THE UNGA LINK

Newsletter of UNGA-Link UK, an NGO in Association with the UN Department of Public Information

"We stress the right of people to live in freedom and dignity, free from poverty and despair. We recognize that all individuals, in particular vulnerable people, are entitled to freedom from fear and freedom from want, with an equal opportunity to enjoy all their rights and fully develop their human potential. To this end, we commit ourselves to discussing and defining the notion of human security in the General Assembly."

Representatives of the 191 UN member states signed up to the above paragraph, recognising that everyone is entitled to freedom from fear and want, and committing themselves to "discussing and defining the notion of human security in the General Assembly". After 60 years, this is where the governments of "we, the peoples" have got to.

They recognise that the values and principles of the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights still hold, and they – members of an organisation set up to protect the security of states - prepare to consider "the notion" of human security.

It is one of a number of significant indications in the Outcome Document of the UN World Summit held 14-16 September that the efforts of the Secretary-General and his staff to mainstream human rights as a core element in UN renewal are bearing fruit. Others include commitment to a collective responsibility to protect people from crimes against humanity "in accordance with the UN Charter, including Chapter VII" (para 139), a giant leap from Article 2:7 of the Charter; at least on paper.

So is the glass of UN Renewal following the 60^th Anniversary Summit half full or half empty? Clearly it may be read either way, as the responses in this issue to the Outcome Document show including UNGA-Link’s (drafted by Keith Hindell), and those of our Honorary Consultant and New York Correspondent. But all see a half-full glass, on balance.

In March, as reported in our last issue, the Secretary-General proposed a carefully balanced package of reforms, calculated to meet the different needs of the rich and powerful states (anxious about security) and the developing states (wanting progress on the Millennium Development Goals/MDGs). After the Summit, representatives of governments, UN staff and civil society mostly say we could not have expected to gain everything on the Secretary-General’s agenda and should be content that the event was not wholly sabotaged by the 750 late amendments submitted by the United States.

Indeed there are several very positive gains. On the human rights front, in addition to commitment to the responsibility to protect and to consider what "human security" involves, there is agreement to reform the UN’s Human Rights machinery by increased funding for the High Commissioner’s Office and establishing a Human Rights Council. On peace and security, the major gain is the Peacebuilding Commission, designed to help states emerging from conflict with fragile peace agreements from relapsing into violence, as about half have done up to now. On development, the commitment to the MDGs remains, with bolstering detail including the "quick-impact initiatives" urged by Jeffrey Sachs and his Millennium Project colleagues (para 34). On strengthening the UN, reaffirmations of many commitments, some promises, and agreement to delete redundant bits of the Charter.

But what about Civil Society? Tucked in toward the end as usual, under a heading that covers local authorities, the private sector "and civil society, including non-governmental organisations". We agree with the GPPAC speakers that this is not good enough. We are encouraged by the Interactive Hearings in June but of course want more. Will we get it, while governments see civil society as "amorphous groups with separate, contradictory agendas" and no united leadership? Well, that ball is in our court, isn ’t it? Editor

The members of UNGA-Link UK strongly support the Draft Outcome Document submitted by the President of the General Assembly on 5^th August 2005, which addresses many global problems in a forthright and practical manner.

We particularly commend the proposed Peacebuilding Commission (paras 76-87) and reform of the Security Council to make it more representative, more efficient, more effective and more transparent (paras 133-135). The Security Council would certainly be more effective if it embraced the Responsibility to Protect (para 118) and the Permanent Members agreed to forego the veto on questions concerning genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity (para 119).

We consider the two paragraphs on civil society (paras 154-155) rather bland as they do not embrace any of the recommendations in the Cardoso Report and do not propose a forum in which civil society could discuss current questions with the General Assembly on a systematic basis.

