open Democracy News Analysis - The United Nations in trouble, Carne Ross - Comments

garydstark on "United Nations in trouble: time for another San Francisco "

garydstark — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:43:22 +0000

This would be in improvement. Any move that increases the reliance on democracy in the UN is a good idea...

gary

garydstark on "United Nations in trouble: time for another San Francisco "

garydstark — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:41:00 +0000

Cathy,

You finished your post with:

"In the end, we keep coming back to the UN and the SC, as bad as it is, because, like democracy, it's the worst system except for all the others. The UN is where all the countries are, so you go there to try to work things out."

I think you inadvertently hit the nail on the head...the UN is not ENOUGH like democracy. If you believe in the very concept of democracy (as opposed to dictatorships), it makes no sense to ignore that difference with dealing with countries. If we pretend that Kim Jong-il represents the people of North Korea, you can't hope to achieve progress on issues of human rights. Of course a more real example would be China, which holds a PERMANENT seat in the SC. That's an outrage. And why does France (20th in population) have a seat, but not India (2nd in population)? Clearly the UN is an undemocratic institution, which is the source of many of it's problems. Here's my proposal for how it should be...

www.UnitedDemocraticNations.org

Feedback is welcome...

gary

Lawrence Efana on "United Nations in trouble: time for another San Francisco "

Lawrence Efana — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:09:18 +0000

Happy that Gray agrees with most of what observers feel is UN core problem. I agree too that we would need objective analyses to help us know about its depth as such.

That was why the university was dragged in, thinking of chances to see beyond "poker game", which reduces diplomacy to a raw strategic game of interest hence adds to the frustration of UN as world organization. Lets hope interested scholars are given the chance to join and map the field empirically and theoretically, to in the end introduce better and less conflicting revisions of the values and practices.

The theme: "regionalism" is guarded by two words 'style' and 'approaches'. Contextually, EU successes on intrastate and interstate basis leave much to learn. Interests are not limited to EU regional integration concept only. Other world regions are finding themselves drawn into it. What could then be better than to focus regionalism with a view to advise on aligning endeavours in support and not frustration of UN. Clearly this articulates coordination and openness to plurality of approaches.

Resource question is contextually more challenging. The UN has many agencies parallel to its commitment to peace-making and keeping across conflict zones worldwide. At the same time, besides its peacekeeping undertakings, the same is also a theme for regional/bi-multilateral interests. Here scarcity of resources is a relative problem. Poor regions feel its impact most. To cut short - if it makes sense with analogy], the financial/economic meltdown is witnessing "bellout" endeavours and doing so by redefining the implications for (i) Wall Street, and (ii) Main Street: recent concepts/expressions. Do we figure out any implications for regions and the UN. Who really bells out the UN - venturing to see it [partly] as "world" Main Street object?

Not having said it all, many are saddened about what appears to be the inability of Africa to stand tall over its problems and challenges.

Lawrence Ben [Finland]

gray on "United Nations in trouble: time for another San Francisco "

gray — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:54:35 +0000

Lawrence makes a very valuable point concerning the nature of diplomacy - I think that many of the issues that we are facing now are legacies of deplorable diplomatic approaches, normally focussed on manipulating power for narrow objectives rather than any collective benefit. I think this is improving, but I would like to see some objective analysis of diplomacy and its impacts.

I disagree, however, with the concern about regionalisation. Managing the globe is an enormous problem, and we need a variety of approaches to doing so - we just need to ensure they have some coordination. The UN, for instance, works with the African Union in peacekeeping. We need to ensure that the UN has the resources and support to play its part properly.

merlin landwu on "United Nations in trouble: time for another San Francisco "

merlin landwu — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:22:19 +0000

The UN is in danger of imploding in the same manner as the banking system - all of the ingredients are in place. Particularly the complete lacking of accountability or policing of their actions.
We as a species are incapable of acting without adequate regulation because of the human characteristics endemic in all of us - from the drug addict to the most successful.
Personal greed is the obvious facet and until we can recognise our own fallibility we will never cause the serious change we as a species now need to happen.
An "honesty overhaul" is long overdue. Naive!
It was lack of integrity and a feeling of invincibility that created the banking crisis and will trip up the UN in similar fashion.

