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Why is the secretary general of the United Nations making solemn statements about the dreadful rape and murder of a woman in Delhi? Since when was it the job of the UN to comment on horrific crimes that are executed, not by states or armies or guerrillas, but by a handful of depraved men? I don't remember the UN aiming stern warnings at the United Kingdom when, in 2006, the Ipswich serial killer murdered five prostitutes, or at Belgium in the late 1990s when a warped man raped and murdered five girls. Yet now, following the death of the physiotherapy intern who was gang-raped on a bus in Delhi on 13 December, the UN is telling India to get its act together and protect its women.