T
H E U N G A L I N K
The best
hope for peace is UN – plus You
Newsletter of UNGA-Link UK, an NGO in
Association with the UN Department of Public Information
Volume 7, Issue 2 (May 2005)
How is the Opportunity going
to be Used?
That was the question posed by the Earl of Lytton at the
first UN General Assembly, meeting in Central Hall Westminster in
January 1946. And it is in substance the question which frames
the latest report of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, as he spells
out the "historic opportunity" of this 60th
Anniversary Year and concludes with "our opportunity and our
challenge".
Entitled In
larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights
for all (ILF), this report has the Secretary-General’s
recommendations for strengthening the United Nations so that it
can achieve its objectives (see page 2) It includes or endorses most recommendations in the
recently published reports of the High Level Panel on Threats,
Challenges and Change and the Millennium Project but is much more
than a response to them. It is Kofi Annan’s personal agenda
for reform, based on his eight years as Secretary-General, his
own conscience and convictions and his understanding of the
Charter "whose principles and purpose it is my duty to
promote" (para 4). The document referred to most frequently
throughout is the Millennium Declaration – the agenda
for change agreed by 189 Heads of State or Government five years
ago. This is due for review by the General Assembly, 14-16
September this year – the Declaration as a whole, and the
eight time-bound Development Goals it contains.
Wilfrid Grey’s Letter from New York (page
3) says there is more talk of UN Reform this year than at the
time of the 50th Anniversary, and in this country the
Foreign Secretary invited citizens to let the government know our
views through a special project on UN Reform at the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office. Elsewhere, for example, the African Union
has published "The Ezulwini Consensus" on the subject
and the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies held
a seminar to explore what might be included in a Common European
Position (page 2).
Security Council Reform
One subject on which no one expects an EU
consensus is Security Council Reform. In his report, the
Secretary-General urges Member States to consider the two models
of the More Secure World report "or any other viable
option" and to reach agreement before the General Assembly
meets in September. Even if it proves impossible to take the
vital decision by consensus, "this must not become an excuse
for postponing action" (ILF para 170). Security Council
Reform has been on the UN’s agenda for well over ten years,
as Jeffrey Segall reminds us with reference to earlier reform
proposals (page 3). Where the Panel and the Secretary-General
chose to limit themselves to what they think should be
achievable, Dr Segall does not want the good to be the enemy of
the best.
UN-Civil Society Reform
On the issue of direct concern to UNGA-Link,
UN-Civil Society Relations, the Secretary-General endorses the
"many useful recommendations" of the Cardoso Report and
calls on the General Assembly to "establish mechanisms
enabling it to engage fully and systematically with civil society."
(ILF para 162) What those mechanisms might be will be discussed
in some detail following our AGM on Saturday 9th July
under the heading "UN-Civil Society Relations after
Cardoso". The Cardoso Report was given quite a mixed welcome
by the NGO community in New York, as may be seen on very useful
websites of the Global Policy Forum and the NGLS: www.globalpolicyforum.org/reform/initiatives/panels/cardoso and www.un-ngls.org/UNreform.htm
The obstacles to reform, whether from
the NGOs and CSOs, the private sector, the UN system or the
Member States, derive in large measure from mutual distrust. All
sectors have their grounds for suspicion, and if they are to take
the historic opportunity of this anniversary year and meet the
challenge, each must surely honour the need for transparency and
accountability it demands of the others. The NGO Accountability
Project of the One World Trust, a Member Organisation of
UNGA-Link, is doing in-depth work on this subject (page 4).
The campaign to Make Poverty History proceeds
apace. Can we not resolve to Make War History too, by
taking seriously the potential of the United Nations to achieve
its aims, and acting according to our various spheres of
influence and responsibility to ensure that it can do so? Editor
An Agenda of Highest
Priorities
That is how the Secretary-General describes
his newest report, In larger freedom: towards
development, security and human rights for all. The first
phrase of the title comes from the inspirational preamble to the
UN Charter, and the central chapters of the document – on
Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear and Freedom to Live in
Dignity – are clearly intended to recall the "Four
Freedoms" speech of Franklin D Roosevelt, and that American
President’s essential contribution to the founding of the
United Nations.
There are no lectures for the American
President of today, indeed there is implicit acknowledgement of
America’s sense of vulnerability and need for a more
effective UN. Like the members of the High Level Panel on
security matters, most of whose recommendations are included
here, Kofi Annan has chosen to call for action he believes to be
"both vital and achievable" (para 5, bold
added).
This account is of necessity brief, but we hope
it will encourage many to read the report itself.* One striking
feature throughout is language reminding us of the complexity
of the UN’s task, with its uniquely comprehensive range
of global responsibilities. An obvious point, perhaps for that
reason overlooked by the critics who deny the Organisation
anything like adequate resources.
The drawbacks to the method Member
States have developed to achieve consensus are noted: it
fails to resolve real differences, producing instead
"so-called decisions" reflecting "the lowest
common denominator". In the General Assembly it
"prompts (a) retreat into generalities, abandoning any
serious effort to take action" (para 159), and we quoted on
page one a like reference concerning the Security Council (para
170).
