There has been no fundamental change in the way the UN does business since its establishment. We must live with it till it either reforms itself, or we create a more representative group that better reflects the realities of today.
New Delhi: If, as recent reports suggest, China is rapidly expanding its footprint in the almost defunct United Nations, I would not be unduly alarmed. Such reports have been emerging for a few years.
China is not taking over. Even though India pulled out of the race for the top job in the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2020, China lost to India in 2021 for a seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Singapore defeated it in the World Property Organization. It lost to tiny Samoa in elections to the UN Statistical Commission. It came fourth out of five in polling for the UN Human Rights Council. The bottom line is that the world, which has better things to do, little notices or cares for what happens in that Lego building spanning the East 42nd and 48th Streets on First Avenue in New York. If the Chinese are trying to take over the United Nations, I would wish them Godspeed so the rest of the world can then create a new entity that better reflects the present geopolitical reality.
The shameful subservience of the World Health Organization to its overlord in China, and the consequent deaths of millions, is a telling example of what happens when a system is subverted (China stymied any attempts to discuss the pandemic in the Security Council). Of course, realizing that his future could be at stake, the WHO’s shameless Director General has distanced himself from China.
The 76-year-old UN is a relic that no one takes seriously, not even China.
The United Nations is an unending scandal masquerading as everlasting hope, afflicted by bigness in size, systems, and ego.
Contrary to the belief that the UN runs on a shoestring, total expenditure for the UN system in 2020 was around US$55 billion. There has been no fundamental change in the way the UN does business since its establishment. We must live with it till it either reforms itself, or we create a more representative group that better reflects the realities of today.
In 2019, the United Nations Human Rights Office was accused of handing over since 2013 lists of names of human rights activists that included Tibetan and Uyghur dissidents, some of whom were US nationals and residents. Initially the UN Office denied the accusation, then confirmed the sharing of names but disagreed that it had harmed the human rights defenders in question.
In the UN issues are discussed. China does not know anything about discussion as it is a closed system, where whatever the Party says is divine instruction. So instead of training its sorry diplomats (who are abusive wolf warriors) to debate and discuss and put across China’s viewpoint, it seeks to subvert the process of discussion and debate by taking over the platform. Traditionally focused on the UN’s development activities, China now flexes its muscles in the heart of the UN, its peace and security work.
During the height of the first Cold war, we would say that when the USA and the USSR saw eye to eye, the UN was pointless, when they disagreed it was powerless, at all other times it was useless.
When an enlargement of the security council was discussed in 1995, China encouraged African states to demand seats for themselves as a countermove to Japan’s ambitions, and thereby nullified the expansion idea. China will continue to make mistakes in the UN, as it did from 1972-1974 by blocking Bangladesh’s membership. China is now the second largest provider of assessed contributions to both the UN’s regular budget (at just over 12% compared to 22% from the US) and peacekeeping budget (15% compared to about 27% from the US). Unfortunately for China, the UN is not yet for sale, it is too complex to be.
What makes the world uneasy is the expectation that China will use its stronger voice to chip away at human rights and other values-based issues in the multilateral system. Much of the global angst about the growing Chinese role derives from the fact that four of the 17 UN specialized agencies—the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) —are now headed by Chinese nationals, whose overriding loyalty is to the Chinese Communist Party. Although US power has waned somewhat, China, with its present OCCUPRESSURE (Occupy and Pressure) system, can never hope to replace it. The UN can be characterized as “home turf” for the United States.
India has been a strong voice in favour of developing countries, peace and security, democracy, rule of law, multilateralism, development, maritime security, women and youth issues, technology with a human touch. We speak out against terrorism, and hope that the United Nations can get its act together when dealing with global existential issues like the pandemic.
Reforms to the system come up against that massive wall of inertia also known as reluctance. Indonesia was the first member to attempt to withdraw from the UN on New Year’s Day1965. After a coup later that year, it came back. Bills to end US membership in the UN have been introduced in United States house of representatives, for example the American Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2009 and another one in 2017. Such measures have failed to pass by large margins.
The UN needs reforms in its processes, responses and character, India’s Prime Minister has said. India in many ways is a sui generis country. It is a country of a billion-plus, it is a democratic country, perhaps the only example in history of so many people working together in a democratic framework. The issue of the expansion and reform of the Security Council is not an India-centric issue. It is an issue which entails a whole host of teams. You can’t have that dichotomy between an organisation, which says, “I’m ready to work on behalf of the peoples of the world,” and keeps such a big country representing 1.35 billion people out.
