UN needs to repair its tattered image

Editor, I WISH to respond to Kenneth Agutamba’s article, “UN’s legal immunity breeds inertia”, published in the Sunday Times issue of April 13. The continuous failure of UN in the execution of its obligations is an interesting matter of concern and an area that begs for deep investigation and study. If I may recall in my earlier school days when our leaders were elected and failed to perform their duties to the expectations of the electorate, then “a vote of no confidence” would be passed against the students’ body and a new leadership would be elected to replace the non-performers. UN remains a “poor or non-performer organisation”, and has lost primacy and relevancy to its member countries. All in All, UN needs to fix-up its mandate and image as it is, in countries such as Rwanda, Sudan, CAR and Syria, to mention a few. Meanwhile, African countries need to work on finding homegrown solutions and avoid over reliance on foreign countries and transnational agencies. Just like in a “home setting”, when a household is faced with internal problems, one does whatever they can to solve the emerging problems and don’t wait for the neighbour to come and fix a household “problem”. All the neighbour can do is to give a supportive hand but not the entire solution. Faridah Namukasa, Beijing, China ***************************** FRANCE PULLED all the strings at the UN during Rwanda’s moment of need. The career guys in New York at the time, including our own Kofi Annan, turned a blind eye because they were serving the interest of France. It was all politics of the veto powers, that’s why the likes of Annan can’t muster courage to attend Genocide commemoration functions. But if we can’t get them to account, in my opinion, they should also keep their unsolicited opinions on how Rwanda can become a democracy. We are the authors of our destiny...they failed to grab a chance to be co-authors in 1994 when they chose to look the other way as our people got killed. Elly Tumwine, Rwanda

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UN needs to repair its tattered image