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Canada & the UN > Newton Bowles Reports
The General Debate: Sustainable Glossolalia Shall we begin with Groucho Marx saying he would not want to be in any club that would let him in? Not so here at the UN. Everyone-- well, the Swiss not yet-- wants in; and so we are now up to 188 members. The "General Debate" is the grand opening of each Assembly, a fortnight for statesmen and stateswomen to make their pitch on the worries of the world, troubles with their neighbours, affairs back home. This time only 180 chose to speak: 36 heads of state, one Vice-President, one Crown Prince, 19 Prime Ministers, 118 Foreign Ministers and 13 Ambassadors. Bill Clinton was there, but not Boris Yeltsin. Tony Blair was there but not Jean Chrétien. Present also were President Mbeki, succeeding Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and President Obasanjo of Nigeria. (No offense to the 32 not mentioned.) A good mark for the UN it is that both Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the President of the Assembly Theo-Ben Gurirab (Namibia) are sons of Africa. These days there is a lot more jetting around the world than was conceivable when the UN was born. (When I was a boy in China, it took our family three days to travel, lock stock and barrel, the 30 miles from Chengdu to the Tibetan foothills.) But the chaos of jetting would never assemble the leaders of the world were it not for the UN. There have to be benefits from meeting, greeting, breaking bread together in this still elegant, if rundown, palace of peace. For those who feel especially put upon by the Super Power, there is added spice in mounting this planetary soap-box, immune here in the dragon's den. (The UN plot is international, not under U.S. jurisdiction.) One hundred and eighty statements about the woes of the world do not, however, constitute a debate leading toward consensus or action. At best they may set the stage for action. How capture the clout of these political C.E.O.'s, here today, gone tomorrow? In his inaugural reform package (1997), Kofi Annan suggested focusing each General Debate on one or two major problems. A year ago, in the 53rd Assembly, this idea was realized around the theme of globalization, a well-prepared consultation. Although no such thematic focus was foreseen in 1999, the Secretary-General in his opening address plunged the Assembly into the core and critical issue of rights violation and armed conflict, its prevention and resolution, through "humanitarian intervention" (the term covers a whole range of interventions). What to do about massive violation of human rights and armed conflict as now happening within States thus became the top question in the debate. This did not, of course, preclude the airing of many other issues. Having reviewed the whole debate, I will try to give you a notion of its tenor, attitudes, and recurrent concerns. Diplomatic tradition and protocol kept the "debate," for the most part, polite and restrained. Grievances among members of this UN club were aired, however: brick-bats were tossed between India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Iran and Israel, Ethiopia and Eritrea, D.R. Congo and its eastern neighbours, D.R. Korea (North) and Japan, and Cuba-Libya-Sudan versus USA. Divine intervention by way of disastrous earthquakes was finally bringing Greece and Turkey together as citizens rushed to mutual aid, to the evident relief of their UN spokesmen. Bloody tragedy suffused the words of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh as she recalled that, within the year following her father's address to the Assembly in 1974, he and most of his family were murdered in a military coup. The Prime Minster and her sister survived because they were out of the country. Let this horror stand for many brutalities in the lethal game of politics. Offsetting horrors were reports of borderline peace after long dispute between Ecuador and Peru, and between Chile and Argentina. China's borders with its Central Asia neighbours have also been stabilized. (I can report, although it did not come up in the General Assembly, that Machias Seal Island in the Bay of Fundy is happily in limbo between the U.S. and Canada, with Canada maintaining the lighthouse and protecting the puffins that shelter there.) State of the World, the World of States "Hope against Hope" is an account of the political harassment and death of the great Russian poet, Ossip Mandelstam. It was written by his widow, Nadezhda (her name means "Hope"). I think of "Hope against Hope," without closure, as apt for our UN concourse. Edward Shevarnadze, beleaguered President of Georgia, spoke to the point, having barely survived an attempt to kill him. I happened to be at Harvard in 1991 when he received an honorary degree, and there he spoke eloquently of prospects for an over-arching world order. Now at the UN his spirit still shone as he looked back over our century's conquest of tyranny-- the Nazis, the Comintern. Ending the Cold War for him was an intellectual triumph, a triumph for freedom. Nevertheless, he said, looking around the world today we must conclude that we live in a condition of planetary anarchy. For his country, the UN has so far done little to help resolve the bitter Abkhazia struggle. Nearly all speakers pinned their hopes on the UN; all felt it must be strengthened; and several wondered whether it will survive shocking failures (Somalia, Srebernica, Rwanda) and lingering crises. Delegates of Afghanistan and Angola were understandably pessimistic about the capacity of the UN. Ethiopia, embroiled in a crazy war with Eritrea (over a bit of rocky territory) was evidently on the defensive politically (waffling over a truce arranged by the OAU): it scolded Africa for not taking hold of its own destiny, while at the same time attacking the UN for its bias against Ethiopia. Dr. Mahathir, the perennially exacerbated President of Malaysia, poured contempt on the UN as facade for the rich and powerful. Most sinister and violent