YET ANOTHER AFRICAN HUMANITARIAN CRISIS.

The more one hears from the United Nations, the more one is inclined to believe that it must be the most useless and ineffective organisation ever invented.

Some high official of this talking shop has recently been in the news begging for more billions to be made available to help to alleviate the effects of yet another African famine. How many times this same situation has arisen over the last 40 or 50 years I cannot recall, but it is most certainly an annual event at the very least.

Time and time again, the UN tells us of some humanitarian crisis that is afflicting somewhere or other, most often in Africa. Time after time, it asks for billions of pounds, dollars, euros, francs and anything else that may be available. Time after time, the money is produced and the problem is seemingly solved, until the next time, which inevitably rolls around within a year or so. Why do we do it ?

Rather than tackle the underlying causes of these recurrent crises, the UN keeps throwing OUR money at them in a generally uncoordinated and pointless fashion. Rather than digging wells, irrigating land and making it productive, it provides food; rather than taking action against the despots, fanatics and money-grabbing rulers of the affected countries, it allows them to continue starving their people in the expectation that the rest of the world will come to their aid. Rather than taking action to prevent the endless wars and revolutions that are the root cause of many of these problems, it does nothing.

The United Nations was a grand idea dreamt up by politicians after the Second World War as a replacement for the equally useless League of Nations which was invented after the First. For it to actually do anything of any consequence it has to gain the approval of so many competing factions that it is toothless; very often, action against any particular country is rendered impossible due to the need to garner support from countries which see themselves as next in the firing line. Tyrants and their brutal regimes remain in power and their people starve, while the rest of the world is expected, at the behest of the United Nations, to continually fork out billions to stave of catastrophe.

Juts like the European Union, the United Nations is a talking shop. It's top officials are always selected from countries of no account, who consequently have no real power or authority, while the real power remains with the governments of the most powerful countries, inevitably the USA, Russia, China and 2 or 3 others. The UN, just like the EU, costs vast amounts of money and is largely useless; both organisations have to kowtow to their most powerful members but neither can do anything of note; both are dragged down to implementing nothing more than the lowest common denominator.

This time, the UN is asking for something like $4bn; one wonders how much it has had over the years and how much more it will demand in the future before people realise how hopeless their approach is.