Continued from here ...

Now, to that "immediate attention" thing ...

TEN YEARS AGO, this commission met for its forty-first session.

Any guesses as to the sort of blather that went on then? Not just "sort" of blather ... actual, real life, exact blather.

If you're thinking it was the same as this year's, you'd be so close to on the money that you'd be forgiven for making your way to the pay-out window before the flag drops.

The topic was different ... "Women in power and decision-making" instead of the girl child thing ... true, but the substance?

Here are the "agreed conclusions" from 1997:

They wanted the Beijing Platform accelerated, equal participation for men and women, more data collected, education and training programs, awareness of gender issues, economic empowerment, mainstreaming, blah, blah, blah ...

... eventually coming around to the "girl child" and all sorts of ideas on issues revolving around such.

What did they want back then? Here's what they listed under action to eradicate violence: enact measures, enforce legislations, training programs eliminate sexual harassment, education, protection, gender sensitization, healing, rehabilitation, assistance, blah, blah, blah.

Enact and enforce legislation protecting girls from all forms of violence, including female infanticide and prenatal sex selection, genital mutilation, incest, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, child prostitution and child pornography, and develop age-appropriate safe and confidential programmes and medical, social and psychological support services to assist girls who are subjected to violence.

You know what I would love to see now? I would LOVE to see exactly how much money has been spent in the past ten years on these meetings of "The Commission on the Status of Women".

Even better? A look at how much has been spent on 51 years of these meetings.

How much would the total come to if taken into account was every penny spent on salaries, air travel, ground transport, accommodation, food, tips, clothing, hi-my-name-is badges, allowance, paper, ink, pens, electricity, water, coffee, pay to the people who must take up the slack while others are at the meeting, and on and on and on.

I'm not crawling anywhere near a limb guesstimating that we're looking at millions here.

And how much bang has there been for these millions of bucks? From this year's agenda compared to 1997's, none.

I don't know if you're getting tired of hearing this drum I'm beating half to death, but I'm sure worn out from the pounding I give it on too regular a basis ... and it's not that I have any solutions to offer for some of the huge problems facing the world every day ... other that tossing the UN in the trash heap, taking the bazillions they spend and doing something useful with the money ...

but ... and here's my big but again ...

Shouldn't we all be asking: What the heck is going on here?

Can we really keep buying the yearly hype over this Commission or that Summit? Don't we need to look at the context that clearly shows that NOTHING is being accomplished? And shouldn't we be shouting from the rooftops that enough is enough?

If things continue as they are, if the UN is left to grasp and grow and spin, the sixty-first session of the Commission on the Status of Women will come and go in 2017, and the girls born this year will be in exactly the same position as those born in 1997 and 1987 and 1977, and so on. Female infanticide, genital mutilation, slavery, beatings ... all that life dumps on the portion of the population that had the misfortune to not be born male ... will go on and on and on.

Our children come from countries that serve up this slice of life. If we don't owe it to them to ask the questions, perhaps we owe it to our grandchildren.

I certainly wish my parents' generation had been less ready to give a giant pass to the UN on a wish and a prayer that it would be the band-aid on the booboo, and had made the effort to look askance at policies that impacted other parts of the world.

I have no doubt that Cambodia would be a different place today if they had.