We urge civil society organisations concerned with issues of global governance to form a union, equivalent to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which could seek observer status with the General Assembly to parallel that of the IPU (sent to the NGLS and included on their website at www.un-ngls.org/UN-summit ).
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Jeffrey J. Segall (Coordinator of Campaign for a More Democratic United Nations (CAMDUN). www.camdun-online.gn.apc.org

The leaders at the UN World Summit were unable to reach consensus on a definition of terrorism. We remind readers of one offered by the US Secretary of Defence, Donald H Rumsfeld, in New Delhi, 12 June 2002:

"I think any time people, innocent men, women and children are being killed that that is, in effect, the definition of terrorism." (www.intothelight.info)

During the Summit, the Security Council unanimously passed a British-sponsored resolution to ban terrorism worldwide and work for a Convention to combat it. With or without a definition, we know what it is, don’t we?

While the whole NGO Community is disappointed at the chopped-back results of the 60th Anniversary Summit, it is a good moment to look back and see what is really positive in the history of the UN so far. I have now completed eighteen years service in and around the UN, so I hope I may have the experience to make this assessment.

First, we must never forget that the United Nations is the only global institution which still commands universal repect. It might be thought that this universality ought to be taken for granted after the cataclysm of the Second World War. But Churchill always wanted a more regional oranization and he was certainly not interested in decolonization or the birth of new nations. More important, in a world where loyalties are still largely confined to the family, to religious organizations and only spasmodically to the nation state, it is remarkable that the UN has somehow held together with 191 nations willing to pay their annual membership fee to join in.

Second the role of Civil Society has increased and is increasing all the time. Again this development cannot be taken for granted, because it threatens the absolute power of the nation states. Member states fear that they may have to share both power and influence with Civil Society who will fight for their place in the sun. They realize only too well that 'power cannot be given: it has to be taken.'

It is, however, a major step forward that increasingly nowadays the negative term ' Non-Governmental Organization is being replaced by the more positive and inclusive term ' Civil Society'. Civil Society is still hobbled, especially in the South, by lack of money but that situation will improve.

Here are some remarkable highlights of this advance of Civil Society. The first was the extraordinary effort of Homer Jack, Founder of the World Council of Religion and Peace to persuade the member states at the height of the Cold War to pass a Declaration on Religious Toleration. In the nineties Jim Paul, Director of the Global Policy Forum, skilfully negotiated with the Chairman of the Security Council for him and his colleagues to meet regularly for the first time with a selection of NGOs who could advise them with expert local knowledge before they began to craft a Resolution.on, say, Somalia or East Timor. Most recently I have been impressed with the way Bill Pace of the World Federalists has marshalled a huge coalition of NGOs to help create the Statute of the International Criminal Court. And this June, the round-table presentations to Member States by NGOs before the latest Summit took place were unprecedented.

Lastly, I want to affirm against much opinion in the present American Administration that the major World Conferences in the Nineties on Population, on the Environment and especially in Beijing on Women's Rights, were not in the least a waste of money. They brought about a fresh dialogue between Civil Society and Member States. Those from Civil Society who attended fortified each other for the struggle ahead and also discovered what they had to do to ground the conclusions of the Conferences in the domestic laws of their own countries.

I wish I could report equally favourably on progress made in the way things are done in the General Assembly. But during my time the GA has failed to become the Town Meeting of the World. All too often it has remained a forum for rubber-stamping conclusions reached in its main committees. Overseas bureaucrats (diplomats) in cahoots with home-based bureaucrats (civil servants) will never inspire the general public to come to hear their scripted arguments. An infusion of Civil Society members who could speak as well as listen might liven things up. Meanwhile the alternative of a People's Assembly alongside the GA remains a lively option.

In this unsatisfactory situation the advocacy work of UNGA-Link remains of crucial importance. Multilateral negotiation is hard and often unrewarding work and I have felt the diplomats at the UN more than earn their keep.

