Stephen Schlesinger: Obama Gets Good Grades at the United Nations

Stephen Schlesinger: Obama Gets Good Grades at the United Nations:

"Barack Obama promised throughout his presidential campaign to reengage with the United Nations. And he has. He's compiled an extraordinary list of accomplishments already at the UN building. Let's begin with his decision to appoint a new ambassador, Susan Rice, who actually believes in the UN and has made her commitment clear. Next, his early meeting with Ban Ki Moon at the White House in his seventh week of his presidency, which demonstrated in a public way Obama's determination to link America up again with the UN.

Then his early decision to pay up our annual dues and peacekeeping arrears, estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and to switch our payment schedules to coincide with the UN's own budgetary calendar rather than our Congressional one; his choice to increase American military and civilian support to UN peacekeeping missions; his willingness to rejoin the Human Rights Council; his public declaration to recommit the US to ending climate change; his renewal of US funding support for family planning programs and reproductive health services at the UN's Population Fund; his desire to strengthen American backing of UNICEF and UNESCO; his endorsement of such UN inspired treaties as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; his backing of the UN General Assembly statement opposing violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation; his public citing of the ICC and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women; his push for a pact to end the production of fissile nuclear materials and his pledge for a vigorous US participation in the 2010 UN review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; his support of the UN's Millennium Development goals; his desire to reform the UN Security Council, including possibly adding more countries to its roster; and his support to complete the UN's internal reforms, the Peacebuilding Commission, the Democracy Fund, management changes and the new Responsibility to Protect provision (in the Security Council). All of this represents a 180 degree change of course from the George W. Bush years." Sphere: Related Content