Image d’illustration : Théo Maugeaus, Siège des Nations-Unies, New York, New York State, USA (7 oct. 2022).
In this interview, Dr. Krasno shares some insights on the studies of United Nations, but also her experiences with the archives related to the institution. It deals with the creating and publishing of archives, and offers a history of the UN Secretary-General archives1.
Jean E. Krasno is a political sciences scholar. She teaches at City College of New York and Columbia University, and she was lecturer at Yale University. Dr. Krasno has contributed throughout her career to bring the United Nations to the attention of searchers and public. In 2003, she co-edited with Bradd C. Hayes and Donald C. Daniel, a study titled Leveraging for Success in United Nations Peace Operations2 . The same year, she published with James Sutterlin a book about The United Nations and Iraq3. In 2004, she directed a study called The United Nations: Confronting the Challenges of a Global Society4 . In 2015, she carried out a publication on Personality, Political Leadership, and Decision Making5 . In 2021, she co-authored a book with Elisabeth Szeli entitled Banning the Bomb: The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Today, she came back with a new edition of her study on the UN, renamed The United Nations: Policy and Practice6 .
Dr. Krasno’s work shows us that historians, and more generally scholars, do not have to be confined to the sole analysis of archives as a base for books. Indeed, she is also deeply committed toward the publication of, and making publicly available these archives. Between 1992 and 2005, she had carried out no less than some 200 interviews for the UN Oral History project7 , with personalities like Harlan Cleveland, George Tomeh, or Walter Eytan. Following, in 2012, she published online thousands of released papers from Secretary-General Kofi Annan during his service in office8 . Recently, in 2022, she published a new set of about six thousand released papers from Secretary- General Ban Ki-Moon9 .
In your book, you assess that the United Nations “goes largely unnoticed both in media and in the curriculum of most colleges and universities”10 . It is quite surprising when we compare to the initial tremendous interest in the public in the late 1940s described by Ruth B. Russell11 . According to you, for which reasons the United Nations became so much overlooked in the medias and in the academical world?
The ups and downs of the perception of the United Nations has played a big role.
When the United Nations was created, Franklin Roosevelt did a very good job of understanding how the medias works in the US and elsewhere. He gave many speeches and talks of how after the war ended the world needed to come together and prevent the outbreak of another war. He really promoted the United Nations. Even though the League of Nations had failed, he really felt that it was a good experiment and that we could build on that.
He encouraged groups, NGOs, to meet all around the country in the United States, to talk about the creation of this new institution, because he knew that the Senate would have to ratify the Charter. In our system you have senators that represent each States, and they had be confident that the citizens of their state – their constituents – were going to be in favor of the UN before they would go vote on accepting the Charter.
Roosevelt understood this because the US had never joined the League. Woodrow Wilson wrote the first draft of the League’s Covenant, but he did not understand the use of the media, and that he needed that support politically. And when it came for the Senate to ratify the League, they did not do it.
In the USA there was always this friction between those who want to be involved with the rest of the world – multilaterally –, and those who are isolationists. Some isolationists in the Senate, they do not want the US to be involved anywhere, but just to spend our resources at home. But for others, it is not so much isolationism, it is unilateralism: the US wants to protect its right to do anything in the world; it does not want to be checked by anybody else.
So, we have this friction always, it is still there. And it depends on the politics whether one rises and the other diminishes, or contraire, depending on leadership whether multilateralism begins to dominate. It depends on what leadership we have. It is generally in our country the democratic party that is more multilateral, and the republican party is more isolationist or unilateralist… generally, but not necessarily, because we had republican presidents which were very involved in the UN. President Bush the father, had been ambassador to the UN, and he really was in favor of working multilaterally. So, it just depends on which way the wind is blowing.
I would say there was a lot of enthusiasm when the UN was first created in 1945 at the San Francisco Conference. So much media coverage of that event… And, the first few years there was a lot of positive feeling that the UN was going to be successful: we are finally bringing everybody together to talk about things and make decisions. But then the Cold War set in… And, there was so much friction in the Security Council… the Soviet Union occupying much of Eastern and Central Europe, the problems in the splitting of Germany, the Berlin Wall, all these things created a tremendous amount of tension… the Korean war and the support Soviet Union gave to North Korea… the Cuban missiles crisis… So, during that period of time, the view that many Americans had of the UN was that it was useless, it could not solve anything because it could not get the major powers to agree. It would kind go up and down somewhat, but that was the general view. And, there was not much written about the UN because if it would be written it would be negative.
