Wither United Nations (necessary) Reforms...

by Anthony L. Hall
Friday, May 5, 2006 
Caribbean Net News
Original Source: http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000014/001485.htm

Delegates from the Caribbean are amongst the most ardent defenders of the United Nations bureaucracy.  Although, apart from the pay, perks and pensions their tenures afford them, I suspect they’d be hard-pressed to justify their unqualified support.  After all, the UN is one of the most disunited, corrupt, ungovernable and ineffective organizations in the world. And, its failure to properly plan and oversee its stabilization mission in Haiti - following the forced exile of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004 - provides clear and convincing evidence of this fact. Indeed, the UN’s “systemic failures” have become so notorious in recent years that, when the United States coerced Secretary General Kofi Annan to initiate belated reforms last year, its UN Ambassador, John Bolton, introduced an unprecedented 750 amendments to redress bureaucratic problems.
Yet, a week ago today, delegates from our region aligned themselves with a cabal of Third World nations - led by the South African Ambassador - to scuttle the reform agenda that Annan eventually embraced as the potential centerpiece of his UN legacy.  And, even though each of them would cite specious balance-of-power considerations for their obstruction, this move to maintain the status quo is tantamount to cutting off our noses to spite our faces. Because only developing nations, not the U.S. or other developed nations, will be hurt by this missed opportunity to make the UN a more effective agent for peace, stability and sustainable development throughout the Third World. And, here’s why:
The reforms they undermined last week were intended to redress the management failures that allowed UN foot soldiers to inflict widespread abuses upon those they were charged to protect.  For example, a series of internal UN reports have revealed that many of these abuses occurred in refugee camps in Africa where the raping of women and molestation of children by UN peacekeepers rivaled the horrors of war and starvation these refugees were trying to escape.  And they perpetrated these crimes against humanity because the UN’s failure to reprimand them led these soldiers (and their UN civilian co-workers who committed similar crimes) to believe that they enjoy immunity from prosecution under the cover of their peacekeeping missions; similar to the immunity diplomats enjoy under the cover of their diplomatic missions.  (And every New Yorker is painfully aware of the egregious behaviour UN diplomats get away with in New York City under such cover.)
Of course, these reforms were also intended to redress management failures that allowed UN bureaucrats to systematically embezzle millions of dollars from funds that were disbursed to provide food and medicine for starving and sick men, women and children all over the Third World. For example, the UN’s Oil-for-Food Programme was designed in 1995 to provide Saddam Hussein the means to purchase humanitarian supplies for the Iraqi people during international sanctions against his country. However, records discovered after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 revealed a monumental scheme by UN bureaucrats to help Saddam launder billions of dollars from the programme in return for handsome bribes.  Indeed, the fleecing of this programme was so pervasive that Annan’s own son, Kojo, was implicated, which compelled Annan to deny any knowledge of Kojo’s activities and express “profound regret over and exasperation by his behaviour.”
Clearly, any national organization, in any developed country (and even in some developing countries like South Africa) that is plagued by this kind of mismanagement would have been held to account long ago.  Yet, Third World delegates seem perfectly prepared to countenance such mismanagement at the UN in perpetuity.  And, even though the U.S. has the superpower to force regime change on countries it deems “undemocratic”, it is evidently powerless to force reform on the UN. 
It’s noteworthy that the EU, the U.S. and Japan fund over 80% of the UN budget, and that they were all extremely solicitous of seeing these reforms implemented.  However, where U.S. threats to withhold dues (25%) were once sufficient to get Third World countries to comply with its UN agenda, now they can look to nouveau-riche China (which blessed their obstruction) to indulge UN mismanagement and the fecklessness and myriad abuses of its staffers.
Alas, here’s how the Japanese Ambassador to the UN - whose country is second to the US in funding UN operations (almost 20%) – lamented last Friday’s action by this Third World cabal:
I fear there will be no winners in this vote, and if there are losers, it is reform of the organization….It is likely to be interpreted as rejection or at best deferral of these necessary reforms.
The British deputy Ambassador reacted on his country’s behalf as follows:
“This is a destructive move….We see today's events as a setback for the reform effort. We deeply regret this debate has become so polarized. We must express our dismay and our wider concern about the consequence of being forced to take action on a draft resolution that enjoys no consensus.” 
And, lamenting this latest stain on his record as Secretary General of the United Nations, Annan said that he:
“…deeply regrets the failure of the U.N. membership to rally around a common approach to changing the organization.”
Indeed.  But as our brothers and sisters in Haiti and Darfur know all too well, if your country is facing a military or humanitarian crisis, don’t bother calling the UN….