United Nations Change on the Way?

By Eric Schultz

The old adage, "that which does not kill you, only makes you stronger" may be tested out on the United Nations this year. On the one hand, the 60 year organization is on the ropes, reeling from a series of blows including US unilateral action in the Iraq war, the oil-for-food scandal, continuing genocide in Darfur, and sexual crime among peacekeepers in Congo. On the other hand, that critical scrutiny may be just what was needed to prompt an invigorating, and long overdue, round of UN reform.
On 22 February 2005, Secretary General Kofi Annan summed up the situation by stating,"The UN cannot expect to survive the 21st Century unless ordinary people throughout the world feel that it does something for them." He continued to pledge, "This September...leaders from all over the world are coming to a UN summit in New York. I shall put before them an agenda of bold but achievable proposals for making the UN work better, and the world fairer and safer."
The agenda that he referred to will be based on the finding of two important reform commissions: the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change and the UN Millennium Project's Investing in Development report.
Last December, after just over a year of deliberation, the 16 members of the High Level Panel released an 80 page report which (1) reevaluated the threats facing our modern world, (2) examined the means by which international collective security currently operates, and (3) made 101 suggestions as to how the UN's policies and structure need to be overhauled. From that report, a few important themes emerged:
l The Panel recognized that inter-state war, which the United Nations was originally set up to counter, is no longer the main threat in today's world. Civil war, terrorism, poverty, and disease, all interrelated and all fully globalized forces, must be treated seriously as security threats. The panel recommended addressing those threats through aggressive economic and social development.
l The Panel recognized a 2001 report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which stated that states have a responsibility to protect and provide for their citizens. If they fail to do so, the international community becomes responsible for correcting the situation.
l While acknowledging the real threats posed by militant non-state actors and the proliferation of WMD's, the Panel did not recommend direct UN action (perhaps in the form of a standing UN security force) but instead stressed the UN's ability to produce normative standards upon which member countries should act. Furthermore, it went on to recommend an official definition of terrorism, something the UN has yet to accomplish. The Panel suggested that the Security Council take pro-active measures to address security threats, not under the authority of Article 51, which concerns the right of States to defend themselves from attack, but instead based upon the mandate outlined in Chapter VII, which calls for the Council to "maintain or restore international peace and security,"
l In an effort to make the organization more representative of the international power dynamics of the 21st Century (as opposed to those of 1945), the Panel made proposals for expanding the Security Council. (See Autumn 2004 T.D.W.F.)
l Finally, the report very clearly continued to see nation states as the primary players on the international scene. It portrays the UN's role as a facilitator to help the existing states to work better internally and collectively. It declares, "The front-line actors in dealing with all the threats we face, new and old, continue to be individual sovereign States."
The UN Millennium Project's Investing in Development report is a product of 3 years’ work by a staggering 265 experts on development. The report is "a package of scores of specific cost-effective measures that together could cut extreme poverty in half and radically improve the lives of at least one billion people in poor developing countries by 2005." In a statement that suggests the impotence of the UN in its current form, the
project's director Jeffrey Sachs mentioned that "Until now [5 years after the project’s goals were established], we did not have a concrete plan for achieving (those goals).”
The report:
l makes suggestions on how to ensure that countries that receive aid use it properly;
l proposes reforms in the international agencies and civil networks that help in development, in order to make the entire system more efficient, transparent, and accountable; and,
l endeavors to convince developed countries that it is in their ultimate interest to contribute between .44% and .7% of their GDP to development efforts.
The direction the United States may take in Annan’s September meetings will be largely based upon a Congressional Task Force that was set up in response to the corruption in the UN's Oil-for-Food program, that was brought to light recently by the Volker report. Newt Gingrich and George Mitchell have been selected (and endowed with $1.5 million) to lead a 12-member task force to create actionable suggestions as to how the US should react. With coordination from the U.S. Institute of Peace, the group will consult America's most notable think tanks, both liberal and conservative.

UN reformers will remember that Congressional involvement in UN change is nothing new. In 1993, any prospect of positive developments from the US Commission on Improving the Effectiveness of the United Nations was foiled by conservative Republicans. Ten years later, HR 3079 calling for the establishment of a National Commission on the Modernization of the United Nations failed to gain any momentum. Gingrich claims that there are several resaons why this time will be different. (1) The task force will focus on the UN from the perspective of American interests and responsibilities, not on the basis of an abstract notion of international community or of the concerns of other countries. (2) Its results will be based on the results of fact-finding missions and assessments of UN activities everywhere, not just in New York and Geneva. (3) It would produce by June a realistic, actionable plan for US actions to help strengthen the UN. (4) Composed of a bipartisan group of leading Americans, it will bring expertise not only from politics and government, but also from the military, business and academia.

Global civil society organizations may also have suggestions to offer. Already, in January 2005 at the fifth World Social Forum (in which an estimated 200,000 people participated) there were major discussions on creating a "global alliance" to push for a more democratic, representative, and accountable UN.