UNITED NATIONS, 22 September 2004 — A year ago, Secretary-General Kofi Annan stood before hundreds of world leaders and said the United Nations had to change or die. Now, after a year of feats that seemed to breathe life back into the organization — and scandals and instability in Iraq that knocked the wind out of it — the prognosis for the world body is still uncertain.
As he opened this year’s General Assembly, Annan appears acutely conscious of his legacy, having made clear in speeches and directives that he wants to leave behind a revived and robust institution when his term ends in 2006. Last year, he appointed a panel of international experts to consider the most pressing questions facing the institution: pre-emptive attacks, nuclear proliferation and the balance of power in the United Nations and in the world.
Shaken by the inability to stave off the invasion of Iraq — an action he termed “illegal” last week — Annan has said he wants to write clearer rules on when nations can act pre-emptively. He has said he wants to define how to deal forcefully and collectively with new threats confronting the world — terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and genocide — while still addressing such issues as poverty and disease. And he has expressed hope that he can expand the Security Council to make it represent today’s world, not the victors circle that held power in 1945 when the United Nations was created.
But the expert panel won’t report until the end of the year, leaving the leaders attending this year’s General Assembly treading water.
In the absence of answers, the United Nations struggled through the challenges this year with mixed results. After skirting the United Nations on its way into Iraq, the United States came back to ask the organization for help. Annan’s special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, pulled together an interim government for Iraq in time for the handover of sovereignty in June.
“We would not have a political road map in Iraq without the UN” said Michael Ignatieff, the Carr professor for human rights at Harvard. “Without them, we’d be walking in the dark.”
But US and Iraqi officials took over the process at the last minute, and there has been little UN follow-up on the political path forward. Iraq is relying on the United Nations to put together elections scheduled for January, but the organization, still traumatized by the bombing of its Baghdad headquarters a year ago, won’t commit more than a few dozen staffers until the risks subside. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari criticized the United Nations’ paltry presence in an interview with the BBC over the weekend, saying, “They are not doing enough to help us.”
In wake of the invasion of Iraq, one little-noticed victory for the world body was how well UN weapons inspectors seemed to have done their job there. Most likely in part because of years of intrusive UN inspections, Saddam Hussein appears not to have had weapons of mass destruction after all.
Other unheralded successes for the United Nations this year have included the conflict that was quelled in Liberia, the polio outbreak that was contained in Nigeria and refugees who were saved in Sudan.
But the United Nations is still struggling with issues of nuclear proliferation. North Korea has opted out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the UN inspections the pact requires. Iran is pursuing technology that can be used either in nuclear power plants or weapons — but the rules of the treaty cannot control which way Tehran chooses to go.
The United Nations’ moral high ground was undermined this year by a brewing scandal over the “oil-for-food” program that allowed Iraq, under UN sanctions in the 1990s, to sell oil to buy humanitarian goods. Allegations that Saddam pocketed $10 billion through the program to rebuild his palaces and reinforce his army have been distracting and damaging for Annan, who waited months before responding to them.
The United Nations’ administration of the program, which concentrated on delivering goods but not on investigating reported kickbacks and corruption, is the subject of several investigations, including an internal UN inquiry. The Security Council also has been criticized for setting up a program that protected its members’ own economic interests in Iraq while not ensuring accountability.
“Oil-for-food is an enormous negative for the UN,” Ignatieff said. “The credibility of a decade of UN inspection, patiently accrued to the UN, was thrown away by the incompetence and corruption of the oil-for-food program. There’s no doubt it’s a catastrophe for the UN’s moral credibility.” Annan’s statement last week that the attack on Iraq was illegal foreshadowed his anticipated appeal to this year’s General Assembly to respect the rule of law.
The acts of cruelty, war and genocide reflect a collective failure to uphold the law and instill respect for it, he is expected to tell the gathered leaders Tuesday. Along with condemning Sudan for recent atrocities in its Darfur region, Annan is expected to deliver a between-the-lines rebuke to the United States for invading Iraq without explicit Security Council approval, abusing Iraqi prisoners and holding detainees without charge in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
It is a message that President Bush, who will speak just after Annan, is sure to dislike, but Annan will deliver it only obliquely. That in itself says the most about the ambivalent relationship between the United States and the United Nations, said David Malone, the president of the International Peace Academy, an independent think tank in New York.
The United Nations needs US money and participation, but it fears becoming the instrument of US wishes. The United States, on the other hand, dreads the constraints of multilateralism yet still seeks the international legitimacy that only the United Nations can confer.
