Monitoring Policy Making at the United Nations |
| ||||||||||||
Annan on reforms Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, Speaks Out On Continuing
Reforms and Sanctions and StabilityBy Michael Littlejohns
Earth Times
1998
United Nations--Kofi Annan has a dream. "It would be a dream that I would cherish if we all banded together and accepted that we live in one world and what happens in another country, maybe far away, could have an impact on all of us," he said. Significantly, where US and other hard-currency countries' pocketbooks take a hit, faraway places with strange-sounding names can appear to be right next door, a phenomenon that Annan recognized in observing the impact of the Asian economic crisis. "But I don't think we understand it in other fields," he said, possibly alluding to bloody turmoil in many places, notably Africa, that has left much of the developed world curiously unmoved. Numbed, perhaps?The Secretary General made his remarks in response to questions at the national convention of the UN Association of the United States, whose members were evidently well briefed on the world body and eager to get Annan's views.
"We hear a lot about reform, and I'd sure like to hear some of the things you've done to reform the United Nations in the last couple of years," said one questioner, eliciting a response that he may have thought disappointing. Annan trotted out the "restructuring" that has taken place, saying this was to make the UN more cohesive and better focused on core activities like peace and security; human rights; humanitarian affairs; economic development; and social-economic affairs. And senior managers "meet regularly to discuss their issues."
As for paring the payroll, total cuts remain stubbornly where they were in Boutros Boutros-Ghali's final year--1,000. (At the time an aide to Boutros-Ghali called him the most reform-minded Secretary General ever; the US, which did not agree, vetoed his reappointment.)
As he had done in remarks elsewhere, Annan insisted that the UN Secretariat now is down to the bone and any further axing of jobs would have to be at the expense of efficiency, but he cautioned the UN Association members that maintaining the zero-growth budget on which the US Congress has insisted "is going to be difficult" in the next two years. "Are we able to cover the same programs with a reduced number of people? To some extent we have, but we are stretched."
While most staff reductions have been achieved by leaving vacancies unfilled, this has not been the rule for the system's upper echelon, to which Annan said he had named "some outstanding leaders," including former Irish President Mary Robinson Commissioner for Human Rights), Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway (head of the World Health Organization) and Klaus Töpfer, Germany's former Minister for the Environment (now running the UN Environment Programme). The Secretary General did not mention this, but UNEP, based in Nairobi, was in considerable disarray before Töpfer came on board--at some personal sacrifice, having had to decline his government's offer of a financial subsidy because that would be against UN rules.
In his give-and-take with UNA, Annan put in a plug for his innovative outreach program directed at what he termed civil society--business, universities and foundations. "It is only by working in partnership that we can get our huge agenda accomplished," he said.
Back to that dream: "I think what I would like to see in the next three years would be a revitalized United Nations, a UN that functions well, that is responsive to the challenges that we face, a UN that has the support and the confidence of the people, a UN that is able to get the governments to work together on multilateral issues. Governments, big and small, coming together to recognize that we have only one world--ours--and that in today's interdependent world we all need to work together to tackle the issues that we face. There are issues out there that no government, however powerful, can tackle alone."
On sanctions (and with an eye, perhaps, on Iraq) the Secretary General said these were a blunt instrument that tended to hurt ordinary people, but if "smart" sanctions could be developed, targeting leaders with travel bans, freezing bank accounts and "really letting them feel the pain," that might ease the suffering of the innocent.
An expanded Security Council with Germany and Japan as the sixth and seventh permanent members, with or without veto power? Don't hold your breath. "I cannot promise you that it [Council reform] will be resolved by the end of this year, and if not by the end of this year, when will it be resolved? I really do not know. But we require creative thinking and a sense of compromise to move forward on this critical issue."
