“The New U.N. Secretary-General Should Immediately Embark On An Ambitious Reform Agenda.” — Says Ruth Wedgwood, professor of international law and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies.

SOUTH KOREA’S FAVORITE son, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, will soon take up residence on the 38th floor at Turtle Bay as the new secretary-general of the United Nations. It is a timely change. Energy and innovation can renew an institution that suffers from administrative sclerosis and political fracture.

What should top Ban’s agenda for his first 100 days?

First and foremost, he must send an unequivocal message that business as usual is not the plan. By tradition, the 60 assistant and undersecretaries who run the house are required to submit resignation letters on a new secretary-general’s first day in office. Yet ordinarily they expect to stay comfortably in place, like insiders from the BBC series “Yes, Minister.” Ban needs to seize the opportunity to choose his own team in a clean sweep and set a new, performance-based measure of U.N. work. He must sidestep insiders who would reduce him to a political dauphin and derail his stewardship.

Ban should transplant privatesector expectations about productivity and responsiveness into an entrenched bureaucratic culture. The U.N. system takes in most people by the age of 32 and keeps them until they retire at 62. Real-time ways of doing things, including outsourcing and competition, are not endemic. Recruiting mid-career professionals from other sectors would invigorate the U.N. ranks.

Ban also will need advisors who can more accurately take the temperature of member states and other important constituencies. The U.N. has not quite adapted to a more democratic world, in which congresses and parliaments asked to fund this crucial institution also suppose they have a stake in the oversight of its performance.

Photo-ops are no substitute for reform. The U.N. should rethink its star-struck cult of celebrity. The 38th floor has recruited actors, rock stars and billionaires as envoys and advisors, but there is a difference between sizzle and steak.

Ban should also insist that his new staff abandon the guerrilla theater and political self-indulgence that has spiked U.N. credibility in Washington over the last several years. It does not help U.S.-U.N. relations to have senior U.N. aides lamenting the Rottweilers in Congress or scoffing at the oil-for-food scandal as a mere affectation of conservative critics. It does not help to have wandering global envoys offering their personal opinions about the war in Lebanon while declining to comment on the role of Hezbollah as an Iranian surrogate.

On the legislative side, Ban should profit from his 100-day honeymoon to summon the General Assembly to pass crucial administrative reforms. The U.N. needs an independent inspector general and toothy external auditors. Whistle-blowers need a powerful champion. At a time when the organization is asked to manage a record number of peacekeepers around the world, the secretarygeneral must be able to move personnel where he needs them and end featherbedding. There should be no further occasion for mordant comments, such as the one made by a Jamaican radio host who interrupted a recent program on the appointment of Ban to recall his own stint as a U.N. employee. Why, he wondered aloud, had the lady across the hall done no visible work?

The 192 delegates who control the General Assembly need to deliver more value for countries of the south, spending money on programs instead of personnel, in AIDS prevention, microfinance, innovative entrepreneurship in poor economies and the status of women. First World countries are being asked to pledge 0.7% of their GDPs as official overseas assistance as part of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. (The United States, while the world’s largest aid donor, still gives less than 0.2% of GDP, not counting private giving.) This requires showing that the money can be spent without worsening corruption in developing countries. The U.N. cannot lead an anticorruption campaign if there is money leaking out of its aging hull and cronyism in every purchase.

Ban’s political agenda should focus on renewal of the Middle East peace process. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and sectarian regimes continue their Olympics of international violence. Yet conservative Arab regimes are frightened by Al Qaeda and Iran. Ban may be able to help them find common cause with the United States (and surprisingly enough, with Israel) in countering the spoilers. He can sharpen the teeth of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon. And Bashar Assad’s regime in Damascus may be shaken awake later this year, when the U.N.’s prosecutor reports on who authorized the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

But the Palestinian-Israeli conflict provides fodder for the spoilers and roils the Muslim street around the globe. Ban should work with Washington and the Arab League to quietly support talks between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

There will be no shortage of other challenges: Darfur, eastern Congo, Kosovo, North Korea. These problems will test the energies of the East and West and cannot be solved by the U.N. alone. The test for a secretary-general is whether he can facilitate solutions. This is a skill not advanced by trips to Lincoln Center or charity balls but by earnest conversation with world leaders. Ban’s interest in quiet diplomacy will be measured by results, as all U.N. work should be.

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OK, we know, it is easy to give advice. But we know that his first test will be to go by himself to North Korea and get them to help him by coming up with a halt of their push for an independent nuclear capability. China and Japan would not like Ban Ki-moon facilitating a future reunification of Korea, but his greatest show of independence, while exhibiting great skills of diplomacy, would be just that - help North Korea from stepping down from its high perch with a South Korean suppplied ladder. If he brings to New York a modicum of promise on the Korean subject, then he will be more able to reorganize the local dragons of First Avenue as suggested by the Johns Hopkins professor.

Plans for his Secretariat, Mr. Ban can make already now - after all, he was given a good two month worth of working days for that purpose - probably more then any previous Secretary-General. There is no need to release all members of the Secretariat - not all of them are bad - some could be retained or moved to new positions. It is more important at this stage to get first a clear view of structural changes he would like to make - i.e. elimination of offices and functions that have been grand-fathered while the actual needs have long vanished. Obviously, an institution like the Trusteeship Council, has long lost its raison d’etre - it could perhaps be used now for long term needs of planet earth - like subjects of climate change, nature disasters, and man made disasters that lead to further hunger and poverty. It is clear that such serious change at the UN can not be done by the SG alone - but his vision that these are problems to be confronted eventually should be stated up-front. With this on the table, Mr. Ban’s talents as facilitator will emerge as his greatest assets. The “Vision Thing”, to quote a former US President, could then make it obvious what gradual changes he will be making during those 100 days - and that will be just the start-up.

The many specifics on needed UN policy on political issues, and UN governing policy for running the organization, are valid, but we suggest here that they must be made in context of a larger “Vision Thing.” The UN is obviously not a world government, but as we all live on Planet Earth we are all responsible for what goes on in all parts of the world and within the global eco-system. This is the vision, and now we have a leader to help us out from our individual holes we dug for ourselves. Ban Ki-moon, the harmonizer by his own description, will be able to claim that his actions are to enable us to move closer to that vision. He could also enlist in this process some of those that competed against him in the campaign for this job, and Sashi Tharoor comes to mind as one of those that though UN insider was really not part of the UN home grown crowd. He has enough of an outsiders life not to have been dependent on his UN job - this makes him usefull not just in the Communications department but perhaps in a future more hands-on position.
Another possible candidate from the campaign, could be perhaps the economist from Afghanistan, the latest entrant to the contest, Dr. Ashraf Ghani, who might be a great leader in the development area. As we reported at the time, we met during the days of the campaign Messrs. Ban Ki-moon, Sashi Tharoor and Ashraf Ghani at the Asia Society and we found strong points in all three. Now we could think of those strong points being used in the new UN Administration. (These are just a few comments SustainabiliTank.info wishes to add at this time to above article - we are shure that we will revisit the article in the future.)