Annan urges radical overhaul of United Nations

Edith M. Lederer

UNITED NATIONS — Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged U.N. member states Tuesday to approve an overhaul of the world body’s operations that would include a 2,500-member rapid reaction team to help millions facing hunger, violence and terrorism.

After decades of piecemeal reform, Annan told the 191 members a radical overhaul is needed because current United Nations rules and regulations “make it very hard for the organization to conduct its work efficiently or effectively.”

Since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, he said, the United Nations has changed from an organization of conferences and meetings to a global body engaged in peacekeeping, humanitarian relief efforts, electoral assistance and human rights monitoring.

Annan’s proposed shakeup, detailed in a report, would create a mobile civil service and convert 2,500 short-term peacekeeping positions into a new, flexible team that can be deployed quickly in urgent peacekeeping and political missions.

It would also allow a one-time staff buyout costing about $100,000 per person, modernize U.N. information technology systems, and consider outsourcing translation, editing, printing, payroll, medical insurance and computer support services.

The proposals are a response to last year’s investigation into the U.N. oil-for-food program, which blamed shoddy management in part for widespread corruption. It cited weaknesses in oversight, accountability, responsibility and structure.

The report, titled “Investing in the United Nations,” proposed improvements in the way the U.N. buys goods and services, an area of that has seen widespread corruption and is the subject of several investigations. Annan said the proposed changes would improve transparency and lead to a savings of up to $400 million.

The secretary-general stressed the report is an effort to transform the U.N.’s post-World War II management structure and practices so the world body can deal with 21st century problems.

More than 70 percent of its $10 billion annual budget now relates to peacekeeping operations - up from about 50 percent of a $4.5 billion budget 10 years ago - and over half of the U.N.’s 30,000 civilian staff now serve in the field, Annan noted.

Since the Cold War ended, the U.N. has taken on more than twice as many new peacekeeping missions as in the previous 44 years, the report said.

The United States has been pushing for a major management overhaul that would give the secretary-general more power and flexibility.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said “the notion of a radical overhaul is exactly what we’ve been suggesting.”

“So now the burden, I think, is to persuade the other U.N. member states it’s not just a U.S. reform, the secretary-general is proposing it. I think it’s got support. Now we need to push it through,” he said.

But the General Assembly, dominated by developing countries, controls the U.N.’s purse strings and must approve most of the reforms — and it is not expected to give up any power easily.

In a speech to the assembly launching the report, Annan said, “This reform is not a cost-cutting exercise, any more than it is a grab for power by the Secretariat, or a desperate attempt to placate one or two major contributors to the budget.”

Annan said that “for many years, this organization has been skimping on investment — investment in people, investment in systems, investment in information and communications technology.”

It is time now, he said, for member states to invest in the United Nations so the organization can be better organized, more transparent, and give “better value to the hundreds of millions of people throughout the world who, by no fault of their own, find themselves in need of its services.”

“The true stakeholders in an effective United Nations,” he said, are the people threatened by extreme poverty, hunger, malnutrition, disease, environmental degradation, natural disasters, civil conflict, anarchy, violence, transnational organized crime, terrorism, oppression, bad government, genocide and ethnic cleansing.

“Let us not fail them,” Annan said.

He called on member states to adopt the package as a whole, saying failure to reform one area “can greatly reduce, or even nullify, the value of reform in all the others.”

(Associated Press)