The reason the U.N. will never work

Robert Mugabe has turned down an offer of tents to temporarily house the people that his government made homeless earlier this year by knocking down their homes.

"The president stressed we are not tents people," said Mr Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba, arguing that other countries were getting more help.

Of course, there is nothing that the U.N. can do. Homeless Zimbabweans will continue to go without even basic shelter because their government (who put them in this predicament in the first place) will not allow the world to help them.

This gets to the heart of why the U.N. will never truly succeed. As long as people are being victimized by their governments rather than a foreign power, there is really very little that the U.N. has the power to do. U.N. representatives will continue to talk in polite terms about 'disagreements' with the leaders of undemocratic regimes and people will continue to suffer.