UN Watch  is a Geneva—based organization keeping tabs on the world body. Its subscription—only 'Wednesday Watch' weekly bulletin can be a valuable source of information. (Subscribe here.) This week's edition contains valuable insight on the resignation yesterday of Kofi Annan's deputy Iqbal Riza prior to the issuance of the Volcker Report, and on the recent 95 page report of the UN's own high level panel on reform:

Riza, to be sure, may have had other reasons for leaving.  Harsh criticism from the UN staff union accused the former Pakistani diplomat of protecting abusers within the system and targeting the whistleblowers instead.  Riza was also accused of nepotism because of his son's UN job in Lebanon.  Nor will he be missed by those who recall the events of 1994.  Riza's reputation will be forever marred by his role, together with Annan, in overseeing the UN's spectacular failure to prevent the Rwandan genocide.  As Dore Gold's new book reminds us, when Canadian general Romeo Dallaire begged the peacekeeping department for permission to destroy weapons and avert the massacres, Riza ordered Dallaire not to intervene. In an interview with PBS, Riza dismissed the tragedy. 'Look, since the 1960s, there have been cycles of violence — Tutsis against Hutus, Hutus against Tutsis. I'm sorry to put it so cynically.' 

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The report envisions an expanded, geographically representative Security Council that would grant the UN greater legitimacy.  Ironically, however, it is precisely in many of the states that stand to join — Germany, for example— where the UN already enjoys the greatest legitimacy.  The true legitimacy deficit lies in the reality that the UN's premier human right bodies this year were unable to condemn the world's worst human rights crime — Sudan's killings in Darfur; and, a corollary, that repressive regimes, never elected to represent anyone, continue to dominate UN proceedings.

Thus when it comes to confronting the glaring failures of the Commission on Human Rights, the report — while frank in recognizing the Commission's 'eroding credibility and professionalism,' and that 'States have sought membership [...] to protect themselves against criticism' — ultimately offers up a remedy that is a demonstrable failure.  Expanding membership from the current 53 to all 191 states would be clearly damaging to the cause of human rights.

Ed Lasky   12 23 04