Topic: Improving Accountability at the United Nations
Country: Indonesia
Delegate Name: Sam Stanley
School: Flint Southwestern Classical Academy
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Indonesia position papers GLIMUN 2014 committees
Throughout recent history, the United Nations has dealt with issues of accountability within their policies. Specifically recently, with the major developments of UN failures in Haiti, the UN has shown major flaws in their procedures for handling crises. The mishandling of funds and issues with the procedures of UN workers in disease and poverty stricken lands has shown fundamental issues with the integrity of UN policies in relation to crisis situations. Prior to this, little information was given to member nations as to action being taken in these situations, and often, it was merely requested of member states that funds were provided, with minimal explanation of their intended purpose. In some cases, the information provided to member states after action was taken was incomplete, giving little explanation of what occurred while the UN was attempting to resolve a given issue, occasionally glazing over crucial information, such as the possibility that United Nations workers may have contributed to, rather than solved, the issue they were asked to attend to. Also, there have been issues within offices of the UN pertaining to the dissemination of information, and there has been a severe lack of checks on offices of the UN by other offices within the organization.
We, the state of Indonesia, believe that the United Nations is in a critical position, and that the issue of accountability must be addressed promptly. We find that as a major financial and political contributor to the United Nations, we should be better notified of action being taken with our conditional contributions. We have done our best to provide the UN with our support, but have felt that the UN has misrepresented our interests, to the point that in 1965, we felt the need to leave the United Nations in response to what we saw as critical issues in their policies. Since rejoining the UN, we have striven to create some level of accountability to member states. We have struggled to find functional policies to prevent the misuse of our and our allies’ funds and support.
As previously stated, we would like to see a marked improvement in UN reporting to member states, as well as increased transparency in UN policy. We would strongly support a resolution which creates a system to provide full disclosure of financial and political information and dissemination of this information to member states, as well as making this information fully available to the general populace. We would also look favorably upon the reevaluation of current offices of the UN to find where the current mismanagement occurs, and root out any issues within the organization.