I know of no better summary of the UN’s laborious progress - but progress none the less - than these words from the evergreen Brian Urquhart: 'International cooperation is slow, irritating, complicated, and extremely boring sometimes and unheroic'. Let me end this appraisal with these words from that inimitable world statesman Dag Hammarskjold: 'Everything will be all right when people stop thinking of the UN as a weird Picasso drawing and think of it as a drawing they made themselves.'

INFORMAL INTERACTIVE HEARINGS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY WITH REPRESENTATIVES OF NGOS, CSOS AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR:

The NGLS website has a very useful 18-page summary of these hearings, which took place in New York on 23-24 June (www.un-ngls.org/UN-summit). Among the invited 230 representatives of NGOs in consultative status with ECOSOC, CSOs, and the private sector, 134 were from developing countries and 120 were women. It was the first time Member States had interacted with such non-state representatives within the framework of the General Assembly. The hearings were based on the themes of the Secretary-General’s In Larger Freedom report (March 2005) and speakers gave their organisations’ responses to the GA Draft Outcome document as it then appeared. This report will concentrate on the section relating to the General Assembly (see text in the box), but among the other main messages were:

The PrepCom modalities called for relate to the gatherings which precede the major UN conferences. The procedural format for them allows NGOs in consultative status with ECOSOC and others considered "competent and relevant" to the issues under discussion to participate as observers. Observer status permits access to the buildings and meeting rooms as well as to delegates on an informal basis. It also allows NGOs in consultative status broader speaking rights than were allowed at this year’s Summit, where only two (the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the Centre for Peruvian Women) spoke in a Plenary session.

If adopted, the above proposal would give greater access to established NGOs – those covered by Article 71 of the UN Charter – but would be unlikely to affect the wider world of CSOs. A Democratic United Nations requires wider representation and access, which we in UNGA-Link believe would be best achieved through a World Civil Society Union/WCSU with regional and/or national affiliates, and local membership of national bodies to form a comprehensive network of local-to-global governance.

The UN Conference of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) took place in the General Assembly Hall in New York, 19-21 July. Participants on this occasion numbered over 900 from 118 countries, invitations being confined to organisations actively working in the field of conflict prevention. The international conference was the culmination of a three-year regional process, and the beginning of an even larger global initiative of people building peace.
Website: www.peoplebuildingpeace.org

Readers of this newsletter may remember our coverage of Kofi Annan’s report, Prevention of Armed Conflict (June 2001), which was subsequently endorsed by both the Security Council and the General Assembly. A global civil society partnership – GPPAC - was formed under the leadership of the ECCP (see Glossary) in response to recommendation 27 in that report. In the past three years, 15 regional GPPAC conferences have been held round the world, each producing an Action Agenda relevant to local conditions. UNGA-Link was represented at the European Regional Conference in Dublin last year. In July this year, the UN conference produced a Global Action Agenda - a real agenda of human security for global change - to be implemented by the new network, People Building Peace.

"what is really lacking is full recognition of our increasing interdependence and its implications"

Although unable to attend the July conference in person (he was recovering from a shoulder injury), Kofi Annan’s message said he was heartened by the engagement that had gone into the Global Action Agenda. Among the challenges presented by the triad of poverty, disease and war, he said, there is no higher goal than preventing armed conflict. The Secretary-General listed the aspects of the "increasingly important role" for civil society organisations at all levels, local to global and concluded:

"Failure to prevent conflict is often attributed to lack of ‘political will’. But this may be more a description of what happens than an explanation. What is really lacking is full recognition of our increasing interdependence, and its implications. Violent conflict is a ‘threat multiplier’, not only within the country where it happens, but far beyond… All of us should feel concerned, from the moment the threat of conflict appears on the horizon. But we should be clear: such a new security consensus will require us to respond to violent conflicts far more equitably – wherever they erupt."

