lakhdar Brahimi, that the UN is being specifically targeted, more so
that other
outside forces.
Mack
points out that the ICRC was targeted in Iraq, and MSF in
Afghanistan -- both of them groups which emphasize impartiality. Mack
rejected
"the notion that the Taliban distinguish" between the motives or
connections of outsiders. He also said that less than one percent of
Afghans
support the Taliban, which in a subsequent hallway follow-up by Inner
City
Press he modified to "strongly support." But even the benign-sounded
concept of human security doesn't generate strong support. It doesn't
help that
its ostensible proponents do not explain and limit questions about it -
click
here for that.
* * *
These reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
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2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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