What good is the United Nations when this sort of thing happens:

Caroline knows all too well. "It was a week before the election and the trouble was getting worse," she said. "The Zanu (PF) chairman said that in the Eighties when there was war, girls fought too so we need them to fight this time too." So the boys drew up lists of all the teenage girls in their neighbourhood and went to take them from their houses."

Caroline was led to a house in Adbeni used as a militia base. Opposition supporters were taken there from the pungwes (indoctrination meetings) held elsewhere. Caroline was led into a room by two older militia leaders in their twenties to administer a beating. "But instead they raped me, the two of them, in turn." Afterwards they took her to another room where a woman was lying face down on the ground. They told her she must beat her with the rope and baton they had given her. "I said 'How can I beat her, she is older than me? How can I beat someone who is like my mother, my grandmother?'." The face of her own mother, two years dead from Aids, loomed in front of her. But she remembered the horror of the rape and did what she was told. The next day she ran away from Mbare, to her grandmother's house in Highfield. But her older brother went looking for her. She had not told him the truth about what happened.

A country descends into lawlessness and brutality and the United Nation haggles. The United States alone, believes in tough measures (big surprise):

Opponents argued that mediation needed more time. The sanctions proposed by the United States include an arms embargo as well as a travel ban and financial freeze against Mr. Mugabe and 13 senior ministers, army officers and others.

The United Nations states dither about Mugabe's rampaging regime. Could Zimbabwe's chaos be more unnecessary and repugnant? No. And yet, the decisions at the UN could come down to another man's ego:

South Africa also opposes the idea in the sanctions resolution of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointing a special representative to aid mediation. The current mediator, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, criticized for being too indulgent of Mr. Mugabe, dislikes being second-guessed, diplomats said.

Children being forced to rape and be raped. Parents of the opposition helpless and exposed. A beautiful, rich country raped and pillaged by its own for power. And the rest of Africa indulges Mugabe. And the UN debates. What an utter disgrace.

Cross-posted at MelissaClouthier.com