16 May 2000
Text: Holbrooke Remarks on UN Peacekeeping Reform May 16
(He says UN peacekeeping management must change) (2860) United Nations -- Stressing that the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) must be reformed or "the very future of the United Nations is endangered," U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said May 16 that the General Assembly must not only give the department more staff and management capabilities, but the ancient system for financing peacekeeping operations must be changed. Holbrooke, who is the chief U.S. envoy to the United Nations, kicked off the General Assembly's Fifth Committee debate on financing peacekeeping operations. The discussion began as the newly enlarged operation in Sierra Leone met with resistance by the rebels it was supposed to disarm; the UN prepares to field another large, complex mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC); and an enlarged mission in Lebanon is about to get underway. The UN also has major operations in East Timor and Kosovo. "The principle of collective responsibility of all member states for peacekeeping financing is undermined by a scale that today concentrates 98 percent of responsibility in the hands of just 30 members," Holbrooke said. "We find some countries paying beyond their means, and some who could pay more assessed next to nothing. While we all have our own interpretations of what 'capacity to pay' really means, no one can argue that the current system works fairly," he said. Holbrooke said that: -- the U.S. will back a "substantial expansion in DPKO staff; -- the failure to change the 1973 scale of assessment for financing peacekeeping has now put the "system on the brink of collapse;" -- a new tax bracket for middle income countries assessing them at more than 20 percent but less than 100 percent should be considered; -- the reliance on a single contributor should be reduced by imposing a ceiling rate; -- thresholds should be implemented so that countries move up or down based on changing economic indicators; and -- spread equitably among those who can afford it, the cost of peacekeeping barely registers against national defense expenditures. "The next few months will be a test of whether our professed commitment to UN peacekeeping and to the people that depend on it, is real," the ambassador said. Following is the US/UN text: (begin text) May 16, 2000 Statement by Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, 5th Committee, May 16, 2000 Madam Chairman, Mr. Secretary General: This meeting, planned long before the current crises in Africa, comes at an unusually important and urgent moment. Today we are at a crossroads for one of the original core functions of the United Nations -- peacekeeping. What begins here in this room must culminate in true reform -- in the way we finance peacekeeping, and in the way DPKO functions -- or else the very future of the United Nations is endangered. That's because for all of the important things the UN system does around the world -- from the work of UNICEF and UNDP to WHO -- this organization was created 55 years ago primarily to keep the peace. No matter how useful the work of the vital specialized agencies is, the UN will ultimately be judged by its peacekeeping scorecard more than anything else. That record has many successes, but it is once again under serious challenge today in five widely dispersed parts of the world. As you know, last week six of my Security Council colleagues and I were in Africa to assess the prospects for peacekeeping in Congo. The details of the findings we reported last week point up one fundamental fact: peacekeeping must be fixed in order to be saved. Unless we move decisively, those that threaten peacekeepers in Africa and elsewhere may draw the conclusion that -- rhetoric and resolutions aside -- the UN lacks the will, the cohesion and the resources to challenge them. To those of you from states or regions where violent conflicts are underway or threatened, we know that you are depending on the UN. In the last eight months, I've visited every major area of UN peacekeeping, from Bosnia and Kosovo to Congo and East Timor. I am more than ever convinced that, to succeed, all of us, including the United States, have to do our part. The United States takes its responsibility very seriously, and is in the midst of an examination at the higher levels of how to strengthen peacekeeping. But what matters most is the commitments made in this room, in the coming months. UN peacekeeping is by definition a collective responsibility. No one country can go it alone. We each bring different perspectives and resources to the table, but unless we can come together around a common agenda and a shared set of tangible commitments, all the noble statements in the world won't keep UN peacekeeping alive. So let me make a plea to each of you: stand beside us to cut through business as usual at the UN. We cannot do this alone. Unless we act together, peacekeeping will fail, crippled by an organizational and financial system that cannot support the increasing demands now being put on it by the Member States. That being said, the UN's overall record in peacekeeping should not be judged simply by the worst cases. Sierra Leone, for example, is not a metaphor for all of Africa nor is it a metaphor for all of peacekeeping. There are success stories throughout the world, including Africa. At this time when the news is filled with stories of Africa's troubles, we must not -- we cannot -- give up hope. I must say, however, that the sight of UN peacekeepers being taken hostage by murderous thugs in Sierra Leone five years to the week after UN peacekeepers