UN Human Rights Group Meets

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Such is the beginning of Paul Greenberg's post this morning at Townhall, as he discusses the UN's failure to promote human rights on the first day of the Human Rights Commission's annual meeting. Darfur, Sudan is simply the latest of utter failures at the UN. He runs down the long list of Kofi Annan's failures: Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq...

The U.S. has long called for the UN to label the events in Darfur as genocide in order for the Security Council to take action. Unfortunately, the UN decided recently that the killings in Sudan did not qualify for the term "genocide." As the Washington Post noted,

A UN commission investigating atrocities in Sudan has concluded that the government did not pursue a policy of genocide in the Darfur region but that Khartoum and government-sponsored Arab militias known as the Janjaweed engaged in "widespread and systematic" abuse that may constitute crimes against humanity.

The world press seemed to rejoice at the rejection of U.S. genocide claims. Meanwhile, the killing continues.

It will be interesting to see how much attention Darfur receives this week. With members such as Cuba, Sudan, Congo, and Zimbabwe, the Commission will probably spend more time discussing the U.S. "torture" at Abu Ghraib and Israel's "occupation" of Palestinian lands.