The United Nations Reform Act of 2005: A Powerful Lever to Advance U.N. Reform
by Brett D. Schaefer
WebMemo #759 
June 10, 2005 | 

Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, has put forward the U.N. Reform Act of 2005, which he says will help create a “more focused and accountable” United Nations. The U.N. Reform Act is very comprehensive. It requires broad, important reforms of many parts of the United Nations system and backs these reforms with financial withholding of 50 percent of the U.S. assessed contribution to the United Nations regular budget until the Secretary of State certifies that at least 32 of 39 reforms have been adopted. This is a very powerful inducement for the organization to reform in specific, measurable ways.
 
The Bureaucratic Budget
The Hyde legislation details strong reforms that will streamline the budget process and the programs funded by the regular budget.
 
To begin with, the bill proposes weighted voting on budgetary matters. Too often today, countries that contribute little to the U.N.’s budget hold inordinate sway as to how that money is dispensed. The United States has long been the U.N.’s biggest financial supporter. Today the U.S. contributes 22 percent of the U.N.’s regular budget. Under the President’s budget request for fiscal year 2006, this would be $439 million.[1] The contributions of just three nations—the U.S., Japan, and Germany—make up over half of the U.N.’s total budget while the combined contributions of the lowest 128 contributors is less than 1 percent of the budget.[2] Weighted voting on budgetary matters would give the U.N.’s biggest contributors more leverage to ensure that their money is achieving the purposes for which it is intended. In addition, it would encourage other countries to increase their contribution to the organization.
 
The bill also calls on the U.N. to shift 18 programs from the assessed budget to voluntary funding. Other parts of the U.N. system already operate in this manner: UNICEF, the U.N. World Food Program, and the U.N. Development Program operate without funding from countries’ assessed dues. In addition to lowering member countries’ assessed dues and providing countries with more control over their relationship with the U.N., moving programs to voluntary funding would make them more accountable to the countries that choose to fund them. Under Hyde’s proposal, the United States would redirect a portion of the assessed contributions to these 18 programs to voluntary contributions in support of internal oversight, human rights, and humanitarian assistance.
 
Hyde’s proposal requires that the U.N. implement sunset policies and results-based budgeting for new programs that are funded in the regular U.N. budget. This could be an effective means of improving efficiency and eliminating outdated or irrelevant programs. Unfortunately, this provision applies only to new programs. It should apply to all of them.
 
Finally, Hyde’s bill would take a swipe at one of the U.N.’s most egregious financial excesses, General Assembly Affairs and Conference Services. The costs to run conferences are astonishing. U.N. conferences and other meeting cost $565 million in the last two-year period and comprised the single largest section in the U.N. budget. Transcripts of meetings can cost as much as $8,000 per hour.[3] Hyde proposes to start cutting back on conference funding immediately—a 10 percent cut in 2007 and a 20 percent cut in 2008.
 
Ensuring Accountability
In recent years, the United Nations, at all levels, has been dogged by accusations of improprieties, ethical lapses, and even outright criminal behavior. Hyde’s bill seeks to rein in these excesses by altering the U.N.’s bureaucratic culture.
 
Too often, the U.N.’s internal oversight procedures have failed to catch and adequately handle questionable behavior by U.N. staff. Mishandling of bidding processes and the ongoing Oil-for-Food scandal are examples.[4] Hyde’s bill aims to give the U.N.’s Office of Internal Oversight greater independence with the creation of an Independent Oversight Board. This new board would have the power to define procedures relating to whistleblowers and could investigate allegations of misconduct throughout the U.N. system.
 
Other measures in the bill are proactive and preventative. It calls on the U.N. to establish a code of ethics to make clear what is expected of staff. Responsible for this effort would be a new Ethics Office that would be charged with thwarting abuses and conflicts of interest. The bill also includes a requirement that employees above a certain grade disclose any financial ties that they might have, so as to lessen the chance of improprieties in contracting and policymaking.
 
For years, the U.N.’s peacekeeping missions have been plagued with accusations of severe misconduct—from petty crimes to rape and forced prostitution. Hyde’s bill includes a mandate that the U.N. require a stronger Code of Conduct, enforce it on all peacekeeping missions, and make it a central part of peacekeepers’ training.[5] As well, the bill calls for a database to track misconduct and an independent investigation and audit unit. These are reasonable steps to prevent the sort of abuse that’s gone on in the Congo, Burundi, Haiti, Liberia, and elsewhere from recurring.[6]
 
Ending the Commission on Human Rights
The U.N. Commission on Human Rights is rightly regarded as epitomizing the “dictators’ debating club” esthetic that some ascribe to the whole organization. Recent members of the Commission include Libya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, China, and Cuba—all of which are known for their deplorable records on human rights. Like clockwork, the Commission issues regular resolutions condemning Israel while overlooking real offenders—such as many of its members.
 
While Hyde’s legislation supports replacing the Commission on Human Rights—which can be regarded, by now, as sullied and unsalvageable—with a new Human Rights Council, it should explicitly call for the abolition of the Commission. To ensure this new body would be no facsimile of its predecessor, the legislation prohibits membership to countries that violate human rights or are subject to specific human rights resolutions. The bill also seeks to prevent the new Council from maintaining a standing agenda item that relates to one country or region. This would prevent the Council from singling out Israel the way that the Commission does today.
 
One improvement that could be made to this section of the bill would be to require that member states participating in the human rights bodies at the U.N. be democracies. Another would be to eliminate the General Assembly’s 3rd Committee (which addresses social, humanitarian and cultural affairs) to reduce redundancy.
 