Finally the Cold War ended. We really had to thank Gorbachev for his insights, particularly from the world perspective. He really felt that the Soviet Union was imploding economically from the inside… it was just failing because of central planning, corruption, and number of different things. He realized that the Soviet Union would thrive if it opened its doors to the outside world and collaborated economically and politically. He came to the UN in 1985 and gave an important speech. He said that USSR wants to work multilaterally. Everybody was astonished.
Things started to change, and within the Council there was much more agreement. They were able to bring an end the Iraq-Iran war because the Council was in agreement on that. And then, there began to be more news about the UN, and encouragement of the UN, and more books coming after that period of time. But it is interesting though that college students and high-school students do model UN every year, there are thousands and thousands that do model UN, so there is tremendous interest in the youth. But the universities are just no teaching it; it is so frustrating!
The United Nations had a well-known predecessor, the League of Nations. In the some aspects, the two organizations seem very similar. Therefore, why the League did fail to adapt while the UN has succeeded in doing so?
The League was very important because it was the first time that world had a permanent Secretariat for a world organization, not holding just a conference here and there, but a permanent place and a permanent organization. It could create the basis for the Charter, so you had a permanent staff, permanent Secretariat, and a permanent location where people could meet constantly, daily, and discuss problems that arise quickly… But one of the problem the League had, was that everything had to be completely by consensus. You did not have majority rule, you had absolute consensus to get anything done, and that blocked them from getting anything done, because if one country did not want it to happen it did not happen.
The League never outlawed war: you have to wait only three months before going to war… And that was one of the first thing that the Charter did: it outlawed war. Aggression is completely forbidden against the territory of another states. The other problem with the League was the Council (it was called the Council, not the Security Council). On the Council you had Japan and Italy, and they became members of the Axis powers. When Japan invaded part of Asia, and Italy invaded Eritrea, there wasn’t anything that anyone could do. When Italy had completely occupied that territory, then they dropped the sanctions. Then, when Japan invaded Mongolia, the League sent people to investigate the situation, but they spent a year investigating the situation and never did anything about it.
The other thing that needed to be changed is that you had to have the ability to use force: so, Chapter VII was created and with the ability to impose sanction, to send troops, and to use force. What they said was the League did not have “teeth” to do anything about any resolution that it passed. Therefore, they wanted to build that into the UN, so you could use force to make a decision on something that was important to the members.
In the beginning of the UN we only had 51 countries that were members. Now we have 193. The pressure grew to be more inclusive. Members of the Council now have to represent geographical regional rotation. Even though there is the P-5 always there, the other ten always represent other parts of the world. That is very important.
The General Assembly had become more active. It is sometimes more active, sometimes less active. It depends on the members in the General Assembly. If there is a very proactive group of member states, then, they can generate much more. Because the ambassadors to the UN change all the time, personality makes the difference. So, that is another reason why it can adapt.
But also, the world changed. Wars are now more often within states – civil wars – than between states. But, it does not mean that wars are isolated within that state because the effects spread throughout the region. If the UN was going to be relevant and keep peace in the world, it has to devise a mechanism to do that, and so peace-keeping arose. If the P-5’s interests want peace and did not infringe on their personal interest, they voted for peace-keeping operations. We have twelve in a field now, but there had been as many as seventy in the field at any one time, with 100,000 troops at any one time, trying to make peace… so there is lot more effort. The Secretary General and the staff – the Secretariat – have very brilliant people and they reinvent things: if there is a need here, then we have to reinvent things and address that particular need.
Peace-building has become a very important part of what the UN does. It is not talked about very much in the news; you have to kind of read between the lines… but the UN and member-states who wants to bring peace to parts of Africa, Asia, Latin-America, are working on building institutions, creating development so there are more jobs and less poverty. Building up justice system, reforming police, all of it is done through the UN, through peace-building. That is another aspect that is completely created maybe a decade ago, but it is evolving because of a need.
A crucial aspect of the United Nations is to be found in its economic and social activities. One might say that the League of Nations, due to its inability to settle political problems, has evolved toward furthering its technical work. It is a similar development that follows the United Nations?
