Alvaro de Soto, assistant secretary of the United Nations, said yesterday the United Nations needs to undergo reform if it is to survive in the changing international climate.
"The U.N. needs to try to define its role in this new emerging era," de Soto said.
De Soto was a participant in a panel discussion titled, "The United Nations Today," which kicked offthe conference "The United Nations: Fifty Years After San Francisco."
The conference, sponsored by the John Dickey Center for International Understanding, ends today. Approximately 180 people attended yesterday's panel, which discussed the present state and possible future format of the United Nations.
"Although the U.N. is said to be inefficient, ineffective, expensive and troublesome, can we imagine a world in the last fifty years without it?" said Dickey Center Director Martin Sherwin, who moderated of the panel discussion.
De Soto and Sherwin were joined by Robert Grey Jr. '57, member of the U.N. Council on Foreign Relations, and University of South Carolina Professor Donald Puchala.
Most of the discussion centered around the reforms needed in the United Nations.
"It is almost taken as given that the U.N. has to be reformed," Puchala said.
De Soto said many of the organization's difficulties arise from the international system that emerged after the Cold War.
"You have states that are fading because the donor community which could afford to be generous because of political reasons is re-entrenched," de Soto said.
Puchala said other problems in the United Nations include bureaucratic inefficiencies and the lack of funds "to do what they're supposed to be doing."
Grey said he agreed with the idea of restructuring the United Nations and called for "a need to rededicate ourselves to making it work."
"The U.N. system is overtaxed," Grey said. "We need to give the U.N. system more financial and personnel aid necessary to run its operations."
However Grey said he still considered the present United Nations a "hell of a good deal for us."
Grey then offered what he called a "Washington point of view."
"National interests are best served when the U.S. takes the lead in collective action," Grey said.
However, Puchala said he has "come to the conclusion that the U.N. cannot be reformed."
"Too many people in the U.N. see change as threatening," Puchala explained.
Puchala recommended looking into "multilateral alternatives for the U.N. that fall back into specialized agencies, such as the World Health Organization, many of which work better than the U.N."
Before the panel discussion, the movie "1945: The Foundation of the United Nations" was shown. The movie outlined the events of World War II and their influence on the formation of the U.N.
De Soto began the panel discussion commenting on how intrastate conflicts are now affecting the United Nations.
"The U.N. was conceived as an instrument to manage --if not bring an end to -- conflicts among states, and not within states," he said.
"The U.N. had just carried of successful operations culminating in an operation within Cambodia," de Soto continued. "It was though as if the time had come for the U.N. to take on challenges that it had hesitated to take on before."
