United Nations needs streamlining

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 10, 2004 by Robert F. Drinan

As a member of the Council to the United Nations Association, I spent two days recently consulting at the United Nations in New York. The secretary general, Kofi Annan, spoke at dinner reminding the 60-member group of the complexities of the 191 nations (192 if one includes the Holy See) that make up the United Nations.

The association has existed for some 40 years, urging, exhorting and inspiring the United Nations to streamline its outdated and ineffective structures. The obsolete mechanisms of the United Nations are self-evident. There is no reason why the victors in a war that ended in 1945 should be the five supreme rulers of an organization that embraces 6.1 billion persons alive today. Nor should a tiny nation like Togo have a vote equivalent to that cast

The United Nations Association and the World Federalists have been advocating the reform of the United Nations for many years. But a visit of 36 hours at the United Nations makes vivid the realization that it cannot be reformed without the active leadership of the United States. That leadership is nowhere in sight. Indeed it is clear in talking to the leaders of the United Nations that the United States is the elephant in the parlor. The United States has openly defied the United Nations in its war in Iraq. It has also aggressively opposed the development of the International Criminal Court, which would be a permanent Nuremberg--ideal for the forthcoming trial in Iraq of Saddam Hussein.

Kofi Annan, who grew up in Ghana, is a skilled diplomat who expressed in forthright terms his gratitude for the existence and the work of the United Nations Association. He also made clear that he is aware of the deep-seated indifference, even hostility, to the United Nations in parts of the American society. Among the influential people on the Council to the United Nations Association is the Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Conference of Churches and a former member of Congress from Pennsylvania. He noted that United Nations Day, Oct. 24, falls this year on a Sunday. He expressed the hope that the 50 million congregants in the National Conference of Churches could this year, along with all believers, expressly pray for the United Nations that day. His pleas reminded me of the failure of Catholic leaders to work actively for restructuring the United Nations. For 50 years several popes have spoken to the General Assembly. But many people associated with the United Nations have rightly or wrongly, generally negative feelings about the activities of the Holy See at world conferences held in Mexico City; Cairo, Egypt; and Beijing.

The Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has recently made a vigorous call for a much stronger role for religious commitment to the work of the United Nations. Indeed, the archbishop has openly declared that limiting the sovereignty of nations is essential. He does not endorse "world government" but a contractual arrangement among nations to deter crimes shielded by sovereignty. The Vatican's approach to U.N. reform has been more cautious. Pope John Paul II has recommended that the United Nations be a "moral center where all the nations of the world feel at home and develop a shared awareness of being a family of nations."

In the 1960s there developed in the United States a vigorous Catholic Association for International Peace. Its secretariat was with Msgr. George Higgins at the old National Catholic Welfare Conference. For apparently bureaucratic reasons, the association died of neglect. Its revival would be a godsend.

The United Nations Association of the United States of America (www.una usa.org) is an organization with great vigor but with an aging membership, in which Catholics appear to be underrepresented.

One leaves the United Nations with a deep sense of "what might have been." If an American president shared the convictions and courage of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the United Nations could fulfill its vision and its dream.

A visit to the United Nations is overwhelming. The complexity of the organization tends to obscure the simplicity and the urgency of its mission. But one understands anew that lf the United Nations could function successfully, the entire planet could be transformed.

But the United Nations cannot work unless there exists a spiritual force beyond every political development. Annan said it well: "One should never underestimate the power of prayer. When we speak up, when we pray, individually and collectively, with one voice or with a multitude of voices, we can overwhelm the sound of war. We can overcome the seeds of intolerance. We can forge the peace and justice that is the birthright of every human being."

[Fr. Robert Drinan is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.]