were similarly taken hostage by murderous thugs in Bosnia, is not only outrageous, but sobering. We must ask: have we learned anything? The answer, I hope, is yes. There are successes. Look to Namibia, El Salvador, or Mozambique. Or East Timor, where an orderly, well-planned operation deployed quickly and efficiently -- thanks in no small part to the superb leadership of Australia. The peacekeeping operation there has made progress since September. Or Kosovo, where despite a rocky start, the UN is essential to bringing normalcy to that battered land. Or in Cyprus and Lebanon, where the UN has helped keep the peace amidst continuing tensions in historically unstable regions. But failures in Sierra Leone or elsewhere will inevitably cast a shadow over the UN's successes. We must therefore ensure current operations succeed. And for the long-term, we must reform peacekeeping conceptually, bureaucratically and financially. We must distinguish between peacekeeping and peacemaking. We must reform how UN peacekeeping operates, and overhaul our current method of financing peacekeeping. Thirty-five of the UN's 53 peacekeeping operations have taken place in the last decade. Peacekeeping expenses since 1990 are more than four times greater than those during the UN's first 45 years. And today's missions have taken on a vast and challenging array of civilian and military tasks never imagined by the UN's founders. But we have failed to draw the conclusions that derive inexorably from these facts: since the start of the 1990s we have used the term "peacekeeping" to refer to activities different in scope, magnitude, complexity and difficulty from what came before. Today, we call on UN peacekeeping forces to act in situations that are new or that were previously either neglected, or handled by other means. We have put greater demands on peacekeeping, but we decline to make the increased investment necessary to ensure the desired outcome. We have piled responsibilities on peacekeeping -- ranging from civilian administration and ambitious military objectives to complex logistics -- all on structures designed to handle truce supervision and border patrols. These systems are desperately over-stretched. Without fundamental reform, the strings will snap. My friends, this is why action is essential. Allow me to turn first to what, at least in the abstract, ought to be the harder of the two problems to solve -- the way DPKO works. All of us should respect what DPKO has managed to accomplish. With a shoestring budget, a small staff, and a set of resources that has to be reconstituted for every mission, DPKO has achieved an admirable measure of success. Now, however, with the big five missions -- Sierra Leone, Congo, Kosovo, East Timor, and Lebanon moving into higher gear -- ten more missions at various stages of activity, and yet more under consideration, DPKO faces what looks like mission impossible. In saying this, I want to stress that I am in no way criticizing my friend Bernard Miyet and his over-worked, understaffed team. He only has 400 people, of which only half are professionals. They do their utmost to make this unworkable system work, putting in long hours to deal with crises that can explode at any moment. I hope that the expert panel led by Ambassador Brahimi and appointed by the Secretary General will clarify what must be done. But their report will only be the beginning -- and waiting for yet another blue-ribbon study is just not enough. To accomplish meaningful reform, all of us must reconsider long-held positions. To avoid a train wreck between capability and demand, we must commit ourselves now to remedying the gaps in DPKO's planning, deployment, staffing, and procurement process. We need to agree on immediate steps to bolster DPKO staff, to streamline logistics and procurement, and to get resources to the field more quickly. The Secretariat needs a pool of qualified, trained pre-screened specialists that can be dispatched at short notice. An obvious step is to approve the Secretariat's request to develop and staff a rapid deployment management unit that maintains a roster of qualified military, police, and civilian experts. Another essential step is to equip the UN's Brindisi logistics base with state-of-the-art equipment, and to streamline procurement procedures so that missions get what they need when they need it. Beyond that, we need to take advantage of the kind of advance planning measures used for the Congo mission to ensure that we do not wait until the eve of deployment to begin these multidisciplinary operations. At the same time, we need to equip DPKO's organizational structure to handle current demands, and better plan for future ones. DPKO needs a built-in ability to expand and contract according to the varying levels of activity. The Secretary-General must be empowered to move people to priority areas within the system. That the Department of Public Information is twice as large as DPKO is not appropriate -- and we should give the Secretary-General the tools to make it right. Beyond that, on behalf of the United States, I'd like to announce that consistent with our firm and sustained emphasis on budget discipline, we are ready to consider proposals to add more posts to DPKO that avoids unnecessary pressure on the regular budget. Subject to a response to the longstanding request for a thorough inventory of current personnel and core and surge needs, we will back a substantial expansion in DPKO staff through redeployments and additional hires funded by the support account and individual mission budgets. We must take steps now to address this urgent need. That means moving forward on these proposals in the 5th