As Ban Ki-Moon gets ready to head the U.N., suggestions on priorities and strategies are coming in from all imaginable directions. An opinion piece by Bret Stephens in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required) provides several recommendations to the new Secretary General. Here is a quick summary of some of them:
1. Re-read your job description – the point here is that the Secretary General should focus on being an effective manager of the organization in addition to being a diplomat.
2. Prioritize – pay more attention to and spend more resources on countries that matter, and spend less time on countries that do not matter as much
3. Preach prosperity not development – tackle root sources of poverty, such as weak market and democratic institutions (rule of law, ease of doing business, etc.)
Suggestion #3 is key if the U.N. is to lead international efforts to reduce poverty. John Sullivan and I bring up a similar point in our recent column in the International Business Times, as we argue that Ban Ki-Moon should step back and look at what made his country so prosperous over the past several decades and promote private enterprise as a way to reduce poverty that plagues so many countries. The task should be familiar to the U.N. because, as we note,
[m]uch of what needs to be done has also been laid out in the U.N.’s own report “Unleashing Entrepreneurship: Making Business Work for the Poor,” which was published in 2004. This report is built on the same lessons learned in South Korea and gives the new Secretary General a perfect platform to implement the successes of the Asian Tigers elsewhere in the world.
As such, maybe supporting private enterprise and promoting free trade is something the U.N. will focus on in the upcoming years. And if it does, we will without a doubt see a more peaceful and prosperous world.
Published Date: December 19, 2006