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“These crises hammer home the full cost of the international community’s failure to prevent conflict,” Pillay said. “None of these crises erupted without warning.”

Pillay said Syria’s conflict “is metastasing outwards in an uncontrollable process whose eventual limits we cannot predict”. She also cited conflicts in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Congo, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza.

The resolution acknowledged that the United Nations has not always used the tools in its charter for preventing conflict. It prescribed several steps for improvement, focusing on addressing human rights violations earlier and recognizing that such abuses are often warning signs of looming conflicts.

Ban Ki-moon today voiced his regret that Israel has launched a ground offensive against Gaza, despite calls for restraint, and stressed that there can be no military solution to the conflict which flared up over a week ago.

escalated

I urge Israel to do far more to stop civilian casualties. There can be no military solution to this conflict.

Hamas does – firing rockets from holy places and civilian areas toward Israel.

“We support Israel’s actions in Gaza. The only language terrorists understand is that of force. We urge the EU to recognize this simple fact.”

Lithuanians don’t get notifications about a daily dosage of rocket attacks, and not only because the airraid sirens don’t actually work in Lithuania.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is broke, and without the military means to move against the Russian-backed rebels. Most of the victims are civilians who struggle with hunger and dislocation in the rubble of the combat zones and die in the constant exchanges of shells and rockets.

resident Vladimir Putin has sharply cranked up his direct support for the rebels in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, while continuing to baldly deny it and to blame all the violence on the United States.

its allies will actively use their good offices with Kiev to seek a workable

With Russian-backed separatists pressing their attacks in Ukraine, NATO’s military commander, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, now supports providing defensive weapons and equipment to Kiev’s beleaguered forces, and an array of administration and military officials appear to be edging toward that position, American officials said Sunday.

But it is only now, four or six months later, that the great machine of the so-called "international community", the United Nations, is lumbering into action.

Imagine trying to set up and run a medium sized multinational company. But then imagine trying to set it up in countries with very bad roads and electricity supply, dodgy telecommunications and mostly badly-educated populations

To establish your "multinational company" you have to do some mundane tasks. You have to bring in people from all over the world. Then you have to feed and house them. You have to get them cars and desks and telephones. You have to make sure each bit of the machine knows what the other bits are doing. And that's before your aid workers can move to the front line and actually do their job.

The Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) created a ‘solidarity fund’ to contain and manage the outbreak, [17] and the World Health Organisation convened an emergency meeting of regional health ministers in Accra to strengthen surveillance operations and facilitate cross-border consultations. [18] The World Health Organisation also opened a Sub-Regional Outbreak Coordinating Center in Conakry. [19] Doctors Without Borders has deployed 300 personnel to assist in health care facilities, and both the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the European Union have provided scientific personnel and resources to assist with laboratory testing and government coordination. [20]

The World Health Organisation fulfilled its coordinating mission by organising a meeting of regional health officials in Accra in early July—but that was three-and-a-half months after the first report of the disease. WHO’s Sub-Regional Outbreak Coordination Center has the potential to be a useful resource, but it took nearly four months from the outbreak’s beginning until WHO began such operations. Given how quickly Ebola spreads and its virulence, such a delay helped the disease gain a foothold in the region. Arresting the spread of infectious diseases requires quicker action.

First, the current response needs to be ratcheted up. Opening sub-regional command centers, deploying personnel from governmental and nongovernmental sources, and providing financial resources are all important—but they need to be done in greater number and with greater urgency. The initial efforts are not necessarily failures; they are just too small and slow in response to the overwhelming nature of this unprecedented outbreak.

The W.H.O.’s goal is what it calls “70-70-60” — safe burials for 70 percent of victims, and 70 percent of suspected cases isolated, within 60 days of the date it set this goal.