Antony Loewenstein

Jan Egeland, former UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, on the world’s greatest problems in 2008:

One is still eastern Congo, catastrophically neglected. It was the biggest loss of lives on our watch these last fifteen years: five million people died. Darfur has spread as a conflict and as a catastrophe to Chad and the Central African Republic. But certainly Iraq and Afghanistan is still unfolding as a hemorrhage of human life.

Obvious lesson in history number 2673:

John Dugard, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights for the Palestinian territories, has told the BBC that the UN should stand firmly against the global powers denying human rights to the Palestinians (by not pressuring Israel):

“In my most recent report to the General Assembly…I will suggest that the secretary-general withdraw the U.N. from the Quartet, if the Quartet fails to have regard to the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories…The international community has given its support almost completely to one faction, the Fatah faction. That’s not the role the U.N. should take.”