In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

I joined the United Nations on a wave of reform—indeed, the position that I occupy, that of Deputy Secretary General, was part of Kofi Annan’s first reform package in 1997. The reforms put in place at that time did much to restore confidence in the organization—confidence that had been badly eroded, above all, by the UN’s failures in Bosnia and Rwanda. Those reforms continued throughout the 1990s, and we introduced a second wave of reforms in 2002. Thanks in part to these changes, the organization emerged from a prolonged funding crisis with the United States. I vividly remember the day when Senators Helms and Biden visited UN Headquarters with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and how that led to the implementation of the Helms-Biden Act, under which the US eventually paid off most of its arrears due to the UN in 2001. I also recall the palpable optimism of the moment in September 2000 when member states adopted the Millennium Declaration—a remarkable document which showed widespread confidence that humanity could make measurable progress towards peace, security, disarmament, human rights, democracy, and good governance. And I think all of us who serve the United Nations were proud when, a year later, the Security Council responded swiftly and decisively to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Today, however, it is difficult not to feel that we have, in some respects at least, slid back down the greasy pole to somewhere near the place where we started eight years ago. The organization has been deeply scarred by the divisions over the war in Iraq. Many who supported the war saw the Security Council’s failure to authorize action as symptomatic of the UN’s inability to provide a muscular response louise fréchette 2 THE UNITED NATIONS adapting to the twenty-first century 9 to today’s threats. Many who opposed the war were disillusioned that the UN appeared helpless to prevent what they saw as a premature and dangerous war, fought on uncertain grounds. As a result—and notwithstanding the deployment by the Security Council of a host of new peacekeeping missions to stabilize other troublespots—at the very time where they were very divided over the Iraq issue, people on all sides experienced a crisis of confidence in the United Nations. The controversies surrounding the Oil-for-Food Program only added fuel to the fire, as did other failings in the conduct of staff and peacekeepers. Today the calls for reform are stronger than ever. Once again, the Secretary General is leading the charge. In September 2003, he warned that the international community stood at a fork in the road, and then set up the High-level Panel (HLP) to put forward a new vision of collective security that could command the confidence of all states. It was also he who set up the Millennium Project, to give both rich and poor nations a plan of action to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Those two bodies produced their reports this winter, and two weeks ago, the Secretary General published his own report entitled, In Larger Freedom. That report offers member states a package of decisions which, taken together, could forge an effective multilateral response to the great challenges of our time, and make the United Nations itself an effective instrument of that response. For some of our harshest critics, this is a futile exercise. They view the United Nations as a worn-out relic of a bygone era, inefficient and ineffective, corrupt and morally bankrupt—in short, next to useless. But if that is true, why do States entrust so many vitally important tasks to the United Nations? Why have they turned to it to spearhead an unprecedented global response to the Asian tsunami, and to the more recent earthquake in the region? Why did they call on the UN to help with the creation of an interim government in Iraq, and to provide technical assistance during the recent elections? Indeed, why do member states put more than 70,000 of their troops at the disposal of the United Nations to deploy in peacekeeping missions in four continents —which, I feel compelled to add, the UN does on the impressively small budget of around $4 billion a year. I could, in fact, spend my entire speech listing all the things that the UN does, day in and day out, to save lives and help stabilize societies. But I won’t. I could expound...

Share