UNITED NATIONS: U.N. Marks a Bittersweet 50th Anniversary

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 20 1995 (IPS) - When U.N. spokesman Joe Sills was asked last month what word best described the mood for the United Nations’ 50th anniversary, he quickly responded, “Bittersweet.”

“The situation is so difficult,” U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali told The New York Times Thursday about his agency’s problems. But “I’m a fighter.”

Those are hardly words for a man presiding over an institution about to be feted for assisting world peace and stability over the last half-century. But the United Nations is not a peaceful organisation today.

As more than 140 world leaders prepare to converge here for a three-day commemoration of the world body’s 50 years beginning Sunday, the future of the United Nations seems more uncertain than ever. Many heads of state have acknowledged that, for the United Nations, these may be the best of times to commemorate the past, but the worst of times to think about the future.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad told IPS last month he would not attend next week’s celebrations since the occasion would only prompt statements lauding the world body. “I am not good at saying how good things are when things are bad,” he said.

Mahathir criticised U.N. efforts in Bosnia, but also lashed out at what he saw as the increasing dominance of the world body by Europe and the United States.

U.N. peacekeeping has expanded dramatically in recent years, with more than 60,000 soldiers currently serving under a U.N. flag. But at the same time, peacekeeping failures in Bosnia- Hercegovina, Somalia and Rwanda have opened the world body to criticism as ineffective and ill-equipped.

Irish President Mary Robinson admonished the United Nations to do better to improve its human rights work and to avert crises like last year’s genocide in Rwanda or the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

“We need the capacity to move quickly” if new Rwandas arise, Robinson argued here Monday. “Last time, let’s face it, the United Nations failed.” That failure, she noted, contributed to perhaps one million deaths.

At the same time, the heavy emphasis on U.N. peacekeeping has dramatically boosted the world body’s costs — leading some poorer nations, and U.N. veterans, to complain that the United Nations has abandoned its social and economic work.

One senior U.N. official, speaking to IPS on condition of anonymity, said recently that the shift away from the U.N. focus on development activity toward peacekeeping pleased Western powers but left veterans from the developing world lost and bitter.

Peacekeeping satisfies the industrialised nations that the United Nations is doing something, he said, but argued that U.N. workers feel the change of direction has badly hurt the developing world by depriving it of one if its most effective mouthpieces on social and economic issues.

Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has tried to convince the more powerful U.N. members, including the United States, Britain, France, and Russia, of the need to maintain economic development, not just peacekeeping. And he has also confronted those powers on Bosnia, calling it at one point a “rich man’s war.”

Consequently, this will likely be Boutros-Ghali’s last year of office, with those key nations expected to withhold backing for renewal of his tenure when his term expires next year. Potential challengers are already being named, including High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata and Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Haarlem Brundtland.

To top it off, the U.N. cashflow problem — always a source of complaint by officials here — now seems a serious crisis, with the United States, the largest U.N. donor, behind on its payments. Boutros-Ghali has warned of cuts in both regular and peacekeeping operations if the financial woes continue.

Spokesman Sills said last week that countries owed the United Nations 742 million dollars for its 1.2 billion-dollar regular budget, and 2.5 billion dollars for its 3.2 billion-dollar peacekeeping budget. The United States, which is required to pay 31 percent of U.N. operational and peacekeeping costs, owes more than half the amount due.

Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans noted recently that the regular U.N. budget was two-thirds that of New York City’s police department. The total number of people working for the world body and its agencies number some 61,400 — a third the number of people who sell McDonald’s hamburgers worldwide, Evans said.

The U.N. staff union last week threatened to stay away from the anniversary celebrations, citing threats of staff cuts and the current halt to overtime pay. The staff workers are expected to show up Sunday — but grudgingly, and without overtime.

The United States, a founding U.N. member, is unlikely to address the financial crisis anytime soon. The Republican-led Congress has made the United Nations a target for criticism, lambasting the organisation for its peacekeeping failures and dismissing its bureaucracy as expensive and corrupt.

U.S. national security advisor Samuel Berger said Thursday that President Bill Clinton would once more call next week for the United Nations “to re-invent itself, to deal with a bloated bureaucracy, to deal with redundancy.”

Washington also wants to see a new agenda for the agency in which it focuses less on the threats of aggression it has faced in the past 50 years, Berger added. He said the United Nations should now focus on “a new set of challenges from the terrorists, from nuclear proliferation, from international criminal cartels, nuclear smugglers,” and so forth.

The calls for change come amid a hostile climate for the United Nations in many developed nations, warns Brian Urquhart, a former U.N. under-secretary-general now at the Ford Foundation.

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