Mr. Chairman: You ask how the United States can restore confidence in the United Nations. In my opinion, neither this House Committee nor the United States government can restore confidence in the United Nations. Only the officers and functionaries of the U.N. can do that. They can do it by organizing themselves with transparency and functioning with integrity. We should all contribute a fair share to services and costs.
Obviously the United States should always try to be just in our judgments and generous in our support of worthy U.N. projects. We should help the poorest people, the refugees, the victims of illness and genocide.
I have always had an especially strong interest in human rights and have had high expectations about how the United Nations could strengthen the record on human rights of those countries who victimize their own populations.
And as almost every one now understands, the record of the U.N. in this field has been poor--and that of the Commission on Human Rights especially poor.
Literally nothing was done to assist the victims of genocide in Rwanda or Bosnia in their hours of greatest need, nor most recently the people of Darfur. No help has been given by the United Nations to the 75 Cuban doctors, teachers, journalists, and librarians arrested and harshly imprisoned in the summer of 2003. The Commission on Human Rights did not even mention their arbitrary arrest or harsh treatment.
There is large room for improvement. But improvement would require the more affluent countries to contribute more assistance, to care more and to work harder to ease the condition of the victims of tyranny.
Free people in open fora should never fail to protest the brutal treatment of helpless citizens at the hands of ruthless governments. People who attend meetings of Human Rights Commissions should never forget what the meetings are for. People who testify before Congressional Committees should not forget the victims of the world’s tyrants--in Cuba, China, Burma, Sudan, Vietnam, and elsewhere.
Those of us who enjoy the benefits of freedom should never forget the millions who do not.
Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick is a senior fellow at AEI.
