George Clooney is fast taking over the showbiz mantle of U2's Bono in being an agent for humanitarian change.
He is having a fair go at the UN in trying to get them to step up to the plate in Darfur, Sudan.
[He] warned the UN security council that Darfur would become the scene of the "first genocide of the 21st century" if peacekeepers were not sent to Sudan by the end of the month. "After September 30, you won't need the UN," he told the council. "You will simply need men with shovels and bleached white linen and headstones."
If estimates of between 170,000 and 255,000 deaths since 2003 are correct then the situation is already as dire as the Bosnian tragedy of about 200,000 deaths from 1993-1995.
If the failings of the UN, the US & NATO in Bosnia were, according to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, "the greatest failure of the West since the 1930s", then what on earth are we to make of a situation which is already worse in terms of lives sacrificed?
2 comments:
It horrifies me how we've sent people to the moon, and could conceivably start a human settlement in space long before we can peacefully interact with members of our own species. It's like we're far more technologically advanced than we are socially advanced. Why is that?
I hear you, and it's seems to be a bit tense everywhere at present.
Perhaps it's the big problem with the information age that bad social ideas can proliferate as rapidly as good social ones.
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