By Aaron Timms

Her hee-hawing, kind of-Australian, kind of-American, kind of-annoying accent aside, Nicole Kidman’s appearance last week before a congressional foreign affairs committee was a model of clarity, grace and poise. Kidman appeared in her capacity as a U.N. goodwill ambassador on women’s issues, answering questions relating to draft legislation before the House aimed at tackling violence against women overseas. Naturally there will be those who will dismiss her performance as mere frippery. Naturally, some will argue that the nomination of celebrities to these largely ceremonial “ambassadorial” roles demeans the gravity of the issues concerned. In fact, there is much sense in getting celebrities to help promote the work of the U.N..

Roger Federer, for instance, is a children’s rights ambassador for UNICEF: this is a role to which he is intrinsically well-suited, as he has spent much of the past few years crying like a two-year-old every time he loses a grand slam final. Even his idiosyncratic on-court dress sense carries an air of enchanting, child-like wonderment: the fetching cream pants-and-waistcoat combination he wore to Wimbledon this year, for instance, just screamed “awareness raising of children’s rights throughout the developing world”. Okay, so in the process the outfit also made Federer look like a mincing, Eurotrash barman in a crap Spanish resort, ready to vamp up to your table by the pool holding a stick umbrella-decorated mocktail and proffer the drink with a devilish swivel of the hips and the words, “Sir, your frozen mango daiquiri. Enjoy. Can I also interest you in some wings for the table, hmmmm?”. But so what? That association, in its own quiet, unhurried way, can make just as important a contribution to the task of ending global injustice and poverty as any so-called UN “studies” or “reports” can.

David Beckham is assigned to the same portfolio as Federer and the points of harmony are just as obvious. After all, this is the man who named his children “Brooklyn”, “Romeo” and “Cruz” – a perfect grounding upon which to speak authoritatively on the rights of the child, and how best to violate them.

Elsewhere the inherent “fit” between celebrity ambassadors and their assigned ambassadorships seems even more apparent. Angelina Jolie makes for an excellent ambassador on refugee issues, because half of the world’s refugees under the age of 15 are now officially her children. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is ideally suited to advocate on behalf of the World Health Organization, because it is a world-renowned symphony orchestra with a repertoire stretching from the mid-Classical period through the High Romantics, the atonality of the Second Viennese School, Soviet social realism and the intensely chromatic tintinnabulism of Arvo Part.

Raul, the Spanish footballer, Ronan Keating and the First Lady of Paraguay, meanwhile, are all goodwill ambassadors for the Food and Agriculture Organization. Their appointment proves something many of us have long suspected: that the best way to “get at” the problem of global hunger is from behind a 24-ounce Wagyu porterhouse steak, with a side of mustard greens, braised celery hearts and fresh truffle and a bottle of feisty Syrah – perhaps a Chateauneuf-du-Pape, or an ’05 vintage Madiran. Yes, the whole of the policy challenge with respect to food security is to understand what it means to go without; but to do this, we first need to understand what it means to go with. Only the extremely wealthy, such as Raul and the Paraguayan woman, whatever her name is, can lead us towards this understanding.

In short, there is a place for people who take issue with the UN’s goodwill ambassador program. And that place is by the pool, waiting for Roger Federer to sidle up with a mocktail in hand and offer a quick word about children’s rights.