Uganda Does Not Deserve Seat On UN Security Council, It's Time To Pay Attention

There is a critical issue facing the United Nations Security Council in the coming weeks that gives the United States great leverage in Central Africa, but it has not merited a single mention, that we can find, in mainstream international news coverage. An important question to ask the McCain campaign would be whether or not Sarah Palin met with any representatives of Uganda when she shook hands with world leaders at the United Nations. Katie Couric and CBS booted an opportunity to open a dialogue on Africa that has been occult, if it exists at all. The Bush Administration has been very cozy with the leadership of Uganda. Will McCain and Obama follow suit? Should we care?

Last weeks' post here examined positions Barack Obama and John McCain have or have not taken on Africa, especially the volatile and strategically important Great Lakes Region. Several readers suggested that affairs at home should merit more coverage than Africa, because there is nothing we can do for Africans anyway. The African continent is "lost" and we should put our own house in order. There is not enough media time to examine Africa, readers wrote.

However, mainstream media spent dozens of hours this week dissecting Couric's grilling of Sarah Palin on national security issues regarding Russia, while a seemingly over-managed Palin flubbed the question horribly, and Saturday Night Live and Tina Fey had a field day. It was all good sport and great comic relief in a week of financial meltdown that cried for some humor.

Our lack of attention to international issues could become the prelude to more tragedy. In the next week or so, Uganda will be pulling out all stops to gain a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Milton Allimadi of Black Star News succinctly describes the irony.

"Uganda was found liable for massive human rights abuse in Eastern Congo, including genocide and theft, by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2005; separately, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is also investigating the same alleged crimes for which Uganda was found liable by the ICJ," Allimadi writes.

As if that were not enough, the International Criminal Court, which has been cautiously supported by both McCain and Obama, indicted Congolese warlord Jean Pierre Bemba. The ICC maintains that Bemba, who is in the Hague awaiting trial, was financed by Uganda.

Today, Friends of the Congo told OffTheBus that Black Star News has it correct, that this is a serious situation, and deserves immediate action by the United States and other voting members of the United Nations who can block this move to seat Uganda on the Security Council.

"Our position is consistent with what Milton of Black Star News wrote. Uganda is certainly an agent of the US wreaking havoc on the African continent particularly in the Congo. The ICJ clearly stated that the DRC is entitled to $10 billion in reparations for the looting of Congo's resources and human rights abuses on its soil by Ugandan military and its proxies," Spokesman Maurice Carney said.

Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni's son was trained in Fort Leavenworth, as was President Paul Kagame of Rwanda. There is no love lost between Kagame and Musevini, and the United States has supported both countries in the finer points of weaponry and war games.

One must ask the question. What is the payback for the United States? We are propping up Kagame in Rwanda with the excuse that we allowed the 1994 genocide to happen. Uganda is clearly looting Congo, and so is the United States.

Visit Dan Rather's report on American company Freeport Macmoran's looting of Congo, "All Mine." The United States has much in common with the warlords of central Africa and no one is talking about it. Even Dan Rather can't get his probing report past HDNET, and his production team was arrested in the course of their filming in Congo.

A seat on the United Nations Security Council would be a reward for the United States' proxy actions and support of the resource wars in central Africa.

FOTC's Carney sums it up.

"Invade other countries and kill your fellow African and you get rewarded with a seat on the UNSC, what a travesty it would be to legitimize such actions as a route to such a prestigious post, " Carney said.

It is doubtful at this point that Uganda can be stopped.

There are fifteen permanent members of the Security Council. The structure is complicated, but is codified, unlike the elusive "Bush Doctrine" that took up so much media time a few weeks back. It turns out the Bush Doctrine was really the Charles Krauthammer Doctrine.

Five permanent members of the UNSC have veto power and the ten non-permanent members have no veto power. Seven non-permanent members can unite to block measures introduced by permanent members. One wonders how many members of the press who should be covering this could answer the question about veto power.

I could not. Had to look it up.

Permanent Security Council veto-wielding member countries include the United States, China, France, Russia and Britain.

