Roger Iredale:  the Friend, 21 October 2011

I have never had any difficulty with remembering United Nations Day, 24 October, since it coincides with my mother’s birthday! This huge organisation rambles like a rose bush over the globe, with its many offshoots involved in almost every aspect of human life in every corner of the world.

Some, like UNICEF, do outstanding work with children and mothers in slums and deserts, while others come to the aid of the beleaguered Gazans, or struggle to keep peace in the vast recesses of Central Africa. Friends have been able to make their influence felt through our offices in Geneva and New York.

The organisation was born of the idealism of the eccentric pacifist Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson and his Bloomsbury circle, who began to create the League of Nations even before the First World War ended. While that organisation failed to prevent the next war, it created many agencies later inherited by the UN and provided a template for the present structure of seventeen elements, including UNESCO, the International Monetary Fund and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

It is a pacifist concept born of a profound objection to war as a means of resolving disputes. That it is empowered to sanction military action in response to emergencies is a constant source of tension and contradiction.

A political organisation with an intergovernmental dimension, the UN inevitably attracts the power struggles and egotism that characterise politics. I have talked with a chief statistician whose job was threatened because of her unwillingness to distort the sensitive literacy statistics of an influential member state. I have unknowingly worked with an official who was secretly employed to follow the Cold War rivalries within one of the agencies. And I have seen the scrawled, defiant file notes of an autocratic director-general, written in pursuit of some private agenda, countermanding the considered judgments of a senior colleague.

In such a vast enterprise, aberrations are inevitable.The UN represents governments, and governments come in all shapes and sizes. Some agencies are more effective than others. All aim to help the poorest and most vulnerable.

The General Assembly and the Security Council are central to the UN. The latter is an absurd historical anomaly, with France and Britain occupying permanent seats – while India and Brazil have to take their turn with the rest of the world.

Does this jealously guarded status quo contribute to the belief of the British political classes that they have a right to fight other people’s wars? Did Tony Blair’s military adventures arise from Britain’s self-importance because it sits beside China, the USA and the Russian Federation at the top table? Is it fair that this small island can wield such influence over global decision making? Indeed, is it right that any country, particularly the USA after it misled the General Assembly on Iraq, can veto crucially important world events? Everyone agrees that there is a need for change, but then the Tower of Babel takes over.

So, we have this valued, ubiquitous entity embracing the globe and trying to spread flowers of peace in dangerous places, tackling poverty, refugees, health, agricultural, economic, cultural, scientific, financial and social issues.

Though it works from a script that was written some sixty years ago, in a very different world, it was conceived by people of peace and it remains the only sane barrier to the opposite.

Roger Iredale is a member of Mid-Somerset Area Meeting.  His work has involved close collaboration with UN agencies across the globe. He is emeritus professor of international education at the University of Manchester and former chief education adviser to the Minister for Overseas Development.

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                  Guest Speaker  Heather Blake:  

UK chair of Reporters without Borders

Elizabeth Way summarises this Birmingham UNA meeting, held on September 17^th: 

On the 17th of September Heather Blake UK Director of Reporters Without Borders (RWB) spoke to the Birmingham Branch AGM about Press Freedom and Human Rights. 

 RWB was founded in 1985 to support journalists and uphold their rights and to report freely. It helps financially by supporting the families of journalists imprisoned or murdered. She spoke about the increased deliberate attacks on journalists and the increasing violation of human rights.  I pressed for the establishment of laws to facilitate free reporting and for the UN to get the right to report firmly established as one of UN human rights. 

RWB will send one of their panel of experts to areas that have been reported to look at the evidence.  They can send protest letters to governments responsible.  They can then work to raise the international profile of events in that country.

Heather Blake spoke of the problems arising from the cutting of financial support for the World Service by the BBC; it may be impossible for some countries to hear a more truthful alternative to the state media, making human rights violations more probable.  She praised the balanced reporting of Al-Jazeera.  She also spoke about the need to balance detailed reporting in some situations in order to safeguard people who are opposing their own government and giving vital information to the reporter.  Heather praised the Birmingham branch for their informed interest and searching questions.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the 1998 Rome Statute by a vote of 120 to 7, with 21 countries abstaining. Seven countries voted against the treaty: Iraq, Israel, Libya, China, Qatar, Yemen and the US.

Following years of negotiations, the International Criminal Court was set up to prosecute individuals accused of genocide and other serious international crimes. The statute requires judicial candidates to have experience of criminal proceedings or of international law and qualifications that would enable them to take up a place at their country’s highest court. The ICC, based in The Hague, Netherlands, began work in 2002. 

