Making Change Happen Within the United Nations.

• Author: Bertini, Catherine

Title: Making Change Happen Within the United Nations

Author: Catherine Bertini

Text:

Editor's note: The author was Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme 1992-2002 and United Nations Under Secretary General for Management 2003-2005.

President Biden's nomination of Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield as US Ambassador to the United Nations promises to bring effective leadership, professionalism, and immense knowledge to the role. She is one of only a few American diplomats who have had leadership postings dealing with important UN operations at every level--in countries where she served as a foreign service officer, in Geneva, and in Washington DC. In New York, the ambassador will need to summon all her skills and experience to lead the American team at the US mission to the UN.

Along with the USUN ambassador and the Secretary of State, US multilateral efforts are led by the Assistant Secretaries of the Bureau of International Organizations and the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration and the Permanent Representatives to the UN in Geneva, Rome, Vienna, and Nairobi.

The president should nominate people for these positions who have in-depth knowledge of the system and related issues, solid judgment, and strong interpersonal skills. The diplomats must be strategic, prepared, creative, goal oriented, and personally engaging. Process oriented micro-managers will not accomplish much.

These multilateral diplomats must juggle a complicated morass of interlocking ecosystems of member states, UN principal organs based in New York, agencies, boards, commissions, and the influence of the press, the Red Cross movement, non-governmental organizations (including think tanks and foundations), all while representing their government and convincing 'all of the above' that the United States of America once again puts a high value on multilateralism and institutions that reflect it.

Some of the first actions of the Biden administration will send that message--such as the return to the World Health Organization, supporting the UN Population Fund, and a re-commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement, but it will be the tone established by his appointees that will prove to the broader international community that the US is serious.

Setting Goals

The administration should set broad goals for what it intends to achieve or set in motion at the UN during these next four years, as well as goals at each of its multilateral missions. This is true whether establishing goals at the United Nations Security Council, the World...