Lawrence Efana on "United Nations in trouble: time for another San Francisco "

Lawrence Efana — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:32:18 +0000

Certainly the consensus of opinions is not lacking on the issue of the desirability to restructure the United Nations functionally and structurally.

While that fact of its reality is well demonstrated in the article and comments, I would be frank to raise the point that it appears something important has been 'drowned', and that is, the rather problematic character of diplomacy! What has it meant and how has it functioned? If we have learned anything at all about how it has functioned, how ready are we to apply what we have learned to enrich the pragmatic and yet moral awareness able to uplift UN-functions as an organization and so bring it to the level of what we expect of it?

The subject of diplomacy thus, drags in among others university political science departments, particularly units dealing with its study and possibility of a revisionist approach that can make it possible to reassess its practical outcomes at the nationstate and international levels. On this, all should be concerned about the delight of many to treat it as a "poker-game" subject - the consequence of which inevitably frustrates and breaks the moral 'operative wings' at both levels. You can only argue against the posited if you are not worried about what many times seem as empty words' play and also inaction, leaving observers to wonder about who should bell the cat when everyone is hiding something under the cupboard, explaining partly that which many worry about: dirty diplomacy.

There is a saying that charity begins at home. I am not quite convinced about overflogging the UN without doing the same to the nationstate. The former is afterall a conglomeration of the latter. That makes the call for reform a two-way arrow matter and I seem to believe it is somehow what the idea of change articulates from all we have heard so far. This two-way arrow reform is definitely going to be challenging for many reasons, including the increasing proliferation of nationstates resorting to military-power policies, anti-solidarity economic values, protectionism and increasing regional integration - whatever the reasons are. The latter in particular, depending on style and approach duplicates the UN with known and unknown consequences in the longrun.

All of the above-mentioned directly and indirectly eat-up the status as well as the effectiveness of the UN and that has been argued and known even before we are now where we are on world conflict spots. UN is reduced to an agency without biting legal status but dependent in nearly all senses on what goes on either at the nationstate levels or regional integration levels. Are there reasons to further examine these critically if we want the UN to serve the world better than it has done so far during its short but long and winding history?

I would agree with the author that current financial melt-down effects on national and global economies need not usurp arguments to critically understand what is wrong with the UN, if its renovation challenges are to be dealt with. A mob-democracy on representation basis for world states, might therefore benefit from reassessing the "security council as world cabinet body" and therefore truly for argued and unargued reasons, its manpower/recruitment policy deserves looking into to augment efficiency and commitment.

Lawrence Efana [Finland]

Andrew Turvey on "United Nations in trouble: time for another San Francisco "

Andrew Turvey — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:14:17 +0000

There is a solution - a source for the electricity that you say is so needed. It is called the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) - an elected parliament of politicians representing the people, not diplomats representing their government. Over 500 parliamentarians have signed up to support it.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Parliamentary_Assembly for more information.

Cathy Fitzpatrick on "United Nations in trouble: time for another San Francisco "

Cathy Fitzpatrick — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 08:13:39 +0000

I think this is an important article to stimulate thinking on what might galvanize the UN toward becoming more relevant. It *is* in a crisis which can most dramatically be seen by the huge overextension of the peace-keeping forces, now numbering over 100,000, costing a tremendous amount, with often little to show for enormous expenditures, such as in Darfur.

Carne Ross is right that we're now seeing a proliferation of items from the Security Council that are shy of effective resolutions (which aren't so effective either when they are finally mustered). There are more presidential statements, news statements, etc. An awful lot of time goes into negotiating these PRSTs, getting them "just so," and yet they really are nothing more than a kind of temperature-taking about whether an actual resolution is then possible down the line, using some of the same hard-won language. Much of the time, however, the PRST's never graduate to resolutions.

What I've come to understand about the UN over the years I've observed it is that while you can blame the institution or this or that agency for this or that lapse, it's really an organic sort of mirror that reflects merely the countries in it. This is how states are, and they are not better, when you put them into a group. Seeded throughout all UN agencies as you know, due to "geographical distribution" are representitives of different blocs, especially among the p5, so that in this or that program, you find this or that representative in fact of a state can make or break the program. You can't hire people on merit because of the "geographical distribution" imperative which the states themselves set, and mainly the G77 lashes out about constantly, i.e. in crippling the special procedures of the Human Rights Council.

