This week’s report of the Independent Inquiry Committee on the employment of Kofi Annan’s son Kojo by Cotecna, the Swiss firm hired to monitor the flawed UN Iraq oil-for-food programme barely leaves the UN secretary general untainted by corruption. Those who have been clamouring for Annan’s resignation may be disappointed that the committee found “no evidence that the selection of Cotecna in 1998 was subject to any affirmative or improper influence of the secretary general.” But the real reason Annan does not belong in a post that should inspire trust in people is that he has an indefensible record of placing his institutional loyalties before the value of human lives in Rwanda, Bosnia, and now Darfur. The UN, founded

to prevent a recurrence of the Nazi horrors, should not be impartial between the victims and the perpetrators of genocide. His best was not good enough to save the 7,000 Bosnian Muslims who were massacred in the UN “safe” zone of Srebrenica in 1995, or the 10,000 Africans who are perishing each month in Darfur while Annan declines to use his authority to demand a forceful humanitarian intervention. Annan should resign not because he failed to keep his son from embarrassing him but because he has allowed the UN to appear useless in preventing crimes against humanity. — The Boston Globe