was the speaker for the Democratic Republic of Congo, harking back 30 years to the assassination of Lumumba. The DRC Foreign Minister said: "We know the United Nations." For President Lumumba "the flag of the United Nations served as a shroud." If we are not careful, the same thing will happen to President Kabila, he said. Instead of UN peacekeepers, throw out the invaders (Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda). No mood for conciliation here. Central America has a different take on the UN. Both El Salvador and Guatemala said the UN was instrumental in resolving their violent conflicts. The process continues in Guatemala. Referring to its recovery from Soviet "occupation," the President of Latvia said: "The support offered by the United Nations in this onerous task has been of enormous significance." There is the usual need to blame someone for all your troubles; and since the East-West Cold War is officially over, the spotlight has shifted to the U.S. (and the UN as its underpaid lackey). Cuba makes the most of this in a clever and articulate way, twitting the impotent monster. China says the Cold War mentality persists and: "Hegemonism and power politics are the root causes of the turmoil in today's world." Russia, claiming its status as a world power, says it advocates a multipolar system; peace, democracy and prosperity for all, attainable only through the United Nations. On this perception, President Clinton had little to say. Sweden's Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh, spoke for all true believers when she said: "When the United Nations fails, it is because we fail." Human Security: Humanitarian Intervention By tradition and common sense, the Secretary-General is invited to present his annual progress report at the start of each Assembly session. This time brave Kofi Annan chose to talk about human security and its application as humanitarian intervention, in effect setting the agenda for this year. This is an historic address, it shows us what the UN means in today's world, and whether the UN stands or falls this speech will be there as a witness to our times. You will find it in Annex 1. He says the future of the UN depends on how it takes hold of humanitarian crises, referring to Cambodia, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Rwanda, Angola, Sierra Leone. He says that the tragic inability of the Security Council to act on Kosovo "has revealed the core challenge to the Security Council, and to the UN as a whole, in the next century: to forge unity behind the principle that massive and systematic violations of human rights-- wherever they may take place-- should not be allowed to stand." State sovereignty is being redefined, he says: "The state is now widely understood to be the servant of its people, and not vice versa." This is all within the letter and spirit of the UN Charter, he says, which requires the Security Council to defend the "common interest," our common humanity under international law. State interest needs to be understood as the common interest. It is no surprise to find that to define is not to resolve. It was Kofi Annan who used the word tragic; and indeed it is tragic that the world of nation States is not able to coalesce around his challenge. State sovereignty, of course, is the raw nerve. Hands off, says China, attributing much of our troubles to the superpower that even bombs China's embassy in Belgrade. China regards human rights as a domestic affair. Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia carried on in his usual way about the hypocrisy of intervention by the powerful into domestic affairs of weaker states. Latin America is historically allergic to intervention from the north. Mexico stressed national sovereignty. Even President Pastrana of Colombia, whom the U.S. is trying to prop up, said: absolutely no outside intervention in domestic affairs. Belarus joined Russia, entangled in Chechnya, in putting sovereignty above all. The Ukraine sided with the Secretary-General. Africa has reason to be ambivalent. African leaders have often complained about their neglect by the Security Council at times when they needed strong support, which meant intervention. Indeed, intervention was the name of the game, e.g., in the D.R. Congo, Sierra Leone. Algeria, which is the current president of the OAU, was predictably cautious. Does intervention mean only the strong against the weak, he asked. In any case, said Algeria, a State must agree to any intervention. Yet we heard President Mugabe of Zimbabwe thanking Zambia and the South Africa Development Community for having gone into the D.R. Congo. President Clinton essentially supported the Secretary-General, saying that those who perpetrate gross violations of human rights can not hide behind the UN Charter. NATO action over Kosovo in fact had upheld UN principles, he said. The U.S. is helping Africa to gain capacity to deal with conflict. "The U.S. and others" cannot take on everything. The Europeans were more forthcoming. France and the U.K. supported Kofi Annan. Even more enthusiastic were Denmark and the Netherlands. The Dutch Foreign Minister said respect for human rights is more important than sovereignty: "people over politics." Sweden and Germany were more cautious: the UN could intervene only under authority of the Security Council. I was surprised to find that Thailand, between Malaysia and China, gave strong support to Kofi Annan, human security, rights above borders. Fresh memories of massive NATO bombing over Serbia made people think of intervention as force (Chapter VII of the Charter). This was not Kofi Annan's intention. He presented a whole range of approaches: peaceful discrete diplomacy above all, force only as a last resort. An informal consensus did come out of this debate: at the UN we need to think through the whole doctrine and strategy of intervention, even endowing the UN with the means to do it. Can we update the 1992 Agenda for Peace? Growth and Hope: Globalization At this Assembly, developing countries lined up in