UN's Burpday

Yep, the United Nations turn 61 today.

This international organisation was founded after the Second World War to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations and promote social progress, better living standards and human rights....

Shivers. It doesn't seem that the UN is doing too well really. Although... maybe we should ask ourselves what state the world would be in so far as extreme poverty and war go if the UN weren't around.

(And maybe it goes for Jesus followers too.)

So hurray for the UN.

I think they are a pretty great Org, you know. I love the Millenium Development Goals, their mission, their reason. But then... they are also pretty naff in so many ways too. I believe the movies when they portray those corrupt aspects of the UN. There is this bit in No Mans Land, where the UN workers want to go into the battlefield to collect a wounded soldier lying on a mine, but they just can't get the OK from the big cheifs (too dangerous)... Then a News Reporter puts the pressure on and they go in anyway... but they can't dismantle the mine... so they just pretend that they have saved him and but really leave the poor thing there by himself. Give up on him cos it's too hard and dodgy. Its a bit poignant, all right. It really highlights the madness, inflexibility and impersonality of bureaucracy.

So... Here's to the UN. Yet another organisation with a fantastic heart, necesarily functioning on an enormous scale, yet crippled by this very amplitude.