UN criticizes New Orleans displacements

The United Nations, unable to stop real atrocities and emergencies worldwide (like their failure to feed Darfur refugees as reported by Bloodthirsty Liberal),  have shifted their disapproving gaze at their favorite human rights violator – the US (link to Wall Street Journal)

This week, two Council “experts” — an American lawyer and an Indian architect — accused the Department of Housing and Urban Development of denying the “internationally recognized human rights” of New Orleans residents whose former homes in public housing complexes are scheduled for demolition. The demolitions, say the experts, “could effectively deny thousands of African-American residents their right to return to housing from which they were displaced by the hurricane.”

The public housing in question includes the notorious 1930s-era St. Bernard complex, which was already in a bad state before Katrina hit and an even worse state after it. The local housing authority intends to replace the complex with mixed-income housing developments, and in the meantime is granting housing vouchers to former tenants. But some of the new housing will be offered at — horrors! — a “market rate,” to which the U.N. naturally objects. We don’t remember the U.N.’s human-rights czars being quite so vocal when Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe evicted 200,000 people from their homes in 2005.

Well, the Mugabe example is probably the most glaring, but how many others can we cite over the past ten years? If HUD decides to evict the UN from Turtle Bay and give them some housing vouchers to set up their new headquarters in Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Iran, the decision would get thunderous applause from across the US.

Category: Foreign Policy