C.D. Howe Institute Commentary - Cleaning Up the UN in an Age of

The organization’s inaction in the face of genocide, the antics of its Human Rights Commission and the oil-for-food scandal, have all sapped the UN’s authority. [...] Nor can the UN hope to exercise the influence it aspires to unless it addresses the security concerns of the country that hosts it and pays the largest share of its bills. [...] Howe Institute Commentary argued that the UN is not just an organization that can help get things done, it is the only body with a right to intervene in the affairs of sovereign states: “It is precisely because the UN is the chief guardian of both of these sacrosanct principles [sovereign equality of states and the inadmissibility of interference in their internal affairs] that it alone is allowed. [...] This may be a rhetorical success and will appeal to the concerns of the many poorer UN members and the global NGO-cracy, but it will do little to build the UN’s prestige in the hard security sphere, or to reassure the public in the developed world. [...] Howe Institute Commentary Box 1: Definition of democratic principle and practice from the Warsaw Declaration, June 27, 2000 • The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government, as expressed by exercise of the right and civic duties of citizens to choose their representatives through regular, free and fair elections with universal and equal suffrage, open to multiple parties,.