Plenary speakers at the conference were frank about the failures of the UN system and the international community to achieve human security up to now and said the future will only be different if civil society is more deeply engaged. Paul van Tongeren, Executive Director of the ECCP, felt the draft Outcome Document for the World Summit offered mere lipservice to NGO partnership; and "worse than lipservice" in failing to mention civil society at all in the section on the Peacebuilding Commission. One of the recommendations of the GPPAC conference was the need to incorporate a more prominent civil society component into the mandate of that Commission, through a structural mechanism for consultation. The conference also wanted the Commission to include prevention in its mandate as well as post-conflict issues.

Jodi Williams (Ambassador of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines) also noted the "little more than lipservice" that governments and international organisations paid civil society. In a globalised world, she said, everyone had to be meaningfully involved because "partnership created a real possibility for constructive non-violent change."

A correspondent at the opening press briefing got interesting answers to the question how governments would be impacted by civil society, since they saw it as a collection of amorphous groups with separate, contradictory agendas and no united leadership.

Stephen Stedman (a Special Advisor to Kofi Annan) said that in this diverse world CSOs and NGOs would never elect a common focal point on one issue; there would never be a world of hierarchical CSOs. Jodi Williams saw the fact that CSOs, like governments and international organisations, are "a chaotic bunch" in a positive light: that was why allies could be found in all sectors.

Stephen Stedman said members of the High Level Panel on security matters had asked the Secretary-General for a "compelling alternative Strategy" to the war on terrorism. Responding to a question about terrorism at the press briefing, Paul van Tongeren said some meetings had discussed the huge sums being spent to combat it, but in most regions terrorism was a non-issue. We are thus back to the need for a change of mindset – the recognition of interdependence needed for a new consensus.

Glossary

CAMDUN Campaign for a More Democratic United Nations

CIVICUS a name, not an acronym

CONGO Conference of NGOs in Consultative Status with ECOSOC

CSO Civil Society Organisation

ECCP European Centre for Conflict Prevention

ECOSOC Economic and Social Council

GCAP Global Call to Action Against Poverty

GPPAC Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict

IPU Inter-Parliamentary Union

MDG Millennium Development Goal

NGLS Non-Governmental Liaison Service

NGO Non-Governmental Organisation

PrepCom Preparatory Committee

UAI Union of International Associations

UNGA United Nations General Assembly

WCSU World Civil Society Union

WFUNA World Federation of UNAs

Ed. Vijay Mehta. This volume contains the Erskine Childers lectures 1997-2004, as well as introductory articles by distinguished UN staffers, in post or retired, and the full texts of the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21^st Century. ISBN 0 85124 707 5. Available through Action for UN Renewal for £12 including postage. (See enclosed flier.)

Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij and Thomas G Weiss. In 1999 the UN Intellectual History Project was set up to document the ideas launched by the UN system in the area of economic and social development. This slim book summarises the main themes of six volumes of research published to date and makes the points that, in the economic and social fields, the UN has a record of being "boldly ahead of the curve", with substantial achievements which deserve to be better known. Available from UNA-UK for £5. Order through Ed Brenton on 020 7766 3443 or membership@una-uk.org.

This year UNGA-Link was represented at the Conference by Turner Briggs and Vijay Mehta as well as our New York Correspondent. Readers with internet access can tap into the riches offered through the DPI website: www.un.org/dpi/ngosection.

By the opening session, 3,500 participants had registered, representing some 1,160 NGOs and CSOs from 124 countries. And this year the total audience was beyond counting as all the plenary sessions were webcast live.

As Shashi Tharoor, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, explained this year’s conference was more closely tied to other UN processes than usual, as Kofi Annan had told the organisers to "create the means to allow civil society to interact in a more structured fashion with Member States".

To achieve this, the Friday programme included four roundtables which brought together representatives of Member States, parliaments and CSOs for an exchange of views on the themes of the Conference: a Focus on Human Development – Implementing the MDGs; and the Future of the United Nations – the platform issues of the Summit held the following week.

The "many innovative proposals" in the Cardoso Report to enhance UN engagement with civil society were recalled, and civil society was reminded of its duty as the "new superpower" to act responsibly and hold all parties to their commitments.