"Privatizing" the UN: International Fascism.(Brief Article)

With the UN acting as the occupying power in East Timor, Kosovo, and elsewhere, the world body may consider "the partial privatization of nation-building activities," suggested Jamie Frederic Metzl of the Council on Foreign Relations in an August 13th Christian Science Monitor essay.

For instance, Metzl suggests, "Instead of asking the UN to establish and run a finance ministry for a transitional territory like East Timor ... interested donor states could create a fund from which contracts for specific services could be drawn. Local leaders could offer a contract for establishing a ministry of finance and training local personnel.... Firms with expertise in finance would then submit competing proposals to be considered by a corporate board of diverse local leaders, overseen and assisted by a UN ombudsman. The same model could be used for other basic government functions within a hybrid UN/indigenous/private framework."

"Although many of the firms that could provide these ...