reflecting on UN missions

a friend loaned me a copy of emergency sex and other desperate measures: true stories from a war zone, written by 3 UN employees who were on the ground for missions in cambodia, haiti, rwanda, bosnia, and somalia. the book isn't really about sex, despite the title, although there are a few stories about the authors' very international love lives. as a whole it's more about trauma, ineffectiveness, bureaucracy, and epic tales of violence. go read it. it is FASCINATING. i read the whole thing this morning instead of drafting my lit paper.

next time someone starts talking at me saying so you totally want to work for the UN and go on missions because that's totally what human rights is about, i'm gonna slap their face, and then loan them this book. and if they get that the UN is not the end all of human rights work after reading the book, i might apologize for slapping them.

but honestly, if there is one thing i've heard all the former mission staff say -- and this is everybody from the folks in the book to the guy who spoke at the puck building for wagner (he also did cambodia and somalia, and had close friends in haiti) to my old boss, who consulted for the UN in the congo, it's this: there is so much corruption. so much waste, inefficiency, inaction. bribery, kickbacks, sexual abuse, theft, drunkenness, drug abuse. the philosophy of "hurry up and wait".

the story goes that if you have any kind of a conscience and are not in on the backroom deals and sex trade and bribes and are actually there to do a good thing if you can amidst the chaos, you will quit, or go crazy, or both. romeo dallaire knows all about it...