United Nations Association of Greater Boston

The UN after the September Summit

2005 UN Day Luncheon Address
Sir Emyr Jones Parry, UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations

Friday 21 October

Thank you for welcoming me here to Boston. I’m delighted to be here among friends of the UN to report on the state of the United Nations after the World Summit of September and to underline the United Kingdom’s commitment to the United Nations and to its positive reform.

This coming Monday is the sixtieth anniversary of the day in 1945 that the UN Charter entered into force. After two world wars, the 51 founding members committed to work together to maintain peace and security, human rights, and the reduction of poverty and inequality. These are still the key tenets of the UN.

But it is now fully multilateral, with 191 member states. The UN now has over 35 agencies, funds and programmes, covering issues from health to international finance to migration. This doesn’t include the 17 UN peacekeeping operations, the majority of which are in Africa. At the age of sixty, the UN can congratulate itself on being a truly global body with a deep and broad involvement in international affairs. But sixty is also an age when individuals go through all sorts of other changes: reflections on our past, what we have achieved, and perhaps making some profound decisions about our future. We should also be going for a physical check-up – do we look like we’re in good shape?

Many people might say that the UN’s looking pretty sickly. The last year has seen the reports of the Independent Inquiry Committee on the UN’s Oil-for-Food programme. This has laid bare some of the weaker parts of the UN system, and has had a knock-on effect on people’s perceptions of the UN. Before I go on, let me first emphasise this: it is fundamentally important that allegations of mismanagement and inadequate oversight, and the possibility of corruption, are comprehensively investigated. The UK – alongside other member states – has cooperated fully with the inquiry, which found examples of unethical and illicit behaviour and concluded, amongst other things, that the programme had been mismanaged by the Secretariat, by the Security Council and by member states.

But we should be clear that the key culprit in Oil-for-Food corruption scandal was Saddam Hussein, who continually tried to corrupt the programme for personal gain. His actions directly contributed to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in his country, and to making the Iraqi people his victims.

Some, including some vocal individuals from this country, used the outcome of this inquiry to make extravagant criticisms of the UN. The IIC report was to them evidence that the UN was unmanageable, outdated and obsolete. This was piled on top of other perceived failures of the UN. But for other member states, the UK included, the failures demonstrated through the Oil-for-Food programme are a clear symptom of an underlying problem at the UN, but not a mortal diagnosis.

It has been clear for some time that the UN could improve its management efficiency and effectiveness. That this problem manifested itself with such weight in the OFF programme was disappointing and depressing. But the UN and its member states have been working on management restructuring in the context of broader UN Reform for some time. The OFF inquiry outcome highlighted that the debate on reform was long overdue. The measures that we have now agreed are steps towards equipping a modernised, reformed UN with the means to meet contemporary threats and challenges.

Let me briefly take you back to the context of UN reform. In September 2003, Kofi Annan gave his well-known ‘fork in the road’ speech highlighting the divisions in UN membership in their approach to international issues. There were differences of opinion about the war in Iraq, divisions amongst member states on how to deal with poverty, and inefficient and opaque bureaucracy within the UN Secretariat itself. Underlying many of the problems at the UN was what has been characterised as the North-South split – the idea that the developed world in the north focused on so-called ‘hard threats’ such as terrorism and conflict. Contrasting with this, the less developed south was seen to focus on the so-called soft threats including poverty, disease and education.

My own view is that this description does not reflect the reality. Continents and cultures are now bound in a way unimaginable only a decade ago. Terrorism is unfortunately as familiar to those in Nairobi and Bali as those in Europe and America. Conflict is sadly a way of life for many Africans. Conversely, with the increase in air travel, diseases such as HIV and SARS are never far away. The ravages of climate change do not respect borders.

But we also share benefits. Efficient trading systems – without subsidies and quotas – are of value to both developed and developing countries. High quality education will improve innovation and enterprise, which is a boost to the world economy. Good governance in developing countries has a real benefit for the international community.

