Crisis Looming
The United Nations is setting up a top-level task force re looming global food crisis to avert “social unrest on an unprecedented scale.” Times of London:
The United Nations will set up a top-level task force to tackle the global food crisis in an attempt to avert what it calls “social unrest on an unprecedented scale”, Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary-General, said yesterday.
The first priority of the task force would be meeting the $755 million shortfall in funding for the World Food Programme.
“Without full funding of these emergency requirements, we risk again the spectre of widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale,” the Secretary-General said after a meeting of UN agency heads in Berne, Switzerland.
The move came as Robert Zoellick, the head of the World Bank, strongly criticised the bans on rice exports that have been imposed by several countries, including Vietnam and India. He said that they had made worse the problem of high food prices.
Help me out here. I’m trying to think of any global crisis, or even a local one, that might not be worsened by top-level UN intervention. Ban Ki Moon may be right about that looming social unrest crisis.
Topics: UN
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:29 pm on Tuesday, April 29, 2008
5 Responses to “Crisis Looming”
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April 29th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
The first priority of the task force would be meeting the $755 million shortfall in funding for the World Food Programme.
Easy. Rifle through a few UN desks and suit pockets.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:23 am
Stop deflecting biomass to the fuel program. Case closed, next case please!
April 30th, 2008 at 9:53 am
The UN is in charge? God help us all.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Perhaps we could have the UN do what the UN knows best, which is to bribe the officials that need bribing in order to get the food shipments flowing correctly, and get trade opened where it is currently being blocked. They’ll skim off the top, of course, but that’s just the cost of doing business with the UN. Call it a “handling fee.”
April 30th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Now that the UN is involved we can have a real food crisis. The UN is skilled at creating disasters out of problems.
The first things to do are cut out the ethanol subsidies and eliminate the tariff on Brazilian ethanol and sugar imports to the USA. Next up, some sensible energy policy from the US government. We’ll get that when Greeks reckon time by the kalends, of course.