From the Western perspective, a good deal of the problems now are blamed on the G77, in getting resolutions passed that have anything to do with humanitarian action or human rights or effective peace-keeping. You might well ask yourself whether the G77 is the group that really is suffering from paralysis and sclerosis and irrelevance. It's true that some of the countries in it don't share all of the goals of the "like-minded" who can dominate -- and destroy -- various efforts. Take something like "responsibility to protect," or the formation of the Human Rights Council, which can be scuppered by Cuba and other countries that follow a kind of old Soviet line, seeing each action in the UN not as an opportunity to collaborate on solving a world problem through universal values and the UN Charter, but an opportunity to thwart, bedevil, harass, obstruct the West or the North.

The G77 can rightly point to various moral equivalency invocations like "the Iraq war" to make just about any action the Western powers conceive as illegitimate.

Recently, at a conference on the OSCE at the Finnish Embassy in Washington, the Greek ambassador pointed out that the problems of OSCE could not be fixed, nor the body made more relevant, until the p5 came to some better agreement about how to cooperate. And yet the s10 and other powers you've noted like Germany, Japan, Brazil, Nigeria, think the p5 will never do this, and simply demand expansion as a solution to the p5 split.

At OSCE you can see that even without China, you have the West-East split with particularly the US-Russian standoff, and that will not be so easily fixed, when even on situations that ostensibly these great powers from one civilization should agree on, like Zimbabwe or Iran,you find Russia deliberately putting a stick in the eye of the West on these issues.

We're at a stark point where some of the crises that have come up, say the war in Georgia, show the SC to be largely irrelevant. It cannot use its existing mechanisms, such as an SC debate (which was requested by Georgia on July 21, before the war broke out) to get an effective result. Issues like Kosovo and Georgia bounce back and forth between New York and Brussels, between the SC and then back over to the EU or even OSCE, which, as weak and sprawling as it is, is able to effect more action at times than the SC. This is not for lack of early warning. Walter Kalin, as an UN special rapporteur, sounded the alarm on the Georgian and South Ossetian issues back in 2006, for example.

Probably the tackling of the various crises Carne Ross outlines will have to do with simultaneous actions, both improvement of bilaterals between the US and Russia and the US, EU, and Russia; engagement with China; more involvement of the s10; speeding up talks on the enlargement; strengthening regional arrangements like the AU and OSCE and working out the UN's relationship to them.

In the end, we keep coming back to the UN and the SC, as bad as it is, because, like democracy, it's the worst system except for all the others. The UN is where all the countries are, so you go there to try to work things out.

Cathy Fitzpatrick

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/un_tethered

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/ngo_accountability

gray on "United Nations in trouble: time for another San Francisco "

gray — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:46:42 +0000

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It is
great to see a call for greater support for the reform for the UN – the gap
between its ideals and reality is a great concern for those who want the UN to
succeed, and a delight for those who want to see it disappear.

The UN
is the world’s big experiment in global governance, our attempt to find a
rational and humane way of controlling the world – not the first experiment, but
by far the most successful to date. It has brought us from a state 60 years ago
when we were just recovering from a devastating world war and facing the
prospect of further world wars, with global powers threatening each other with
nuclear weapons, widespread poverty and oppression, and many countries under
colonial rule. Now,
nations, NGOs and corporations are cooperating on a host of security, economic
and social development and environmental programs which are transforming the
way we live, and engaging widely with the community. Despite the headlines,
human security and development have improved enormously. We are still, however,
a long way from where we want to be.

It is really important to
recognise that the UN is our creation, and it is only by putting more effort
(and perhaps wisdom) into it, can we make it better. And certainly, we cannot
be relying on Washington to solve our problems, we all need to contribute.