The UN Charter of 1945 sets out the UN’s role in promoting peace and security, prosperity and human rights. Kofi Annan’s March 2005 report ‘In Larger Freedom’ highlights that these threats are fundamentally interlinked. In many countries, periods of war result in sustained poverty. Conflict is often preceded by an increased frequency of human rights violations. Threats tend to affect all countries. Member states of the UN should all be working together to address these challenges. But importantly we need a reformed UN that is up to this. These are some of the reasons why the UK is such a strong supporter of the United Nations and takes very seriously its permanent membership of the Security Council.

This brings me to the Summit outcome document. This was officially agreed on September 15th by all 191 UN member states. I will not dwell on the lengthy negotiations between May and September on this, in which the UK, as EU Presidency, took a key role.

There were many areas of agreement, many achievements, many issues where we would have liked to go further, and, on non-proliferation and disarmanent, we will continue trying to achieve any agreement at all. Let me set out some of the main areas of consensus:

Development
The Summit outcome document highlights that the relationship between developing and developing countries is one of partnership, rather than payer and receiver. Developing countries should set out national strategies to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, they should provide stable macroeconomic environments to ensure that aid is effective. Developed countries, in return, should leverage up what they are prepared to pay to see developing countries stand on their own two feet.

The EU have already done a lot – 15 of the member states have agreed to reach the 0.7% ODA/GNI target by 2015; half of this will go to Africa. The present equivalent figure for the US is 0.16%. We also want to front-load aid to deliver more resources now, through the International Finance Facility or other innovative sources of finance. Let me be clear: we, the developed countries, need to keep our side of the bargain and deliver resources. In return we will hold developing countries to theirs. In addition, continued progress is necessary on debt relief, where the UK has led substantial G8 progress this year, and on increased trade access for developing countries, to developed markets especially.

Peacebuilding Commission
But poverty-reduction and development are only part of the story. We all know of countries emerging from conflict which don’t have the means to rebuild themselves and too often suffer from the lack of coordinated support from political, military and development communities. Think Haiti, Guinea Bissau, Burundi. Or look at the statistics: half of all countries that have recently emerged from conflict may be expected to relapse back into conflict within a decade.

We have a moral imperative to do something about this – let alone a political, economic and security interest in doing so. The UN has, not before time, agreed to establish a Peacebuilding Commission. Its aim is to advise on the policies and means needed, and delivered by whom, to promote sustainable peace, rule of law and economic development. The Summit commitment: to have the Commission up and running by 1 January 2006.

Terrorism
I also want to touch on another aspect of peace and security. Terrorism affects people all around the world, irrespective of their nationality, religion or creed. It rips up the homes and livelihoods of innocent people going about their daily business. We all need to work together to agree a definition that outlaws all aspects of terrorism. This is overdue: the only people who benefit from the lack of a clear definition of terrorism are the terrorists. We are focusing now on agreeing a Comprehensive Convention on Terrorism in the General Assembly. This will provide a framework for the international community’s response to terrorist acts. We need to ensure that this passes.

Human rights
Let me now turn to human rights. The third pillar of Kofi Annan’s In Larger Freedom. rights and freedoms are essential for people to enjoy peace and prosperity. We need a more focused Human rights Council - smaller and more viable than the current Commission on Human rights. The aim is to mainstream human rights in all the UN’s considerations and activities, and focus on those situations where rights are not respected. The UN is uniquely placed to oversee international human rights; it has established numerous norms over the years. Let’s now try to ensure their global implementation.

Responsibility to Protect
There are times when human rights violations are extreme, in situations of genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing. We’ve seen this in Bosnia – 8000 men killed in Srebrenica alone in 1995 – in Rwanda in 1994. Is the international community to stand by and allow this to happen again? We said the right words about Bosnia. But we failed to prevent mass slaughter. The international community has now agreed the concept of the responsibility to protect – a mandate for the international community to act if the national Government is unable or unwilling to act in these situations. Our world is too small to ignore the victims of murder and oppression on our doorstep.

