UN Effectiveness

"There is rarely a vision beyond fundraising, and rarely an organizing narrative that draws together disparate capacities. What is needed is a complete overhaul of strategic and operational leadership in the UN. Regrettably, the leadership, management and co-ordination of the international community's efforts have not risen even to the challenges we currently face. Unless we radically improve the quality of the leadership of the international effort in humanitarian crises, we will not succeed in dealing with what is ahead. In all but one of the case studies for this review, UN leadership was poor. This was especially true in the larger disasters." Paddy Ashdown, Humanitarian Emergency Response Review

So much for the salvation of the world at the dedicated and faithful hands of the experts assembled by that great world body, the United Nations. Acquiring the required operating funds to launch humanitarian missions all around the Globe on behalf of global citizenry, those who live in countries who are advantaged by good governance and wealth, transferring funding to the world body on behalf of the disadvantaged has not resulted in needed resource delivery.

Raising funding is evidently no problem; those member countries who can afford the tariff cough it up, leaving it to the expert panels working on behalf of humanity under the auspices of the United Nations, to spend it wisely. Spending the funding raised by UN appeals to its membership to ameliorate natural disasters, bringing medical and food aid and shelter where it is required; operating refugee camps; diplomatically intervening in calamitous conflicts.

The world depends on the work of the United Nations. That august body was organized, established and is trusted to launch missions to rescue humanity from nature's disasters, and more tellingly from humanity's own folly. The study just concluded on the effectiveness of the UN's various humanitarian missions studied responses to recent humanitarian disasters; famine in Niger, flooding in Pakistan, earthquake in Haiti.

The conclusion reached is dispiriting and most definitely unflattering to the purported professionalism of the world body. While governments regard the United Nations as the "only legitimate authority" in grave and desperate situations where a specific government of a country affected by some kind of disaster proves incapable of mounting its own humanitarian response, the result of the study indicates the authority's effectiveness is sadly lacking.

Only the UN's World Food Program is exonerated for the extent and value of its effectiveness in its ability to "rapidly deliver[ing] food to seven million people in flood-hit Pakistan". And UNICEF is pointed out as another success story, supplying infant food throughout Niger. But the failure of the UN seen in its "inability to treat and contain" Haiti's cholera outbreak does not reflect well on its capabilities and dedication.

The report points out the communication dysfunctionality of the various UN agencies, commenting on their need to work together "more collegially". Critics of the United Nations - and there are many, mostly those drawing their conclusions from the political sphere of diplomatic influence and ingrained corruption - will not be surprised that this aspect of the world body's vital work is also horribly impaired by incompetence.

The United Nations has become a lobby emporium for some of the world's most human-rights-abusing nations; its effectiveness is stifled by bureaucratic ennui and moral corruption. Its submission to the ideological dictates of member-countries outnumbering democratic, forward-looking countries of the world merely reflect its unforgivable inadequacies.