news details |
|
|
| Annan’s goal of “a larger freedom” | | | by Anita Inder Singh
Kofi Annan became Secretary-General of the UN in 1997, placing administrative reform high on his agenda. A decade later, as he prepares to bow out at the end of the year, streamlining the management of the UN remains a priority for its member states. Red tape, cronyism and corruption, especially in the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, have raised questions about his managerial style.
But they remind us that the world’s top diplomat can do nothing without the consent of UN member-states, and that the tendency, especially of the US, to blame the UN for anything that does not conform with national interests, only contributes to the organisation’s administrative problems.
Peace and security is the highest goal of the UN, and Annan’s most significant legacy may be the broadening of the concept of security to embrace conflict prevention and resolution, development and human rights to create ‘a larger freedom’. Although the number of armed conflicts in the world is said to have declined over the last 15 years, the UN now has a record 90,000 peacekeeping forces in 18 operations around the globe, with an annual peacekeeping budget of about $ 5 billion.
Domestic conflicts often spark international conflicts, and, as the recent conflict in Lebanon showed, all too often only a multinational UN force is acceptable to the different warring parties to keep the peace.
Not surprisingly Annan has overseen the creation of a Peacebuilding Commission within the UN to steer war-torn countries from conflict and to put them on the path to economic recovery and stability, tackling not just the military causes of conflict but also their deeper social and economic roots.
Since 9/11 countering global terrorism has been a high priority of the UN. The General Assembly devised a counter-terrorism strategy in 2006, but member states have yet to agree on a definition of terrorism. Meanwhile terrorism and some of the national responses to it are spreading fear and suspicion between and within some states – Afghanistan and Pakistan illustrate this well.
A new Human Rights Council was created last year to increase the chances of excluding authoritarian states, but its teething problems are a reminder that the UN cannot be an association of angels.
Poverty is a source of conflict, and the Millennium Development Goals, enunciated in 2000, have highlighted the need for global cooperation on reducing poverty and the incidence of HIV Aids and other lethal diseases, increasing gender equality, primary education and environmental sustainability. In 2002, the International Conference on Financing for Development (“Monterrey Consensus”) set in train a partnership to achieve internationally agreed development goals, but Annan admits that very few countries are on track to reach the MDGs on target by 2015.
Paradoxically, while the illegal Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 challenged the raison d’etre of the UN, American requests for UN help in rebuilding Iraq have only confirmed the indispensability of the organisation. But there is still no international consensus on what constitutes a threat and when the use of force should be authorised and by whom.
Annan’s successor, Ban Ki-Moon, is also likely to find that the world’s chief communicator can influence, even if he has no power. But being UN Secretary-General is not roses all the way, and inevitably, the roses have their thorns.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
