UN Ineffective Against Armed Bandits in Darfur

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UN Ineffective Against Armed Bandits in Darfur

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Claiming banditry against food trucks as the root cause, officials with the United Nation’s World Food Program announced today they are cutting rations to the people of Sudan’s Darfur region:

“Attacks on the WFP food pipeline are an attack on the most vulnerable people in Darfur. With up to three million people depending on us for their survival in the upcoming rainy season, keeping WFP’s supply line open is a matter of life and death. We call on all parties to protect the access to food,” said Josette Sheeran, WFP’s Executive Director.

At this time of year, WFP-contracted trucks should be delivering 1,800 metric tons of food daily to Darfur to supply warehouses ahead of the rainy season, due to begin next month. But deliveries have dropped to less than 900 tons per day.

At the same time as this news from the UN is unbelievable, it should be regarded as inexcusable! For an organization that receives so much money — the vast majority of which comes from the United States — to be so ineffective seems to validate calls for top-to-bottom reform of the organization. At the very least, such poor performance justifies in my mind the withdrawal of all U.S. taxpayer funding of the UN.

To read the rest of the UN WFP “spin” on the matter, click here.

-- Bob McCarty Writes