Ever since Mark Malloch Brown arrived on the 38th floor of UN Secretariat headquarters in New York, the UN New York community has been speculating about how long it would take before the SG announced an internal overhaul on a scale similar to what MMB oversaw across the road at the UN Development Programme. The speculation about when has now changed to debate about whether it will happen at all. more

The US recently put forward its position on UN reform issues calling for change in seven areas. The LLP was most interested in the US proposals on internal reform. The US position was: “Without a properly functioning Secretariat, it would make little sense to try and implement other reforms in the Organization. Inefficient programs and activities would become even more so without a stronger orientation on results.” The statement by US Ambassador to the UN went on to say: more

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As if the world’s hyperpower needed it: with two bold strokes - one from the executive branch and the other from Congress - the US increased its negotiating power over UN reform questions markedly this week. more

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A frank Mark Malloch Brown interview from the Secretariat News. more

“There’s unlikely ever to be a more pro-American U.N. secretary general than Kofi Annan — that’s the real irony.” more

In addition to the perennial problems of dysfunctional institutions, inadequate resources, and ephemeral political will, the United Nations has always faced crises of expectations. At the beginning of the 1990s the United States, while proclaiming itself the victor of the Cold War, magnanimously asserted that this provided an opportunity for the UN to fulfill its long-promised role as the guardian of international peace and security. The Security Council saw new possibilities for action without the paralyzing veto; Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali laid out grand plans with An Agenda for Peace. In the words of US President George H.W. Bush “the rule of law would supplant the rule of the jungle.”
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“You can’t have reform if you don’t withhold dues,” Republican Representative Henry Hyde, the panel’s 81-year-old chairman, said today in Washington. “You can wish, you can pray, you can do all sorts of things. But if you don’t withhold the dues, it’s an empty gesture.”

“Given the important role the UN is playing in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Darfur and scores of other places, I fail to see how going into arrears at the United Nations will promote America’s national security interests,” said Tom Lantos of California, the senior Democrat on the panel.
The full article is here.

Republican Congressman and chair of the House International Relations committee, Henry Hyde introduced a bill in the US Congress which proposes linking the payment of US dues to certain UN reform targets. Whether the US should withhold dues or not depends on whether the current reform drive is likely to succeed.
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