The League was based on the concept that the WWI had erupted because of miscommunication: the people really do want to get along, but there was a miscommunication. If you had a body where people could talk together all the time you could avoid that. But they did not understand that some countries want to create war – acts of aggression. Once it was understood in WWII that it is not a matter of talking, you have to stop aggression. It is one of the reasons the UN had to change the way the provisions of the Charter were written.
But the League, as I said before, was a good experiment in doing a number of different things. One of the things is it created the mandates. After the WWI, the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist. All those territories in Northern Africa and in Middle-East were no longer part of the Ottoman Empire. They had to become states; they had to become self-governing states. The League was put in charge of establishing what those states would be. Some of them had never governed themselves – Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Namibia. The mandate system was set up: another country was established as the administrator for that territory, but the idea was to prepare it for independence. Within that system there had to be respect for the rights of people and indigenous groups. That was part of the League. That was important that they did have those provisions.
The League was a pioneer in terms of peace-keeping – at that time they did not call it peace- keeping. The Saar Basin – which is a territory between France and Germany – for example, it was not clear whether it should belong to Germany or France. It was set up as a League administrated territory, and they administered it for about fifteen years. They had troops there to provide peace and security, and they held a referendum. Ultimately, people voted to become part of Germany. So, it was peacefully resolved. They did some very important things that the UN wanted to keep.
However, because the United States had come out of deep deep depression in late 1920s, Roosevelt realized that for security you not only have to have military security, you have to have economic security. He was very adamant about the creation of the Economic and Social Council. ECOSOC had to be a part of peace; development has to be part of peace. He wanted to create a body that can create mechanisms in that sense. Later, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… To sum up, we acknowledged development, we acknowledge respect for human rights; and those became much of the basis of the UN as it went forward. That grew out of some of the things the League did and many others as for the respect for women and religions.
Undoubtedly, the structure of the Security Council was endowed with the importance, at the time of writing the Charter, of keeping the major powers together who had devoted their militaries to ending the Axis powers. They felt very strongly that they would not be part of the UN if they did not have this privilege. It is why that was created. They were permanently on the Council and they
could stop anything from happening… It was considered better to stop it than to get into a war between major powers.
That was the way it was set up… but it is a stumbling block; it is a huge stumbling block. But, it is not always a stumbling block, which I try to convey to people, because the UN does so much around the world, that goes beyond these problems within the Council in terms of the World Food Program, the World Food and Agriculture Organization. There are out in the world helping to bring food to people who need it in an emergency situation, and then also developing the skills within a country for agricultural or other needs.
This, in the image of the UN, it is part of security. We cannot resolve political problems without addressing social and economic problems. They fit together. If in a particular country, human rights of a particular group are constantly being violated, what are you going to do? You set the seeds for revolution, because they become desperate. At some point, if you cannot get food and you cannot get education for your people, then you rise up. But, if economic development is spread out throughout the whole country, then people feel its fair. That psychological sense of trust and fairness plays so much of a role in security. That has to be understood. It is not just military security.
The UN had grown so much in this respect. We have now the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The High Commissioner for Refugees has grown tremendously, because when it was first established it was simply to cover refugees after WWII, and now we know refugees are a constant problem and have to be dealt with fairly and justly. In the beginning we might have thought these organization to be temporary, but we realize the world is constantly dealing with these issues, so those institutions have grown and have gathered more support.
As for the writing of the Charter, some books emphasize the role of Franklin D. Roosevelt, others highlight the work of US Department of State’s experts. According to you, who is to be considered as the father of the United Nations?
Franklin Roosevelt set the goals and the structure, in the sense he knew the UN had to have something that we now call Chapter VII. He knew that it had to have respect for the rights of people. In a holistic sense, that was his vision.
But really, it was Leo Pasvolsky who wrote the draft. Interesting is that he was of Russian background. He could communicate very clearly when the Russians came to Dumbarton Oaks. He could translate very clearly what was in English into Russian. He truly was the one that sat down and did the writing.
