How the UN's Global Poverty Plan Robs the Poor
by Mary Jo Anderson - May 7, 2008
Reprinted with permission.
The United Nations Millennium Development Goals were ushered in with global fanfare and media hoopla in 2000. It is nothing short of an ambitious renovation of the political, social, and economic structures of the world. Of course, it's not billed as Development of a Planetary Parliament; it is presented to the world as an "historic" moment, a "blueprint agreed to by all the world's countries… ."
The first of the eight Millennium Development Goals is to "eradicate extreme poverty and hunger." If the phrase is vaguely familiar, thank Barack Obama, who sponsored the Global Poverty Act (Senate Bill 2433) that is currently enjoying concierge service from Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Obama bill specifically ties S.2433 to the United Nations Millennium Declaration (2000).
The Global Poverty Act thus submits the citizens of the United States to the UN's demand for 0.7 percent of our GNP, or $845 billion – $2,000 from every man, woman, and child in the United States. The current U.S. foreign aid contribution of $300 billion does not count toward the $845 billion demanded by the United Nations by 2015.
While certainly motivated by a noble impulse, a global goal to eradicate poverty is a recipe for a web of greed, graft, bribes, kickbacks, cronyism, and all manner of nefarious abuse. Some local "administrators" will use the money to influence political outcomes, while others will abuse their UN-sponsored influence to punish enemies. Some despots will simply accept the world's largesse on behalf of their poor and plunder it for their gilded toilets, as Saddam Hussein did. History shows that the poor will be robbed of the money intended to relieve their distress.
The billion-dollar UN "Oil for Food" scandal of 2004 is Exhibit A. Make that $22 billon, if you include the $21 billon Saddam skimmed from the program from 1996 to 2003. And let's not overlook his ingenious payout of oil chits to Russia, a hefty insurance policy for Russia's favor at the UN Security Council.
The massive Global Poverty Program that the UN seeks to control requires thousands of functionaries to oversee the supposed distribution of funds: managers, procuring agents, brokers, accountants, vendors, inspectors, auditors, monitors, "poverty consultants," and local officials. In short, the program is simply too large to be sustainable without significant loss to fraud. There were supposed safeguards in place for the Oil for Food Program, but there is no effective mechanism within the UN for self-regulation – nor any true motivation for internal reform. Iqbal Riza, special assistant to Kofi Annan, was caught shredding papers that allegedly incriminated top UN officials in the Oil for Food scandal. As punishment for this dastardly deed, Riza has a new job: special adviser to the new UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon.
Americans will be asked to pony up over $800 billon to a UN whose idea of good management is to seat Syria and Sudan on the Human Rights Commission, despite the horror of genocide in Sudan. Incidentally, Sudan also sits on the UN's Refugee Agency's (UNHCR) executive committee.
Worse, the implementation of a program as massive as the Millennium Development Goals lays a foundation for the cherished UN peace plan to institute some form of global governance. The Millennium Declaration understands the UN's role as "the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development." This "common house" may well imply a world council, a kind of planetary parliament whose members administer and enforce the goals. How else could such a sweeping renovation of social and economic structures be accomplished?
Mary Jo Anderson is the co-author of Male and Female He Made Them: Some Questions and Answers on Marriage and Same-sex Unions, and is a frequent contributor to InsideCatholic.com.
