Monitoring Policy Making at the United Nations |
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Citizens' Charge on the U.N. Citizens' Charge on the U.N.
By Jessica Mathews
Washington Post November 20, 1995
Although this Op-Ed piece was written in 1995, Ms. Mathews' insight into the political dynamics of both the UN financial crisis and NGOs' roles remains highly significant and relevant. At the time she wrote this, Ms. Mathews was a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has gone on to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The administration and the Republican leadership have taken the first small step toward resolving the United Nations' fiscal crisis largely caused by the United States' nonpayment of its dues. They've agreed to try to negotiate a deal tying payment of U.S. arrears and reasonable future funding to a package of U.N. reforms.
If an agreement can be reached -- still an enormous if -- it will put the administration in the awkward position of in effect saying to 180 other countries "we'll meet our legal obligations only if you agree to the following changes." It's not an enviable negotiating stance, but it would be a great improvement on the alternative of battle-ax cuts and the beginnings of U.S. withdrawal from the U.N.
The causes of Congress's crisis of confidence in the world body are not as clear as they might seem. It's not driven by public demand: Americans' support for the U.N. is robust and has, in fact, never been stronger. Yes, there is duplication, waste, too many empty promises and a proliferation of agencies, including many that have long outlived their original purpose. But the scale of these offenses cannot, on its own, account for the response. Everything the U.N. does, from blue helmets to managing global communications frequencies to vaccinating babies, costs the United States $ 7 per person (as compared with about $ 1,000 for defense). Perhaps it could all be done for $ 5.50 -- and who would oppose greater efficiency? -- but even at the present cost it's a good deal and even the House Republican freshmen, in their heart of hearts, probably know that.
Something deeper is going on, and not just in the United States. Governments have always been ambivalent about international bodies. They know they need them to deal with problems from peace to fisheries, but they hate to give up bits of sovereignty to do so. As the number of countries' interdependencies has grown, so has the tension. Governments, of course, have been in charge of the process -- they write the treaties and create the institutions -- but that doesn't mean they have to like it. From time to time they rebel. The clock can't be wound backward by cutting funding, but it's a way, however ineffective, to try to slow things down.
I suspect that there is, as well, a quite new underlying cause of governments' unease in the rapidly growing relationships between international bodies and citizens' groups, so-called NGOs, nongovernmental organizations.
Twenty years ago, Alvin Toffler diagnosed the U.N.'s problems as stemming from its being "all top and no bottom." Steadily deepening ties between the U.N. and NGOs have given it a bottom -- one bursting with energy, ideas and passion. But this new relationship between an institution created by states to serve states and NGOs, which are instead linking it directly to citizens, sometimes leaving out or cutting across the interests of national governments, is a new source of tension and perhaps resentment and a subliminal fear of losing control.
You can see the signs in criticisms of U.N. conferences which in recent years have been energized by the work and presence of thousands of NGOs. The Rio environment summit, the Cairo meeting on population and the Beijing gathering on women attracted worldwide attention. Nine-thousand journalists came to Rio -- while earlier government-only meetings labored in well-deserved obscurity -- because NGOs made things happen. Yet Sen. Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kan.) and Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) -- normally thoughtful internationalists -- propose to ban all such events as a U.N. reform. For a rationale they offer this howler: "If an issue is serious, a conference will not solve it; if it is not serious, a conference is a waste of time." So much for Bretton Woods, the recent conference that saved the nonproliferation treaty and, well, you get the idea.
The Rio meeting produced two major global treaties and in three years of intense preparatory work educated thousands of government officials. Cairo went a long way toward bridging a bitter, decades-old north-south quarrel and was able finally to get governments to recognize what research has long shown to be the most effective means of reducing fertility. It's too early to say what Beijing will lead to beyond a clearer appreciation of how much of the talent and energy of this half of humanity is not being tapped.
But, sniff Kassebaum and Hamilton, such meetings risk turning the U.N. into "little more than a traveling road show." All those citizens, you know. And, of course, they cost too much. Wild numbers are being flung around. The Copenhagen Social Summit is said to have cost $ 60 million. The assessed cost was actually $ 2.4 million.
The global conference business can get out of hand. The Copenhagen meeting was one too many. So is the forthcoming cities summit. The U.N. has to get much tougher about drawing the line. But that's a far cry from killing off the whole enterprise.
The threat from NGOs -- if that is how governments perceive it -- is only going to grow. Money may force the issue. Nearly every expert look at U.N. financing has recommended a source of nongovernmental funds (e.g., by taxing air travel, currency exchange etc.). Governments would love to reduce their burden, but the loss of control could lead them to back away. Or they might welcome agencies strengthened by citizen engagement. It's too soon to know more than that the transition won't be easy.
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