Ban Ki-moon “comes to the job at a very difficult time”, said Lee Feinstein, senior fellow on United States foreign policy and international law and a former State Department official under the administration of former President Bill Clinton. Speaking to journalists via a conference call on 21 December 2006, Mr. Feinstein outlined his views on the challenges that the new United Nations Secretary-General will face, including reforming the UN and preventing genocide.
Saying that Mr. Ban has inherited the “proverbial problem from hell with Darfur”, Mr. Feinstein recommended that Mr. Ban rally the African Union to deploy the number of troops needed for a mission to stop the violence in Sudan. This would follow the African Union charter’s call for “African solutions to African problems” and would lead to “greater African self-sufficiency”.
Mr. Ban is known in diplomatic circles as a “very tough and very patient negotiator”, said Mr. Feinstein, observing that he would likely differ from Kofi Annan, who often took positions that opposed those of other Member States. The new UN leader would be “more in the mold of a traditional Secretary-General, in the sense that he's unlikely to make public statements that will give offense to one party or another, and much more of a conciliator, although not to be confused with somebody who's not strong”, said Mr. Feinstein.
Regarding UN reform, an issue Mr. Ban has repeatedly said he would make a priority, Mr. Feinstein recommended that the new Secretary-General “make genocide prevention, prevention of atrocities a centrepiece of the UN reform effort and build reforms around this mission”, which would have direct consequences for the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Human Rights Council. Giving a political reason for reform “has the potential to give UN reform a much greater impetus than it's had so far”, added Mr. Feinstein.
Even if Mr. Ban were to put genocide prevention at the heart of UN reform efforts, Mr. Feinstein said that it is “unfair to expect a secretary-general to be responsible for preventing and stopping the atrocities that happen around the world”. Calling the UN an “underfunded” and “militarily stretched” institution, he added that “very often, when people say the U.N. failed to prevent genocide, what they really mean is members of the UN have failed to take action to prevent genocide”.
To bolster peacekeeping efforts, Mr. Feinstein suggested developing a recommendation made by Mr. Annan – “a ready peacekeeping capacity that could deploy quickly and effectively, at least in a vanguard capacity, soon after a peacekeeping operation is authorized”. He added that such a force could operate on a preventative basis to keep violence from escalating while actors build the political will necessary to end conflicts.
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