Why Won’t the UN Do Anything About Libya?

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/21499556@N04/2568931976/">Ammad Abd Rabbo</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Whether you believe the body count of the Libyan government (300), the Italian government (1,000), a French doctor-witness (2,000), or a member of the International Criminal Court (10,000), one thing remains undisputed: terrible, terrible things are happening in Libya.

Yesterday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made a statement condemning the violence, saying that “Those responsible for brutally shedding the blood of innocents must be punished.”

Those are pretty strong words. But what they are not is a resolution. If you’re thinking that the UN is theoretically supposed to actually do the punishing the secretary general is referring to, you would be correct: In 2005, its member nations agreed to the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, which stipulates that if a government starts slaughtering its own people the UN is responsible for taking “timely and decisive” action. I’ve blathered at length about cases where the UN has failed to do this, but the Guardian‘s Carne Ross puts it fantastically in regards to Libya:

What is happening in Libya is the true test of such declarations, and it is for every UN member, including the UK and US, in their positions as permanent members of the council, to declare loud and clear—and now—that this principle must be respected, and if it is not, that consequences will follow.

A possible UN resolution could say that if dictator Muammar Qaddafi doesn’t stop the slaughter, the international community will freeze his regime’s assets, resort to sanctions, or even force. It must be really hard, though, to get something like that together; with all the states involved and China and Russia predictably pulling the old “we shouldn’t interfere with other people’s business, especially people who sell oil” card, it certainly takes a super long time to pass a resolution. Right, Ross?

I spent four and a half years negotiating resolutions on the Middle East at the UN Security Council. When it wishes, the council can make decisions in hours. We agreed a resolution condemning the 9/11 attacks in less than an hour, the morning after the attacks took place.

Alright, well, there’s that. When it comes to the lack of meaningful UN action on Libya, it’s not disorganization, or excessive bureaucracy to blame—just a healthy dose of sacklessness.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate