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Senator urges major reforms at U.N.
By: Administrative Account | Source: The Washington Times
October 20, 2007 1:32AM EST
October 19, 2007
By Rachel Kaufman - The United Nations is flawed by design and needs to be changed if it is going to serve as an effective world body, a senior Senate Foreign Relations Committee Republican said this week.
U.N. supporters agreed that reform is necessary but said the question is how it should proceed.
"Any organization in which the majority of members are not fully democratic, by definition, will not have a perfect performance on promoting human rights and spreading democracy," Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota told an American Enterprise Institute meeting.
Mr. Coleman cited the Group of 77 developing-country bloc that now numbers 130, the 118-member Non-Aligned Movement and the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference as typically blocking initiatives pushed by democratic countries while their members contribute little to the U.N. budget.
The G-77 countries, for example, contribute about 10 percent of the regular U.N. budget while the United States contributes 22 percent, according to the U.N. Association of the USA.
The countries in these groups, according to AEI, have blocked a number of initiatives such as a resolution on human rights violations in Uzbekistan and reforms of the U.N. Secretariat.
Terry Miller, director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for International Trade and Economics, told the conference, "One person, one vote is a democratic ideal. One country one vote, is something else entirely."
"And when many of the countries casting those votes are not democracies, then I think the question of just whose views are being represented is a very real one," he said.
The new Human Rights Council, in the first year of its existence, has "made a mockery of its stated purpose," Mr. Coleman said.
He criticized the council for focusing primarily on Israel.
"They didn't talk about Darfur, they didn't talk about Zimbabwe, they didn't talk about Cuba," he said.
The issue, though, is not whether but how the U.N. should be reformed, according to David Smith, deputy director of the U.N. Information Center in Washington.
"If the U.S. stands four-square behind the reform process and helps the U.N. to work diplomatically to achieve it, then it is achievable," Mr. Smith said yesterday.
According to Tim Wirth, president of the U.N. Foundation, "What you see depends on where you sit."
Mr. Wirth said the groups Mr. Coleman cited "feel very small in a world of tremendous economic power" and "probably feel that they have to band together to have any influence at all."
He said, though, that the U.S. should approach U.N. reform diplomatically.
"If you don't like the mission, change the mission. The idea of trying to nickel-and-dime the funding is a backdoor way of trying to diminish the institution," he said.
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