China is present in every country in Africa to some extent, looking for resources.

How will the United States vote?

"The United States doesn't preview its vote for the rotating seats on the Security Council," Mark Schlachter, who is with the State Department's Bureau of International Organizations Affairs, told Black Star News.

This column is no place for a policy paper on Uganda, but mention must be made of the plight of the 2 million ethnic Acholis, who have been confined inside "relocation" camps, where the World Health Organization reports 1,000 people are dying per week. It is possible that 600,000 to one million Acholis may have died in these camps.

When I was in eastern DRC in 2007, I was approached by Congolese who stressed the stranglehold Uganda has on food commerce in the region. Congo could feed the world, but food and dairy products are shipped in from Uganda at prices out of reach for the average Congolese.

A stop at an "NGO (non-governmental organization) store" in Goma was a must before pointing the rented Land Cruiser 4x4 north on the only major highway in eastern DRC.

The NGO food store rivaled Wal-Mart in the sheer scope and variety of products providing comfort for American and Europeans. Markets where the Congolese gather offer dried and decaying fish skins discarded from the filets enjoyed by the NGO's in western-style restaurants in Goma. Lunch on the road consisted of roasted ears of corn--a staple of the Congolese diet.

I have a vision in my mind of a beautiful Congolese woman that I have carried with me since my trip there. She appears from time to time in my writing, locked forever in the vault of memory. I will never in this lifetime see her again, but I remember clearly the indigo blue skirt and bright yellow blouse she wore as she tended her goats and her field of maize below the hillside on which I stood. I attempted to befriend two of her goats that were tethered along the roadside and they would have none of it. Our eyes locked and she laughed heartily at the "Muzungu" harassing her goats. She is my muse now.

My video camera was rolling as I tried to capture the vast potential of the fertile land that war, greed, and international proxy armies, including that of Uganda, had reduced to fallow dreams.

I would post that video for readers on YouTube, but a "bodyguard," who said if my report got out, it would "ruin" certain plans for Congo, stole it. Oh, and he also confiscated my film of the NGO store.

Perhaps it is finally time for the United States to abandon its proxy role and "ruin" a few proxy plans in central Africa. Consider where our insatiability has taken us at home.

Follow Georgianne Nienaber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/nienaber

Comments

[africadeservesthebest]

I want to express sincere appreciation for Georgianne Nienaber’s article. Receiving press coverage for the truth and raising pertinent questions are essential to bring an end to the crimes against humanity being committed by official forces of Uganda and other countries with interest in the region.

Now that we know (or have plenty of clues staring us right in the face) none of us can sit back and allow our leaders to endorse Uganda’s current regime being seated on the UN Security Council. And we Americans should insist, at every opportunity, that our leaders remember the reasons for the UN’s founding and existence. Adhering to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (www.unhchr.ch/udhr) would be a great move for U.S. leaders and for the other world leaders as well.

[Busingye]

Dear Georgianne, Just wanted you to know that your excellent piece gave us the inspiration to take this issue back to the Ugandan people in an effort to create awareness that there are people out here who care about the catastrophe in the Great Lakes Region and the implications of endorsing the Ugandan government through unreserved international recognition. I hope US policy towards Uganda will change in the post-Bush years.

Here is the story published in Uganda's print and electronic media

http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1293&Itemid=64

[Georgianne Nienaber - Huffpost Blogger]

I read your link. All that writers can do is throw a pebble into the pond and hope that the ripples reach the shore.

I will continue to do my best, in whatever publication will have me, to be a voice for the voiceless. Together, we can all work to break the silence. I am here. So are many others. You are not alone.

[mygrain]

Commendations to Georgianne Nienaber for her excellent article regarding the application of President Museveni of Uganda for a seat on the UN SC. I hope that her article is read widely! Western countries have turned a blind eye to the acivities of this regime that have cost the lives of millions in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Some have sponsored the Regime of President Museveni, in spite of its record of extreme corruption and human rights abuse to say nothing of lives lost to war and state sponsored war and terror both in Uganda and in surrounding countries.

