UNITED NATIONS: Calls for Change Abound at Fiftieth Anniversary

By Farhan Haq and J.D. Aranha Reprint | | Print |

SAN FRANCISCO, United States, Jun 26 1995 (IPS) - The United Nations may deserve a day to rest on its laurels, but its fiftieth anniversary is not that day.

World leaders from U.S. President Bill Clinton to South African Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu gathered in San Francisco Monday to commemorate the founding of the United Nations fifty years earlier.

But calls for changes, rather than simple praise for past accomplishments, were the loudest sounds at the anniversary.

Some of the hundreds of people present here for the anniversary talked about changing the U.N. Security Council to make it more representative of the world today. Others asked for greater efficiency and a crackdown on waste. Still others seek a fresh infusion of funds at a time when the world body is strapped for cash.

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, however, took advantage of the anniversary to warn that all such change must be pragmatic.

“There is no shortage of ideas,” he acknowledged of the recent flood of calls for reform. “New ideas are put forward everyday. Some would say that every idea for improving the United Nations already has been conceived.”

But he added, “Realism is required. The value of ideas lies in their potential for practical application.”

Boutros-Ghali also stressed that any reform effort must attract a consensus among the now 185 U.N. member states and take note of the historical and political context of the United Nations.

The secretary-general added that the next few years may see a flurry of changes comparable to those in the early 1960s, when the membership of the United Nations rose sharply. That era, he noted, culminated in the 1963 revision of the U.N. Charter, which enlarged the Security Council’s membership.

Many diplomats calling for a stronger United Nations can hardly wait.

“We have a responsibility in our time, as our predecessors did in theirs, not to be prisoners of history, but to shape it,” Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said here.

At a time when Washington is openly wary of sending funds to the United Nations, Albright and Clinton are calling for dramatic improvements in U.N. peacekeeping. Some of their proposed changes include a 24-hour peacekeeping command centre in New York, and improved logistics and equipment for U.N. troops.

The United Nations, Albright said, should help ensure “a world in which conflict is effectively contained.”

But Brian Urquhart, a former U.N. Under-Secretary-General now with the New York-based Ford Foundation, countered that the world body, which fields some 60,000 troops worldwide, is over-extended already.

“Peacekeeping is not mentioned in the U.N. Charter at all,” Urquhart said of document drafted in San Francisco 50 years ago by 282 delegates from 50 nations. As such, he added, blaming the United Nations for failing to avert wars in Bosnia-Hercegovina or Somalia is “a great piece of humbug.”

Other anniversary participants argue that the United Nations should devote less time to peacekeeping, and more to addressing poverty, human rights and social issues.

Former Ambassador Minerva Bernardino of the Dominican Republic, one of the original signers of the 1945 Charter, said she was able through sheer persistence to put women’s rights on that cornerstone document. Now, she said, the world body must do more for women.

“I will continue to fight for women’s rights as long as there is breath left in my body,” Bernardino said.

Not only the goals, but also the composition, of the United Nations is up for debate.

Professor Ernst Haas of the University of California argued here that, to be more fair, the U.N. General Assembly should weight the votes of the 185 U.N. members according to their populations.

Olara Otunnu, the president of the International Peace Academy, added that a United Nations controlled by the developed countries would make “a farce” out of the world body’s democratic process.

The calls for change come amid a hostile climate for the United Nations in many developed nations, Urquhart warned.

“The United Nations is the largest collection of foreigners in the world, so it does attract a lot of xenophobia,” he said. “Also, it is widely believed that the United Nations is an expensive organisation, (although it is) far from it.”

The main problem the world body may face, he added, is a growing distrust of governmental institutions worldwide. “I think we’re in for a mean-spirited period,” he said.

But for Boutros-Ghali, the challenges ahead demand a flexible approach to reform.

“Some say that revolutionary change is not possible,” he said. “Others sat that an evolutionary approach is too slow. I believe we must cultivate the ability to do both.”