Thank goodness!! The interview I saw with Lubbers on the news last night left me gobsmacked. Here was a guy who by many counts has carried on this behaviour for years and yet he was in complete and angry denial about it. His attitude was so appallingly arrogant I couldn't believe it. If he is innocent as he claims, then calmly work through the investigation and cooperate. Don't angrily obsfucate the investigation. The other thing that is unbelievable, is that even if the UN, or rather Kofi Annan, stood by him, the women accusing him have absolutely NO recourse of action to sue him in civil court or otherwise bring this to light. As a UN commissioner - he is above the law. Untouchable. Now that he has stepped down, he is still untouchable for any behaviour that allegedly took place while in his official capacity as a UN high commissioner.
This is obviously a problem deep within the UN. The book I just finished reading and HIGHLY recommend, Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures : A True Story from Hell on Earth details any number of atrocities by UN peacekeepers and other staff members during the course of their assignments - simply because they could, and they'd get away with it and did. The complete lack of oversight and accountability in the UN is a theme repeated again and again in this book, and the three UN staffers who wrote it were either reprimanded or dismissed as a result. One staffer had already quit. The two remaining staffers, Heidi and Andrew, have retained legal counsel, but it's pretty safe to say their UN careers are over. It's a GREAT book - I highly, highly recommend it.
Kenneth Cain, a Harvard educated lawyer, and one of the book's authors, wrote a good op-ed article in the WSJ just before Christmas. It highlights issues in the book regarding Annan's failure in preventing genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, and why it's past time the guy should step down.
Liberal multilateralists on the left, like me, are often skittish about offering too pungent a critique of Mr. Annan, because it offers aid and comfort to the "enemy" on the conservative unilateralist right. But if anyone's values have been betrayed at the U.N. over the past decade it is those of us who believe most deeply in the organization's ideals. Just ask the men and women of Rwanda and Srebrenica.
