With his ten years as secretary-general of the UN coming to a close, Kofi Annan took one last parting shot at President George W. Bush yesterday. In keeping with the cool, diplomatic tone he has set for himself in the past decade, Annan didn’t mention Bush by name, keeping his remarks broad—but pointed. He did, however, mention the US by name. “This country has historically been in the vanguard of the global human rights movement,” he told a crowd in Independence, Missouri. “But that lead can only be maintained if America remains true to its principles, including in the struggle against terrorism. When it appears to abandon its own ideas and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused.”
“Troubled and confused” would be a good way to describe the UN these days. As historians sit down to assess the UN’s Annan period, one of the principal questions will have to do with the legacy the Ghanaian diplomat will leave for his successor. It is hard to argue that the UN’s prestige and effectiveness have not lessened in any way over the past ten years. From Iran to Israel to the United States to Sudan, governments the world over are ignoring or reacting with hostility to UN resolutions condemning their behaviour. The UN’s successive human rights commissions have been plagued with bad press, as countries with poor human rights records set the agenda. The UN proved ineffective in bringing a diplomatic solution to the US-Iraq standoff over weapons of mass destruction, which eventually led to the current war in Iraq. And many of the organization’s initiatives are hijacked for the political purposes of member countries.
But before all these failures are laid at Kofi Annan’s feet, it’s worthwhile to note that it is the member nations of the UN who push through politically-motivated resolutions, who ignore the UN’s will whenever it doesn’t suit them, and who condemn the UN when it doesn’t see eye to eye with them. The UN is a body with no power of enforcement—if it weren’t, it would be a world government. So the UN, by definition, can only be as strong and effective as its member countries make it. Whether or not one agrees with the positions Annan has taken over the years, his legacy will likely be that of a lone, diplomatic voice, slowly drowned out by the growing screams, rhetoric and violence that are shaping the world today. If the UN has failed, that failure belongs to the human race as a whole.
Maisonneuve MediaScout
December 12, 2006