[curiosiT]

I agree with the update and added information in Georgianne's column. The Huffington Post is one of the ways we the people can access media that is not censored by the main media and their preferred sources of information.

I wonder if there is a way that this content could get before the Associated Press in any form or to World Press which has a great electronic website. They just need a photo to go with the story, and perhaps they will take your story as this World Press is from CANADA. I know you must still have photos that could perhaps go with the story, anything from Uganda or a stock picture of Museveni.

Many or most US citizens do not KNOW about the judgment AGAINST Uganda by the International Court of Justice. Most do not know of the horrible exploitation of the Dem Rep of Congo either, though some major movies on diamond smuggling which was popularized and had appeal was tied to websites like Control Arms campaign.

Most don't know of Uganda's own use of child soldiers.. A light needs to be shone on the underage Arrow Boys and others under the supposed lack luster training of the UPDF, Uganda's defense forces. This contravenes our own supported US based legislation which passed Congress. But Uganda remains a friend of the Bush Administration, especially for going into unpopular conflicts..which we pay them to do as a front on proxy wards.

[Georgianne Nienaber - Huffpost Blogger]

Thank you for your engagement. If only the Associated Press would pay attention to some of the stories of atrocities that I and other freelancers have offered them! There is a great silence surrounding the humanitarian crisis In Uganda and DRC, but only Darfur has really hit the mainstream. Perhaps it is the oil fields there...but don't get me started. There must certainly be a way to break the silence, but I, for one, have not figured that out. I think we writers do what we must do and...write. Strength to the sword arm!

[GloriaSandiego]

Under Museveni, about 52% of the Ugandan yearly income comes from abroad, mostly from USA. Undoubtedly the reason (50) why we have known nothing about GENOCIDE in Uganda.

Museveni's election in 1986 incited the fanatical Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to rise up in opposition, kidnapping children from their own people to fight the government. Respondig, Museveni imprisoned over 2 million northern Ugandans in IDP camps, pretending protection. Rape, murder, child abduction and theft, by the LRA and Ugandan soldiers, became nightly occurrences. Parents sent children off into the dusk to "safe centers" to sleep. In the morning they trudged back to the camps. Many chldren were born in the camps which were overcrowded, underfed, almost waterless, filthy, open-air concentration camps. Over 2 million died from disease and violence during the following 20 years .

Much of the fertile soil and cattle was confiscated and sold to foreign investors. When the camps were suddenly opened about 2 years ago, and the residents allowed to leave, where could they go? Many are still barely surviving in the camps. With the current worldwide financial crisis, little help reaches these displaced people.

The potential for further internal violence is tremendous. My hope is that the European Union will lead the way to helping Uganda solve the terrible problems which outside interference and exploitation have helped to create..

[scottyva]

When it Comes to Central African Issues in General the UN Has had a History of being Heavy Handed. On 2 Different Occasions Museveni Threatened to Invade the DRC if they did not rein in the Militias that Control the Kivu Provinces. Both times the White House Signed off on the Threats.

Now there are almost Daily Reports of Attacks in the Region. The LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) is once again conscripting Children and launching attacks. In the Past Museveni has used the CIA to crack down on a Political Rival.

Uganda does not really deserve a seat on the UN Security Council. Its actions in Southern Sudan and the DRC disqualify it.

[scottyva]

I also have a blog where i discuss US Policy towards Africa. It is called Confused Eagle and it can be found at morganrigh­ts.tripod.­com

[Georgianne Nienaber - Huffpost Blogger]

I just dropped a note to the editors here regarding how well thought out and articulate the responses are here. The issue deserves this kind of discussion. While I am gratified and humbled for the support, I am reminded about something Coleen Rowley said to me when I first met her. She said that she did not deserve to be on the cover of Time Magazine for telling the truth about events leading up to 9/11.

In the same way, coverage of humanitarian issues should be EXPECTED and not a deviation from the norm. We will keep trying.

The post about us turning a blind eye in Rwanda in 1994 and what is happening now, gave me pause....