NAM and the G77. Speaking for NAM, South Africa zeroed in on the "free market" neglect of the poor, calling for government (and inter-government) intervention to redress. On behalf of the G77, President Jagdeo of Guyana said that, in fact, globalization and so-called trade liberalization had helped the strong but trashed the weak: "Economic and social misery have followed in its wake exposing the vulnerabilities of small developing countries." He said that the harsh reality is that poor countries will not have the clout to benefit from trade negotiations like the forthcoming millennium round, unless the rules of the game are changed. What we need, he said, is a common vision, a strategy to bring up the poor. For the OAU, Algeria said that, while Africa needs to put its own house in order, the key to accelerating African growth is in the hands of the advanced "North." Are we globalizing poverty, asked Tanzania. Nigeria injected a new idea that could make waves around the world: let us create an institutional means to regain for Nigeria the vast flight of capital under the former corrupt government! Sri Lanka made an outstanding contribution to the discussion, saying: It is now virtually established wisdom that the least developed countries have been increasingly marginalized in the globalization and liberalization process. A restructuring of the global financial architecture must include special protection for these most vulnerable segments of our global society. Since a crisis in any one part of the global structure has the power to cause havoc in the rest of the world economy, we must look beyond national solutions to global ones, for both now irrevocably linked.The countries of the "South" should come together to deal with this reality in a serious way, said Sri Lanka.The time has come for the countries of the South to formulate an effective and implementable economic agenda.The recommendations of the Non-Aligned Movement ad hoc panel of economists are of primary importance in organizing the substantive work of the agenda for the South. They include the need for the elaboration and regular updating of the developing countries' agenda; development of a networking system between countries of the South, involving specialists and researchers in the various fields of importance; an economic coordination scheme to help identify and analyse aspects of international economic and trade-related issues; and the assembling and launching of expert groups, which could mobilize those national and inter-South institutions, like the South Centre in Geneva . . . . The general thrust of globalization and liberalization of the international economy has now become irreversible. The growing linkages between countries, the opening up of markets, the spread of investments, the impact of technology on standardizing products, the shrinking of distances and the speed of modern communications, offer new windows of opportunity for developing countries, especially if their positive aspects are seized upon and their pitfalls avoided. The task facing us in the developing world today is one of adapting this twin process to conform to our own specific requirements and priorities. This, in our view, would be the primary objective of an economic agenda of the South in the evolving global economy of the future. Without going into detail on what to do, India challenged the glib assumption that "globalization" is an autonomous process: in the way it goes, it is in fact political. From the benign North, we hear President Clinton say that globalization need not be divisive, that open markets, trade and aid should be complementary in helping the poor, and that "We must refuse to accept a future in which one part of humanity lives at the cutting edge of a new economy, while another lives at the edge of survival." France was one of several states, north and south, that called for better regulation of international finance (IMF and private). With impeccable sobriety, the European Union, speaking through Madame Halonen, Finland's Foreign Minister, offered a gentle palliative: The globalisation of the world economy is an unavoidable process. We see the need to put the globalization process and macro-economic policies in closer touch with the lives of ordinary people. We consider this to be one of the challenges facing the world community on the threshold of the new millennium. The United Nations is uniquely positioned in providing intellectual leadership to ensure that the advantages of economic globalisation are equally shared by the world's population. Increasing interdependence must work for people. Power and Pelf: Fixing the UN Reform of the Security Council has been worried over for six years, and this is where any change in power sharing with the General Assembly will be formally registered. It was on everyone's mind in the General Debate. The vetoremains a choker: Russia said the UN would collapse without it, New Zealand and others said it should be abolished. The tone of this discussion was relatively muted, whether from readiness to compromise or from fatigue. The UN's precarious hand-to-mouth financing was, of course, another
pervasive concern. U.S. delinquency was the make-or-break issue; and
at the time of the General Debate, things looked grim. More or less
veiled criticism of the U.S. came from all directions; and was loud
and clear later when the Fourth Committee discussed Peacekeeping and
the delayed UN reimbursement of troop contributors (delay caused by
the UN using Peacekeeping money to keep the regular show afloat). Several
delegations (e.g., Ghana, the European Union) said all contributions
must be unconditional, no bilateral strings. Still waiting for life
membership in the Security Council, Japan ventured to ask why its assessed
contribution should be more than the combined contributions of four
of the Permanent members. I didn't hear an answer. Hope against Hope.
Nadezhda Mandelstam wrote a second volume of reminiscences. She called
it "Hope Abandoned." Is there a place called Nadezhda in Arkansas? |
