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The U.N.'s moment of truth

Kofi Annan

Those who really care about reform should come together and form a new coalition — one that bridges the artificial, destructive divide between North and South.

A MINOR storm broke out last week when my deputy, Mark Malloch Brown, made a speech suggesting that the United States should engage more fully and wholeheartedly with other members of the United Nations to bring about reform. That is absolutely right, but he and I believe the same message needs to be heard in many other countries besides the U.S.

The U.N. now faces a moment of truth. Last December, member states adopted a budget for the current "biennium" (2006-2007), but gave us in the Secretariat authority to spend only enough to carry us through the first six months. The main contributors to the budget, led by the U.S., insisted that this spending cap should be lifted only when there is significant progress on U.N. reform. We are now perilously near the deadline, and it is far from clear that enough reform to satisfy them has been achieved. Neither side has found a way of engaging with the other to agree on further reforms.

Only political crises

Sir Brian Urquhart, the U.N.'s elder statesman, once said that there was never really a financial crisis at the U.N., only political crises. Brian is right. The U.S. is trying to use the power of the purse to force through badly needed management reforms, and these tactics have provoked a reaction among developing countries.

Most of these are well aware of the need to reform — not least because it is in those countries that the U.N. provides many vital services — from peacekeeping and peace-building through emergency relief to strengthening human rights, helping organise elections, and fighting infectious disease. That means they are the ones who have most to gain from a U.N. that is well-managed and really gives value for money. Their quarrel is much less with the detail of proposed reforms than with what they see as the overwhelming influence of a few rich countries, in an organisation supposedly "based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members."

That was what I meant in London last January, when I referred to the "feeling of frustration and exclusion that prompts many states to exercise the only power they do have: the power to block other reforms, such as better management — since some see even this as an attempt by the big boys to grab yet more power for themselves."

In the long run this means that, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair recognised in a speech in Washington two weeks ago, the whole U.N. structure has to be reformed, including the Security Council. And so even these current reforms are only a small down payment on what must follow. Public policy is simply getting more global. From terrorism to poverty, drugs and crime, disease to trade, no states can settle matters alone.

But even while we wait for the political vision to catch up with the scale of today's challenges, we have vital work to do right now — programmes which have been mandated by member states and which provide essential services to people in acute danger or need. However important the debate on reform, we must not let that work be stalled.

It's in the interest of all member states to keep the U.N. running, and to adapt it to the specific work that they are asking it to do. And that means that both sides in the current argument need to turn down their rhetoric and engage with each other in serious negotiations, to work out a sensible compromise now as a basis for more fundamental change later.

It is not just the composition of the Security Council that is stuck in the mid 20th century. Both the management and the attitudes of many governments to the Organisation are caught in the same time warp. Neither has fully adjusted to the new reality of a U.N. which no longer simply holds conferences and writes reports, but is managing complex, multi-billion dollar operations to help keep peace and combat poverty and humanitarian disasters. As a result, we do not have the institutions that we need to confront this century's global challenges. It is vital that we escape from this bind.

The blueprint for reform that I put forward last year was very clear about this. It reminded us all that the U.N. is founded on three legs — development, collective security, and human rights. Each of the three strengthens the other two, but is also dependent on them. And like any good chair they need a fourth: major management reform.

The U.N. has to help its members advance on all three fronts at once. That is why it needs not only a Security Council but also an effective Human Rights Council, and why the Economic and Social Council must be transformed into a true development chamber that allows development and finance ministers to pursue progress and track results in meeting the Millennium Development Goals, the world's effort to halve extreme poverty by 2015.

Some reforms have been achieved. Both the new Human Rights Council and the new Peacebuilding Commission will meet for the first time next week. All member states have accepted their responsibility to protect people threatened by genocide and other comparable crimes. We have in place a much improved emergency relief fund, a democracy fund, an ethics office, and a much tougher system for protecting whistleblowers. Now we need better accountability and oversight arrangements, a stronger procurement system, more financial flexibility, and better rules for recruiting and managing our staff.

Set against the scale of the tasks we have to undertake, these are not such ambitious demands. Surely governments can agree on how to make these reforms happen without bringing the whole organisation to a halt. It is time for those who really care about reform to come together and form a new coalition — one that bridges the artificial, destructive divide between North and South, and brings together all those who are willing to work together because they share the vision of a U.N. that really works, for the benefit of all the world's peoples. — Courtesy: UNIC New Delhi.

(The writer is Secretary-General of the United Nations.)

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