Somalia and South Sudan to receive £100 million each in UK aid

[Brighton Mod]

it's been there for everyone to see for years , maybe you should open up your eyes
regards
DR

The problem is that since the Biafran famine in the late 60s we have all become used to the same scenes of young children with distended bellies and thin arms. These shocking television images, which are shocking, no longer have the same effect and we are now seeing charity fatigue as a result of the corruption and lies that are peddled. Th UN is a racket, I've seen thousands of tonnes of wheat at warehouses in Djibouti, left to rot due to incompetence, UN staff lavishing themselves in countries where many starve, incorrect data and intelligence send out to extracate themselves from troubled areas and 180 degree wrong decisions made due to not understanding the situation on the ground.
Somalia was the bread basket of North East Africa and Russian/US meddling has made it what it is today, but don't confuse Somaliland which holds the northern coastline with the rest of Somalia which is run in a very different way. When I hear journalist, politicians and aid workers referring to Somalia as whole, I know immediately they do not know what they are talking about. The truth is, very few people really care.

 

[sydney]

£200m is approx 0.025% of UK government spending.

so ...?? 200 million that , as others have said will be quaffed up by aid agencies.......the majority of what is left will be squirrelled away by corrupt officials..

UK needs to look after it's own people....Africa is a basket case unfortunately......corruption on an unbelievable scale.

 

[rocker959]

Money better used at home .

 

[sir albion]

You can be sure that barely 20% of our £12 billion foreign aid contribution reaches its destination and I'm sure we pay for all the weapons of all the nutty groups in Africa..

Waste of money

 

[sjamesb3466]

I think the language 'presided over' is misleading at worst and colourful at best.

I have no appreciation of how the UN is set up, but would be interested in what reforms you'd suggest. I assume you're not suggesting we just do away with it and each go our own way?

I think presided over is fairly reasonable especially in Bosnia and Rwanda considering as UN troops knew that civilians were being targeted, troops/militia were heading towards civilian populations and the UN did little or nothing to stop them. That makes them mightily close to an accessory to genocide. I don't blame the troops themselves by the way, simply the organisation and the command structure that is designed to prevent the military element from becoming powerful.

As for an alternative, I believe the original intended purpose is sound, however like many of these organisations they have become bloated, corrupt and too far reaching. Simply an organisation to protect civilians during civil wars by creating safe zones/no fly zones and physically protecting the people inside them against anyone trying to harm them. An organisation that actually has the balls to tackle the serious situations that are going on in the world rather than picking the easy ones and ignoring the disasters. And finally an organisation that can take in aid money given by the world's caring nations and ensuring that this actually gets to the people that need it on the ground.

 

[sjamesb3466]

I agree with your post, just pointing out that it has been successful in this endeavour. Mainly because of the veto...

Although saying that Korea was an interesting situation, UN troops were used - the soviets were sulking at the time and were boycotting the UN.

Agree in some aspects in that it has helped prevent nuclear war (although it could be argued that the nuclear deterrent has prevented war by itself) however when it comes to conventional conflicts it has been poor, especially when targeting the more modern militia/guerrilla style conflicts of the last 15 years. Unfortunately the UN is designed to prevent conflict between defined nations which with the Arab spring, isis, civil wars across Africa and Ukraine are no longer the most common way modern war is occurring.