There is, as always with Kofi Annan, a strong
emphasis on prevention – not only of armed conflict,
but of all causes of human misery. "We must address all
these threats preventively, acting… with the full range of
available instruments " (para 81). The report strongly
supports the More Secure World proposal for a Peacebuilding
Commission to fill "a gaping hole" in the UN’s
institutional machinery, tasked with helping to prevent countries
sliding into lawlessness and conflict or to recover sustainably
from such situations (para 114-119).
The Secretary-General continues to press for
the Organisation to mainstream human rights. He recommends
the establishment of a Human Rights Council to replace the now
discredited Commission (para 183) although we owe it the
framework of universal human rights treaties, independent expert
reports by theme and by country, and "an opportunity for
working with civil society that does not exist elsewhere"
(para 181). He "strongly agrees" with the
recommendation of a "collective responsibility to
protect" while being "well aware of the sensitivities
involved in this issue" (para 135).
There is no doubt that the Secretary-General
appreciates all that civil society has to offer the
Organisation: it has "a critical role to play in driving
(the) implementation process forward to ‘make poverty
history’" (para 38); it "plays an increasingly
important role in world affairs" at national and
international levels (para 153); and it can offer valuable
expertise (paras 189 & 201). As we said on page one, he
agrees there is a need for "mechanisms" to allow full
engagement with the General Assembly.
Of the many telling passages in this report,
perhaps the following most concisely sums up the opportunity and
challenge it presents: "We must move from an era of
legislation to an era of implementation. Our declared
principles and our common interest demand no less" (para
132, bold added).
* www.un-ngls.org/UN-report-largerfreedom.pdf
Regional Approaches – AU
and EU
It is probable that the current wave of
attention to UN Reform will result in Regional Organisations
having a more coherent role in global governance, particularly
"in multi-pillar peace operations under the overall United
Nations umbrella" (ILF para 215).
The African Union reached a common
position in reponse to the More Secure World proposals at
Addis Ababa in March. The Ezulwini Consensus calls for
more emphasis on poverty as a root cause of insecurity,
emphasises the need for developed countries to take urgent action
on global warming, and commits AU members to expediting the entry
into force of the African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty. The
document concludes with a resolution on Security Council reform,
saying full representation for Africa would require at least two
permanent seats with veto power and five non-permanent seats.
The European Union are still
deliberating. At a seminar in Paris on 21 March, representatives
of governments, academia, the European Commission (EC), the UN
and - through UNGA-Link - civil society discussed The EU and
the UN: Implementing Effective Multilateralism.
The EC strongly support the Peacebuilding
Commission proposal and would hope to play an active role on such
a body. One speaker raised the possibility of a Security Council
seat for the EU. Others made the point that the EU’s
generally good record on Peacekeeping and Human Rights is not
matched by its trade practices.
UN Reform is In the Air
Our Letter from Wilfrid Grey in New York
At this 60th Anniversary the UN is
awash with ideas for reform and encouragingly a significant
number of developing nations are supporting a larger role for
civil society. In Larger Freedom is the
Secretary-General’s detailed response to the report of the
High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.
Reform is much more in the air than it was at
the UN’s 50th Anniversary, where the emphasis was
all on the theme of Human Security as opposed to National
Security. As usual, nothing much will happen this year unless the
Americans want it. But this time around there is a snag. There is
no American Ambassador in post. The President’s choice, John
Bolton, a senior official in the State Department, has proved
controversial. His manner is abrasive and what has been seen of
him at the UN has not endeared people to him. If, as seems
likely, he gets appointed he might railroad through one or two
reforms, but there will be no progress on ratifying Kyoto,
joining the International Criminal Court or even the ratification
of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The best we can
hope for is that Bolton will be chastened by the strength and
breadth of the criticisms ranged against him.
When the 60th Anniversary Summit
takes place in September there will probably be an omnibus
Resolution which will grade reforms as ‘immediate’ and
‘for further study’. We shall be reminded once again
that, especially in international diplomacy, Max Weber’s
aphorism ‘Politics is the slow boring of hardboards’
does not go out of date.
But there is some good news for those who, like
members of UNGA-Link, want to see a more lively General Assembly
where the views of NGOs count for something. In June there will,
for the first time, be two days of hearings at which carefully
chosen and rehearsed members of civil society will dialogue in
round-table discussions with representatives of Member States.
The Agenda will be the main topics in the
Secretary-General’s report: freedom from want, freedom from
fear, freedom to live in dignity and reform of the United
Nations.
If this wide-ranging dialogue goes well a
precedent will have been set and this event could well begin to
take place on an annual basis. This could in time make the words
often used to describe the General Assembly ‘ The Town Meeting of the World’
seem less euphemistic and more in line with the rightly impatient
demands of a global public.
Security Council Reform
– Bigger but Business as Usual?
