The United Nations: A 60th Birthday Retrospective

Plagued by sluggishness, shortcomings and scandal, the United Nations limps toward its 60th birthday next week with many observers - including key supporters - questioning its effectiveness, and even its survival as a credible insititution.

Most significantly, it is under attack from the country that once was its greatest booster.

"As the U.N. approaches 60, it is getting creaky in its bones," admits former foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, now Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border dispute."Many of its key institutions were formed in the post-World War II reality of the victors. It's stalemated in terms of decision-making reforms, and hindered in adapting to the new global networks and constellations that exist today."

The U.N.'s current crisis began when the trauma of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks led to increasingly independent military action by Washington.

"In striking contrast to the pragmatic internationalism of F.D.R., Harry Truman, George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower and the leaders that followed them, the ideology of the Bush administration is basically unilateralist, exceptionalist and anti-internationalist," says Sir Brian Urquhart, one of the earliest and most senior members of the world body, and a U.N. historian.

Annan was known as an unusually skilled and pro-Western U.N. leader. But relations with Washington soured when he opposed Bush's decision to invade Iraq without U.N. backing.

Kathy Bushkin, executive vice-president of the United Nations Foundation in Washington, says the months of bitter exchanges between Annan, Bush and United Nations weapons inspectors, dealt a blow to the Secretary-General and the U.N.'s image.

"It created an overhang. There have always been a coterie of U.N.-bashers in the U.S., but it's unfortunate that they have now attacked the most pro-Western and pro-U.S. leader the U.N. has ever had."

Anger against Annan blew up in an explosion of allegations involving the"oil-for-food" program that allowed Saddam Hussein to sell limited amounts of oil in exchange for humanitarian goods during the 1990s international sanctions. Investigating the loss of $20 billion (U.S.) earmarked for impoverished Iraqis, a U.S. senator called for Annan's resignation.

The program was overseen by the U.S. and Britain, which were responsible for vetting its contracts. But the attack on Annan became personal, with allegations that his son, Kojo, was receiving unearned payments from a Swiss former employer that inspected goods eligible to enter Iraq under the program.

The Iraq scandal was damaging, but only the latest of the U.N.'s woes.

It was also hit with allegations that peacekeepers in Congo raped women and young girls, as well as profiting from prostitution rings. Accusations of sexual misconduct had surfaced earlier, in East Timor, Cambodia and the Balkans after wars.

Meanwhile, Annan was forced to reverse a decision to drop a sexual harassment case against a senior refugee official, after protest from U.N. workers.

It was a signal of the discontent that is rife within the U.N.organization. Its staff unions have held non-confidence votes in senior management, and the 2003 bombing of the U.N. compound in Iraq - which resulted in the death of 22 people - led to widespread anger by frontline staff.

Resentment against the U.N. has even spilled over to its host city, New York, which gains $2.5 billion a year from its presence on the East River, and New York's state senate, which blocked a plan to refurbish and expand the aging U.N. complex.

"Criticisms have been absolutely legitimate," says Kathryn White, executive director of the United Nations Association in Canada."But considering the U.N. is operating with structures left over from 1945, it's amazing it's stayed intact as long as it has. In spite of all the criticisms, it's a table at which nations agree it's important to sit, however imperfect or battered it may be."

Only part of the U.N. is a political organization, experts point out. Its largest role is humanitarian and technical, carried out by its many agencies, from health to development, women's and children's rights, global economic aid, emergency food delivery, refugee aid, environmental protection, trade and international transit. Its Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is the focal point for international response to emergencies such as the Asian tsunami.

"When the horrible calamity of the tsunami strikes, you find that the U.N. is in Jakarta organizing the humanitarian effort," says U.N. Development Program spokesperson Bill Orme.

"It has the ability to bring together the affected countries, individual donors, and the World Bank, which is part of the U.N. system. The world recognizes that the U.N.'s agencies are playing a critical role."

The dimming of faith in an institution that had such bright beginnings has caused some observers to look back at another international body that came into being 85 years ago and was unable to maintain the support that was its lifeblood.

On Jan. 10, 1920, the League of Nations held its first meeting, pledging to reduce arms shipments, oppose wars and settle disputes through negotiation, diplomacy and a better standard of living for the world's poor.

