Process and Bureaucracy Doom Millions

The world--too late--stands at attention and watches the women and children of a nation die emaciated before our eyes. Incredibly, our world, our country and the United Nations are letting process and bureaucracy get in the way of saving thousands upon thousands of innocent lives of women and children in Somalia.

In Somalia, we must recognize there is no government. The U.N. owes it to the Somali people who are denied the protection of a government to give them international protection. The United States should be the lead voice at the U.N. making sure this happens. The United States should also expand cross-border relief operations as well as more within the country.

The U.N. approach needs to be two-pronged. First, it should provide all needed protection and internationally loaned military personnel and equipment under the U.N. flag to ensure delivery of food and supplies before more babies starve. It is not acceptable for the U.N. to say “we are not there because all papers of agreement had not been signed.”

Equally important is the political second step. The U.N. must help heal Somalia by working to broker a peace and administer the country until some civil government is in place. Only with the restoration of a functioning government will the need for relief be replaced by the conditions to get the economy functioning once more.

Third, the United States should be a strong voice at this upcoming General Assembly session of the U.N. to set the parameters for U.N. involvement in the early warning stages in other countries. We need to codify a humanitarian response. If we are not to make a mockery out of human rights and many U.N. pronouncements on justice, the world community and the U.N. need to have stand-by, on-loan military capacity to ensure humanitarian access and, if necessary, to re-establish order when it collapses inside a country. We should never again have to say that we let people starve for months because the government did not want us in--or the government had collapsed and no one was authorized to negotiate with the United Nations.

Fourth, we have learned from the stories of the Somali women as told to reporters and to MacNeil-Lehrer’s News Hour that guns sent to poor countries are being used as instruments of torture and violence against mothers, young girls and babies. They are creating the conditions for refugees, economical collapse and starvation, anarchy and civil war. Countries that sell or provide these guns are creating the conditions of suffering.

There is so much unnecessary suffering being tragically borne by the babies of Somalia. If the United States helps lead the U.N. to a more orderly, prompt, and compassionate response in times of need, future lives will be saved.