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18 / 06 / 2004
Astri Surkhe: None of the UN agencies can compete with the World Bank
For the investigator from the Christian Michelsen Institute in Normway, the UN lives within the contradiction of waging war and achieving peace
Astri Surkhe, from the Christian Michelsen Institute in Norway, declared that the World Bank has a “fundamental role to play in reconstruction processes in the wake of conflicts; and none of the United Nations agencies can compete with a more formative vision, because the World Bank is the most powerful”.
As she declared today as part of the panel on “International actors: the UN and others”, the World Bank intervenes using liberal policies that in the long-run generate more conflicts, in stead of working on pro peace economic reconstruction”. She is of the opinion that the genesis lies in the fact that for the World Bank “the absence of rights is not caused by conflicts and, according to what we are told, what is needed is a free market policy”, though their policies, far from alleviating the problem give rise to conflicts. In the same way, she criticized fragmentation within the UN, where “some agencies have much more power than others”.
In accordance with her view, the UN is trapped between “waging war and achieving peace and not adopting a firm and clear position, disassociating itself from the United States”, and for this reason she considers that the UN “should take sides – clearly and distinctly – and have more real and symbolic power”.
The panel gave a very critical vision of the role of the UN in conflicts and in areas under reconstruction, several speakers insisted on the internal and mandate problems within the UN in carrying out their functions.
In the opinion of Carl Tham, Swedish Ambassador to Germany “the failure of the UN or its shortcomings in the Kosovo war lies in it having a restricted mandate. This is the result of a give-and-take attitude from the great powers. Kosovo is not only a failure of the UN but also of the European countries and of the other principal powers”.
David Marshall, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, pointed out “what is needed is a strategy in the short, medium and long term to achieve justice for states in the aftermath of conflict and the selection of the international aid should be more efficient, [they] should speak the languages of the cultures involved and should be trained in international law and basic judicial aspects”.
The Dialogue “Conflicts: prevention, resolution, reconciliation” will conclude on June 20.
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