[Overpaid Slacker]

There may be some hope with Bellamy's long-overdue departure. But I'm of a wait-and-see attitude with the UN, which has far more sanctimony, inertia and indifference than it does competence. (I can't post the rest of this message w/o a subscription, but any of you with a Weekly Standard subscription could log in and copy/paste it):

Two years into Ann Veneman's tenure as head of the U.N. Children's Fund, it is clear that she is following in the footsteps of her predecessor, Carol Bellamy. Bellamy spent a decade reorienting the agency from its core mission--child survival--so that UNICEF could pursue the dual ideologies of children's rights and radical feminism.

Since the United States is UNICEF's largest funder, the selection of the executive director in theory reflects the priorities of the American president. Sure enough, the Clintons gave the children of the world a radical feminist lawyer and former New York politician in the person of Bellamy. When the Bush administration followed with Veneman, she was a former secretary of agriculture with no public record on anything more controversial than genetically modified corn.

Veneman's initial press conference as executive director was watched closely by both left and right, and the right--those seeking to return the agency to the no-nonsense approach that had saved millions of children's lives through massive immunization drives, oral rehydration therapy, and other basic medical interventions in the 1980s--came away hopeful. When asked if she would continue Bellamy's reproductive rights agenda for adolescents, Veneman responded, "I don't believe that these issues are relevant to the mission of UNICEF." She even quoted Mother Teresa.

But whatever her intentions, Veneman has failed to take the agency in a new direction. Its recently released annual report represents the triumph of Bellamy's legacy, so much so that the document isn't even about children. It's about women. The thumbnail account ...