Anand Panyarachun (2004)
vs Qureshi & Weizsacker (1995)
Jeffrey J. Segall, Founder-editor Medicine
and War and Co-Founder, Campaign for a More Democratic United
Nations questions current reform proposals:
The Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
(chaired by Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand
and appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan) recommends
expanding the Security Council (SC) by additional permanent and
non-permanent seats to 24 members with no expansion of the veto.
That power would be confined to the Original Permanent Five
(OP5).
Ten years ago, the Independent Working Group on
the Future of the United Nations (Co-Chairs Moeen Quereshi,
former Prime Minister of Pakistan and Richard von Weizsacker,
former President of the Federal Republic of Germany, appointed by
the then Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali) made
significantly different recommendations. The Group proposed
expansion of the SC to not more than 23 members, including a
maximum of five new permanent members who would have the veto. A
complementary recommendation in the report is that the veto
should be made applicable only to peacekeeping and enforcement
measures.
Let us suppose that one or more of the OP5
prepare to take military action against a UN member-state without
a UN mandate, and that a motion is proposed by other SC members
calling for cessation of preparations for what would be an act of
aggression, and for the peaceful settlement of the dispute under
Chapter 6 of the Charter. Under the terms of the 1995 report, the
OP5 member/s concerned could not veto this motion against their
actions because it did not relate to "peacekeeping and
enforcement measures". Under existing rules, which would be
continued under the 2004 report, the state/s concerned could
exercise their veto and proceed to use force if they chose.
Let us further suppose that the OP5 member/s
concerned sought UN endorsement for the threatened action and
that the other OP5 states abstained or supported it as a
justified UN enforcement measure. One or more of the new
permanent members could veto this motion.
The 2004 recommendations on the SC entrench the
UN further into the past. The 1995 recommendations offer hope
that the UN could initiate the quest for a global order that is
not dominated by power politics and the threats to humanity and
civilised values that this increasingly carries. At the
General Assembly’s interactive hearing 24-25 June, Civil
Society Organisations should urge the General Assembly to
re-consider the recommendations of the 1995 report together with
its consideration of the 2004 proposals.
Why Should We Trust You?
One clear lesson of the United Nations’ 60-year
experience of global governance is the need for all sectors to
have a convincing answer to the above question. The Oil for Food
scandal is the obvious case in point. The Secretary-General
appointed the Volcker Commission to investigate thoroughly,
disciplinary action has followed and lessons have been learned.
The same can not, as yet, be said for the government/s and
corporations involved in illegal profiteering under Iraq’s
Coalition Provisional Authority. NGOs and CSOs were not tainted
by this affair, but history shows they too can fall below
acceptable standards of competence and probity.
UK NGO Accountability Forum
by the Officer responsible for this One World
Trust Project, Robert Lloyd:
Since the early 1990s the role of
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the governance of global
affairs has increased dramatically. International institutions
and transanational corporations have aimed to increase their
legitimacy and credibility through engagement with NGOs, whilst
NGOs have found that through moral persuasion and public
mobilisation they can exert considerable influence at both the
national and international levels in shaping policies and setting
agendas. In response to this new found power however, NGOs are
facing growing questions around who they represent and to whom
they are accountable. These calls have served to push the issue
of accountability up the NGO agenda.
It is against this background that the One World Trust (OWT) convened the UK NGO Accountability Forum.
Initiated in 2003, the Forum is an informal assembly of local,
national and international NGOs based in the UK committed to
increase the NGO sector’s accountability. Most recently,
meetings were organised around the four dimensions of the
OWT’s Global Accountability Framework: transparency, participation, evaluation and
complaints and redress. Experts from within these various areas
were invited to set the background for discussion with a short
presentation.
With this series of meetings now complete, the
Forum is planning to move forward in two ways. First, through
convening an Accountability Learning Group for NGO practitioners
to come and discuss challenges, share experiences and provide
advice. Second, to focus on what is seen to be a weak area of
accountability, complaint and redress mechanisms. The aim is to
develop a common understanding within the sector on how
accountability to beneficiaries can be increased, and to provide
organisations with a set of guidelines to establish or strengthen
their mechanisms. British Overseas NGOs for Development (BOND)
will be a partner in coordinating this project.
As NGOs come to play an increasing role in
economic and social policy-making and governance, they need to be
able to demonstrate who they are accountable to. The UK NGO
Accountability Forum provides an important space for
organisations to discuss these issues and ensure that
accountability is used to strengthen rather than hinder NGO
activities.
Further information from the
OWT website
www.oneworldtrust.org
UNGA-Link AGM - Saturday
9 July
Friends House, opposite Euston Station
2:00-3:00 Business Meeting
Tea break
UN Civil Society Relations after Cardoso
Speakers & Discussion till 4:30
A Word of Thanks and Farewell
Our Outreach Worker, Emily Burfoot leaves us this
month. The recent updating of our website is largely due to her
efforts, and we wish her well for the future.
e-mail: info@ungalink.org.uk
website: www.ungalink.org.uk
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