UN summit is trying to do too much

September 12 2005
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/96b4bd7e-2329-11da-86cc-00000e2511c8.html

http://news.ft.com/c.gif \* MERGEFORMATINETWhen 170 heads of state and government foregather at the United Nations in New York this week, they have a daunting agenda and three fundamental tasks: to overhaul the UN bureaucracy; redirect the organisation and make it more capable of tackling the most urgent security threats of the 21st century; and galvanise action to achieve the promised Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty by 2015. They are in grave danger of failing to tackle any of them properly, by trying to do all of them at once.
The original purpose of the summit was to review the ambitious MDGs agreed by the world leaders five years ago - including halving extreme poverty, providing all the world's children with an education and redoubling the effort to curb infectious diseases. Yet, as the Human Development Report spelt out last week, most of the goals will be missed by a mile, at the present rate of progress. Instead of giving renewed impetus to that process, deep differences over how to reform the UN organisation itself are in danger of hijacking the whole agenda.
Last week's damning report by Paul Volcker on the mismanagement of the oil-for-food programme in Iraq made it clear that without a radical overhaul of the administration, the UN would be incapable of handling any comparable programme in the future. The UN bureaucracy clearly needs to be streamlined and made more accountable. But the problem is more fundamental: it lies in the confusion of responsibility between the UN secretariat, the Security Council and the 191-member General Assembly. All must bear a share of the blame for allowing the oil-for-food programme to be riddled with smuggling and corruption - largely to the benefit of Saddam Hussein and his cronies. All were responsible and therefore none can be held Ă‚Âindividually accountable. Such a system clearly needs drastic reform.
Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, and his team were strongly criticised by the Volcker report for management failures. Yet he is also the man now required to reform the administration. In spite of the backing of his staff and many member states, that is starting to look an impossible task.
Mr Annan wants to give his office more autonomy to hire and fire, and therefore become more accountable. That means curbing the powers of the General Assembly, fiercely resisted by many developing nations. They fear the wealthy donors, led by the US, will end up dominating the secretariat.
In all of this Mr Annan's most ambitious agenda - to bolster the UN capacity to intervene in humanitarian crises and forge a new consensus on countering terrorism and human rights abuses - is also in danger of being emasculated. It will succeed only if North and South combine to back it. Mr Annan has done his best to cajole them into a consensus. It is not his fault that the political will for reform is still lacking.