[ayelayela]

The silence around Uganda's impending presence at the UNSC is reminiscent of the silence around the hundred days in Rwanda in 1994. Back then, Rwanda's was an internal conflict. Back then, when Romeo Dallaire appealed for assistance, from Kigali, the United Nations ignored him as did the White House. There were other things going on. Back then, there was Bosnia.

If Uganda's nomination as a candidate was forwarded by the OAU, then fellow African leaders are doing what they do best -- turning a blind eye. The permanent members of the Security Council are in position to lead the rest of the world in exposing the atrocities associated with the government of Uganda. Indeed, that is their prerogative to prevent wholesale slaughter and torture of fellow human beings.

If the Security Council does the right thing, it will earn our respect as a new brand of leadership. At the very least, the people of Northern Uganda, along with the people of Rwanda, Sudan, the Congo deserve that. We remember Bill Clinton's words after the genocide in Rwanda when he reminded us of WW2 -- "Never again." Were those empty words?

Thank you, Georgianne Neinaber. Thank you, Huffington Post. Indeed, your work does not go un-noticed. Your words, along with other words, continues to shed light on the madness in far away places and spaces that are sometimes our homes, but always our common responsibility. Than you for your work.

[VoteForHumanity]

Beautifully put.

[Busingye]

Please sign my petition and lets do what we can to expose this outrage!

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/uganda-does-not-deserve-a-seat-on-the-un-security-council

[Truthblogger]

Should the UN ignore Museveni's attrocious records in destabilizing the Great Lakes Region and reward his bad behavior with a seat on the Security Council?.
For looting minerals and natural resources in Congo and killing multiplied thousands of civilians in the senseless wars, Museveni needs to be tried by the ICC in the Hague.
Are the lives of the Africans in the Congo and Acholi killed by Museveni no value?
It would be a travesty of justice and an insult to the victims in Acholi and in the Congo to nominate or endorse Uganda's membership to the Council.
Regime genocidal wars against civilians, massive government corruption in government, cronysm, political repression, rigging elections, hopelessness and vast poverty of population are the conditions that radicals and terrorists exploit.
The current US administration should have the moral fortitude and send a tough clear message to these regimes by demanding for either change or isolation and not rewarding the regime.
Any short term political, business or military gain or cooperation in fighting terrorism while turning a blind eye to these attrocities will prove more costly to the current or next US administration and the world at large and will not be forgotten by the Africans.
Museveni has shrewdly learnt the art of appearing to play to Washington's security goals in the region for his own political survival while advancing a very repressive regime agenda to hang on to perpetual power.
It is wrong to reward Uganda with a seat on the Security Council.

[UgandaBlue]

Museveni of Uganda should not be rewarded with a seat on the UN Security Council.

The man's name will someday head a list with such rulers as Charles Taylor, Robert Mugabe and Idi Ami. He is a puppet for the West and just as easily as they have supported his rise they can also bring him down.

[xposeuganda]

Ms. Nienbar, thank you for highlighting this issue.

Usually when western media covers Uganda or travels there, most of the true story is left out. I heard an interesting story from a journalist who travelled to Uganda last year--she went all the way to the war-torn areas of Acholi to see the squalid camps. The government tour took them to a "sanitized" camp, and when this reporter was later shown camps which had not been sanitized for foreign consumption she was shocked to say the least at the crowded conditions and dire poverty. Imagine sharing a latrine with 100+ people or waiting in line for water for hours and hours . Lack of basic facilities such as water and basic health care continues to be a reality, despite warnings, reports and condemnations by all the largest humanitarian NGOs in the world. Indeed, shockingly, Uganda's "IDP Policy" has been lauded. This is after people have died en masse from government neglect. Amnesty International reported inadequately guarded camps during the height of the war (50 soldiers guarding 50,000 people).

I encourage people to look beyond the propaganda of the Ugandan government and the smokescreen the LRA's horrific atrocities have provided, to see a pattern of abuses that has spilled outside of Uganda to the neighboring countries. Far from being a peace-keeping nation, Uganda is at the center of many conflicts in the Great Lakes region.

Thank you Huffington Post for making space for a story which has received little coverage.