Committee this month and preparing for action this fall in the General Assembly. That of course would also include a meeting of the special committee on peacekeeping early this fall, rather than waiting until next year. Until we are ready to endow DPKO adequately -- we will continue to put both lives as well as this organization's credibility at risk. The second, but no less important, part of the reform equation is financing. The UN's system for financing was created in a bygone Cold War era, the result of a last-minute compromise in 1973. The system was designed for a single, $30 million operation in the Sinai. Everyone -- I repeat, everyone -- who spoke in that debate 27 years ago agreed that the arrangement was temporary, just for one operation, and not precedent-setting. Yet it has never been revised or properly reexamined. Now it has put the United Nations in a potentially fatal financial straightjacket. The world has changed dramatically since 1973, but the ad hoc peacekeeping scale has hardened into stone. Fifty-four new countries have joined the UN. Some have grown richer, some poorer; some more and some less active on the world stage. Yet the peacekeeping assessment system has remained the same. What we have, then, is a system completely at odds with common sense and the best interests of the member states. It also violates this organization's sacred principles, including capacity to pay. These principles, outlined in General Assembly resolution 1874, are ones to which all of us have subscribed. The principle of collective responsibility of all member states for peacekeeping financing is undermined by a scale that today concentrates 98% of responsibility in the hands of just 30 members. Similarly, as a result of the changes in the regular budget scale of assessment, the principle of special responsibility of the P5 has been lost in the calculation. The principle of taking into account countries' stages of development is likewise undercut: We find some countries paying beyond their means, and some who could pay more assessed next to nothing. While we all have our own interpretations of what "capacity to pay" really means, no one can argue that the current system works fairly. These problems were identified more than a decade ago, and our failure to resolve them has now put the system on the brink of collapse. The U.S. doesn't come here today with a plan cast in concrete. We are prepared to work with all of you in considering ideas small and large, old and new to help fix this system. Among the ideas that we think merit attention are: 1) creating a new tax bracket for middle income countries that will assess them a fair share -- something more than 20% but less than 100%, 2) reviving the role of all P5 members through a floor rate or another mechanism that affirms their special responsibility, 3) reducing reliance on a single contributor through a ceiling rate and lastly implementing objective thresholds so countries move up and down based on changing economic indicators. All of this can be accomplished without sacrificing the interests of those countries who are unable to pay more. Let me be clear: the United States will not advance any proposal that would increase the peacekeeping assessment rates for countries with low per capita income. And once the peacekeeping scale is reformed, the United Nations will be able to begin reimbursing the many members states that generously contributed troops to past UN operations, but have still not received the full amount owed. To make peacekeeping financing more equitable and reflective of the realities of the year 2000 (not 1973), all of us must agree that peacekeeping is a priority. The current system has allowed many of us to participate in name only, without incurring the obligations and tradeoffs that collective security unavoidably entails. Changing this will require sacrifices, and those who are prepared to step forward deserve our admiration. But in considering whether we can together afford to keep this system in business, we must also consider whether we can afford not to. In real terms, spread equitably among those who can afford it, the cost of UN peacekeeping barely registers against what we pay for national defense expenditures. The cost of refusing to pull our weight, on the other hand, will be measured in innocent lives and in peace and security worldwide. Those that take the position that peacekeeping should remain the sole province of a small group of countries as determined in 1973, or that procedural niceties should stand in the way of stable finances, set this organization up for failure. They are asking the rest of us to let the meter run out on UN peacekeeping, and by definition, the millions of people who need us. Today, together, we must move forward in this vital effort to save peacekeeping. Madam Chairman, the tasks before us are clear, and the time is short. The events of the past few weeks underscore the importance of these meetings. The current system is not sustainable. For all of us, the next few months will be a test of whether our professed commitment to UN peacekeeping, and to the people that depend on it, is real. I am encouraged by the fact that so many delegations have taken the opportunity over the past few months to evaluate their positions in light of current circumstances, and to develop creative and forward-looking ideas on what we can accomplish together. I am especially grateful to many of you personally for your patience and understanding. I look forward to working with all of you in the critical days ahead. (end text) (Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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