Update from Mark Malloch Brown
Pam Perraud, NGO Director
Things are changing for the better at the UN according to Kofi Annan’s new Chief of Staff, the former head of UN Development Program, Mark Malloch Brown. He was guest speaker at the Foreign Policy Association held at McGraw Hill’s Headquarters in New York on October 6, 2005.
Everyone was curious about how things are going these days at the UN. He candidly described his new job and how he viewed the institution. He talked about a few of the current crises that fill his daily “in basket” which include some of the world’s worst trouble spots – Iraq, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Iran and North Korea.
He said the UN is attempting to solve these issues by finding internal allies and seeking outside partners but has to manage all of these while working on broader reform. He sees his role as mobilizing the institution from its somewhat passive role to a more active one, bringing forth its full power for good.
Concerning the recent World Summit at the UN in September and actual reforms being proposed at the UN he said the following –
- He felt the recent Summit was a relative success because the Millennium Goals were reaffirmed and the UN is now in the process of making real reform to make the institution better able to handle crises.
- He feels that now because there are a majority of democracies in the General Assembly, some 115 out of the 191 member states, there should be a “Democracy Caucus” to move forward on key issues. He hopes they will vote as a block to institute more democratic reforms in the GA itself. Such a reform group already exists, see www.democracycaucus.org for more details.
- He was disappointed that despite progress in other areas of reform, details concerning the composition of the Human Rights Council were not agreed upon at the Summit.
- He thinks that the “decision by consensus” which has been the traditional way the UN has operated, is now obsolete and an obstacle for change. He recommends that the GA change to regular “majority wins” votes.
- He sees the remaining 14 months of Kofi Annan’s last tenure as Secretary General as a time for the Secretary General to be “in a hurry” to fix administrative problems and set up reforms. Personally, he said he’s trying to keep the idea of being a “ lame duck” at bay.
- When specifically asked about whether he took seriously the US threat of cutting off funding to the UN if it did not reform, he replied that he thought that there was little chance the Congress would actually vote for it. He also thought that the US’s new Ambassador, John Bolton was going to give the UN more of a chance to reform than most people thought.
In general, he was optimistic about reform and thought that there was a great deal of support and consensus regarding UN reform because everyone agreed it was too important an institution to leave crippled and ineffective.