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Shashi
Tharoor
MaximsNews
Contributor
Shashi
Tharoor, United
Nations
Under-Secretary-General
The Good for Something U.N.
by
Shashi Tharoor
United
Nations Under-Secretary-General
for
Communications &
Public Information
UNITED
NATIONS -
7
February 2005
www.MaximsNews.com
/ -- In a
hilarious early episode of
"Seinfeld,"
Jerry convinces Elaine
that Tolstoy's
monumental "War and
Peace" was originally
titled "War: What Is
It Good For?"
The
same attitude seems to
prevail these days with
regard to our other great
institutions.
A
lot of people,
particularly in the United
States, have been asking
of late, "The United
Nations: what is it good
for?"
The
most devastating natural
disaster in living memory,
the Indian Ocean tsunami,
has given us part of the
answer.
The
U.N. rushed to the rescue
and is spearheading the
largest humanitarian
operation the region has
ever seen.
International
aid workers, soldiers and
survivors are working side
by side to deliver food
and medical supplies
provided both by
traditional Western donor
countries and less wealthy
Asian ones.
Less
than a month after the
horror, and amid the
turmoil of a massive
cleanup, children in Sri
Lanka are heading back to
school.
The
worst of the feared second
wave of deaths -- those
from hunger and disease --
has not happened.
But
is that all the U.N. is
good for -- coordinating
humanitarian relief?
Some
think that's where the
world body's real strength
lies: pulling together the
resources, and expertise,
of all countries to tackle
those challenges that are
an affront to
humanity.
Many
U.N. agencies have
established a global
reputation for excellence
in delivering aid --
notably UNICEF (helping
children), UNHCR
(protecting and assisting
refugees), the World Food
Program and the World
Health Organization, which
have all been in the
forefront of international
crises and disasters for
nearly six decades.
What
makes the U.N. effective
at this kind of
work?
I
found out for myself a
quarter century ago, as a
young man running the
UNHCR office (and the
refugee camp that went
with it) in Singapore at
the peak of the Vietnamese
boat-people crisis.
It
was obvious that some of
the things I did could
have been done just as
well by nongovernmental
organizations, church
groups, compassionate
individuals -- all of whom
I indeed enlisted in the
cause as partners, donors
and volunteers at the
camp.
But
the U.N. could also do
things that these good
folks could not --
because, as an
intergovernmental body,
the U.N. has clout with
its member states.
Only
the U.N. could negotiate
with the Singaporean
government the terms under
which refugees rescued at
sea could be brought into
the port;
only
the U.N. could arrange
their disembarkation;
only
the U.N. was allowed to be
responsible for the
camp;
only
the U.N. could work out
the guarantees of
resettlement in foreign
countries without which
the refugees could not
disembark;
only
the U.N., in the end,
could persuade immigration
officials of a dozen
foreign countries to admit
refugees and resolve
problem cases.
The
U.N., I realized through
my own work, isn't just a
way of bureaucratizing our
consciences -- it makes a
real difference to real
human beings.
Equally
important, the U.N. enjoys
the support of many
governments precisely
because it does not belong
to any single one of
them.
Whenever
donors jostle for
attention or national
interests threaten to take
center stage, the U.N. is
preferred because it
embodies the collective
interest.
Many
organizations must bring
their expertise to bear on
disasters like the Asian
tsunami; only the U.N. is
unchallenged as the
coordinating authority.
No
government likes to give
in or play second fiddle
to another state, but all
can serve under a common
flag that represents
everyone.
The
same American expert,
adviser or aid worker is
easier for a sensitive
government to admit when
he or she arrives as a
U.N. official.
That
is the essence of the
"legitimacy
question."
Because
of its universality,
the U.N. enjoys a standing
in the eyes of the world
that gives its collective
actions and decisions a
legitimacy that no
individual government
enjoys beyond its own
borders.
This
is why the U.N. is the
preferred vehicle to
address all those
"problems without
passports" that cross
frontiers -- human rights,
climate change, drug
trafficking -- and those
activities that we simply
have to handle
collectively in a
globalizing world (from a
universal postal system to
an international
civil-aviation
organization).
And
it's also why the world's
sole superpower has found
it necessary to go to the
U.N. when it has wished to
undertake new initiatives
in Iraq or Sudan or even
Haiti.
The
U.N. provides the only
forum to marshal the
political will of all
governments behind a
course of action that
could not legitimately be
undertaken by only one.
That's
why it's not enough, as
some American critics have
suggested, to answer
the "Seinfeld"
question by seeing the
U.N. as good only for
relief work.
The
very qualities that make
the U.N. the most
convenient body to tackle
humanitarian disasters are
also the ones that make it
the indispensable source
of collective decision and
action on issues of
international peace and
security.
Indeed,
as Tolstoy would have put
it, of war and peace.
Shashi
Tharoor
Born in London in 1956,
Shashi Tharoor was
educated in Bombay,
Calcutta, Delhi (BA in
History, St. Stephen's
College), and the United
States (he got his PhD at
the age of 22 from the
Fletcher School of Law
& Diplomacy at Tufts
University).
Since 1978, he has
worked for the United
Nations, serving with the
UN High Commissioner for
Refugees, whose Singapore
office he headed during
the "boat
people" crisis.
Since October 1989,
he has been a senior
official at UN HQ in New
York, where, until late
1996, he was responsible
for peacekeeping
operations in the former
Yugoslavia.
From January 1997 to
July 1998, he was
executive assistant to UN
Secretary General Kofi
Annan.
In July 1998, he was
appointed director of
communications and special
projects in the office of
the Secretary-General.
In January 2001, he
was appointed by the
Secretary-General as
interim head of the Dept.
of Public Information.
On 1 June 2002, he
was confirmed as the
Under-Secretary-General
for Communications and
Public Information of the
United Nations.
Tharoor is the author
of numerous articles,
short stories and
commentaries in Indian and
Western publications, and
the winner of several
journalism and literary
awards, including a
Commonwealth Writers'
Prize.
His books
include:
Reasons of State
(1982), a scholarly study
of Indian foreign
policy;
The Great Indian
Novel (1989), a
political satire;
The Five-Dollar
Smile & Other Stories
(1990);
a second novel, Show
Business (1992), which
received a front-page
accolade from The New
York Times Book Review
and was made into a motion
picture titled Bollywood;
and India: From
Midnight to the Millennium
(1997), published on the
50th anniversary of
India's independence.
On August 13, 2001
Penguin Books (India)
published Tharoor's latest
novel Riot. The US
edition was published by
Arcade on September 28,
2001.
Shashi Tharoor is the
winner of numerous
journalism and literary
awards, including a
Commonwealth Writers'
Prize in 1991.
In 1998, Shashi
Tharoor was awarded the
Excelsior Award for
excellence in literature
by the Association of
Indians in America (AIA)
and the Network of Indian
Professionals (NetIP).
He received the
honorary degree of Doctor
of Letters in
International Affairs from
the University of Puget
Sound in May 2000.
In January 1998, he
was named by the World
Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, as a Global
Leader of Tomorrow.
United
Nations
Under-Secretary-General
for Communications &
Public Information
United Nations
Headquarters (S-1027A)
New York, NY 10017
Fax: (212)-963-4361
[This
also appeared in the
Newsweek International
Edition, 31 January 2005.]
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