Successive American administrations have had sometimes rocky, sometimes rosy relations with the UN, but one feature which all US governments have universally admired at the UN has been its peacekeeping missions. These undertakings have over the decades prevented the outbreak of conflict, disarmed combatants, overseen elections and trained police forces - all without involving US troops and saving Washington millions of dollars.
Today they number eighteen and involve over 100,000 UN soldiers. But now they may be in trouble. The US owes almost $500 million in back-dues to support these operations because several years ago Congress insisted that our nation should pay only 25% of the overall costs of these endeavors though we could afford more. Without these US outlays, these vital enterprises may now be crippled or forced to end.
Successive American administrations have had sometimes rocky, sometimes rosy relations with the UN, but one feature which all US governments have universally admired at the UN has been its peacekeeping missions. These undertakings have over the decades prevented the outbreak of conflict, disarmed combatants, overseen elections and trained police forces - all without involving US troops and saving Washington millions of dollars.
Today they number eighteen and involve over 100,000 UN soldiers. But now they may be in trouble. The US owes almost $500 million in back-dues to support these operations because several years ago Congress insisted that our nation should pay only 25% of the overall costs of these endeavors though we could afford more. Without these US outlays, these vital enterprises may now be crippled or forced to end.
Josette Sheeran, the new chief of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) officially took up her duties yesterday by calling for a renewed commitment to combating hunger.
Executive Director Josette Sheeran said "despite enormous efforts by WFP and its donors and partners, we are losing ground on hunger with 4 million more people malnourished each year than the year before. Together, we can turn that tide."
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A new United Nations-backed study says that one third of today's Iraqi population lives in poverty with more than 5 per cent living in extreme poverty.
"Prepared by the Iraqi Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology with the support of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the statistics show that a high percentage of people in Iraq live under various levels of poverty and human deprivation despite the country's huge economic and natural resources." More
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon named four new top officials to his cabinet last week.
"Mr. Ban named a United States diplomat as chief political officer, a Chinese veteran of international organizations to head economic and social affairs, a Japanese international civil servant to manage public information and an Egyptian diplomat to oversee General Assembly management." More
Lee Feinstein is senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of a new report published by the Council on Foreign Relations, titled, Darfur and Beyond: What Is Needed to Prevent Atrocities.
Ban Ki-moon won Washington's support for the job of Secretary General on the strength of his campaign pledge to "reform" the United Nations.
More than a year ago the United Nations adopted the "responsibility to protect." The General Assembly's endorsement of this revolutionary principle removes blind reverence for national sovereignty as an excuse to look the other way when innocents are being wiped out. In elevating this principle, the nations of the world said that they prioritize the right of people to live over the right of states to do as they please. The question now is whether this pledge was humanitarian hypocrisy, or did they have something serious in mind?
The most important "reform" Ban can undertake is to convert these three inspiring words into a program of action. The goal, as Ban himself said, should be to "operationalize" the responsibility to protect by building up the UN's capacity to respond early and effectively at the first sign of concern.
The place to start is by building a more nimble and capable peacekeeping capacity at the United Nations. Despite steady improvement since the 1990s, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations still lacks the capacity to deploy troops when it counts.
The absence of a rapid response capability is a problem that dates back to the UN's founding. But the time may be right to address this deficiency head on. Building on President Bush's proposal in the State of the Union for a voluntary international reserve of civilians, Ban should push for the establishment of an international strategic reserve of troops that could be designated by states to be available for peacekeeping missions authorized by the Security Council. Nations would train troops to international standards. Earmarked troops would exercise with one another. States would be compensated for their efforts, and would receive a premium if they gave formal approval for their forces, which would remain under each state's national command, to be deployed to a UN mission.
In adopting the responsibility to protect last year, the United Nations accepted the principle that mass atrocities which take place in one state are the concern of all states. The new secretary-general should begin to bridge the gap between these words and the institution's deeds by taking the General Assembly's endorsement of the responsibility to protect as a mandate and a mission statement.
The long-term goal is to avoid the stark options of "Doing Nothing" and "Sending in the Marines." That requires establishing a pattern of international response at the first signs of concern. The place to start is with concrete steps to build capacity -- diplomatic, economic, legal, and military -- in support of the principle of humanitarian protection. Adoption of the responsibility to protect has begun to remove the classical excuses for doing nothing in the face of mass atrocities. What is needed now is the capacity and political will to back it up.
The Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Darfur, along with an African Union (AU) envoy, will travel to Sudan next week in an attempt to revive the stalled peace process.
"Jan Eliasson and the AU's Salim Ahmed Salim will travel on Monday to the capital, Khartoum, and to Darfur itself for talks with the Government and with representatives of those rebel groups that did not sign the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) in May last year." More