Memo to Ban Ki-Moon: True UN Reform
By Joseph Schwartzberg
Editor's Note: The following op-ed was submitted to the Star Tribune on December 19 with the expressed hope that it would be printed as close as possible to January 1, the date on which Ban Ki-moon officially took over the post of UN Secretary General. As of this writing, it has not been published. Because the piece was kept below the prescribed 800-word limit, the text is rather dense and supporting arguments for the recommendations put forward and other relevant details were necessarily omitted. Still, we think that our readers might wish to see the essay in its original form.
In his final years in office, Kofi Annan devoted considerable energy to promoting United Nations reform. Recognizing that the UN is presently inadequately empowered, insufficiently funded and too poorly staffed to perform effectively many tasks it might ideally undertake, he appointed a High-level Panel to propose wide-ranging reforms and supplemented their 2005 recommendations with a report of his own. These reports were reviewed by the General Assembly, watered down considerably in light of anticipated American opposition, and then hopelessly eviscerated on the insistence of John Bolton, our newly appointed UN representative.
Bolton is now history; American voters have demonstrated dissatisfaction with the neo-con approach to world affairs; and a new Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, is at hand to help guide the reform process, should he so choose. While major reforms will, obviously, not be made during Bush's presidency, it is not too early to lay out a reform agenda more far-reaching than those recently proposed and more in keeping with the world's true needs. From a long list of possibilities, I here offer five:
1. Funding: The assessed annual budget of the entire UN system comes to about $ 7 billion. This is supplemented by another $12 billion or so in voluntary contributions. The total is significantly less than the state budget for Minnesota. Yet, critics complain about the UN's inability to solve all the world's problems! But suppose the present needlessly complicated funding system were replaced by one with a flat assessment of 0.1% of the gross domestic product of all countries. Given the global GDP of nearly $40 trillion, that would yield roughly $40 billion, more than enough to cover all current UN expenses, including those of affiliated agencies (excluding the World Bank and IMF), plus the innovative programs noted below, and to establish an escrow account for use in future emergencies.
2. Preventing Genocide: "Never again!" world leaders proclaimed following the Rwandan genocide. Yet, Srebenica and Darfur mock their rhetoric. But genocide is preventable. A bill to be introduced in the 110th Congress would declare US support for a proposed UN Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS) for rapid response, not only to potential genocides but also to major natural disasters. UNEPS' proponents envisage a standing, elite, all-volunteer, internationally recruited force, under the UN flag, which the Secretary General could dispatch, as needed, for up to six months, pending approval (or termination) by the Security Council. Were such a force available, Darfur would not now afflict our collective conscience.
3. A UN Administrative Reserve: Supplementing UNEPS there could be a UN Administrative Reserve Corps (UNARC, proposed in the UN Chronicle, March 2006). UNARC staff would be an elite corps of men and women, recruited worldwide, but especially from developing counties, all of whom would have gone through a tough three-year training program at a UN Administrative Academy to develop needed administrative skills along with area and language expertise. On graduating they would return to posts in their respective countries, but be available for ten years for service in failed state situations such as those in Afghanistan between Russia's 1989 withdrawal and the Taliban takeover or Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam.
4. Secretariat Staffing: Allegations of staff incompetence are the most common of all complaints by UN-bashers. Recruiting at all levels is highly politicized. Many top jobs have traditionally been the preserve of individual major powers, with minimal professional screening, while middle- and low-level jobs are distributed mainly in terms of geographical balance, often being filled on the basis of cronyism and nepotism. Sir Brian Urquhart, among others, has written extensively on how to overcome those shortcomings. Assuming that innate capability is abundantly available in all parts of the world, one remedy would be to combine testing for merit with the requirement that all successful applicants attend a rigorous one-year administrative training program before commencing work in any entry-level position.
5. Weighted Voting: Does it make sense that Tuvalu, the UN's least populous member, should have the same vote in the General Assembly as China, with a population 125,000 times as great, or the US, whose GDP exceeds Tuvalu's by an even greater ratio? Similarly, leaving aside the unfair privileged position of the five permanent members of the Security Council, why should the SC vote of Qatar (population 750,000) count the same as that of Indonesia (population 225 million)? How does this affect the credibility and legitimacy of UN decisions? The Westphalian legal fiction of the "sovereign equality of nations" is ill suited to 21st century politics and should be replaced by something more realistic. We need an expert panel to analyze existing plans for weighted voting, taking into account both population and economic power, and to recommend workable changes.
How about it, Mr. Ban?
