The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the UN at 70

Over the last 70 years, the UN has spent upwards of $500 billion tackling the world’s greatest problems. Given the scope of its ambition, it’s no surprise that there have been some real successes, and some real failures too. These five facts explain the good, the bad and the ugly of the UN at 70. This piece has been repurposed from my column in TIME.

Protecting Global Health

UNICEF is one of the UN’s most visible and well-regarded agencies, as well it should be—it feeds more than 80 million people each year. Over the last 70 years, UNICEF has helped more than 2.6 billion people get access to clean water and vaccinated more than 400 million children against life-threatening diseases. In fact, the World Health Organization, a specialized agency within the UN organization, was the main driver behind the eradication of smallpox in 1980. When the smallpox initiative started in 1967, 15 million people were stricken by the disease every year; eradicating it is estimated to have saved 150 million lives. The UN did that, and continues to lead the charge in battling epidemics around the world.

(CBS News, UNICEF (a), UNICEF (b), The Guardian)

Aiding Refugees

The UN also has a strong track record when it comes to helping victims of war rebuild their lives. The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the agency charged with protecting and supporting refugees worldwide, and has done such strong work that it’s won two Nobel Peace Prizes (1954 & 1981). UNHCR currently provides food, shelter and security to nearly 12 million refugees around the world. These are people who desperately need the help—by the end of 2013, more than half the people being cared for by the UNHCR had been in exile for more than 5 years. The world has a short attention span when it comes to various humanitarian crises—that makes the sustained commitment of the UN all the more critical.

But caring for war survivors doesn’t just mean food and shelter—it also means calling those responsible for war to account. To that end, the UN has played a critical role in setting up the war tribunals that prosecuted Charles Taylor (Liberia) and Slobodan Milosevic (former Yugoslavia), among others. In total, the UN has handed out more than 250 indictments for war crimes. It would be a gross overstatement to say that justice was served in these cases; but the UN recognized the fundamental need for these proceedings and followed through with them. There is no other organization in the world with the moral authority to spearhead these efforts.

(UNHCR, War Crime Justice Project)

Preventing Wars

But for all the good the UN has done in prosecuting war criminals after the fact, it’s done a pretty awful job of preventing those war crimes from happening in the first place. Back in 1994, UN peacekeepers failed to stop the initial slaughter of Tutsis at the hands of Hutus, and the eventual result was a genocide that claimed the lives of 800,000 Rwandans, or 10 percent of the country’s population. And the UN can’t claim ignorance—a Canadian general of the Rwandan peacekeeping force cabled the UN to inform them of the growing horrors in Rwanda, but the UN Secretariat ignored his warnings.

In addition, during the Bosnian war, the UN designated the town of Srebrenica as a “safe zone” and disarmed all Bosniak Muslims who entered. But when the village was surrounded by Serbian forces in July 1995, the 110 Dutch soldiers left behind to guard the people they disarmed were no match—8,000 Muslim men and boys were butchered as a result. Similar UN “failures” have cost the lives of thousands in Sri Lanka and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

(The Independent, Global Policy Forum, New York Times (a), New York Times (b), graphic h/t tamasvarga67)

UN Scandals

Back in 1996, Saddam Hussein’s government was under the thumb of international sanctions. But sanctions too often hurt the populations of countries they’re targeting more than their governments. As such, the UN Security Council approved an “oil for food” program to allow Iraq to sell limited quantities of oil in exchange for food and other necessities. Big mistake—Saddam was able to use the program to rake in $1.8 billion in illicit income. This gave his regime a new lease on life, and did so under the auspices of the UN.

The Iraq scandal could be chalked up to political miscalculation; other scandals are nobody’s fault but the UN’s. Human rights groups are suing the UN after its peacekeepers triggered a cholera outbreak in Haiti by dumping raw sewage into the country’s largest river, claiming the lives of nearly 10,000 people and sickened hundreds of thousands more.

Further, since Ban Ki-Moon became Secretary General, there have been nearly 500 incidents of sexual misconduct perpetrated by UN peacekeepers, mostly on African missions. After years of reports and allegations, it was just this year that Ban removed a commanding officer from duty over the issue. Prior to his appointment, Ban had spoken forcefully on the issue numerous times. The fact that he has done so little while in a position of power defies explanation.

(Heritage Foundation, Reuters, CNN, graphic h/t The Higher Learning)

Secretaries-General

There have been eight UN Secretaries-General to date: Norway’s Trygve Lie, Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjold, Burma’s U Thant, Austria’s Kurt Waldheim, Peru’s Javier Perez de Cuellar, Egypt’s Boutros Boutros Ghali, Ghana’s Kofi Annan, and South Korea’s Ban Ki-moon. The first men to hold the post came from a variety of different backgrounds before assuming the UN’s top job. As such, they brought with them unique perspectives to governing the institution. But Cuellar held various positions within the UN organization for more than a decade before becoming Secretary General in 1982. Kofi Annan spent more than 30 years with the UN before his appointment, and Ban Ki-Moon has been employed by the UN on-and-off since 1975. While direct experience is usually a desirable trait in a new hire, the UN is in desperate need of reform. In other words, the UN needs to start looking for leaders who haven’t risen through the ranks of the very system they are expected to shake up. Ban’s term ends late next year; we’ll see what the UN has learned from its history by the end of 2016.

(Encyclopedia Britannica, CNN, United Nations)

Banner Photo h/t: United Nations Photo