10:55 am
Wonk’d: What’s Wrong with the United Nations
This is part two of my series on the UN. In part one, I talked about what’s right with the UN. Now let me address some of the serious problems facing the UN.
The first problem is that much of the great work the UN does happens in ways we don’t notice – or in places that we never see. When the UN shows up, the cameras usually aren’t there.
What Americans do see – particularly at UN headquarters in New York – are images of bureaucrats in the General Assembly and Security Council debating endlessly, failing to take any action on some of the world’s most pressing problems. And for the most part, these images are accurate. The story of the UN over the past fifteen years is a story of how governments have refused to let the UN do its job.
The General Assembly, for instance, often seems more interested in scoring political points than in accomplishing anything substantive. Since 2006, the General Assembly has failed to take any significant action. These days, model UN meetings achieve more than most GA sessions.
There are a lot of reasons for this –- it would take more time than I have today to discuss all of them. But let me highlight one: the GA is the sum of its members’ actions, and for far too long; countries have seen the GA as little more than an excuse to posture and preen. Different blocs of states spend more time trying to obstruct measures than they do trying to address issues. But in the end it is the UN that looks bad.
The United States must take its share of the blame for this. In 2006, the Bush Administration repeatedly threatened to shut down the UN in the name of promoting fiscal and management reform. Such actions did nothing to advance reform, but they did manage to transform the Group of 77, a bloc of developing countries that comprise the majority of member states. Historically, the G-77 was the gang that couldn’t agree on much of anything. But as a result of US action, they have become a well-oiled machine intent on protecting its interests – including its control of UN budget and staffing – often at the expense of the Organization’s effectiveness and efficiency.
The Security Council has been disappointing at times, too. Of course, in order for the Security Council to work properly, countries need to live up to the principles of the UN Charter. During the Cold War, that proved largely impossible. During the first Bush and Clinton Administrations, however, the United States worked hard to transform the Council into something that often –- though not always -– lived up to its original purpose.
Today, however, the Council finds it difficult to do business again, and its utility has retreated to Cold War-levels. One reason for this is Iraq. When the Council did not support the US demand for action, the Bush administration chose to ignore the UN and invade anyway. During that crisis and ever since, the Administration has repeatedly suggested that the Council can only stay relevant by backing US positions. Such actions only encourage other countries to act in a similar fashion. Just in the past few weeks, we’ve seen the Security Council fail to take action on Zimbabwe and attempted (but failed) to prevent the ICC prosecution of Omar al Bashir.
I could go into considerable detail about some of the scandals that have wracked the UN: the oil-for-food fiasco, the allegations of UN peacekeepers running prostitution camps, and others. But those have been covered in detail elsewhere, so I’ll limit myself to institutional questions.
There is one more major institutional problem with the UN: the Human Rights Council. That will be the subject of my next post.