Annual budget of the New York Police Department, 1995: $2.26 billion
Official languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese
Number of staff translators: 526
Martyred hero: Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, killed in a plane crash while on a peacekeeping mission to the Congo, Sept. 18, 1961
Most respected of the U.N.’s 50-plus agencies and programs: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), by acclamation
Least respected: Too many to choose just one
Most famous foster child: The state of Israel, founded in 1948 by a U.N.-sponsored partition plan dividing the former British mandate of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states
Greatest achievement: Probably the World Health Organization’s global eradication of smallpox, announced in 1980
U.N. good-will ambassadors: Richard Attenborough, Harry Belafonte, the late Audrey Hepburn, the late Danny Kaye, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, Liv Ullman, Peter Ustinov
Ralph Bunche, who mediated the armistice that ended the Arab-Jewish war in 1949, was the first star U.N. diplomat. A year later he would win the Nobel Peace Prize–the first Nobel awarded to a black American. Secretary of State Dean Acheson had offered to appoint him assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern, South Asian and African affairs. Bunche politely declined; he later told an insistent President Truman that he had vowed to never live in a segregated city like Washington, D.C.
After all the delegates signed the U.N. Charter in San Francisco on June 26, 1945, President Truman agreed to keep the document in the White House safe. Alger Hiss, secretary-general of the founding conference, was in charge of its delivery. “The army put a plane at my disposal . . . “Hiss recalled later. “. . . Since the Charter was so valuable it had a parachute attached to it–and I didn’t.”
In 1955 the Chinese Nationalist government in Taiwan, which occupied a permanent seat on the Security Council, vetoed Mongolia’s admission to the United Nations on the ground that Mongolia was part of mainland China–from which the Nationalists had themselves been expelled in 1949.
Norwegian diplomat Trygve Lie, the first U.N. secretary-general, was a collaborator of McCarthyite witch hunters. Lie allowed FBI agents to look for suspected communist sympathizers among American staffers on the U.N. premises–legally, international territory, where U.S. law-enforcement agencies had no jurisdiction.
In 1971 Kurt Waldheim of Austria was elected the fourth U.N. secretary-general. Waldheim had fought in the German Army in World War II, but had covered up the most damning aspects of his wartime activities. In 1986, five years after the end of his second term, Jewish groups discovered evidence of Waldheim’s role–which he denies–in the deaths of thousands of Balkan Jews and Resistance fighters. In fact, in 1948 the U.N. War Crimes Commission had documented the record of Waldheim’s service with the Germans. The ease against Waldheim had been filed away in the U.N.’s own archives.
As the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1971, George Bush had witnessed Third World delegates spontaneously erupting in a victory dance after the General Assembly voted to oust U.S.-allied Taiwan and admit the communist People’s Republic of China. While vice president of the United States, Bush exacted a small revenge, instructing U.S. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick to block the efforts of Tanzania’s Salim Salim to become secretary-general. In 1971, Salim had been among the most joyous of the dancers.
In 1988 the U.S. was opposed by every other U.N. member (except Israel) in a vote on PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat’s right to speak in the General Assembly. Under the 1947 Host Country Agreement, the United States was required to grant an automatic visa to whomever the General Assembly invited to address it. Washington absolutely refused to do so. The General Assembly decamped to the Palais des Nations in Geneva, where Arafat duly delivered his speech.
The Trusteeship Council, mandated by the U.N. Charter to oversee colonial transitions to independence, completed its mission in 1994 when Palau became independent and was admitted to the United Nations. Was the council abolished? Certainly not. France suggested mothbailing it, so as to not precipitate the “dangerous” task of revising the Charter–which, incidentally, gave France a permanent seat on the Security Council.
Author of the U.N. Charter preamble: Archibald MacLeish (American poet)
Blue helmets’ reddest faces: When $3.9 million in cash was stolen from an unlocked filing cabinet in Somalia, 1994
Least friendly bumper sticker: YOU CAN’T SPELL COMMUNISM WITHOUT U.N.; seen on American cars, around 1960
Never a dull year, or decade: The U.N. has declared 1995 the Year of Tolerance; 1988-97 the World Decade for Cultural Development
Why driving down First Avenue is hell: Estimated amount of unpaid New York City parking tickets by U.N. diplomats in 1994 was $10 million
Party poopers: Neither Saddam Hussein of Iraq nor Muammar Kaddafi of Libya will attend the 50th-anniversary celebrations
Some U.S. ambassadors: Andrew Young (below) 1977-79 African-American Donald McHenry 1979-81 African-American Jeane Kirkpatrick 1981-85 Woman Edward Perkins 1992-93 African-American Madeleine Albright 1993-present Woman
“The most frequently asked question is, ‘Where did Khruschev bang his shoe?’”
–Lena Dissin, chief of U.N. Guided Tours Unit, 1994
KEEPING THE PEACE
The number of United Nations peacekeeping operations has skyrocketed in the last decade. Since 1985, 25 operations have been deployed, including the most recent, in Macedonia.
1945-55 2 1955-65 6 1965-75 4 1975-85 1 1985-95 25
Peacekeeping dues owed by U.N. members totaled $2.29 billion in 1995, and some of the world’s richest countries are major debtors. The top five:
United States $880 million Russia $498 million Japan $197 million Ukraine $185 million France $101 million
SOURCES: UNITED NATIONS, “A GLOBAL AFFAIR: AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE UNITED NATIONS,” “UNITED NATIONS: THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS,” “THE U.N. FOR BEGINNERS.” RESEARCH BY CHARLES S. LEE
CGPRT Regional Coordination Center for Research and Development of Coarse Grains, Pulses, Roots and Tuber Crops in the Humid Tropics of Asia and the Pacific
UNGEGN United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
WIPO World Intellectual Property Organization
“Don’t bother me with that U.N. crap.”
–Henry Kissinger, U.S. secretay of state, 1973-77, to his aide in chagre of international organizations