Supported by U.S. president Woodrow Wilson as the best means of preventing future conflicts, it was never endorsed by the American Senate. In spite of some successes, it steadily lost ground with the major powers until it crumbled in the cataclysm of World War II.

But hope for peace dies hard. And 60 years ago, the United Nations rose from its ashes with unprecedented backing from Europe and the U.S. Where the League of Nations sank under the weight of American congressional opposition, the U.N. and its founding charter sailed to success at head-spinning speed.

"We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace," said president Franklin Roosevelt, who with his wife Eleanor, laid the foundations of the U.N."Our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of nations far away. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community."

Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, agrees. The demise of the League of Nations, she says, is a cautionary tale for critics of the world body.

"The league is remembered as a failure because of World War II. But it settled disputes, had trusteeships, and at least introduced the idea that the Third World should have some financial benefits. In its time, it enjoyed tremendous support. But it was weakened because, like the U.N., it was only as good as its members. If powerful states don't support international institutions, they will be handicapped," says MacMillan, provost of Trinity College, University of Toronto.

But, says Axworthy, it would be a mistake to compare the league with the U.N., in spite of its difficulties.

"The U.N.'s problems, and the hostility of (President George W.) Bush should not suggest that the organization is finished. It is not the League of Nations. It has institutions that are imperfect, but are the best alternative the world has today. And it is a multinational organization where people like me go off to resolve disputes in countries where nobody else is doing it."

Even before the recent crisis of confidence in the U.N., its shortcomings were clear to friends as well as foes.

On its 50th anniversary, it was labelled a"miasma of corruption" by former U.S. State Department official Stefan Halper, now a political science professor in the U.K."At the heart of the organization's mounting problems is almost total lack of accountability," he charged in a policy paper for the Washington-based conservative think-tank, the Cato Institute.

The budgetary process was flawed, he pointed out, and allowed for"bloated salaries, costly perks," and a wildly overgenerous pension scheme for bureaucrats who are often"time servers whose sloth is reputed to be of mythic proportions."

When Annan took office in 1997, he launched a"quiet revolution" to trim the organizational fat, making badly needed reforms. But he has not been able to make the U.N. bureaucracy fully accountable, and many of its workings are murky.

The political system of the U.N. has also been under the gun. The Security Council, with five veto-bearing permanent members, and a rotating membership chosen from regional groups that hold no vetos, has been criticized as an outdated legacy of the Cold War.

The 191-country General Assembly is regularly attacked as a"talking shop" that takes little responsibility for its actions. And the Geneva-based Human Rights Commission sparked outrage when countries that are some of the world's worst rights violators were elected to serve terms as its head.

With so many deeply rooted problems, the U.N. was rapidly moving toward a crisis of confidence when Sept. 11, 2001 accelerated the need for reappraisal.

In November, 2003, Annan called on a 16-member panel of experts to study ways of reforming the international system and meeting new global security threats that have sparked a bitter debate on when military action is justified, and what role the U.N. should play in"preventive war."

The results were tabled last month, in a report titled A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility. Its writers include former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, Egyptian diplomat Amre Moussa, head of the League of Arab States; and former French justice minister Robert Badinter.

Early reviews were encouraging:"The panel looks at the broader issues of 2005," says one senior diplomat."It's not one versus the other. They are inviting nations to redefine what collective security means, including poverty, hunger, disease and environmental degradation. They're recommending changes that would reinvigorate the U.N.'s purpose and mandate."

The 101 recommendations will be reviewed and voted on by the General Assembly at a summit in September. They include backing for a Canadian-inspired measure to protect civilians from genocide, ethnic cleansing and other atrocities even if is against their government's will.

"State sovereignty has always been seen as a shield, and that was true when the U.N. was first formed," says Canada's U.N. Ambassador Allan Rock."But now we've begun to look at the fundamental principles of humanity and ask the question: 'Are we going to stand by and watch genocide, or will we intervene when humanity demands we do so?'"

The most powerful countries are likely to oppose the recommendation, Rock admits. But, he says, if countries are unwilling to safeguard their citizens,"we believe there should be a shift from the right to intervene to the responsibility to protect. That's been adopted by the panel, so we've crossed that threshold. It doesn't necessarily mean automatic intervention, but it makes advocacy much easier."