António Guterres of Portugal was sworn in today to the worst job in the world. He is the new United Nations Secretary-General and will start a five-year term in January 1, just weeks before Donald Trump takes over as President of the country that created the UN and remains its most powerful and influential member state.
Guterres is a well-known, tough and experienced diplomat who was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for 10 years (2005-2015) and Prime Minister of Portugal before that (1995 to 2002). But at the UN, he may be emasculated from the start by Trump.
His acceptance speech to the 193-nation UN General Assembly was cautious. “The United Nations needs to be nimble, efficient and effective. It must focus more on delivery and less on process; more on people and less on bureaucracy,” he said.
All of those things describe what the UN is not. It is a lumbering bureaucracy almost all of which is unaccountable to courts in any country, including the US, because of diplomatic immunity. Its regular budget of $5.4 billion for the 2016-2017 biennium is modest but governments contribute another $19 billion as extra-budgetary funds for humanitarian work and development spending and about $8.5 for peace keeping operations.
The US contributes about 22% for the regular budget followed by Japan at nearly 10% and China at 8%. Nearly three-quarters of this budget is spent on staff salaries and administration.
The US also contributes about 29% for peacekeeping, followed by China at 10.3% and Japan at 8%. The extra-budgetary contributions are voluntary but pay for the bulk of the UN’s field work around the world in support of development projects run by member governments. Almost none of its money goes directly to the people.
Guterres’s pledge to focus on the people is generous but the UN is a servant of governments and does not respond directly to appeals from people anywhere. Nor is it accountable to them.
However, its various agencies do excellent work that benefits people directly in many fields. It includes humanitarian and food aid, protection of human and labor rights, caring for children and mothers, implementing the rights to equality of women, preventing diseases and dealing with epidemics, combating environmental pollution, and building support for slowing down climate change. All of them are financed by extra-budgetary funds and also receive money separately from private foundations and government aid institutions.
The Preamble of the Charter that founded the UN is eloquent. It begins with the words, “We the peoples of the United Nations” and affirms determination “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind; and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small; and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”
The people pledge “to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors; and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security; and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest; and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples.”
Regrettably, several of these uplifting pledges are unfulfilled after 71 years of existence because the UN can achieve only as much as its government members allow. And they are too often enmeshed in politics and power rivalries for the preamble’s ideals to be translated into concrete gains on the ground.
The UN and most of its members have always followed the US lead because of not only its power and wealth but also its idealism and fairness, as compared with the former colonial powers and empires.
Now, Trump’s arrival may scupper that idealism and throw the UN into more disarray than ever because of a new and deadlier phase in power politics among major countries, including the US, China and Russia.
The name “United Nations” was coined by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and first used in the “Declaration by United Nations” of 1 January 1942, during the Second World War, when representatives of 26 nations pledged to continue fighting together against the Axis Powers.
In fact, the UN began as a coalition of the willing in a world war. The modern UN came into existence on 24 October 1945 to prevent wars. Its Charter was signed by 50 countries and it comprises 193 countries now.
As it stands, the UN is accused of ignoring thousands of deaths in Haiti allegedly caused by toxic waste dumped into the water system by troops protected by the UN flag. It has also fallen far short of doing enough to prevent and respond to appalling crimes of sexual violence and exploitation committed by UN peacekeeping soldiers in African countries.
“In the end, it comes down to values … We want the world our children inherit to be defined by the values enshrined in the UN Charter: peace, justice, respect, human rights, tolerance and solidarity,” Guterres said. Hopefully, those words are more than fine intentions.
He noted three strategic priorities for the UN: working for peace; supporting sustainable development; and reforming its internal management. Each is a mess currently and requires strong and stubborn leadership to improve even slightly.
Whether Guterres can succeed in the Trump era depends greatly on the foreign policies chosen by the new administration. Perhaps, they will become clearer after the president-elect names his foreign secretary on Tuesday.
Guterres is said to have made history already because all previous UN chiefs were chosen behind closed doors by the UN Security Council. This time, there was public discussion of several candidates including women before the Security Council went into secret conclave.
That process may set the tone of his term in office. The governments that have a stranglehold on the UN – the US, Russia, China, France and Britain — chose the UN chief in secrecy as usual but allowed a veneer of transparency.
Guterres may just have to keep his head down while Trump’s America, Russia and China duke it out in power-plays under a veneer of serving the people’s yearning for peace.