Since it's Friday and I'm writing on Cambodia on the International Blog, as usual, it seems a good time to mention here that a global conference on genocide took place in Montreal this week.

Survivors of a couple of our generation's very own genocides, those in Rwanda and Cambodia, joined big wigs and 'important people' in what was dubbed as an effort to explore ways of preventing genocidal violence.

It seems I'm not the only one rolling my eyes at the impotent arrogance of the meeting:

"It seems that for the most part the vow of 'never again' was not taken seriously by the international community. Since 1948 (the signing of the genocide convention), it is more like 'ever again' that we have had, from Cambodia to Bosnia, to Rwanda and now today in Darfur, a repeated failure to intervene against what is considered the ultimate crime," Payam Akhavan, the conference chair, told AFP [Agence France Presse].

I am, of course, immediately annoyed that the press stemming from the conference trots out those same blasted numbers on Darfur that I've been complaining about for ages now.

... 200,000 people have died and two million others displaced ...

Sheesh! Will someone please start counting again, as most certainly more people have died than those 200,000 referred to now years ago!

The conference was UN-heavy, with speakers including Romeo Dallaire, former commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide and Francis Deng, a former Sudanese diplomat who is now advisor to the UN Secretary General on the prevention of genocide.

Why in the world these two get even a courteous passing glance from the world, much less a travel budget and a hotel room in Montreal is beyond me since they are so clearly the modern equivalent of a fiddling Nero.

Esther Mujawayo, a Rwandan woman who lost her mother, father and husband in the genocide said her experience had made her a skeptic.

"Don't tell me you didn't know. The world did know. The world looked away. You knew but did not have the will," said Mujawayo, who managed to escape the country with her three daughters.

She said foreign nationals and their pets were saved during the genocide, while the Rwandans were abandoned.

"When the people were evacuating, the French, the Belgians, the Americans, all the expatriates, they even evacuated their dogs and their cats. I can't forget that image.

"A Belgian dog is better off than my child, and this is sad."

Part of the discussion to take place included thoughts on how to predict genocide and "fight the political and bureaucratic inertia that impedes UN intervention in genocidal conflicts," with an eye toward slapping sanctions on genocidal regimes.

Yeah, that'll help. Just look at all the good sanctions have done in Zimbabwe.

Oh! How I would love to get a look at the bottom line on costs for this conference!

While I was researching this post, I popped by the website for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Oh ... my ... goodness ....

Along with touts for the launch of the "Handbook on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol" and other such ultra-expensive practices in the futile and feeble was this telling headline from earlier this week: UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food deplores increase in the number of people suffering from hunger.

It starts like this:

"Today I am unable to report a reduction in the number of persons suffering from violations of the right to food. On the contrary, despite real advances realised in different countries, the number of people suffering from hunger has increased every year since 1996. This number has now reached an estimated 854 million people, despite Government commitments at the 2002 World Food Summit and at the 2000 Millennium Summit to eradicate hunger. Every five seconds, a child below ten dies from hunger and malnutrition-related diseases.

Any idea what this person's salary might look like? How about what the budget is for the UN tentacle in charge? And the reason for the very existence of such an organization would be ... ?

And the reason all of this fits under the umbrella at the top of the page that says "Adoption News"?

A conference was held last week on adoption issues and reports on the activities are dribbling out through various cracks and crackpots. So far, some indicate a strong bias toward what are euphemistically dubbed the "reform" or "preservation" neighborhoods of the adoption community, those who stridently insist that all children are better off without the option of adoption ... no matter what.

Apparently, genocide, child prostitution, starvation, slavery, abuse, infanticide, and such don't exist on the planet these people inhabit, and in their world biology automatically conveys a guarantee of love and caring. Mothers in that universe are all bountiful fonts of never-ending maternal dedication, each and every one of them, and fathers are providers of strength, virtue and all the needs for life ... and all it takes for any child to reach full potential in the full course of years is to be surrounded by genetically connected others.

How simply wonderful. Or how wonderfully simple.

Unfortunately, those simple people don't live in a different world. They just lack the capacity to grasp the reality of this one, and their narrow view leaves out millions of the world's children. It's not only the children of the genocide in Rwanda that are worse off than Belgian dogs.

Seems some members of my "fan club" noticed I wasn't in attendance, so I posted a little geography lesson for them on my personal blog.