The UN has 44,000 staff, 17 specialized agencies that are legally independent, 14 funds, 72 peacekeeping operations (14 ongoing). It has spent well over half a trillion dollars in 75 years. In 1994, US Ambassador John Bolton said that if the United Nations secretariat building in New York “lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference”. UN peacekeepers caused a cholera epidemic in Haiti that claimed over 10,000 lives. Yet it took UN headquarters six years to acknowledge responsibility. An Associated Press investigation found “nearly 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other personnel around the world” over a 12-year period, including 300 allegations involving children “but only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators served jail time”.
The UN has a lot of fragmentation. There are about 1,200 UN country offices around the world, 100 countries have more than 10 UN country offices which often have no idea what the UN is doing. Half the money goes for the operational expenses of the offices, leaving very little for programming or key activities. The UN introduced the idea of country coordinators, but not many agencies are willing to be coordinated.
Dag Hammarskjöld, the tragic second UN Secretary General, said that the United Nations “was created not to lead mankind to heaven but to save humanity from hell”. It has infuriated with its numbing bureaucracy, its institutional cover-ups of corruption and the undemocratic politics of its Security Council. It goes to war in the name of peace but has been a bystander through genocide.
Governments may turn away NGOs, but the UN cannot be ignored. Neither can the UN’s huge logistical capabilities, such as the World Food Programme’s airlifts, be matched by any private organization. The UN is weighed down by “incompetence” and red tape. It is a very heavily bureaucratic organisation. It hasn’t changed. It has built systems on top of systems on top of systems. The organisation has grown so big that at times it is working against itself. Critics point to large numbers of support staff doing ill-defined jobs. Staff costs account for two-thirds or more of some UN agencies’ outgoings. Cooperation between different UN agencies has been hindered by competition for funding, mission creep and by outdated business practices, a report said. In some sectors, such as water and energy, more than 20 UN agencies are active and compete for limited resources without a clear collaborative framework. More than 30 UN agencies and programmes have a stake in environmental management. The United Nations has established several programmes and funds to address particular humanitarian and development concerns. Only one UN programme has ever closed, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRAA), shut in 1959 subsequently replaced by UNHCR.
When the United Nations was formed in 1945 major concerns in first decade were colonialism, economic development, prevention/resolution of conflict, nuclear weapons. Thereafter the focus kept shifting—arms control, Israeli Palestine conflict, weapons of mass destruction, development, human rights, peace keeping, equality among nations, prevention of genocide, war crimes. As the world changes, so do its priorities. Today we are more worried about terrorism, climate change, sustainable development, pandemics, but the international architecture, determined by a few, has remained the same.
In 2016, the German Foreign Minister warned that the western world, as virtually everyone alive today has known it, will almost certainly perish before our eyes. The main challenges before United Nations in 2021 are to define the rules of changing power equations, manage the transition from a western-dominated world to a more equitable one, create a global order that roots out terrorism, save our planet from mutation and utilize our remaining resources for the benefit of everybody. The existing world order is dying, the new one is struggling to be born. Should the United Nations be buried?
In February India’s Foreign Minister said that the UN was at its lowest credibility ever. It was missing in action during the Chinese virus attack. Its agencies such as the World Health Organization are relics whose expiry date is long over. The veto power is criticized for its undemocratic nature. a single country can prevent the Security Council from taking any action. Amnesty International claims that the five permanent members had used their veto to “promote their political self-interest or geopolitical interest above the interest of protecting civilians”.
For a racket like the United Nations, the attractions of the location of its headquarters, New York, far outweigh the utility of the organization.
The UN still spends money even when conferences are curtailed or cancelled with officials issuing self-important statements about how they are dealing with “the worst crisis since the Second World War” (anything will do for them to draw attention to themselves). It is not enough to take refuge in meaningless phrases like we need the UN, if it is not there, we must invent it etc. What we need is a head-to-toe examination of this body from its dandruff to its corns. Although the major powers complain about developing nations insisting on what one official called “jobs for the boys”, they behave little differently. Permanent members of the Security Council all expect to have a senior person from their country around the UN table, even apart from the mouthwatering daily allowances.
It is incredible that in the United Nations, which produces negotiating texts on every other area it deals with, has just not been able to put a text on the table in Security Council reform. 15 years ago, the UN launched its most enduring report on reform. A panel—co-chaired by the Prime Ministers of Mozambique, Norway, and Pakistan, and including the then British Chancellor, Gordon Brown—wrote a devastating document. It ticked off criticism which said the UN was badly failing those it was supposed to help. Its governance was called “inefficient and ineffective”. What happened to the report?
Read about it in 30 years.
Ambassador Dr Deepak Vohra is Special Advisor to Prime Minister, Lesotho, South Sudan and Guinea-Bissau; and Special Advisor to Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils, Leh and Kargil.