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In terms not quoted verbatim on this site, the US Human Rights Watch spokesman, Richard Dicker, questioned the competence of the court’s judges and the polling process which appoints them.

Philippe Sands, a barrister specialising in international law, who has written a book on the election of judges to international courts found that ‘vote-trading, campaigning, and regional politicking’ was common. That is not surprising as this is the norm in national and international politics and sport.   

It has also been criticised for including candidates with insufficient qualifications. Japan, which contributed a fifth of this year’s annual budget of €103.6m ($142.7m), previously successfully nominated two judges who were not qualified lawyers.  

This criticism appears to be ill-founded as the Rome statute requires two categories of judges: those with experience in criminal proceedings as judges and prosecutors (list A) and those with expertise in international law (list B), in order to achieve a delicate balance between criminal law and international law.

Another concern flagged by the South Korean president of the court, Sang-Hyun Song in correspondence seen by the Financial Times is that some who are elected in December may not be able to start work straight away. The British candidate, Howard Morrison, is currently presiding over the trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia which is not expected to finish until 2014.  

Masahiro Mikami, Director of the International Legal Affairs Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan responded to the crtiscism of Judge Kuniko Ozaki of Japan, who serves at the ICC and is not a qualified lawyer. 

The ICC recognises that governance can be improved at the court and has set up a group studying the issue, which will report at the December meeting of member states and the election.

 Sources: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/96fbbd78-e529-11e0-bdb8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1Ym9ICXlf 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/21de35c6-def7-11e0-9af3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1YXUCI8Gs

“Elites consolidate more money & power, further driving disparity and eroding governance. What results is an interstitial vacuum where corporate intervention fails to see any profit motive and where state intervention lacks the funds or will to govern effectively. 

“In effect, the combination of super-empowered non-state actors, failures of state governance, and widespread economic disparity undermines the Rule of Law by releasing elites from accountability . . . “

Another damaging feature of globalisation is the mass movement – legal or illegal - of the poorest peoples, to serve the corporate desire for the cheapest labour, antagonising the economically weakest, largely unemployed 10% of the host nation.

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The only convincing prescription? 

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The only convincing prescription seen by the writer, which addresses this uneasy dependent fragility, appears in a book by the convenor of the Green New Deal Group,Colin Hines: LOCALIZATION: A GLOBAL MANIFESTO, Earthscan.

After the Deputy Lord Mayor’s welcome, an introduction to the Millennium Development Goals, was read by Bert Gedin. All speakers agreed that progress had been made, but the process has been slowing down and efforts should be renewed. Some points made at this meeting, facilitated by Ravi Kumar, chairman of B’ham UNA, follow.

Former DFID Secretary, Clare Short, listed major conferences which preceded the MDG agreement, including the Beijing event focussing on the empowerment of women, Cairo on reproductive health, Rio on the environment and several major political events, including the overthrow of apartheid and release of Nelson Mandela and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Clare pointed out that the MDGs are related, for example education will be adversely affected if a child has no access to potable drinking water. To release resources, she suggested that some military spending could be transferred to education.

 She described a ‘high point’, when in 2000, 189 world leaders unanimously adopted the “United Nations Millennium Declaration” at the conclusion of their Millennium Summit on 8 September 2000, and concluded that the ‘Arab Spring’ and other changes of mood offer hope that more progress will be made towards achieving the MDGs.

Malcolm Harper, now an independent international consultant after long and distinguished service as director of the United Nations Association, looked back over improvements made since the ‘60s and focussed on the factors inhibiting the achievement of the MDGs: 

• the rich-poor divide – some multinational companies are far wealthier than some developing countries;
• poor rural infrastructure – for example, many needy people have to walk many miles to reach medical facilities;
• aid which is not focussed on quality – for example, increasing the number of children attending school, regardless of equipment provided and staffing levels;
• corruption – both corruptors and corruptees must be tackled. 

Malcolm believed that less progress has been made towards the goal of gender equality and that this should be urgently addressed. 

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John Cooper, Christian Aid’s Regional Co-ordinator for the West Midlands, spoke next. Christian Aid thinks that the Declaration’s emphasis on empowering people living in poverty was translated into telling poor counties what their priorities should be. Its emphasis on powerful countries and companies meeting their responsibilities to others was translated into a system which fails to hold them accountable for their part in fuelling global poverty. 

Progress has been made with providing clean water but the other MDGs are significantly behind target level in areas, including maternal and child mortality, hunger and access to sanitation.