We also need in-depth
understanding of what is happening to appreciate the nature of the movement,
and where pressure can best be applied (see www.securitycouncilreport.org)

Gray Southon

precycled on "United Nations in trouble: time for another San Francisco "

precycled — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:36:33 +0000

Great article. The UN's ineffectiveness may not be entirely self-inflicted. Please see my review of the UN' including its first effort at sustainable development, in 1972, which was heavily lobbied by big business and consequently produced a declaration which neatly transferred responsibility from the market (whose "essential" duty of economic development should not be "hampered") to government, where it has remained ever since in paper-shuffling limbo. http://www.blindspot.org.uk/unreview.html

The UN is now belatedly issuing a 'call for evidence' to support "transformative thinking" in a 'Green Economy Initiative'. See http://www.unep.ch/etb/publications/Green%20Economy/TowardsGreenEconomyFlyer.pdf

Don't hold your breath, however. Submissions are not being acknowledged and I fear mine has already been filed away under 'too ambitious'.

james greyson www.blindspot.org.uk

The United Nations in trouble, Carne Ross

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:36:54 +0000

The financial crisis has triggered calls for renovation if not replacement of the world's outdated financial institutions. But there is another crisis - where the damage is measured in terms of real blood shed, not dollars or mortgages lost - that shouts out the need for change: this time at the United Nations, the world body charged with international peace and security.

Carne Ross served in the United Kingdom mission to the United Nations from 1998-2002. After resigning from the foreign office over the Iraq war, he founded and now directs Independent Diplomat, the world's first non-profit diplomatic advisory group

Also by Carne Ross in openDemocracy:

"The United Nations and genocide" (1 November 2006)

"Music in the Security Council" (26 February 2007)

The slow-burn genocide of Darfur, the raging disasters in Somalia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the intractable political impasses in Burma and the Western Sahara are not, of course, solely the failure of the UN; but, like the financial crisis, the absence of competent, legitimate global institutions to deal with such horrors has hindered an effective global response.

It's time to say it loud and clear: the UN is in trouble. Here are the problems. The Security Council is divided or unable to agree effective action on many crucial peace and security issues: Darfur, Iran, Somalia, Burma...the list goes on. Frustration and anger within and against the council - in particular its five permanent, veto-wielding members (known as the P5) - is at an all-time high. Today, one can hardly talk to a UN ambassador outside the P5 - including the ten non-permanent (or elected) members of the council - without hearing a litany of complaint against the P5's behaviour. Criticisms range from the P5's unwillingness to discuss draft texts with other members before demanding they vote on them, to crude threats from P5 members to veto discussion of issues (such as like Palestine, Chechnya or Tibet) that make them uncomfortable.

The hard reality

Rather than discussing and producing real political measures to tackle the world's many crises, the Security Council is proliferating forms of expression, unnecessarily complicating its already-opaque communication with the world. There are now no less than four different forms of council expression - resolutions, presidential statements, press statements and "remarks to the press"; distinctions which are unintelligible to all but the cognoscenti. Meanwhile, the council busies itself agreeing new formats in which to meet, one of which requires non-council UN states to apply - in writing - to the president of the council to attend misnamed "open" or public meetings of the council.

So nugatory and trivial is this fiddling-while-Rome-burns-type behaviour that it escapes international attention and concern. Journalists still write about the Security Council as if it is a serious body, even though the dwindling UN press corps and even diplomats inside the council despair at the ineffectiveness and absurdities of a body charged with nothing less than preventing war and promoting peace. The world may be distracted by the credit-crunch, Afghanistan or Iraq, but it doesn't mean that the neglected UN is working any better. Its decline is no less serious for being unnoticed.

Also in openDemocracy about global governance:

David Held, "Global challenges: accountability and effectiveness" (17 January 2008)

Ann Pettifor, "The G8 in a global mess: 1920s and 1980s lessons" (7 July 2008)

Paul Rogers, "A world in flux: crisis to agency" (16 October 2008)

Andre Wilkens, "The global financial crisis: opportunities for change" (10 November 2008)

Simon Maxwell & Dirk Messner, "A new global order: Bretton Woods II...and San Francisco II" (11 November 2008) Thanks in part to the sclerosis on the council, discussion of many other issues at the UN - such as reform of the UN bodies dealing with the crisis facing the environment (an urgent matter you might think) - is impeded. The G77 bloc of so-called "developing" countries (a now-outdated grouping of more than 130 countries, ranging from China to Tuvalu) takes the chance to push back against what it sees as the arrogance of "the west".

And slowly but surely, this poison is spreading, including to parts of the UN that were hitherto seen as more effective, such as the humanitarian agencies. Here too, G77 anger has blocked important efforts to reform things like recruitment and management practices in the UN, which is still beset by inefficiency at best, and downright incompetence and corruption at worst. Any frank and honest UN official will quickly agree.

