Power games

The US campaign for reform would be more persuasive if Americans had been more efficient managers themselves. For most of the UN’s existence Americans have been in charge of the Department of Management. Yet that department has been the most obviously inefficient. For example it is responsible for recruitment yet refuses to acknowledge receipt of applications or to notify those who are unsuccessful, which are simply basic courtesies. It commonly takes over a year to fill a position.

The reform which is most sorely needed is adequate funding and staffing. After a decade and a half of almost stagnant funding, staff are overworked, equipment is outdated and many buildings desperately need refurbishment. The Organisation’s mandates have been steadily increased, but few positions have been added. So it is impossible to adequately fulfil some major responsibilities.

The budget of the UN for 2006 of US$1.9 billion is less than 3 per cent of US annual military research and development spending of US$70 billion. This is clearly ironic since it is the neocons who have multiplied US military research and development, yet they are the strongest critics of what they claim to be UN inefficiency.

Stability is needed as much as “reform”. Unrelenting attacks by vicious US critics has caused deep melancholy among UN staff. Recognition of achievements as well as managerial improvements are needed to restore morale, together with improved staffing and working conditions. As with all people, positive rewards would do more to improve efficiency than constant criticism. But then the present US Administration seems to want to reduce the UN’s effectiveness rather than improve it.

The foundation for UN reform must be recommitment to use the UN as its founders intended - to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, to affirm faith in fundamental human rights, to establish the basic conditions for justice and the international rule of law, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.

Some advocates of so-called reform want to retreat from those goals and limit the purposes of the UN to little more than human rights and measures to control terrorism and international criminality. Of course those are vital goals among others, but the framework of goals is so integrated and mutually reinforcing that action on one without attempts to achieve all would be doomed. There can be no stable international peace without economic and social justice, order and respect for human rights.

Robert Hill, the new Australian Ambassador to the UN would be doing well to urge lifting of the cap on the budget for 2006-7, so that the UN’s vital work can continue uninterrupted.