Column: The United Nations - The Time is Right for Reform

The United Nations - The Time is Right for Reform

No matter how you view the United Nations (UN), one fact remains constant - the UN has been reduced to a dysfunctional and nearly irrelevant organization. There is no doubt in my mind that the time for reform is now.

The UN's inability to act in the interests of world peace and security, their mishandling of the Oil-for-Food program, the litany of scandals involving peacekeepers, and their ineffectiveness to prevent tyrannical dictatorships from gaining international legitimacy from UN membership raises serious questions over the role the UN should play on the international stage in the future.

In January of 2003, Libya was elected as chairman of the UN Human Rights Commission, the UN's main human rights watchdog tasked with receiving complaints about human rights abuses. As the Chair of the Commission, Libya was the UN watchdog for human rights abuses while at home, the government criminalized free expression and association, and imposed the death penalty on those who criticize Col. Muammar Qaddafi or the 1969 revolution that brought him to power.

Just as shocking, the UN sought to ensure that pre-war Iraq was one of the countries represented on the Conference on Disarmament and actually promoted the idea that Saddam Hussein's Iraq should lead this Conference. As a nation who has defiantly thumbed their nose at international demands to disarm, this hardly seemed like an appropriate role for the likes of Saddam Hussein.

What is the relevance of an international agency that condemns the United States for acting on behalf of the interests of freedom around the globe, promotes anti-US sentiment in the world, and idly stands by and watches one international crisis after another go unchecked and unresolved? The answer is clear - such an organization has no relevance and must be overhauled and restructured. The Henry J. Hyde United Nations Reform Act of 2005 mandates changes to the United Nations by applying pressure on the UN to make several necessary and critical reforms.

Many of my colleagues and I remain supportive of the UN's goal of facilitating democracy, mediating disputes, monitoring the peace, and feeding the hungry, but we are opposed to legendary bureaucratization, nepotism, political grandstanding, billions of dollars spent on multitudes of programs with meager results, and outright misappropriation of funds.

The time is right to ensure that important reforms of many parts of the United Nations system are implemented. The reforms called for in this proposal are backed by the withholding of 50% of the U.S. assessed contribution to the United Nations regular budget until the Secretary of State certifies that at least 32 of 39 reforms have been adopted. In addition, the UN Reform Act mandates UN budget oversight, inserts accountability and ethics into the UN, reforms the UN Commission on Human Rights, strengthens the International Atomic Energy Agency, and introduces accountability principles in UN peacekeeping missions. Bringing a new level of accountability and transparency to the UN will reap years of rewards in the future.

If the United States does not step in to assert leadership and discipline in the UN, no one else will. Unlike other proposals that call for the withdrawal of funding or the withdrawal from the UN, this reform package uses the powerful inducement of taxpayer support for specific and measurable changes at the UN - the taxpayers of the United States deserve nothing less.

Despite international calls for reform, the UN continues to talk about changes and refuses to take serious steps forward to make significant and meaningful reforms. Clearly, the ability to truly reform the UN rests solely with that organization. The UN can continue the debate, but without constructive change, the U.S., as the largest financial contributor to the organization, can send a clear message that our valuable resources will no longer be available.

During President Bush?s September 12, 2002 address to UN, he asked "Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?"

Unfortunately, some of these questions have been answered - Security Council resolutions are not honored and UN resolutions are cast aside without consequence. But today, we can and must make a difference, for if we fail to bring about meaningful reform, the UN will be truly relegated to irrelevancy.

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