Christian Aid’s new report on progress towards the MDGs says that the fundamental reason for the failure of the MDGs to achieve more is that they are based on a flawed understanding of poverty – which ignores the root causes of the problem. They are blind to inequality, unsustainability and the importance of input by ordinary people to decision-making. The report argues that a successor to the MDGs after 2015, which truly reflects the ambition of the Declaration, is vital. 

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Rianne ten Veen, of Green Creation, examined assertions made about the MDGs: 

Too ambitious?

In 1996, the Rome Declaration on World Food Security aimed to halve the number of hungry people by 2015, but MDG 1 merely aims to halve the proportion of people in developing countries who suffer from hunger and has a baseline of 1990 instead of what would be a more ambitious 1996.

Too expensive?

The estimated cost of achieving the MDGs is $189bn but:

• Annual fossil fuel subsidies: $312bn
• Iraq War: $648bn
• Wall Street bailout: $8.5trn 

Lagging because of lack of effort from poor countries? 

No; because of the lack of a level playing field in terms of debt, trade and investment.The amount of debt relief is often deducted from the aid budget. Only 1% of foreign direct investment benefits the poorest and 82% FDI goes into the extractive industries.

The role of the WTO was questioned by Malcolm Harper – is it really acting in the interest of poor countries? Rianne points out that the Millennium Declaration had fair trade as its ambition, but MDG8 offers more obvious advantages for foreign multinationals, and trade liberalisation. 

A brief case study of Argentina was given to illustrate the uneven playing field.The ICSID Convention is a multilateral treaty formulated by the Executive Directors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank). ICSID’s website reveals that, in all but one of the first fifty pending cases, wealthy corporations are bringing charges against small developing countries – 24 against Argentina.  The MNCs usually ‘win’. 

MDG7 on environmental sustainability appears to relate only to poor countries, though the rich countries are responsible for the high greenhouse gas emissions and the poor suffer most of the consequences. Rianne concluded that Millennium Consumption Goals (MCG) could help make our development path more sustainable, by focusing on the 1.4 billion people in the richest 20 percentile of the world’s population. They consume over 80% of global output, or 60 times more than the poorest 20 percentile. Instead of viewing the rich as a problem, they should be persuaded to contribute to the solution.  

A vote of thanks was given by Gill Briggs.#

NOTE: The Millennium Consumption Goals proposal was made by Prof. Munasinghe in January 2011 at the United Nations in New York. The background paper for the original proposal “MCG: How the Rich Can Make the Planet More Sustainable” is available at: http://www.mohanmunasinghe.com/pdf/Island-MCG-1Feb20112.pdf. 

At the same meeting, copies of another new publication to promote the implementation of commitments on Women, Peace and Security were available: SCR 1325 and Women’s Participation: Operational Guidelines for Conflict Resolution and Peace Processes.  Written primarily for people working in the field, its practical approach and concise sections make it a useful resource for activists as well.  As with the other big issues – Nuclear Disarmament and Trade Justice to name but two – there are deeply entrenched mindsets to be shifted.  This 48-page document can be downloaded from the website of The Initiative on Quiet Diplomacy/IQ^d (www.iqdiplomacy.org).

Birmingham UNA Group

Meeting Phil Mulligan 

In November Phil Mulligan, who became UNA-UK Executive Director in September 2010, visited the branch. He was touring the country to meet members, introduce himself and speak about his ideas. 

At another meeting Ravi Kumar, chair of Birmingham UNA, showed two videos about children in Nigeria, some as young as a few months old, blamed for misfortune, branded as “witches” and rejected by their families or treated with extreme cruelty in order to extract “confessions” of sorcery. 

According to a recent report by UNICEF, “Children Accused of Witchcraft,” accusations in witchcraft are on the rise in general in Nigeria, in particular against children and adolescents.

Earlier this year, the Nigerian government formally condemned the practice of abusing children as witches and wizards. Nigeria’s permanent secretary at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and Social Development, Alhaji Idris Kuta called the practice “unacceptable and should receive outright condemnation.” It was decided that a letter be written to the Nigerian High Commissioner. 

The UNICEF report may be downloaded here: 

www.unicef.org/wcaro/wcaro_children-accused-of-witchcraft-in-Africa.pdf        

The posting I inadvertently deleted will soon be restored, Friends, along with Phil’s smiling face.

THE INTERNATIONAL COALITION FOR THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT (ICRtoP) brings together NGOs from all regions of the world to strengthen normative consensus for RtoP, further the understanding of the norm, push for strengthened capacities to prevent and halt genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and mobilize NGOs to push for action to save lives in RtoP country-specific situations.

World Federation of United Nations Associations (New York and Geneva) is one of its members.  

See the latest Nato Watch News Briefing: 24 February 2011

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