Whither UN reform?

Some commentators had painted a gloomy picture, giving very little chance of success of institutionalising what they termed as a highly ambitious package of UN reforms. Their prediction that the "largest gathering of world leaders in history at a three-day United Nations summit in New York this week is headed for colossal failure" has perhaps come true.

One can't blame those that see the UN as all but moribund, if not already dead. This feeling stems perhaps from a desire to see the world body to have delivered rather better than what it has been allowed to in the sixty years of its rather chequered existence. The rather heavy reform agenda was termed a non-starter by many observers, not because it was per se not implementable, but because there was lack of consensus among the member states, both on the substance as well as the spirit of the reform proposals. It only shows how divided the world continues to be and how a parochial slant is given to issues that ought to be viewed globally.

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The need for recasting the UN internally to make it more cost effective (its bureaucracy is amongst the largest and perhaps the costliest in the world) has been felt since long. The damning indictment of the world body, delivered by the Volker Report, demanded that changes in the way the UN is run should be brought about without delay. But, while the oil-for-food program scandal has demonstrated that it is not only the third world governments that lack transparency and probity, management reform was not the only issue that the UN member states were seized with. Some of the developing countries are in very good company when it comes to sloppy oversight, dual control of humanitarian programs, shirking of responsibility, mismanagement and corruption.

If the UN Secretary General has been singled out, as the CEO of the world body, for his failure to exercise stricter control over his agencies, the Security Council, in particular the United States, cannot shirk its responsibility in letting this happen, which it has done by conveniently turning a blind eye while shortcuts and subterfuges were being resorted to for almost ten years to make a quick buck out of the oil-for-food program.

If the UN was a natural corollary to a failed international body that the League of Nations was, in that the League was unable to prevent what it was designed to, no such fault can be attributed to the UN. But if our planet has been spared the spectre of a world war in the sixty years of UN existence, it is more due mainly to the mutual deterrence imposed on each other by the two superpowers than the diplomatic skills of the UN or its conflict preventive mechanism. But a damaging consequence of the superpower rivalry has been the conflicts between their surrogates, indulged in to spread and maintain respective spheres of influence.

It was the failure of the UN in preventing these wars among other things, either because it was not allowed to intervene timely, or because it was not capable of doing so, that compels one to think seriously about reforming the UN. More so, since the mutual deterrence has vanished with the of fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet empire, the prospect of the UN fiat running the world order, being overtaken by the dictates of the realists, unilateralists, and the neo-cons of the powerful states, as was the case following the end of the Cold War, and done more abrasively since the start of the so-called war on terror, appears to be a fait accompli.

Of the seven major areas of reform, the expansion of the Security Council was the centrepiece. The three options of the Secretary General are all but on the backburner, for the time being at least, fallen through because of regional rivalries on one side and the reluctance of the US to accord the right to veto to any new members on the other. Without equal powers to the new members or doing away with the veto powers altogether, gradually, as suggested by some, the Security Council would have been a body of equals with some more equal than others.

The Millennium Development Goals with a lofty aim of halving world poverty by 2015 suffered a set back when the UNSG failed to get the commitment of the richest country in the world to provide 0.7 percent of their national GDP as foreign aid. There may be some merit in Washington's argument against relating 0.7 percent to foreign aid in that it wants more free enterprise and a more enabling environment for sustained development, but there is no way that poverty alleviation by 2015 is possible without US contribution.

Another reform, nipped in the bud by the US, not surprisingly, was to make the Security Council the sole authority to authorise the use of force beyond one's own territory. A redeeming feature though has been to get the big powers to commit in principle to militarily intervene to prevent genocide in any part of the world.

In the absence of details, it is assumed that the proposed Human Rights Council that was to replace the much-maligned UN Human Rights Commission will not see the light of the day very soon.

Terrorism continues to resist formulation of a consensual definition, no wonder. Not long ago the UN Secretary General not only implored the heads of states to arrive at an acceptable definition of the phenomenon, he had gone so far as to call for formulating a "a good definition of terrorism that we can all live with." One wonders whether it would be at all possible. Demand from the Arab countries for an exception to Kofi Annan's proposed definition of terrorism as any violence perpetrated by non-state actors targeting civilians for political reasons stemmed from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the Palestinians use terrorism as a tactic to resist Israeli occupation.

The only person to have been pleased with the outcome of the negotiation appears to be the US Ambassador to the UN. No wonder the "recess appointee" John Bolton had introduced as many as 750 late amendments that many see as an effort to effectively shelve the reform idea for a long time, if not for good.

The UN was far from perfect and still remains so. Reform to keep up with the changing world dynamics is a sine qua non for it to be effective. Some feel that there can be no meaningful changes without taking into account the US agenda. And without US 'consent' UN reform is well nigh impossible.

Such an eventuality carries risk of the world organisation becoming a handmaiden of some national governments to serve their strategic interest. That would be an entirely unacceptable proposition.

The author is Editor, Defence and Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.