The closed door

Leadership that can offer a way out of this quagmire is all but impossible to find. The P5 themselves - France, the United States, Russia, China and the United Kingdom - exhibit little appetite and energy for addressing this malaise. The secretary-general is clearly a decent man, but has proven unwilling to admit the crisis, and demand (not merely encourage) action to resolve it: "back change or sack me", he should say, but he won't. The secretariat view is a feeble one - the crisis is for member-states to resolve. This of course is true, but is also an abrogation of the secretariat's own responsibility to provide a way forward when member-states have so abjectly failed to do so.

Outside the council, big countries like Brazil, India, Japan and Germany content themselves with rote demands for enlargement of the Security Council - to include themselves as new permanent members. Clothing their blatant self-interest with calls for more "legitimacy", such states have become excited by the recent agreement to start so-called "intergovernmental negotiations" on council reform. But discussion will inevitably return to zero-sum-game rows about enlargement formulae that merely reflect states' self-interest rather than a genuine effort to reform discredited methods of decision-making. It is naive to believe that enlargement will by itself make the council work.

The UN needs drastic renovation. The council should be more representative of the 21st century, true, but it must also be made more open and accessible to those affected by its decisions. 80% of the conflicts on the council's agenda now involve non-state actors, reflecting the shift in warfare from between states to inside them. Yet such actors are invisible and unheard at the council and indeed at the UN, a bastion (one of the last, in my guess) of governments.

This is one reason why Independent Diplomat, the advisory group I head, has called for all affected actors to be given the "universal right of address" to speak to the council of their concerns. This is but one idea; there should be many others. Senior UN appointments should not be, as they are today, a function of under-the-table national pressure for jobs, an odious internationalised version of "buggins' turn" in which even the most pious UN members (including the UK) indulge. The secretary-general must be free to invite applications from qualified candidates worldwide, and to hire on merit. That such an obvious proposal should seem so radical at the UN is an indication of the depth of the crisis.

Also in openDemocracy about United Nations reform:

Kofi Annan, "America, the United Nations, and the world: a triple challenge" (16 June 2004)

Johanna Mendelson Forman & D Austin Hare, "A 21st century mission? The UN high-level panel report" (25 November 2004)

Phyllis Bennis, "Reform or die: the United Nations as second superpower" (16 December 2004)

Johanna Mendelson Forman, "In Larger Freedom: Kofi Annan's challenge" (23 March 2005)

Dan Plesch, "The hidden history of the United Nations" (17 April 2005)

Shashi Tharoor, "A United Nations for a fairer, safer world" (14 September 2005)

Tony Millett, "The UN's real history: a response to Dan Plesch" (22 November 2005)

Fred Halliday, "The United Nations vs the United States" (13 January 2006)

The only remedy

It is depressing how little creative thinking goes on at the UN to remedy its many deficits. Diplomats posted to the UN tend to come and go for three or four-year tours making little impression, and often leave demoralised and defeated by the UN's absurd and seemingly intractable conundrums. Most UN member-states are small, and have commensurately small diplomatic missions, and most of these admit that are completely overwhelmed with the number and complexity of committees and processes they must keep up with; many barely comprehend them at all (pity the rest of us). Staff in the deeply-hierarchical secretariat are discouraged from action, fearful that their next posting will be to Congo rather than up the greasy, corrupt pole that is the promotion system in the UN. Note, by the way, how virtually no senior staff member is under 50, a clear indicator that subservience is valued higher than competence.

The only solution is a severe jolt of electricity. Some say that only a war will at last trigger the energy for change. But there already is one, in fact many. The leading states should agree to have a conference with the goal of nothing less than a renovated and revivified UN. Take discussion away from the corridors and stale arguments of the New York UN complex. Set an ambitious agenda and aim high, but for something simple and ideal.

These days, the Europeans, including the UK, tend to leave such ambition to the US. But any new administration will have its hands full with the residue of George W Bush's maladministration. Taking on the UN is never an appealing prospect in Washington, even for Democrats, and in any case the American brand is a sure invitation to hostility in UN discussion. Such an initiative certainly won't come from China, Russia or those stuck with their own repetitious and self-seeking demands for permanent membership. So here is a chance for the UK, perhaps in partnership with France, and ideally the whole European Union - a potentially powerful force at the UN - to show some leadership. San Francisco? Why not Bordeaux, or even Brighton?

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