Secretariat Reform
Finally, may I turn to the UN’s efforts to reform itself. Addressing the need for a transformation in the management culture has been a key focus of the last year. The Secretary General has been charged with reporting to the General Assembly on Management Reform implementation, on auditing and internal control, and on an oversight committee and ethics office. We are reviewing the utility of existing programme mandates. Priority setting, evaluation and accountability have to become the norm. The UN may not be a commercial venture: but the need to modernise, to adapt, to become more efficient and coherent in service delivery are vital priorities demanding urgent implementation.

Conclusion

So where is the UN today?

• A UN that is looking at an interlinked set of threats of global concern.
• A UN that is reforming itself to address the new substance of these challenges – peacekeeping, terrorism and non proliferation, human rights, development.
• A UN that is restructuring itself to become more efficient, effective and focused.

Not bad for a sixty-year-old. Particularly one that has, on the face of it, looked pretty unwell from some people’s viewpoints this year. In my view, the reforms that have been agreed at the Summit will go a good way to improving the operations and functioning of the UN. We are looking at an organisation which is at last embracing change: changes in organisational culture to embrace modern methods, improved coherent action by all the UN family, putting in place policies that meet tomorrow’s changing threats and challenges, and developing such new institutions as are needed to accomplish this.

But we’re not there yet. We need to implement these reforms – establish the Peacebuilding Commission and the Human rights Council over the coming months, adjudicate the UN budget and management reform process, and push forward on a number of other priorities – environmental sustainability, non proliferation, and so on.

The UK is currently driving this process. As EU Presidency, we speak for all 25 EU member states in negotiations at the UN. We will push hard for concrete achievements over the coming months before we hand the EU Presidency baton on. We will strongly support the next Presidency of the EU, Austria, in implementing key reforms.

But throughout this time we still need strong partnership from other UN member states. We need those who believe on each issue to speak up. They need to speak louder than those who have something to gain from the status quo. The role of the United States is fundamental. On the table in front of us now is a set of proposals to make the UN more relevant, more effective and more efficient. The US should continue, alongside the EU, to make sure that we exploit this moment. The UN is uniquely placed to address the challenges that the international community faces. We need to make sure that it has the means to do so.

About Sir Emyr                                                            
A multilateralist, Sir Emyr believes that the UN is the indispensable global organization helping to tackle the problems of a globalizing world, issues which recognize no borders and which nation states cannot tackle alone - disease, poverty, degradation of the environment, terror, WMD, humanitarian relief, human rights and human displacement, and illegal drugs. The UK Mission is working to ensure that the UN and its Agencies remain in the forefront of efforts to improve human security.

Sir Emyr Jones Parry has been United Kingdom Permanent Representative to the United Nations since July 2003, after serving for two years as United Kingdom Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council in Brussels. He was Political Director of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1998-2001 and European Union Director from 1997-1998.

About the UN Day Luncheon                                      
The UN Day Luncheon annually gathers over 250 guests from Boston’s Consular Corps, business, professional, and academic communities. UNA-GB invites individuals, companies and organizations to participate as sponsors and attendees. We are thankful to our many sponsors, who support the UN Day Luncheon and our programs on the UN and world affairs.

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Past UN Day Luncheon speakers:

2004 Ted Turner
         “Our Common Future”

2003 Ambassador Andrew Young
         “The US, the UN and Global Security”

2002 Ambassador Richard Williamson, the US Alternate Representative to the UN
         “US Priorities at the UN”

2001 Ambassador Donald McHenry, US Ambassador to the UN during the Carter Administration
         “Unilateralism in an Age of Terror”

2000 Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s Permanent Representative to the UN, who addressed the inaugural Luncheon, “UN Peacekeeping in the 21st Century: the US Role.”
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