Midsummer Madness at the UN

Over the last decade an estimated 2 million children have been killed in armed conflicts and 6 million left disabled. Around 300,000 children now serve as soldiers. Little girls fare the worst. Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, reported last month that "sexual violence is becoming systemic and across the world, classrooms and the kids sitting in them are increasingly seen as legitimate targets."

As the main UN organ responsible for maintaining international peace and security, the UN Security Council has had this matter formally on its agenda since 1999. What has it done about the situation? It has established a "name and shame" list of groups using child soldiers and actively victimizing children. Those who abduct, abuse and brutalize children in order to use them as killers are supposed to be "shamed" by having their groups named in a UN document. The Council met last week to expand the list. Other choice bits of UN madness include the following: Disarmament Conference: On 1 July, Ambassador So Se Pyong of North Korea took over the rotating chairmanship of the Geneva-based Disarmament Conference, the world's only multilateral body to negotiate arms control. Most countries ignored the absurdity of the situation but the Canadians, earnest as ever, declared they would boycott the body till his six month term is over. ECOSOC: July is when the world's diplomats gather for the annual meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the main coordinating organ of the UN System. It is when the world is hit with a ton of new reports, estimates and projections. Among the notable (if not entirely laudable) efforts this year are the following: World Economic Survey: Produced by the central secretariat of the UN in New York, this 280-page report calls for the greening of the world economy at the cost of $72 trillion over the next 40 years. This is a pipedream; the total GDP of the United States is $14.6 trillion. Millennium Development Goals: A 72-page report from the UN tells about progress towards the goal (set by world leaders in 2000), of halving world poverty by 2015. China and India have made significant progress because of their rapid economic growth. The report projects China to have only 5 percent of its 1.4 billion people living in poverty in 2015. India, with a matching population, will have 22 percent below the poverty line then; it used to be 51 per cent in 1990. Sub-Saharan Africa has made very slow progress; 58 percent of its people lived in poverty in 1990; by 2005 that had fallen only to 51 per cent. If the world economy should sink into the cataclysmic crisis that now seems to be building in the financial systems of Europe and China, all projections will have to be radically recalculated. African Development: The UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), note that Africa accounts only for 1 per cent of global manufacturing and recommend increasing that share. As is historically true of UN reports, UNIDO and UNCTAD do not look at any of the real reasons for Africa’s miserable economic performance – instability, war and corruption, all part of the continued and scandalous neo-colonial exploitation of the continent.

UN Reform: Efforts to improve the performance of the United Nations were briefly energized after the Obama administration signalled its intention to seriously engage in multilateral diplomacy, but they are now back to normal. As in a Noh drama, the action is glue-like, the plot incomprehensible, and the whole thing of interest only to afficianados. There is need for a radical change of focus and approach, but UN member States are so reluctant to give up the devil they know that it is impossible to entertain the slightest hope of real change. (For what is necessary to bring about real UN reform see my Discussion Paper; this is a topic on which we need to get a global conversation going.)

Accountability Framework For UN Staff

Kofi Annan had performance compacts with each of his senior managers, but they were kept private. Ban Ki-moon has publicized the existence of the compacts by having a formal signing ceremony for his senior staff and declaring that together, they constitute an "important step towards a full and effective accountability framework within the Secretariat."

At the ceremony at which senior staff signed their compacts, (Monday, 4 February), Ban said that the framework would "provide a performance-driven and results-oriented approach to tackling the many and varied mandates" set by governments." It would assure all UN "stakeholders" of the Secretariat's "integrity, consistency, predictability and professionalism." Managers would be able to set "clear roles, responsibilities and authorities for all levels and stakeholders of the Organization." Posted on the UN Intranet accessible to all staff, the compacts would "bring transparency," enabling Staff to "clearly understand their duties, and the manner in which they will be evaluated." A Management Performance Board chaired by Deputy Secretary-General Asha Rose Migiro will keep tabs on actual performance. Ms. Migiro will also head a "task force on reform" to "formulate proposals for overcoming long-standing difficulties in human resources management."

