SARS
has revealed again
the UN's lack of integrity
By
Jonathan
Power
May 21, 2003
LONDON - Why does the United Nations so often shoot
itself in the foot? Just as the World Health Organization
is basking in accolades at its annual assembly this week
and next for its part in the battle to overcome the
spread of SARS another story has begun to emerge -
of political ineptitude and moral cowardice that
should bring shame not honour on its departing
director-general, Gro Harlem Brundtland.
It is the way the UN agency has dealt with Taiwan, now
the country outside China with the fastest growing number
of cases, despite it having a national health service,
according to a year 2000 report of the Economist
Intelligence Unit, only second in the world to Sweden's.
This suggests that if Taiwan doesn't get on top of the
disease no one will, for all the self-serving reports put
out by the WHO this past weekend that it appeared that
the battle against SARS was being won. Again Taiwan is
somehow not being counted into the equation- just as Dr
Brundtland, the former prime minister of Norway, refused
to answer urgent letters from Taiwan's ministry of health
and medical experts when Taiwan first realized the
disease was spreading into Taiwan from China. Not only
did WHO refuse to accept or republish Taiwan's data for a
number of days, it refused to provide any assistance,
such as providing Taiwan's scientists with the sample
viruses needed in their research toward treatment and
vaccines. Neither did it rush its experts to Taiwan, as
it has done elsewhere, indeed chiding China publicly for
being slow to accept them.
When Dr Brundtland finally got onto the Taiwan case-
presumably after waiting for a nod from China, which
claims democratic Taiwan is part of China's dictatorship
(even though Beijing has always said if there were a
union it would give the island autonomy on matters like
health), WHO published the data from Taiwan under a
heading that suggested that Taiwan is a province of
China, a matter that is by no means settled in
international law.
It is strange that China can bend its own rules when
it comes to Taiwan. It allows Taiwan to participate as a
full member in two important economic bodies- the Asian
Development Bank and the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) - but it will not permit the same on
humanitarian matters and refuses to even countenance that
Taiwan should have observer status at the WHO. But then
money talks. China knows that Taiwan for all its small
population- only 27 million - is an industrial and
technological giant with $243 billion of foreign trade
each year and its investments in China largely make
possible China's own technological revolution.
The UN bureaucracy has a bad habit of anticipating
Beijing's commands. Eight years ago I was commissioned by
a London publisher to edit a book that would commemorate
the UN's 50th birthday. Although meant to be an official
history it was also to be an independent work. Imagine my
chagrin when I was told by the Secretary-General's office
to remove all mention of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan
spiritual leader. I was also told to remove a reference
that the election of Hiroshi Hakajama of Japan as the
then head of the WHO had prompted official complaints of
fraud, and a couple of sentences which said that Iraq and
North Korea were accused of violating the treaty to
prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons by trying to
make such weapons themselves.
In the end, meeting total resistance form the
secretary-general's office to my plea for editorial
integrity, I had no choice but to go to the New York
Times and the Washington Post, two of my old employers,
who splashed the censorship story at great length and
embarrassed the UN leadership on the day of its birthday
party.
Of course, it was washed away fairly quickly as most
stories about the UN bureaucracy's lack of standards and
professionalism often are. Perhaps the worst example is
the performance of the UN peacekeeping secretariat during
the genocide in Rwanda in which at least 800,000 people
were slaughtered eight years ago. Although the U.S.
administration of Bill Clinton must take much of the
blame for insisting on only a minimal role for UN
peacekeepers, it has emerged that the secretariat, then
under the leadership of Kofi Annan, the present
secretary-general, had done a bad job in keeping the
Security Council informed. According to an official post
mortem inquiry conducted under the chairmanship of Ingvar
Carlsson, the former Swedish prime minister, the
peacekeeping department "did not brief the
secretary-general" about a key cable warning of what was
likely to happen from the UN's force commander in Rwanda.
Moreover, "The inquiry believes that the
secretary-general could have done more to argue the case
for reinforcement in the Security Council. Several
members of the Security Council have complained that the
quality of information from the secretariat was not good
enough‚ "The analysis of developments after the
genocide began show an institutional weakness in the
analytical capacity of the UN." And so on.
If the UN were truly an organization that valued
integrity Mr Annan at that point should have stepped
down. So should Dr Brundtland today, not waiting for her
term of office to expire in six weeks' time. And at the
very least the WHO this coming week should vote again on
Taiwan's request to be given observer status. It would be
two very visible steps towards righting a grievous
wrong.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2003 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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