Emergency Sex (and Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone

This is the brutally honest account of three young idealistic UN workers who naively set out to make the world a better place in the 90s, drinking and partying they start off overseeing the first democratic elections in Cambodia, and end up confronting some of the worst horrors imaginable.

Well written and effective, with currents of dark wit... taking in places such as Bosnia, Rwanda and Liberia it pulls no punches in criticising 90s US foreign policy and the bureaucracy and failing of the United Nations.
It unflinchinly chronicles the failure of the west to stop preventable genocide.

Stories like this from the ground level, from people who were there, need to be told. A hugely important book.

it's easy to say 'never again' from our western comfort, but what's happening in Darfur now?


Please read this book   April 3, 2005
Bond - Basildon Bond (UK)
12 out of 14 found this review helpful

I implore everyone to read this book which details the horrendously corrupt ineffectuality of the United Nations who stood by when massacres were taking place in Rwanda, Srebenica and Darfur.
One of the co-authors, Dr Andrew Thomson, wrote a line in the book that has led to his dismissal, as reported recently in the Sunday Observer by Andrew Thomson (another of the book's authors), Thomson was lamenting UN negligence in failing Bosnian Muslims who it had promised to protect in its 'safe area' of Srebrenica where 8,000 men lost their lives. Thomson wrote, 'If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs.'
The UN leader Kofi Annan has had an easy ride from Left wing liberals who read constant uncritical accounts of his leadership in progressive newspapers like the Guardian. It is the job of the concerned and the commited of the left to construct real critiques of the UN before the right wing in America and England come to colonise the moral high ground on this issue.
Despite being reigned in by the dictats of the security council Annan has personally overseen the systematic corruption of his organisation in oil for food and sex for food scandals.
In a recent article Cain tells of his trip to the Rwanda genocide museum in Kigali where there is a reproduction of the infamous fax sent by UN commander General Romeo Dallaire imploring the then head of UN peacekeeping, Annan, for authority to defend civilians being slaughtered in their thousands. The museum also reproduces Annan's response, ordering only the defence of the UN's impartiality, forbidding him to protect desperate civillians waiting to die. While the UN withdrew as the massacres escalated - 800,000 Rwandans were left to die.
The authors moral courage in writing this book is to be celebrated and it deserves a wide readership. Hopefully serving as a timely reminder that real opposition to war, famine and corruption involves more than simplistic Bush-hating and buying centre left newspapers while self conciously advertising your hatred of Republican foreign policy.
I wish the authors every success.


Just wonderful   September 6, 2005
Ben the Doctor
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

This is an inspiring book and one that is brilliantly written. One I won't forget.
The greatest heroes are heroic because they are human like the rest of us, but braver than we are.
I hope and pray that the authors will continue their humanitarian work, or that their remarkable book may persuade others to continue where they have left off. This book has persuaded me that I must return one day to work in the third world.
These are very gifted writers: I agree with the lady who advised Ken Cain that they should be writing so hard their hair catches fire!
Thankyou.


Gritty and realistic   July 4, 2007
A. Gibb (Birmingham, UK)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

Having sent some time in some of these places during my Air Force days I was interesed to see a different perspective of these places. This book is not only gritty but honest and even when times seem boring this only punctuates the frustration and fear felt when times you thought things could not get worse, they do. As the entries (this is written in a journal style) continue you are drawn into the small group and begin to genuinely care about them.
Some of the atrocities recorded here are hard to stomach but have to read so that even when you are safe and comfortable at home you can appreciate that because you can't see evil in the world, it doesn't mean it's not there. This book is proof that there are good people who care but are constantly having their hands tied by those who just don't want to look bad.
Read it, read it, read it.



The laughter & tears   November 10, 2007
Jo @ Momentous Events
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I loved this book. I have recommended it to everyone- ex-Army, complacent city city kids. It doesn't have a sweet conclusion, but in that sense, nor does life. It starts off with the romantic dream of working for an NGO, and describes the kind of enlighenment that day to day living brings with any issue. On the eve of Remmberance, and with my closest friends who have been there, this has helped me to understand more so than any text book or lecture. My copy is well thumbed and I am proud.