Over the course of its existence, the United Nations has sent in military units from member nations to serve as “peacekeepers” in countries torn by civil war or other strife. The majority of these peacekeeping forces serve in Africa, where a number of small nations endure not only the vagaries of drought, monsoons and dangerously corrupt government but also nearly continual fighting. In 2014, roughly 70,000 UN-sponsored peacekeepers served in Africa alone, many of them coming from nations adjacent to the affected countries.

In one such case, troops from the Republic of Congo are accused of murdering a dozen family members of a Christian militia commander in the Central African Republic. A skirmish between the militia and the Congolese peacekeepers left one peacekeeper dead. When the Congolese troops returned, they arrested a group of 12 that included five women and two children. The incident, which allegedly occurred in March 2014, culminated recently with the discovery of 12 bodies that were exhumed by aid workers. This apparent mass murder is on top of the rampant rape and sexual exploitation that’s led to a number of “peacekeeper babies” born to young girls in the region.

There’s no small irony that the United Nations turns a blind eye to abuses by peacekeepers under its supervision while going out of its way to curtail the small arms trade (at the expense of our Second Amendment rights) and to change the world’s economic development model to a less capitalistic one — expanding government control in the name of fighting climate change. It may be the UN’s view that Africa is a model continent because the nation-states have weak economies with very little capitalism. Development in these nations only seems to enrich the allies of the tinhorn dictator in charge, with that ruler keeping a lid on the people through his possession of all the firepower. But at least they’re not contributing to global warming.

UN peacekeepers are not placed with orders to change the existing governments; they are supposed to defend those who need respite from the ongoing fighting in their nations. The United States provides 28% of the UN’s peacekeeping budget, which turns out to be a wealth transfer as nations that provide personnel are compensated from the $8.27 billion peacekeeping budget for FY2016. (For example, the leading provider of troops to the UN is that vaunted military power of Ethiopia. Conversely, the U.S. has only a few dozen.)

As we’ve seen in the Central African Republic, though, the peacekeepers are to be feared as much as any of the various factions fighting over the scraps of charity and foreign aid that filter into the broken nation. With the United Nations clearly failing to improve the lot of those in the Third World, it’s well worth asking whether we’re getting good return on the 22% we contribute to the UN’s budget, not to mention our role as its host.

The chaos in the Central African Republic indicates the answer is no.