During this process – and we can refer to Dumbarton Oaks which was one of the important meeting in the fall of 1944 – Cordell Hull actually became rather ill at that time, so he was not as much involved. Therefore, Edward Stettinius was brought in. He became the new Secretary State because Hull was so sick. So, Stettinius was there… Now, according to Schlesinger and other people we had interviewed on this… Stettinius was a really great guy, very nice, very charismatic, but he was not that smart… He was good to be there because he could be a good diplomat, and could be in dialogue with this side and that side. But, in terms of the details and understanding the complexity of thing he was not that guy… That was more Pasvolsky.
And Alger Hiss, who became actually the president of the San Francisco Conference, was the big secretary running everything. Not many people talk about Alger Hiss, because later he was accused of spying, which he absolutely was not…
Senator Vandenberg was the Republican leader of the Senate, Connally was the Democratic leader of the Senate. Their involvement was what Roosevelt really cleverly managed. He knew he had to have the Senate ratify the Charter. Consequently, he involved the Senate and the House – Sol Bloom from the House was also involved – in all these meetings. They could share ideas, have discussions, so they would own it. That is what he wanted. He wanted them to have a sense of ownership of the Charter, so then they would encourage ratification. That was a political decision on his part. And it worked well, because Vandenberg and Connally were both very smart people and politically savvy. They were very important players, and they went on San Francisco. That was very important.
On the other hand, Andrei Gromyko was in Dumbarton Oaks representing the Soviet Union. At one time, Gromyko said from Stalin’s point of view that all the republics of the Soviet Union should become members. Then Roosevelt answered, “well we would have all 48 states”. But that was not going to happen, because there would be twice as many people in the General Assembly. That was an end to the discussion of all the republics, but Stalin did not stop with wanting more representation in the United Nations. He eventually insisted on Ukraine and Belarus being original members, and Roosevelt gave in to that, basically understanding the West is so predominantly represented in the UN and they had to let the Soviet Union have a couple more members. You know, India was an original member and it was still a colony.
In early 1980s, Evan Luard contemplated that no history of the UN could be completed until “some of the evidence necessary for final judgments, including all the international documents of the UN Secretariat are not available”12. In 2012 you published in book form and then online the Kofi Annan’s Papers, and recently in 2022, you published the Ban Ki-Moon’s Papers. How did you come to work on this project?
A little history of why I decided to do this. When Pérez de Cuéllar was Secretary-General, I worked with my colleague Jim Sutterlin, who had been a speech-writer for Pérez de Cuéllar, and a very close friend of his. Pérez de Cuéllar went to Jim after he stepped down of office, and asked him for some help in writing his mémoires13. And so then, they hired me as a researcher assistant.
They needed the background papers to write each sections of the mémoires, because they divided it into subjects like Central America, Cambodia, different things… When they were going to discuss a particular part of it, then I was asked to go through the papers, and bring them the documents. I got special security clearance… but I found the papers were not well-cared for… that was shocking for me… They had been moved in their files cabinets, out of the Secretary-General’s office, up to the 39th floor of the UN… and just put in this cage with a padlock.
I would go up there, several time a week, and I would get the key from the security guards… go up to the room… unlock the padlock… and then go through the files… and I would pull out different papers they were asking me to find. There was no copy-machine up there, so I would mark where they were in the files… take the paper, go down to the library, copy them… put the originals back in the file cabinets… because, you know, I was trying to be careful… and make the copies, and give them to Pérez de Cuéllar and to Jim Sutterlin, so they could go over them. I did that for months and months… And I realized: “Why are they doing this?… they are not protected… I am here because Pérez de Cuéllar gave me security clearance to do it, but it shouldn’t be like this, it is not respectful”.
Boutros-Ghali became Secretary-General, and my colleague at Yale who had his office right across the hall from me, published a three-volume set of books on Boutros-Ghali’s letters14 . There were not everything… there were basically the letters. And he showed me what he was doing. But Boutros-Ghali served only for one five-years term. Boutros-Ghali wanted my friend – Charles Hill – to publish the papers. He wanted him to do it. So, Boutros-Ghali had his staff photocopy the papers before they went in the file cabinets, and they were packed in cardboard boxes. Then Charles Hill brought a truck and picked them up to take them home… Now… really? This is an institution, it shouldn’t be handled like that!
Later, when Kofi Annan was nearing his last two years, I said “this is a travesty!”. I wanted to publish Kofi Annan papers, so people know what happened. But I wanted to include his reports to the Security Council, reports to the General Assembly, the noon-briefings, and many other things like his internal memos, not only his letters.