Other Reforms
Rep. Hyde’s legislation is comprehensive, addressing almost every aspect of the U.N.’s operations. In addition to the reforms described above, the bill would also:
 
Strengthen the International Atomic Energy Agency to make it more effective, particularly as regards compliance and verification. 
Change the way the Department of State reports the U.N. budget request to Congress to improve accountability. 
Task the State Department and the Government Accountability Office with reporting on the progress of reforms at the U.N. 
Call for an audit of all peacekeeping operations, with an eye towards ending those that are ineffective. 
Call on the U.N. to finally settle on a definition of terrorism. 
Withhold funds from human rights treaty monitoring committees or bodies if the U.S. is not a party. But why not expand this to encompass all such committees and bodies? 
Recommendations
The impressive scope of Rep. Hyde’s reforms leaves little room for major recommendations, but it does omit some useful management reforms. In addition to its existing provisions, the bill should also:
 
Mandate that the United Nations not offer permanent contracts to any new employees. 
Insist that the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations use the voice, vote, and influence of the U.S. to enforce zero nominal growth in all assessed dues to the U.N. regular budget, specialized agencies, and funds and programs. 
Call for enforcement of the 5.6 rule, which requires the Secretariat to identify low-priority activities in the budget proposal. 
Insist that the United Nations publish annually a list of all subsidiary bodies and their functions, budgets, and staff. 
Require the U.N. to outsource and automate translation services, which in the current budget cost nearly $200 million.[7] 
Require that the United Nations and all its funds, programs, and specialized agencies report in their budget documents all voluntary and in kind contributions received and identify them by source. 
Require the U.N. to implement sunset policies and results based budgeting for all programs and subsidiary bodies, not just new programs. 
The accountability and transparency of U.S. contributions to the U.N. could also be improved. Currently, no agency in the U.S. government is responsible for tracking all U.S. funds going to the United Nations system. The legislation could address this gap by tasking the Office of Management and Budget to track all direct and indirect U.S. government contributions—assessed, voluntary, and in kind—to the U.N. system and report these contributions annually to the Congress.
 
Finally, the legislation says nothing about the most controversial aspect of the Secretary-General’s U.N. reform proposal—reform of the Security Council. The Secretary-General and a number of other nations support expanding the Security Council by nine new members, from the current 15 to 24. As the Heritage Foundation has long advocated, an expanded Security Council would undermine its effectiveness and ability to respond to threats to international peace and security.[8] The U.S. Congress should use this legislation as an opportunity to reject proposals for expansion.
 
A useful reform of the Security Council that the legislation could propose is to adopt minimum United Nations peacekeeping budget assessments for Security Council members. Nations on the Security Council have an increased influence over U.N. peacekeeping operations and should shoulder commensurate financial responsibilities. The legislation should push this reasonable linkage by requiring all permanent members of the Security Council to pay at least 5 percent of the peacekeeping budget and all rotating members at least 1 percent of the peacekeeping budget for as long as they are members of the Council.
 
Conclusion
Rep. Hyde deserves praise for laying out a well-designed legislative proposal that would tilt the U.N. away from secrecy, scandal, and corruption and towards transparency, accountability, and effectiveness. The bill recognizes that the U.N. and many of its member states will be wary of change and will do everything in their power to resist it. To that end, the bill backs its proposals with a strong enforcement mechanism: that the U.S. will withhold half of its assessed dues if reforms are not implemented. Though sure to be controversial, this is a necessary stick. The U.N. has already proven itself unwilling to consider substantive reform on its own, and the U.S. is the only country with the clout—and contribution-base—to get results.
 
Brett D. Schaefer is Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the Center for International Trade and Economics at The Heritage Foundation.



[1] Office of Management and Budget, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2006, Appendix, p. 762, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/
fy2006/pdf/appendix/sta.pdf.
[2]United Nations General Assembly Res. 58/1A, “Scale of assessments for the apportionment of the expenses of the United Nations,” March 3, 2004, at http://daccess-ods.un.org/access.nsf/
Get?Open&DS=A/RES/58/1&Lang=E. 
[3]Mark P. Lagon, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs, U.S. Department of State, “U.N. Management Reform,” May 19, 2005, at  http://www.state.gov/p/io/rls/rm/46642.htm.
[4] See, e.g., Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., “The Volcker Oil-for-Food Interim Reports: Next Steps for Congress,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1843, April 13, 2005, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/
InternationalOrganizations/bg1843.cfm; and Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., James Phillips, and James Dean, “The Oil-for-Food Scandal: Next Steps for Congress,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1772, June 30, 2004, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/
InternationalOrganizations/bg1772.cfm.
[5] The U.N. already has several codes of conduct, but they need to be enhanced and enforced. See, e.g., United Nations General Assembly Res. 51/59, “Action against corruption,” December 12, 1996, at http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/51/a51r059.htm; and United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC), “MONUC Code of Conduct,” undated, at http://www.monuc.org/gender/monuc_code_of_conduct.aspx.
[6] For further detail on the U.N. peacekeeping scandal in the Congo, see Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., “The United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC): A Case for Peacekeeping Reform,” Testimony before the House Committee on International Relations: Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations, March 1, 2005, at
http://www.heritage.org/Research/
InternationalOrganizations/hl868.cfm.
[7]Mark P. Lagon, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs, U.S. Department of State, “U.N. Management Reform,” May 19, 2005, at  http://www.state.gov/p/io/rls/rm/46642.htm.
[8] See, e.g., Brett Schaefer, “More Is Not Better At U.N. Security Council,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 214, February 28, 2003, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/
InternationalOrganizations/wm214.cfm; Brett Schaefer, “The United States Should Oppose Expansion of the U.N. Security Council,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1140, September 22, 1997, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/
InternationalOrganizations/BG1140.cfm.