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Side Of The UN Day Concert 2009. |
This is for the orphan children
And for all the refugees
The disappeared, the bombing victims
Don't get ratings on TV
We are all in this together
Brothers and sister, we can do better!
Raise your voices to the sky
The Price of Silence is much too high
We say no to the war makers
Going on a killing spree
We say no to all dictators
Speaking their hypocrisy
Raise your fist with strength
Raise your leg and dance
Raise your voice and speak
Those are things of strength
This song speaks of freedom
This song speaks of love
This song speaks of peace
I see too many papers getting signed and nothing getting done
Young children in the battlefields firing guns
No more words and pretty phrases
No more speeches and delay
While you talk the world is waiting
Got to act on what you say!
From "The Price of Silence"
The above was a rousing musical rendition of issues at the very core of the UN: war, peace, and concerted action. The "Price of Silence" was the grand finale to the UN Day Concert 2009 organized to usher in the dawn of the world body's 65th year of existence. The concert was a joint effort between the Department of Public Information and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, in partnership with the Culture Project based in New York City. The Culture Project is a nonprofit initiative that promotes artistic work focused on social justice and civic engagement.
For the first time since its inception, the UN Day Concert had a theme: A Tribute to Peacekeeping. Performing was the originator of "Sufi rock" and founder of the Global Wellness Initiative Salman Ahmad to the tabla of Indian player Samir Chatterjee (who currently works toward the musical revival of Afghanistan), among a spate of UNICEF goodwill ambassadors, including Harry Belafonte of "We are the World," Chinese pianist Lang Lang, and former Sudanese child soldier and author of War Child Emmanuel Jal. The UN Day Concert 2009 brought together artists across borders, cultures, and musical genres renowned for their effortless fusion of the arts with activism.
The highlight of the event was the extracts of the UN peacekeeping documentary War Against War from Independent Spirit Award- and Sundance Film Festival Award-winning director Fisher Stevens. The extracts were featured between musical performances and readings. War Against War highlights the historic creation of the UN peacekeeping forces and the challenges faced by the Blue Helmets (part of the uniform of UN peacekeepers) while fighting the "war against war."
The UN saluted the film as one that would "give the audience one-of-a-kind access and insight into the formidable challenges facing peacekeepers and the committed individuals who serve some of the most victimized and vulnerable populations on earth."
Delusions of Grandeur
There's little doubt that the power to heal and bridge divides is inherent in the arts. Whether the UN was in fact trying to harness this power or simply wishing to appear to be doing so is hard to say. But what is both self-evident and disconcerting is the ironies the UN's birthday bash so naturally conjures.
Huffington Post's Allison Kilkenny pointed out bluntly,
It seems odd that in the midst of America's violent culture people are celebrating peace, but that's exactly what will be happening on October 23 [the day of the concert]."
Isn't it ironic that the UN is celebrating its birthday with a tribute to peacekeepers?
Inaugurating the concert, Ban Ki-moon called peacekeepers the "flag-bearers of UN ideals" and praised them for "translating those ideals into reality on the ground everyday." Another UN official called the concert a "long overdue tribute on the occasion of the most symbolic day in the United Nations' calendar."
It's amazing how the highest office of the UN deludes itself! By the UN's own admission, the organization's prized Blue Helmets are miserably failing to provide "protection" their primary mandate. In a first-of-its-kind report titled the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, former first lady of Mozambique Graηa Machel documented,
In 6 out of 12 country studies on sexual exploitation of children in situations of armed conflict prepared for the present report, the arrival of peacekeeping troops has been associated with a rapid rise in child prostitution.
In a May 2008 report titled No One to Turn To: The Under-Reporting of Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Aid Workers and Peacekeepers, Save the Children UK lamented,
Troops associated with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) were identified as a particular source of abuse in some of our fieldwork locations, particularly in Haiti and Cτte d'Ivoire. Indeed, of the 38 groups of people we spoke to, 20 of them identified peacekeepers as the most likely perpetrators, and four identified them as the only perpetrators within their communities.
Official UN statistics also show a higher incidence of allegations reported against peacekeeping forces than any other UN staff.
Save the Children UK went on to welcome the "managerial courage and transparency DPKO has shown in making these allegations publicly available." But it concluded that one of the "three important gaps in existing efforts to curb abuse and exploitation
is a need for even stronger leadership on this issue in many parts of the international system notably to ensure that good practices and new procedures are taken up and implemented."
Even the New York Times berated the UN on the occasion of its 60th anniversary saying,
Nothing discredits the United Nations more than the continuing sexual abuse of women and girls by soldiers belonging to its international peacekeeping missions. And yet almost a year after shocking disclosures about such crimes in the Congo, far too little has been done to end the culture of impunity, exploitation and sexual chauvinism that permits them to go on.
Ironic it is then that the world body chooses to pay tribute to a group whose reputation is sullied. Still more ironic is the dual felicitation of peacekeepers; they are also celebrated by a December 2002 UN resolution that declared 29 May as International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers. Does the world really need to pay tribute to the UN's soldiers to this extent? Isn't it ironic that the UN celebrates while reform from within (self-improvement) has become its topmost priority?
In a human being's life, the onset of the sixties would usher in the proverbial autumn years when a person reaches his or her prime and prepares for the inevitability of death. Fortunately for the UN, the states that make up the entity outlive the men and women who make them up.
Ironic, however, is the fact that after six decades the UN still cannot get its act together. Established to deter a third world war, it is waging its own battle within; created to change the world, it needs changing itself. So, in the backdrop of the UN's birthday celebrations with all the pomp and pageantry (and formality) befitting only the crθme de la crθme of the world's diplomatic community, the question that has been ringing hollow for decades continues to ring hollow (Wrong use of idiom. To ring hollow means to seem insincere and untruthful. Please rephrase) Will the UN sink into irrelevance? While the question is being debated (endlessly), the world body has found itself a new savior: A bleated call for "reform" has become the lifeguard brought to save a drowning UN.
Over the years, "reform" has become steadily institutionalized into the UN system, both internally and externally: Secretaries-general trumpet "comprehensive" reform proposals; foundations, think tanks, and blue-ribbon commissions leave an interminable paper trail of "reform initiatives"; and ominous warnings that the UN "must reform or die" emanate from the White House.
Seven months into his appointment, Ban addressed the World Affairs Council of Northern California saying,
Since day one I have set up my reform goals as my top priority, which includes putting this house in order to make the Organization more efficient, more effective and more relevant in the twenty-first century.
However, in a Foreign Policy in Focus article titled "UN Reform: Don't Hold Your Breath," Ian Williams wrote ,
The interminable wrangling over the composition of the UN Security Council
is unlikely to bear much fruit anytime soon. And that may not be such a bad thing. Almost all the proposals are worse than the situation they purport to remedy.
Every summit and report admitting that the UN needs drastic reform shrink in significance in comparison to Kofi Annan's exit interview with BBC's Lyse Doucet where he candidly admitted,
I was also concerned that for the US and its coalition to go to war [in Iraq] without the consent of the Council in that particular region
would be extremely difficult and very divisive, and that it would take quite a long time to put the organization back together, and of course it divided the world too. It is healing, but we are not there yet. It hasn't healed yet, and we feel the tension still in this organization as a result of that.
These words singly drive home the miserable reality facing this world body: The UN is castrated and desperately needs saving.
Really, what good is it in celebrating the anniversary of an entity that has steadily moved from saving the world to saving itself? It would have been far better if there were one minute of silence as a way to commemorate the UN's anniversary a minute of silence to remember all the promises made and never kept. This would have been a more befitting and morally justifiable anniversary.
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