I had a friend, Gillian Sorensen, who was assistant-Secretary-General. I went to her office and I said: “I want to do this!” She answered: “Write a letter to him, but then bring me the letter, and I would get it to him”, otherwise, he may not get it. It took a few months, and then I received a letter back from Kofi Annan saying: “Thank you so much, I would love for you to do this”. He invited me to do a number of things, so I could observe what was going on. His new chef de cabinet at that time was Alicia Bárcena, from Mexico, and he said: “I want you to sit with Alicia, and go over everything, and make sure that she releases things to you”. Following that, we had a legal agreement with the Office of Legal Affairs, and I had to have a declassification officer just so sensitive things wouldn’t become public.
Nevertheless, I argued that these papers were not being taken care of… UN Archives was very mad at me, because I was criticizing them for not taking good care of these things. If we didn’t publish them, they would be locked up in Archives for twenty years, and nobody could see them at all. If you wanted to see it, you had to know exactly what you wanted… you go to the archives and you say “I want that document”… you couldn’t brouse…
I started to work on this project in his last year in office. What happened is I asked Kofi Annan: “Can I start while you are still Secretary-General, because you’re giving me the authority to do this, and maybe the next person won’t”. We had an office in the UN to start… and then, it ended up being delayed because I had to have a declassification officer for us.. The Archives had to do the declassification. Once they had certain papers that were now declassified, they decided to made them publicly available.
But these archives are not organized. In other words, you have to do a word search, you could ask for humanitarian intervention and you get six thousands documents… So, what we did is we read everything – I had a team – and picked the ones they were the most important. We narrowed it down. Ultimately, within our collection, we include the noon-briefings and the reports, and letters, and everything, in one place.. so now, it is in the public domain, but also the private ones that were declassified for us, and put them all in one place. If you wanted search anything related to Kofi Annan, it’s all in one place.
The reason that there are slight differences between the collection on Kofi Annan and the collection on Ban Ki-Moon, is that when we started in 2006-2007, the plan was to have them come out in book form. It is a volume set of five books about five thousands pages. There was no discussion of putting it online. We got the funding to do the book, and we did the book. That is really complicated and different to do a book. But, in the end, Kofi Annan asked: “Could you, please, put them online”, and I said: “ok, let me try”. We had two attempts. In Canada, they were interested. We went up there, but they said it is too complicated. Then, we went to Harvard. They were at first interested, but the person who was interested in doing it left Harvard, so we could not do it there.
At that time, City College set up a digital library. I have to thank profusely City College’s Digital Library, because I went to them, and I said: “Can you help me with this, both with Kofi Annan, and now with Ban Ki-Moon”, and they said: “we would love to do that”! They just walked me through it, and we decided to use JSTOR as the base, which is worldwide. They had a partnership with JSTOR that worked with us, and things were evolving in that system. We had to keep learning how to use the system. But, it worked. Every document has been catalogued, it has all kinds of information about who wrote it, who was it sent to, what is the date, who owns the document. Every document is catalogued. If people use the document, they have a full citation, a full reference, of how this document was created. That system had not evolved until 2014, when were able to use it. They were so supportive – the digital library –, they were absolutely wonderful. I did not have to pay them to do this. The college paid them. Also, there is a nice coincidence that the Secretary- General’s archives ended up on City College’s Digital Library. Leo Pasvolsky, who was absolutely important in writing the Charter in the State Department, graduated from City College.
When I was doing this, my promise – not necessarily just to myself but to all the world – was I would not only do this, but tell people about it so they know it there, otherwise they don’t know it’s there. It is so useful, because it used to be in old book-form, in a library, and people would not know it was there. They were a great resource… but now, no matter where you live in the world, you can get access! You don’t have to go to a library in London, or to a library in New York, or something like that. That was why I was in touch with SciencePo, with Matthew Thomas, I said: “I would really like to do this, because, I want people to know that this treasure of material is there”.
Is the picking up of the archives – that is to say to publish these declassified documents – compatible with the work of historians? How should scholars deal with it?
What I was trying to do in both of these things, is to tell a story. I combined photos, with newspapers articles. Ban Ki-Moon meetings with the press to talk about Myanmar, that was one of my examples… photographs of him meeting with junta… so that those things come together as a story… and then after that was their peaceful agreement, then I added pictures of the Red Cross coming in, bringing food, and the World Food Program, and so forth it, coming in. That it is a complete story. If somebody wants to write about that, all the documentation is there.
