The organizational questions I raise and Mr. Bolton raised I think are of greater importance because if you have the declaration of rights, but you don't have the organization structure to implement it, you've got a big problem.

If you have the structure and you have some nations willing, as we did during the Kurdish emergency, to raise the issue in the U.N. system at the policy level, then the structure is there to use. So in other words, one is of much greater importance, the structural changes, than the declaration of rights. And I—at least in my mind, we should make a distinction between those two things.

But ultimately, while I fully support the changes and have spent some time reading the proposals and studying them and thinking about what needs to be done, we must make sure that the 100 nations' response capability is kept intact until we know whether the reformed system is working. Even when we get the reforms through and they're functioning, we should still maintain some capacity to respond. Because if at some point in the future the political will fails, everything else being in place, then we still need to act sometimes bilaterally. I think we should just have a lot of safeguards and be very cautious about-and not too idealistic and altruistic about how the system might work in all instances.

Mr. EMERSON. I think you're entirely correct. It's hard to understand how-how they ever even managed to get around to having a meeting with that kind of bureaucracy.

I don't diminish your own apparatus in the hopes and expectations that the U.N. may be able to build a breach.

The CHAIRMAN. I want to be sure not to get in your way today. [Laughter.]

Even though you're my good friend, I'm staying way away from Mr. Emerson.

Mr. Smith?

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to welcome our two distinguished panelists to the committee.

Secretary Bolton, as you correctly pointed out, many of our perceptions of humanitarian relief by the U.N. indeed have been shaped by the initial slowness of the U.N.'s response to the crisis on the Turkey-Iraqi border and the Iran-Iraqi borders.

And as I think some of you know, I joined out distinguished chairman, Mr. Hall, as a matter of fact it was his idea that a group travel to the Turkey-Iraq border to visit some of the camps where the Kurds were living or surviving.

And it became very clear to all of us in our meetings that had the U.S. military not responded so quickly and so effectively using and employing special forces, air drops, and the like, many more Kurds would have died and many more would have gotten sick, particularly the children.

It raises a number of questions. And when we went and visited with members from UNDRO and U.N. Commission for Refugee Assistance, it became very clear that there are systemic problems. There are institutional problems that need to be resolved.

One of them is that there is just as we all know, when the word went out for donors from various nations to make donations, the receipt of those donations are slow, the start-up time is slow, and the U.N. is severely hampered in its ability.

How might we provide a more-a higher expectation level in terms of what could be in a contingency fund so that when a crisis hits, the U.N. can almost like a rapid deployment force immediately mobilize and then get into the process of getting additional donations? To have that money up front because we know there are going to be additional crises throughout the world, and it does take money.

But it seems to me that having the money all set to go so that we could mobilize or they could mobilize, you know, within 48 hours if necessary. How might that be done?

Mr. BOLTON. Well, obviously, to give you a complete answer to that question we would have to coordinate with our good friends at the Office of Management and Budget who always have decided views on the subject of additional resources.

I think I can say this though. One of the things that Congress did last year and is, we hope, poised to do again this year is to authorize and appropriate the second year of the President's five-year program to pay the arrearages due to the United Nations and all other international organizations.

The initial uses of those funds as they are repaid to the central United Nations organization in New York will be to replenish the depleted working capital fund. As the U.S. repays its arrears, the U.N. will increase its liquidity, and thereby, although it's in a different account for accounting purposes, that money would be available to draw down. It has not been able to do so over the past five or six years, as there were no monies available in the working capital fund.

Whether there is a possibility of increased funding that would be available as a contingency fund, for example, to the U.N. high commissioner or to some other component of the U.N. system, we'd have to talk to OMB about that. I can certainly say that other donors are thinking about it, and it's an idea we're going to have to confront in the very near future.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. If you could keep this committee apprised as to what we might do, because I think that would-I was, frankly, amazed at how slow the U.N. and—you know, there were built in-it was build right into the system that they really couldn't move much faster. There was some intermural squabbles that I thought was-were unnecessary, but the bottom line what that they simply did not have the money to get going. And as they were getting that money, as you know so well, so please keep us informed on this.

Mr. NATSIOS. One of the things that happens though is the U.N. system has an incentive not to have a contingency fund or a reserve which they could do now. And some of them do, like UNHCR has a reserve fund for emergencies because they know if they issued the appeal they can get an increase in their aggregate funding by using the emergencies to raise more money among the donors.

So there is a real incentive for them not to create a reserve. Because if they create reserve they have less of an excuse to go out

Mr. SMITH. I see.

Mr. NATSIOs. Ask for more funds. If we had a central rule that a portion of their existing budget had to be put aside in the reserve, all of the U.N. agencies that deal with emergencies, you'd have what we require without putting additional money in. There's a way of doing that I think, but just realize that they're not going to be too enthused as bureaucratic institutions about the notion of eliminating or requiring a reserve and eliminating appeals because the appeals are a way of getting more money for the system. Mr. SMITH. OK.

A second question, if I could. What will the U.S. policy initiative look like on the issue of internally displaced persons? Are we crafting such a policy for consideration by the U.N.?

Mr. BOLTON. Well, we're certainly in the consideration process, and we'd be happy to consult further with you on it. I think the Kurdish situation demonstrated that-as did, frankly, the AugustSeptember 1990 outflow of third country nationals from the Gulf region-that there is a hole in the international system's response capability for people who do not meet the strict definition of refugee.

And a part of what we need to do is to decide whether or not the 1951 convention needs to be redefined so that UNHCR's mandate can be extended. I think Mrs. Ogata demonstrated some real leadership in this situation-after consulting with us and going ahead and getting UNHCR involved in cross-border operations in the northern part of Iraq.