[xposeuganda]

For more information please visit: http://www.exposeugandasgenocide.blogspot.com and www.protectafrica.wordpress.com.

Thank You.

[Sokolokobangusay]

Museveni, a one-time Marxist, knows the right buttons for United States and the UK to support his greedy autocratic regime. As long as you practice unfettered Milton Friedman free-market capitalism (even when 90% of your people wallow in abject poverty) and you support the distorted view on terrorism, they will kiss your butt no matter what you do to your percieved "enemies" at home. As he was rewarded with the Commonwealth Meeting he will again get the Security Council membership despite history of:
--using child soldiers
--being th instigator of most of the wars in the Great Lakes Region

Thanks a lot America.. You are now too busy with your own woes and Presidential contests.

Soko
Blog: http://acolidreamer.blogspot.com

[GigsRusdotnet]

Excellent article. The awarding of a UN Security Council seat to Uganda will be a thumb-nosing to the African diaspora and friends of justice, while giving a bloody pat on the back for a job well done by the Museveni government in flawlessly executing the Bush Administartion's proxy war against Northern Uganda's Acholi. The icing on the cake coming to a strategic theater far from you: Africom.

A boosted US military presence on the continent to "counter" Chinese natural resource grabs and "thwart terror groups" will continue to destabilize the whole of Africa. But that's the intent, as US interests play dirty politics with the truth about Uganda, Congo and DRC, through State Department disinformation, expensive high-level Washington PR firm spin control campaigns, and cabinet-level silence in support of war criminal regimes sold to US taxpayers as fledgling democracies.

[Johanson]

Excellent piece Georgianne! I have been to Northern Uganda and the situation is absolutely appaling, the people in Acholi are suffering at the hands of its government and the LRA with the full knowledge of the UN. They have sent respresantives to northern Uganda who have come back and told the UN that it is the worst of the worst case scenarios that they had ever seen. A former UN official i believe went as far as to label the situation a genocide even if it is strongly being denied by the Museveni government and its Western backers, notably the US and UK administrations. Uganda does not deserve a seat on the UNSC, in the case that it gets one, then the UN should not expect anyone from the world's troublespots to take it seriously.

Interestingly, the UN was set up as a lesson from the experience of Jews at the hands of Hitler, but while learning the history of the Holocaust, the world has learnt to treat it as history, and nothing more other than history when it comes to Africans killing Africans - mass murder and genocide in general have unfortunately become commonplace, under the watch of the UN. Uganda is one of the purpetrators of this genocide, towards its own citizens and in neighbouring countries, therefore to give Uganda a seat at the UNSC table would be a traversity that goes against every single reason that the UN was set up for.

[Georgianne Nienaber - Huffpost Blogger]

Thank you Mr. Fox for the kind words, and it is nice to hear from you. I must say that there are many voices crying out from this region. There are many journalists and writers who cannot find an outlet, and that includes African nationals who are persecuted in countries that have no free press, as you so rightly describe. I am fortunate that my thoughts are being noticed after many years, but there are many out there who know far more than I. We surely need an independent media team to go to Central Africa and report on the multinational interests behind the suffering. It will take a high profile group--immune to arrest and confiscation of their work.

[FindingTruth]

The camps in Uganda are a living hell. I've been to Uganda recently -- the North seems like a completely different part of the country and the government has neglected its own citizens.

The United Nations is hovering on the edge of hypocrisy in considering Uganda for a Security Council seat. How can the UN say it wants to prevent genocide when a country convicted of war crimes sits on its Council. The UN itself has reported extensively on Human Rights violations by Uganda, both domestically (child soldiers, internment camps in the north) and internationally (Congo, Rwanda).

The WHO in 2005 found an excess death rate of 1,000 people per week in camps the government illegally created. Oxfam has reported 5,000 people dying a month at the worst point of the camps.

The Ugandan government is also busily denying and refuting UN report. A report from the UN Human Rights Commission was recently blocked from being tabled at the UN.

Is the UN for world citizens or superpowers... it seems the latter. The UN must uphold its professed mandate to protect good governance and the rule of law.