I mean, my choice was either have them locked up for twenty years and nobody could see them, or did not know how to research them… or, publish them, but not being able to publish certain things that were confidential… That is not a big choice. You put out what you can. And it was nice, it was a good start.
In one case, with Kofi Annan, I knew of a letter that he had written to President Bush, the son, that was not released to me. And I went to Kofi Annan – he was no longer Secretary-General – and I said: “I really want that letter, can you send it to me?” He said: “Oh yes, sure”! It was a really important letter, because usually a Secretary-General does not intervene in the affairs of a member state, particularly of a P-5. But he wrote a letter to President Bush and he said: “Don’t invade Fallujah, it isn’t necessary, it isn’t useful, and all those people are going to get killed”. Because, he felt so strongly about it, and he knew it was risky… and it was risky because then the government went after Kofi Annan trying to get him to resign. But, you know, his staff and everybody at the UN loved him.
Why did you decide to focus your work on the Secretariat of the United Nations?
The Secretariat was created to serve the member-states. Not just the P-5, but everybody. Originally, it was simply a Secretariat, typing things up, and reading the letters, and whatever. But then, it evolved into a body of very brilliant people and deep thinkers, realizing that more has to be done. Their ideas would then be incorporated… You have a resolution that you have to implement, but they are the ones who implement this resolution. They have to make a plan of how something is going to get implemented. That is a lot more detailed, and the Secretariat make those decisions. You know, it is a partnership. Sometimes it is not a happy partnership, but it is a partnership. If the Council wants something done, they have to have the implementation, and that has to be done by the Secretariat.
I wanted to bring up one other thing. The new book I have is called The United Nations: Policy and Practice15 . We think of policy coming from the top, and then the Secretariat carries it out… and that’s true… we are going to create a peacekeeping operation the Security-Council approved, and then you carried it out. But also, practice filters up to policy. One example of that is, if we look in South Sudan, there had been after independence a lot of violence braking out because there were competing entities fighting for power. It was horrendous. After finally gaining independence, now they broke to a civil war. Many people were coming to the UN camps for security. The UN did have a fence around the camps to provide security for refugees from the war. But then, a militia broke through the fence and started killing people inside the camp. There was outrage: “why aren’t you protecting them? They came to you for protection and you didn’t protect them”. That brought about the whole controversy of protection of civilians: you were here, you have the military force, you can protect them, but you did not… Because there was this demand on the ground, that outrage filtered up into the Secretariat and into the Security Council, which now has actually acknowledged protection of civilians has to be built in every peace-keeping operation.
Peace-keeping is very important, because this is a projection of the UN out into the world to try to create peace, and maintain peace. Peace-keeping has been an arm of the UN for many other things like peace-building. In fact, peace-keeping operation are broken down into components, so there is always now a human rights component, always a UN radio component – to get the message out – because it did have that before, and there is always a mandate for protection of civilians.
What is the budget of the United Nations? How far can the Secretariat and the Secretary- General utilize it to carry out their projects?
The United Nations used to have a two-year budget. But, in the last several years it changed that to have a one-year budget. Every year they are now planning the next year’s budget. Because the two- year budget, to project out two years did not take into consideration all the changes that were happening in the world. So now it has a budget that they do for one year.
And, that budget had grown. The member-states had realized that maintaining this budget of $1 billion dollars per year was too tiny. If you are going to ask the United Nations to do human rights, and refugees, and all these peace-keeping operations, and all these different activities, you have to give them the money to do it. If you do not, they will fail… and, they did not want that to happen… so, they have increased the budget tremendously to about $3.4 billion in 2023.
Every year, the General Assembly sets the budget. The fifth committee is the body of GA that works on the numbers in the budget. It is very important, because if you have a project, and you do not fund it, it is a policy decision, not so much of a money decision.
The regular budget covers maintaining the buildings, it covers salaries, it covers everything… the budget is the budget… that is what money you have to spend on paying for everything. The peace- keeping budget is separate, so we are not going to talk about that today. But it is a big package. Within it, it covers meetings of the General Assembly, meetings of the Security Council, work of the Secretariat, everything… To talk about the Secretariat not having a budget is not really accurate, because it is part of the big budget, it gets paid from the regular budget.