But we know for a fact that large chunks of the UNHCR bureaucracy were opposed to it on the ground that these people had not crossed an international border and, therefore, were not, technically speaking, refugees. So it has certainly been brought front and center in our consideration that internally displaced have to be resolved at some level within the international system.

Mr. NATSIOS. One of the rationales for Michael Priestley's new unit being set up within UNDP is to deal with this issue, and they put about I think $50 million or $60 million aside of their budget to deal with funding for his office.

UNDP has the responsibility to deal with disasters generally around the world, but they haven't fulfilled that goal. They are going through a process now of trying to train some of their res reps in disaster management.

But the problem is frequently, no matter how well you train them, it is a really arcane discipline. It is unless you've been through one, it's difficult to understand the kind of pressures you're under. So no matter how much training you have, it's really useful to have people who have experience having gone through

one.

And one of the things that UNDP ought to look at, at least in the existing structure-I mean, I'm not talking about with the changes that that John just mentioned in terms of clarifying roles but in the existing mandate of things, the existing structure of things, of getting a cadre of experienced disaster managers under Priestly's leadership who could move into a country and replace the res rep for the purposes of coordinating the disaster in that country.

That doesn't require a lot of structural reform. It just requires Priestley to use his power and resources under this new unit that's been set up on disaster management.

Mr. SMITH. Is that unit operational at this point?

Mr. NATSIOS. I don't know if it's operational. But the decision to go ahead with it I think has been made on the policy level. It's not operational.

Mr. SMITH. What is the current estimate of internally displaced persons? Do we have one?

Mr. BOLTON. I don't have a figure for you on that, but I'd be happy to try and supply it for the record if I do have one. An estimate of the population size of internally displaced people is nearly impossible to calulate, given the constant flucuation in conditions that lead to displacement. It remains an issue of growing concern and we encourage efforts made to determine the magnitude of populations in this situation.

Mr. SMITH. That's all my questions at this point.

I want to thank both of you for the fine job you're doing.

I vield back the balance of my time.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Smith.

I'd like to ask one last question of Mr. Bolton. How do you plan to ensure that we not lose the initiative on U.N. reform when it comes to disaster relief? Many of us in Congress want to see U.N. reform from top to bottom.

But when we ask these questions today, I want you to know that as a committee, and certainly as a chairman, we realize that to make reforms completely in the U.N. is going to take a long time. And what we don't want to lose, if all else fails in the next couple of years to have large-scale reform, we ought to take one piece of it and the very most important piece, in our opinion, is disaster and disaster assistance-humanitarian.

If we've got to have another chart here, another person, with all these numbers like you've got, there ought to be one guy over here handling disaster, and I don't know what you've got in your mind. But everything is going to have to be taken away from these people because all this power and clout, credibility, is being diffused. Do you have a plan for this?

Mr. BOLTON. We do not have a specific plan because, as I think I mentioned earlier, what we are trying to do now is to build a broad international consensus that major structural reform needs to be undertaken. It has not been undertaken in the entire 46-year history of the secretariat. We have an opportunity now with the election of the new Secretary General to do just that.

You know, with 25 Under Secretary Generals reporting to the Secretary General, I couldn't tell you whether that's 10 too many, or 15 too many, but it's clearly too many. We need an overall streamlining. But I take your point that we don't want to wait forever and disaster coordination is a high priority.

The CHAIRMAN. That's the one thing that the committee wants to urge you. If there's not going to be any U.N. reform, if there's going to be something, push this. This is one area where we can work on, and-because it's priority in our minds, and we're going to continue to push it with you.

OK. Do you have anything else, either one of you?

We have some questions that we'll send to you.

Mr. BOLTON. And we'd be pleased to respond to them.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. NATSIOS. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. I'm very pleased to introduce our second panel of distinguished experts on the subject of humanitarian relief. Professor Ved Nanda, Director of the International Legal Studies Program at the University of Denver, has written extensively on the legal implications of humanitarian assistance.

Mr. Larry Minear, now a Visiting Fellow at the Overseas Development Council, and affiliated with the Brown University World Hunger Program, has long experience working and writing on relief issues, most recently with the Church World Service in world relief.

And we are very happy to have Mr. Fred Cuny, a well-known disaster expert, just back from Iraq to talk to us today about his perspective from long experience managing disaster relief programs around the world.

Professor Nanda, would you please begin?

Mr. NANDA. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF VED NANDA, DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL LEGAL STUDIES PROGRAM

Mr. NANDA. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am honored and privileged by your gracious invitation to testify at today's hearings. Because of your committee's initiatives on humanitarian issues and its immense contributions, the committee is appropriately called by many observers as "the conscience of the Congress.'

And, indeed, the committee's unrelenting efforts on behalf of the needy and unrepresented are well known and the committee's actions have clearly demonstrated that it indeed reflects the conscience of the country. I hope that you'll continue to exercise this important leadership role.

Mr. Chairman, I'm not going to read my statement this morning: I'll make very brief comments.

But before I do so, I want to express my views that, along with working at the structure of the organization, it is equally important that this timely intervention that you have taken continue with full vigor to ward changing the world community's legal obligation on the right to food.

What I'm suggesting is that the obligation, the norms, the declaration, and the convention on the right to food are equally important, even it is a structure and the political will that will make it happen. Unless you have the legal obligation, there are no bases for that to happen.

At this stage, I know that the United States does not want to be simply the policemen of the world. So the United Nations is the only game in town. If we want to act in a multilateral fashion, which we must, I would urge that you kindly continue with your efforts to reform the United Nations. This reform is not only in the interest of the world community, but in the interest of this country as well.