Down with the UN (July 2003)
Several months ago Riccardo Barenghi, editor of the Italian Communist daily newspaper, “Il Manifesto”, used the royal “we” in one of his weekly editorials to express a blatantly blasphemous wish which I’m sure will shock most Americans: “Even though we are pacifists,” he wrote, “when we stand in front of the mirror every morning and look ourselves straight in the eye, we can’t help but admit that what we really hope for deep in our souls is that the war in Iraq lasts as long as possible, even if means countless deaths, because that’ll teach the Americans to go to war!”
Well, as soon Bush declared that the war phase was over, when everyone who had been against it began invoking the need for the United Nations to have a highly predominant role in its aftermath, I, too, was tempted to use the royal “we” in order to say that when we look in the mirror we, too, think the unthinkable. That is, that the most intelligent bomb of all would be one thrown on the United Nations building in New York. However, I refrained from writing this at the time. Though I’m not a pacifist, I’m certainly not a person of violence, and I didn’t want to risk that someone might misunderstand that my bomb was anything but purely metaphorical.
During the latest Gulf War, before beginning a series of lessons with my classes on Iraq and the role of the Security Council, I visited the UN web site in order to gather some material for my students. The first thing that I found was a beautiful map of the entire organization. Thrilled to find such a complete but concise table at a glance on the screen of my computer, I decided to print it straight off so that I could photocopy it and distribute it to my students. As soon as I had the print out in my hand, my pleasure turned to pain and the first thing that came out of my mouth was the following exclamation: “Oh, my God! All of those bureaucratic mouths to feed!” If you’d like to remain with your mouth wide open with astonishment when you see the just how tentacular the United Nations and its agencies are, just go to http://www.un.org/aboutun/chart.html.
Not mention all of the redundancies! I wonder for example, if any of the three drug control agencies, i.e. the UNDCP, the United Nations Drug Control Program, the ODC, the Office on Drugs and Crime, and the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, even know what the other two are doing, if they read each other’s reports, if they talk to each other on the telephone, if there is some logical reason why there needs to be three different organizations dealing with the drug problem other than that of offering a tax-free golden salary to so many otherwise unemployed university graduates.
I hoped that my students would notice that on that very same piece of
paper, in that very complex table of agencies there were also: the
World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organizations,
three agencies that are continually being targeted by No-Global demonstrators.
Indeed, it’s hard to understand the exalted sacrosanctity of one of the
organs of the United Nations, namely, the Security Council, which is really
much less representative than all of the others. With its 15 members,
10 of which change every two years, and its 5 permanent members, countries
which have the right to veto any important measure for the mere merit of
having won the Second World War, it might be proper to consider the organ
not only deficit in terms of democracy, but rather anachronistic.
The sins of the UN palaces were recently amply analyzed in a series
of articles written by Mauro Suttora for Il Foglio, all of which confirm
our worst convictions, not only regarding the waste and uselessness, but
the enormous harm that the UN has propagated in the 58 years of its long
career. Suttora also says that “since its real scope is to strip
formations of sociologists and intellectuals from the files of the unemployment
lines, its mission can be deemed computed.”
And who pays for it all? Of its over 200 members, most countries contribute for less than 1% of the budget. Which countries bear then the real financial burden? The United States (25%, recently negotiated to 23%), Japan (14%), and Russia, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Canada, and Spain (less than 2% each). And just who are these countries that pick up the bill for everybody else? The perpetually demonized G8, of course (excluding Spain).
Is it any wonder then that the government of the United States and its citizens have a certain reluctance toward the United Nations? We were thrown out of the human rights commission for the likes of a country like Sudan! And to add insult to injury, they’ve given this term’s presidency to Libia! Then they present a quarter of the entire bill to Uncle Sam and they call him arrogant and protest when the people with the purse strings pretend to be listened to!
There’s a lot of talk these days about reforming the United Nations, but I wonder how you can reform an organization that is pervaded with corruption by about 80 percent. I think it’s useful to have an Assembly General where all countries of the world can at least let their voices be heard. However, to decide the destiny of the world, it might be better to institute a new Organization of World Democracies, like the one suggested at the last congress of the Transnational Radical Party last November, or the one depicted in Italian Radical Party leader Daniele Capezzone’s new book soon to be released in English entitled, "A radical shock for the 21st century".
Sandra Giovanna Giacomazzi teaches Law and Economics at the Liceo Europeo Umberto I in Turin, Italy. She also writes for the Roman daily, L'Opinione della Libertà and was awarded the Mario Soldati Prize for Journalism and Criticism for 2002.
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