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Le Canada et l’ONU > Newton Bowles Reports Ce document est disponible seulement en anglais.
Millennium: Visions, Revisions Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Psalm 90 Fraught with fear? With hope? What did you do as Year 2000 was creeping in? I got scared a little by the threatened Y2K computer crash, and bought two bottles of water. I listened to Bach until boom-boom at midnight. Not a flicker. Two bottles of water still sit on my shelf. A thousand years. The UN desperately needs its rituals to gather up, to digest, to extricate, to illuminate. The new century generates such a ritual, and Kofi Annan was wise not to let it slip by. The trick is to tie ritual to some deeper commitment, to good works among nations. Can it be done, given the weight of greed and violence? A new life for the UN? Just five years ago, the fiftieth anniversary of the UN's founding was celebrated, much fanfare. Thereafter things got worse. This time can we ground the ritual, not only think big, also think how? Whatever can come out of another gathering of harassed Heads of State? I am tempted to think that nothing can happen at a Summit unless it has already happened. At the UN in New York, there will be three Millennium events. In May, a global network of NGO's will hold a Millennium Forum; in August, the Inter-Parliamentary Union will convene a conference of presidents and speakers of parliaments; and in September Heads of State will celebrate as the Millennium General Assembly gets underway. For the NGO Forum, a Council has been at work defining objectives and themes, and making practical arrangements. Right now the Council is scrambling to get money to make possible more than token participation by NGO's from developing countries. Many recent NGO meetings are contributing informally to this Forum, including in 1999 the Hague Appeal for Peace (May); the Seoul International Conference of NGO's (October); and the World Civil Society Conference initiated by Canada's UNA in Montreal (December). The Forum is "to promote innovative vision and ideas" as well as "implementation concepts." The embracing theme for the Forum as well as the formal UN Millennium Assembly is "The UN for the Twenty-First Century." Preparing the official UN ceremonial session in September, six regional meetings have been held. In January 2000, the UN University in Tokyo, the Millennium in mind, brought together "eminent scientists and authorities" to see if they could think usefully about "global governance" in this century. The Secretary-General's brain trust is now on the home stretch, formulating-- is that the word for it?-- the core, critical, creative ideas for the big show. I am not on the inside track, but I have no doubt that Kofi Annan will be pressing on with the grand challenges in his "humanitarian intervention" and WTO speeches. Poverty unter Alles. We don't need new ideas, new visions of what to do, do we? What we need is guts, resources, or as we keep saying, the political will. How generate that? No point in cracking pots unless there is something inside. Related to all this thinkopation is the plethora of Special Sessions and their Prep Coms spawned by the General Assembly, quiquennial and decennial retrospections on:
Nuggets from these events were gathered up in the UN Agenda for Development, though you have to dig to find them there. More than enough for a United Nations century. Special Sessions following the Beijing and Copenhagen conferences will be taking place in June, in the wake of the NGO Forum in May. Any cross-fertility in the genial pool? This future has to be better than the last one. |
