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Our World ’99: Peek a Boo

Always darkest before the dawn. Who said that? Someone who believes in dawns. The thing about dawns is that they are inevitable (so far), but not all dawns are the same: clear-eyed, rosy-fingered, hung-over. A year ago, the UN looked pretty dark, a sort of nadir. Financially the UN was bust, still no U.S. money. India and Pakistan had entered the nuclear nut-house. The rug was about to be pulled from under the UN in the Balkans. And Canada's last hope, Wayne Gretsky*, was retiring.

What a difference a year makes? Not a full dawn, perhaps; but some glimmers. Enough U.S. money arrived to stay alive. Willy-nilly, the UN is picking up NATO shards in the Balkans. The nuclear sky looks darker after U.S.Senate rejection of the test ban (CTBT). Of course, Canada is on thin ice without Gretsky, but we haven't fallen through yet. The UN girds for the new century.

"Black is beautiful." Indeed this is especially so this year: Ghana gave us our Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and Namibia gave us the President of the General Assembly, Theo-Ben Gurirab. As young lads, both Mr. Annan and Mr. Gurirab attended U.S. colleges, so that they know how to talk to the people here. Mr. Gurirab came to the U.S. as a UN fellow in 1963, later becoming the representative of SWAPO (Namibia's Independence Movement) and, he confesses, gate-crashing UN receptions where he learned "to hold a champagne glass and speak at the same time, in full sentences in English." While a competent President, he shows an unpretentious side. Addressing the New England Center for International Studies in Bridgeport, Connecticut, he said:

All the world must know that Gretsky is the all-time star of ice hockey which, next to political quibbling, Canada's national sport.

When I was a young boy growing up in the late forties and fifties, back home in mysmall railway town and adjacent villages, I heard from the local gurus about the United Nations I understood them as saying that the United Nations loved black people and would help us: that is, to join us to fight against apartheid, racial discrimination, and for liberation and independence, and that the world around us belonged to the blacks, because we too were God's children . . . In 1990 I became the independent Namibia's Foreign Minister and I am still at it into my tenth year, which makes me the Dean of all Africa's Foreign Ministers.

I suspect that he has had a hand in writing his own speeches, refreshingly awkward at times; so much better than slick contrivances of Cambodia and Myanmar, scribbled out for them by some hirelings like world-class fashion models.

His predecessor, Didier Opertti, an Uruguayan academic of latinate elegance, bequeathed to these United Nations a Decade of Peace (Culture of --), the last ritual blessing of his 53rd General Assembly. The 54th Assembly could hardly say no to that. On top of that, the Thanksgiving World Assembly, meeting in Paris in October, decided that 2000 is to be the Year of Thanksgiving. Their theme: "Thanksgiving opens hearts." (Calling all surgeons!) Receiving this pronouncement at the UN in December, Mr. Gurirab sounded cheerful: "It is my special wish that the power and compassion of Thanksgiving will guide us in a special way in 2000." I guess it is easier to be thankful for the future than for the past.

With that out of the way, what happened in and around this Assembly? Against the backdrop of Kosovo and East Timor (and Rwanda and much more), Kofi Annan tossed the fox among the chickens as this session began when he said, in effect, the United Nations has to find the means to prevent massive violations of human rights and armed conflict, as these are occurring within nation states, best by creating the conditions for peace, by mediation; as a last resort by force-- "humanitarian intervention." The common good as defined in international humanitarian law, he said, supersedes "national sovereignty." A courageous speech, predictable "North-South" reactions, unresolved, to be continued.

Nor is any resolution in sight to "reforming," updating the Security Council, now into its seventh year of gestation. Good news is that goings on at the Council are now much opener and more inclusive. You don't have to be a member to be consulted. While reformation is stalled, the Council has greatly extended, deepened I hope, its concern for prevention of conflict, protection of civilians, disarmament (small arms) and dirty war profiteering (diamonds, etc.). Prevention as nation building (poverty, etc.) is the province of the General Assembly, but I guess all this drifts over to the Security Council because the Assembly has not been able to do much about it. Good words have come from the Council. Let us hope that good deeds follow.

A little switch over from the Council to the General Assembly was the arrangement for the Assembly to assume responsibility for the UN civilian support to shaky democracy in Haiti. This got around a threatened veto in the Council. A precedent?

Some good deeds are on trial, in Kosovo, in East Timor, in Sierra Leone. Forceful intervention can be done outside the UN-- NATO in the Balkans, ECOWAS in West Africa-- but there is only the UN to pick up the pieces and start rebuilding.

Even in peacekeeping, the UN is coming back, up from 14,000 keepers last year to over 30,000 coming on.

January 2000 brought U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to the chair of the Security Council. With the Dayton Peace Accords (Balkans) behind him, Holbrooke went on to broker the Helms-Biden deal on U.S. money for the UN; and brought Senator Jesse Helms to a ceremonial appearance at the Security Council. Only a game? Maybe a touch of reality therapy.

After Senator Helms came U.S. Vice President Al Gore, to join in an unprecedented Security Council debate about the politics of health, the HIV/AIDS catastrophe in Africa. Little noticed that same week was Nelson Mandela, summoned from retirement to do what he can to stop another Rwanda in Burundi. And soon after, to the Council came the seven heads of African States involved in conflict in the DR Congo: we hope their peace accord will stick this time.

Human rights. The Yugoslav and Rwanda Tribunals are nibbling away at impunity. Pinochet trembles, dread Habré of Chad is on trial in Senegal, East Timor butchers are condemned by investigations by the Indonesians and the UN. Hun Sen dodges the UN on trials of Khmer Rouge. The Conventions on Protection of Women and on Child Rights are strengthened. A Convention to choke financing of terrorism is adopted. Technical work goes well on finalizing the International Criminal Court.

Serious preparations are in the works for a 2001 Conference on financing for development. This might put the UN on the development map. Meantime, citizen power at WTO in Seattle (November-December) reinforces the Third World against the dominant North. Trade negotiations can no longer be seen as autonomous, outside UN social and political surveillance. UNCTAD in Bangkok, meeting as I write, should help.

Canada, dear Canada, has done noble work on the Security Council. Our first crack at the Iraq impasse loosened things up a bit, but the aftermath of bombing and snooping has produced a hard rock. Better luck in opening up the Council and inducing a profound change in its outlook: prevention of conflict, protection of civilians-- women, children, refugees. Not without danger did our Ambassador Robert Fowler expose diamond-studded brutality in Angola. Why does Canada lag so far behind the Netherlands and our Scandinavian friends in development assistance (ODA)? And on nuclear disarmament, are we married to NATO till death us do part? This is our Millennium?