PERSPECTIVE ON FAMINE RELIEF : U.N. Agencies Are Incompetent : Somalia’s suffering is a crime of bureaucracy-- and worse. An inquiry at the highest levelis in order.

Imagine that half the children in a Los Angeles public hospital had died. Imagine that senior consultants had predicted this a year earlier but nothing had been done in the interim. Imagine also that a journalist had discovered that this was but the most recent in a long line of similar tragedies. The people would demand not just immediate measures to save the lives of the remaining children but also a public inquiry into what had gone wrong and the dismissal or prosecution of the guilty parties.

Change the hospital to Somalia and you have an accurate description of the disaster there and the United Nation’s role in failing to prevent it. Perhaps one-quarter of Somalia’s children have died this year, and a similar number face imminent starvation. This was predicted last year by experienced relief agencies, notably the International Committee of the Red Cross and Save the Children Fund (of Britain). The warnings were echoed by Africa Watch on this page in February. We all called on the U.N. humanitarian agencies--UNICEF, the World Food Program and others--to act. They did not, and disaster duly occurred.

The U.N. agencies have no excuses. The dithering in the Security Council need not have stopped them from following the lead of the Red Cross and starting humanitarian work in Somalia. The money was there, but they chose not to spend it. While sitting on their hands in neighboring Kenya, they did not even draw up contingency plans. Six months after the U.N. secretary general ordered the agencies back in, they are still far from a proper operational presence. A “technical mission” of 31 “experts” recently spent 10 days flitting around the country in airplanes, refusing to consult with the staffs of the voluntary agencies that stayed in Somalia through the worst months of fighting.

Most damning of all, this is not the first time. Every experienced relief worker can tell horrifying stories of the incompetence, complacency and even corruption of the U.N. agencies. Despite the efforts of their public-relations officers, they are undoubtedly the most inefficient emergency-relief bureaucracy in the world. One of the untold stories of the 1984 Ethiopian famine was how the United Nations failed to respond to the signs of crisis as the catastrophe unfolded. At one point, the World Food Program scaled down an estimate of emergency food needs eightfold.

During the famine in southern Sudan, the United Nations did nothing for three whole years. And the one UNICEF program helping voluntary agencies to fly supplies into the stricken area was actually closed down as the starvation approached its height.

These are only two examples from a very long list. Veteran relief officials responsible for these disasters are now heading up the U.N. operation in Somalia, calling themselves “experts.” Until now, critics have stayed silent, fearing that governments and the public will stop contributing to humanitarian relief and also in hopes that the United Nations will be able to reform itself from within. These hopes were reinforced by the creation of the new position of undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs at the start of this year. The establishment of the office was designed to ensure that the United Nation’s response to humanitarian agencies was quicker, more efficient and better coordinated.

Somalia shows that adding more bureaucracy changes nothing. More radical reform is needed. The first step is to face the facts. Unless there is an open and honest appraisal of the past, there is no chance of doing better. The continuing failure to take the humanitarian and diplomatic initiatives commensurate with the disaster in Somalia shows that internal reform is not enough.

The second step is to recognize the fundamental principle behind all effective public service: accountability. In poor countries like India and Botswana the same principles of accountability have been applied to famine prevention, and both have excellent records in averting such disasters.

But the United Nations remains impenetrable. There is no glasnost there. An official responsible for allowing famine faces promotion, not prosecution. This is a scandal.

The secretary general must commission an independent inquiry into U.N. famine relief. Somalia must be No. 1 on the agenda. All files must be opened, and all responsible officials summoned to testify. The proceedings must be public. Those responsible must be called to account and punished, and if necessary, prosecuted. Only this can ensure that the situation is not repeated.

American citizens would demand nothing less if their children were dying; they must demand it on behalf of the children of Somalia, whose parents’ voices cannot be heard.

The commission of inquiry must be able to recommend sweeping reform. Above all, it must institute lasting accountability throughout the Kremlin of the U.N. bureaucracy. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has promised a new broom--the world must demand sunlight, the best disinfectant.