UN Tomfoolery

UN Classifies rape a ‘war tactic’

A recent BBC News article ^[1] outlined how the UN Security Council had voted unanimously to classify rape as a weapon of war.

Does that sound odd to anyone else? I guess it would make more sense if they had, instead, classified it as a war crime, but to classify it as a weapon of war?

I can only assume that the UN is using the Security Council as an attempt to add weight to their stance that ‘someone’ should do something about the epidemic of rape in the DR Congo. Since simple censure and vocal condemnation has not stopped the wholesale rape of women in Africa, by co-opting the Security Council and declaring rape as the moral and legal equivalent of an act of war, the Security Council can send in troops under the guise of peacekeeping.

While I would never belittle the horror of the act of rape, it is a criminal act akin to murder and should be dealt with as such. Not only does this open the door to adding other criminal acts to the new list of weapons of war, it actually adds legitimacy to the use of rape as a tool of war. I think most people would agree that the very idea is abhorrent.

I suppose the next step is to declare AIDS as a weapon of Mass Destruction so that the UN can levy greater funding from the more affluent member nations to effect social change by force of arms.

To mis-use a phrase made popular by the new Indiana Jones movie, the UN has ‘nuked the fridge ^[2]‘. The UN has long been working towards complete irrelevance and this latest act has done nothing to stop the downward spiral.