Ban did not mention how the UN's "many and varied mandates" had been boiled down to manageable proportions, or indeed, if any attempt had been made to do so. My suspicion is that the reference to the mandates is purely to mollify the Group of 77 (the 132-member caucus of developing countries), which feels, with ample reason, that the Secretariat is attuned more to the preferences of a handful of powerful States than to formal directives handed down by intergovernmental bodies, especially the General Assembly.

At a more elevated level, there is the question of whether the compacts will make any difference in UN effectiveness when the Organization is so unmoored from the power structures that actually shape the world. But they might prove useful in getting rid of "deadwood." Of course, that word has a different connotation at the UN than anywhere else; it includes not only the incompetent but anyone who is a thorn in the sides of the powers that be. [In the interests of full disclosure, I must confess to having exited the UN Secretariat in 1991 with a buyout meant to get rid of just that category of staff.)

Tragicomedy Central

The tragicomedy of the UN comes in high and low variants.

The latest Press briefing by the President of the General Assembly, Srgjan Kerim (Macedonia) would be high comedy if we didn't hear Wagnerian notes of doom in the background.

Kerim told journalists he had succeeded in making the 192-nation Assembly more “dynamic” during its fall 2007 session. As evidence of the new dynamism he pointed to "crucial negotiations" on such important issues as climate change, development financing and Security Council reform.

“We have made obvious and tangible progress in improving the working methods of the General Assembly, thus making it very dynamic and vital,” Mr. Kerim said. In fact, the "agenda had been so impressive and cooperation among Member States had been so inspired," he even thought it was unnecessary to adopt the traditional draft resolution on “Assembly revitalization.” And what was the evidence of this new vitality? The new spirit delegations had shown in negotiations on climate change, financing for development, the Millennium Development Goals, countering terrorism, and UN reform, including expansion of the Security Council. "Business as usual” was at an end, Mr. Kerim declared. He had also detected progress on the review of the General Assembly's numerous mandates.

Other examples of vitality: a resolution on “social justice” put forward by Kyrgyzstan, and one on “agricultural technology for development” sponsored by Israel. Yet another example of Assembly vitality was the decision to hold a thematic debate in February (11-12) on the outcome of the Bali conference on climate change last week. There would be "two important panel discussions: on creating synergies and support for the post-Bali negotiating process; and on how United Nations agencies would play a role in that process." The Secretary-General had been asked to report on all UN activities touching on climate change by 25 January.

Also in January, the General Assembly would begin substantive discussions of the review of progress since the 2002 Monterrey International Conference on Financing for Development; the process would culminate in a meeting at Doha, Qatar next November. In April, the Assembly had set a thematic debate on UN reform. A newly established Task Force -- Portugal, Chile and Bangladesh along with the President -- was discussing how and when a paper could be produced on Security Council reform that would be the basis for intergovernmental negotiations on expanding the membership of the Council. Mr. Kerim hoped that if the paper was ready in time the negotiations could begin in February.

To appreciate the comic element in all this, one has to keep in mind that the General Assembly has been vastly productive in declaring standards and laws, but with very little effect on the behavior of States. For instance, the 2002 Monterrey Conference heard firm pledges from rich countries to significantly increase aid to the poor and render more equitable the architecture of international financial relations; but nothing much happened: the increased aid went largely to emergency relief or to pay down debt, while poor countries continued their decades-long export of funds to the rich. In 2006 poor countries exported $667 billion (net) to rich countries, up from $500 billion in 2005.

Similarly, talk of Security Council reform has gone in circles for over a decade, as has UN reform. The "negotiations" on climate have been the worst boondoggle of all, for they have seemed to hold out hope of stopping the planet's inexorable slide towards cataclysmic disasters without having any real impact. (More on all this in later posts).

As for low tragicomedy, it comes from The Analyst of Monrovia, which reports that the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) has refused to examine the penis of a person under trial for treason. A local court had written to the head of UNMIL asking that two medical officers be delegated to examine the prisoner to verify whether he was telling the truth about torture that had left him unable to have sexual relations. UNMIL declined to comply with the court's request on the grounds that its mandate would not allow it.