Though, the question is: does the Secretary-General have money other than maintaining the UN? I think that I mentioned that Kofi Annan asked at one point: “do I have discretionary funds. And if I do, how many do I have at my discretion? and how much money is in each one?”. He asked the department of management to give him a memo on that money because they would know. They sent him a list of the different accounts that he had, because a country, let’s say Norway: Norway may give the Secretary-General a budget of like two-hundred thousand dollars that is to be used to human rights. So, it is restricted in terms in what it can do, and it has a certain amount of money in it. However, if the Secretary-General does not know it is there, he may not know to use it. Some of them are for human rights, some of them are for development, some for landmines, some for health, education… different things… So, Kofi Annan discovered that he did have some money that he could work with, and then, he would utilize it in certain ways.
That was very important to know about – even though the Secretary-General does not have his own money particularly – but he does have some. Moreover, the Secretariat can be very clever about how they decide to do things. For example, after the 1991 war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was still bombing the Kurds, and harassing the Kurds. He would not allow peace-keepers to come to protect them. But the United Nations remembered that they have staff there, and they need security, and they can send security for the staff. They decided to send something like five hundred security officers who were truly acting like peace-keepers… but they found another category under which they could do provide security, and then Saddam Hussein accepted that.
Furthermore, there is something called quick impact projects, that the UN can fund. Sometimes it is in the regular budget, sometimes it is funded by a country and given as a discretionary fund to the Secretary-General. But a quick impact project is… let’s say you’re going to send peacekeepers to a new area… there you can build a school as a quick impact project in a sense that you’re going do it for three or four months, you’re going to build the school, you’re going to get all the facilities, the water, the electricity, help to train teacher. Then it’s done. You can also build a police station, or a water well, or provide water in particular village. These are very important for building good will and toward this concept of development and security put together.
Théo Maugeais, étudiant en master 2 Histoire contemporaine sous la direction de François Chaubet
- This interview was originally recorded on May 22nd, 2023, and then transcribed to the final form below. [↩]
- Jean E. Krasno, Bradd C. Hayes and Donald C. Daniel (eds.), Leveraging for Success in United Nations Peace Operations (Westport: Praeger, 2003). [↩]
- Jean E. Krasno and James Sutterlin, The United Nations and Iraq: Defanging the Viper (Westport: Praeger, 2003) [↩]
- Jean E. Krasno, The United Nations: Confronting the Challenges of a Global Society (London: Rienner, 2004). [↩]
- Jean E. Krasno, Personality, Political Leadership, and Decision Making: A Global Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). [↩]
- Jean E. Krasno, The United Nations: Policy and Practice (Boulder: Rienner, 2023). [↩]
- United Nations Digital Library, UN Oral History project [https://digitallibrary.un.org/search?f1=830&as=1&sf=title&so=a&rm=&m1=e&p1=UN%20Oral%20history%20project%20%28Series%29&ln=en]. [↩]
- City College’s Digital Library, The Selected Papers of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan 1997-2006 [https://ccnydigitalscholarship.org/kofiannan/]. [↩]
- City College’s Digital Library, UN Secretary-General Papers: Ban Ki-moon (2007-2016) [https://www.jstor.org/site/ccny/un-secretary-general-ban-kimoon/]. [↩]
- Jean E. Krasno, The United Nations: Confronting the Challenges of a Global Society, op. cit., p. xi. [↩]
- Ruth B. Russell, A History of the United Nations Charter. The role of the United States (Washington D.C.: Brookings, 1958), p. 5. [↩]
- Evan Luard, A History of the United Nations, vol. 1, (New York: St. Martin’d Press, 1982), p. vii. [↩]
- Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Pilgrimage for peace: a Secretary-General’s memoir (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). [↩]
- Charles Hill, The Papers of the United Nations Secretary-General: Boutros Boutros-Ghali (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 3 volumes. [↩]
- Jean E. Krasno, The United Nations: Policy and Practice, op. cit. [↩]
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Marine Azcon (18 mai 2023). Théo Maugeais. United Nations studies and archives: interview with Jean E. Krasno. Master Histoire de Nanterre. Consulté le 15 juillet 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/mzit