The documentary “U.N. Me,” which was released Friday in theaters and on demand, could serve as an effective recruiting tool for the international organization.
“You can put away $80,000 to $90,000 tax-free every year” — and live well while doing it, former United Nations peacekeeper Ken Cain reports. Another ex-peacekeeper, this one anonymous, relates his experience serving in C?te d’Ivoire: “I was paid to do nothing.” When he complained to his supervisor — some people, strangely enough, want to work — he was told, “Enjoy the beach, have beer, go out with the chicks.”
Of course, “U.N. Me” isn’t meant to encourage such a career choice. It aims to expose the behavior tolerated — even abetted — by the group founded at the end of World War II to prevent such an atrocity from happening again. Instead, as director Ami Horowitz details, the organization now turns a blind eye to genocide happening practically right in front of its so-called peacekeepers.
It was anger at the United Nations’ botched handling of the genocide in Rwanda that spurred Horowitz to change careers in 2007, from the lucrative financial industry to the not-so-lucrative documentary filmmaking business.
“I thought I could write an article. Who’d read that? The same people who agree with me,” he says to me on a recent visit to the District. “I could write a book. Who’s going to read that? Nobody.”
Instead, he sought the attention of his fellow Americans through their favorite medium: feature film. In “U.N. Me,” Horowitz travels around the world, talking to those who have worked for the organization and those who have been harmed by it, along with experts including former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, and Joe Loconte, who served on the congressional Task Force on U.N. Reform.
Most powerful, though, are the stories of people you’ve never heard of — such as the unarmed Ivoirian protesters that U.N. peacekeepers fired on. The film contains footage of the dying, making it hard to watch — but necessary to see.
Horowitz decided to release the film simultaneously in cinemas and on demand through home cable services to reach as many Americans as possible.
“Who’s going to stop them? If not America, nobody,” he says with some urgency. “Who’s got the backbone to stand up against them? Not anyone who works there.”
Horowitz emphasizes that he tried to make his film entertaining as well as informative — inspired by guerilla documentarian Michael Moore — for the same reason, to get people watching. But it’s also a “call to action,” he says. The movie’s website encourages outraged viewers to email or call their congressmen.
Horowitz declares, “Congress is the real focus here. Congress controls the purse strings of this country.”
Kelly Jane Torrance is The Washington Examiner movie critic. Her reviews appear weekly and she can be reached at [email protected].
