Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

Kofi Annan's Legacy of Failure
by Nile Gardiner Ph.D.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan delivered his swansong speech on Monday at the Truman Presidential Library. His departure from office has not come soon enough. Annan’s 10 years in power have been a monumental failure, and he leaves behind an institution whose standing could barely be lower, a testament to mismanagement, corruption and anti-Americanism. Annan has presided over many of the biggest scandals in the history of the world body, from the Oil-for-Food debacle to the peacekeeping abuse scandal in the Congo. The UN’s new Human Rights Council is an unmitigated farce, and the United Nations has largely jettisoned the cherished principles of liberty and freedom. Under Annan the UN has shamelessly appeased dictators and tyrants, from Baghdad to Tehran to Khartoum, and has stood weak-kneed in the face of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The United Nations of today is a broken institution, in fundamental need of wholesale reform. That is Annan’s legacy, and the United States and the world looks forward to new leadership at Turtle Bay, untarnished by the taint of scandal, and that actually lives up to the ideals of the UN’s own Declaration of Human Rights.

Read the full paper.

Enough Reports: More Action Needed on U.N. Reform
by Brett D. Schaefer

Real Reform at the United Nations
by Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D.