United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan’s radical blueprint to restructure the world body has received mixed reviews from diplomats, human rights activists and NGOs.
”Millions of people are dying because of conflict and poverty while rich countries are busy jostling for Security Council seats,” said Nicola Reindorp, head of Oxfam’s New York office.
A South East Asian diplomat said Annan ”seems to be bending over backwards” to please the United States — as evidenced in his call for a new council on human rights, a fund to promote democracy worldwide and his plans to rid the organisation of ”traditionalist” senior staffers by ”buying out” their contracts. ”The hidden hand of the United States is missing,” he said, ”but the fingerprints are visible.”
”Key aspects of the report reflect UN efforts to comply with US pressures,” said Phyllis Bennis, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies. She said there is obviously some focus on recent US attacks on the UN for allegations of misconduct, including calls for a large-scale ”buy-out” of UN staff.
In discussions of the need to settle on a definition of terrorism, Bennis said, Annan’s report calls for abandoning even the discussion of ”state terrorism”, most often identified with military strikes by Israel and the US, and sometimes Russia.
”Although the report refers to existing international law being sufficient for dealing with the actions of states, the reality is that those existing international treaties and UN resolutions have proved insufficient to hold Israel, the US or Russia accountable for their violations,” said Bennis, author of Calling the Shots: How the US Dominates Today’s World.
”The fact that the report begins with the self-imposed limitation to only deal with reforms that can be accomplished, reflects the unwillingness of the UN leadership to issue a wholesale call for the UN to reject the domination of the US and to take sides with the ‘second superpower’ in challenging Washington’s drive towards empire,” she added.
Reindorp’s fears about an over-emphasis on the expansion of the Security Council have been reinforced in the report, where Annan said: ”Two years ago, I declared that in my view no reform of the United Nations would be complete without reform of the Security Council. That is still my belief.”
But, for the first time, he attempted to link development aid with the expansion of the Council. He said that developed countries running for permanent seats should ”achieve or make substantial progress” towards the internationally agreed level of 0,7% of gross national product (GNP) for official development assistance (ODA).
This is the 35th year since the UN General Assembly first affirmed the target of 0,7 of GNP as ODA. But, so far, only five countries have met or surpassed it: Denmark, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Six others have committed themselves to specific timetables to achieving the target before 2015: Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Spain and Britain.
Still, the remaining 11 of the world’s 22 rich nations have failed to make any commitment to meet this target.
Although Annan did not say that this should be a condition for Council membership by rich nations, he argued that those participating in major UN decision-making should contribute most to the UN financially, militarily and diplomatically.
Bennis said this ”highlights the stark reality that only wealthy countries are likely to gain new permanent seats.”
Annan said new permanent Council members should include those who make significant contributions to UN-assessed budgets, participate in mandated peace operations, contribute to voluntary activities of the UN in areas of security and development, and participate in diplomatic activities in support of UN objectives and mandates.
The report backed a proposal made by a high-level panel on UN reform, which earlier this year called for two alternative models: Model A provides for six new permanent seats, with no veto being created, and three new two-year, non-permanent seats, divided among Africa, Asia and Pacific, Europe and the Americas. Model B provides for no new permanent seats, but creates a new category of eight four-year, renewable-term seats and one new two-year non-permanent seat, divided among the four regional groups.
Currently, the Council has 10 rotating, two-year, non-permanent seats and five veto-wielding permanent seats held by the US, Britain, France, China and Russia.
Responding to Annan’s proposal, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said, despite the fact that Tokyo had fallen short of the 0,7 target, it was still ”a major development aid donor shouldering close to one-fifth of the total volume of worldwide development assistance over the last 10 years.
”Japan will continue to make such a resolved effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and, to that end, will strive to increase the level of ODA,” he added.
The goals include a 50% reduction in poverty and hunger; universal primary education; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; the promotion of gender equality; and the reversal of the spread of HIV/Aids and other diseases.
A summit of 189 world leaders in September 2000 pledged to meet all of these goals by 2015. But their implementation has depended primarily on increased development aid by Western donors. A second summit, scheduled to take place in New York in September, will review the progress made and set the world’s development agenda for the next decade. — IPS