Development & Aid, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, North America, Poverty & SDGs | Analysis

CHALLENGES 2006-2007: Will New UN Chief Stand Up to Big Powers?

Analysis by Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 12 2006 (IPS) - When South Korea’s former foreign minister Ban Ki-moon assumes duties as the new U.N. secretary-general on Jan. 1, he will succeed Kofi Annan of Ghana who spent over 44 years in the U.N. system, serving the last 10 years (1997-2006) as the chief administrative officer of the 192-member world body.

Ban takes over a cash-strapped organisation described – rightly or wrongly – as mostly mismanaged, inefficient, over-staffed and politically-manipulated primarily by the United States, and to a lesser extent by the remaining four veto-wielding big powers: Britain, France, China and Russia.

Still, the United Nations has had its moments of glory, as when it walked away with the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize under Annan’s watch.

Unlike Annan, who rose from the middle ranks of the U.N. system to its upper echelons – first, as assistant secretary-general, then as under-secretary-general, and finally secretary-general – Ban only had a short 12-month spell in the organisation when he served as chief of staff to a former South Korean president of the U.N. General Assembly in 2001-2002.

But Ban is expected to make up for his lack of U.N. experience with his political skills finessed over 36 years of diplomatic service in his home country. He claims he is a “harmoniser, balancer and mediator”. But he is expected to shun the limelight in favour of low-key diplomacy.

Besides serving as foreign minister since January 2004, he has served as vice chairman of the South-North Joint Nuclear Control Commission in 1992, and chairman of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organisation in 1999.


A former first secretary at the Permanent Observer Mission of the South Korea to the United Nations, he was posted twice to the Korean Embassy in Washington D.C. – providing him with a mix of U.N. and U.S. politics.

But come Jan. 1, Ban will be inheriting a long catalogue of unresolved and thorny political issues facing the world body, including a nuclear-armed North Korea and a potential nuclear power in Iran.

Equally daunting is the U.N. presence in the continuously lethal environment of insurgent-ridden Iraq and Afghanistan; the absence of a U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur, opposed by a defiant Sudanese government; the worsening crisis in Palestine, the world’s longest running trouble spot; and the threat of renewed civil war in Lebanon, home to a recently-enhanced U.N. peacekeeping force.

In the social and economic fields, he will have to help produce results in fighting global poverty, eliminating world hunger, preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, and ensuring environmental sustainability – as envisaged by the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with a targeted date of 2015.

“The key for today’s United Nations is not to create more goals, but to implement those that have been set,” says Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and a special advisor to Annan on the MDGs.

Sachs points out that Ban may also be called upon to help forge a global agreement on climate change beyond 2012, when the current Kyoto Protocol ends.

At home, Ban will try to break the stalemate over attempts to reform and revitalise the 15-member Security Council, with newcomers India, Brazil, Japan and Germany unsuccessfully knocking at the door to gain entry as permanent members.

Plagued by charges of fraud and corruption over the U.N.-supervised, multi-billion-dollar oil-for-food programme in Iraq, the world body that Ban takes over is also suffering from a crisis of conscience.

Awaiting his support is an attempt to reform the management of the world body, including the creation of new Ethics Office promoting a set of values that the United Nations preaches to the outside world but rarely practices in its own backyard: transparency and accountability.

At a U.N. press conference last month, the outgoing Under-Secretary-General for Management Chris Burnham told reporters that Ban has already pledged to sign a financial disclosure form – and also go public with it.

“I think this is a new era for the United Nations,” said Burnham, a former U.S. State Department official, who left the world body to join the private sector.

“We are bringing the United Nations into the 21st century – in terms of accountability, transparency, ethics, efficiency and effectiveness,” he declared.

Burnham said the U.S. government, and dozens of governments throughout the world, including South Korea, have made it mandatory that all civil servants go public with their financial assets.

Asked what advice he would give to the incoming secretary-general, Burnham said: “Stay the course.”

In an interview with IPS just before his election as secretary-general last month, Ban said: “The most serious issue facing the U.N. is the credibility gap resulting from the organisation’s inability to handle the complexities of the issues it faces.”

He also pointed out that the initiatives currently being debated demand not only the creation of new organisational structures within the United Nations, but also a general improvement in services through reform of the operational methods of its various agencies.

“The greatest challenge facing the United Nations at this juncture is reform, which is essential to cope more effectively with today’s global challenges,” he said.

He also said that scandals such as the oil-for-food programme make such reform all the more necessary. “And the most immediate task in reform efforts is to overcome the crisis of confidence permeating the United Nations,” he declared.

Still, one of the biggest political challenges facing Ban would be his relations with the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council – namely the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia – who collectively ensured his election as secretary-general.

The truism in U.N. politics is if you do not play the game by the rules set by the five big powers – and specifically the United States – you lose.

A former U.N. secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, lost his second term (despite 14 of the 15 members voting for him in the Security Council) because of a single veto exercised by the United States.

The right wing neo-conservatives in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush carried out a vicious vendetta against Annan immediately following his statement that the U.S. war on Iraq was “illegal”.

In his parting speech Monday, Annan again tacitly accused Washington of trampling human rights in its “war on terror”.

“When [the U.S.] appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused,” he told an audience in Independence, Missouri.

The international community will be closely watching Ban’s five-year tenure as secretary-general – and how he deals with the five big powers, whose unyielding demands include a monopoly on some of the most senior jobs in the U.N. secretariat, based mostly on politics, not merit or competency.

How vulnerable will Ban be to U.S. manipulation? And will he cave in to political pressure from the big powers? And how outspoken will he be in expressing his views in public – however unpalatable they may be to the big powers?

Only time will tell.

 
Republish | | Print |


rachel lynn david