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Fiches d’information > L'ONU et le développement international
Ce document est disponible seulement en anglais. "The United Nations is not just about
blue helmets and peacekeeping, - Ambassador Richard Butler of Australia, Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) President - When the UN was created after the Second World War, its mandates included the preservation of peace and socio-economic restructuring. Today, more than fifty years later, the organization’s role in conflict resolution is perhaps its most renowned function. For many Canadians, the United Nations is synonymous with peacekeeping. The UN, however, dedicates the greatest portion of its resources and activities to international development, with under 30% of its activities involving peacekeeping. The United Nations system provides over $25 billion in assistance each year, $20 billion in loans and almost $5 billion in grants.1 The UN’s emphasis on fostering equitable and sustainable human development stems from the fact that poverty is one of the greatest causes of instability. Without poverty, the need for peacekeeping might be dramatically reduced. To live in poverty is to be denied basic human rights to such things as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, a clean environment, access to health facilities, education, and employment. Unfortunately, the disparity between the rich and the poor is growing. Whereas the income ratio between the world’s wealthiest 20% and the poorest 20% was 30:1 in 1960, it had increased to 61:1 by 1991.2 The link between lasting world peace and socio-economic development was recognized in the UN Charter in 1945. Since then, the UN has been committed to attaining sustainable human development. Perhaps the greatest recent evidence of the UN’s commitment to development was the 1994 document, An Agenda for Development, produced by former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. For many, the Agenda represents a new, compelling vision of the future, one which reaffirms the UN’s commitment to the eradication of poverty. In it, Boutros-Ghali argues that the UN needs to increase its capacity to promote international cooperation and lasting development for all. After debating An Agenda for Development in the General Assembly and ECOSOC, the Secretary-General submitted further recommendations, asserting, among other things, that:
All recommendations were based upon four broad, yet significant, concepts:
The UN’s commitment to international development and the eradication of poverty is reflected at two levels: it seeks to promote public awareness of development, and directly involve the public in its numerous development-related activities. UN Promotion of Public Awareness: Every year, the United Nations Development Project (UNDP) publishes a Human Development Report which evaluates the well-being of the world’s nations according to defined human development criteria. These criteria include such things as universal primary education; access to safe drinking water and sanitation; the elimination of severe malnutrition; and the availability of family planning services for those who desire them. Ranking countries according to the availability of essential resources and services provides an assessment of the well-being of people not found by simply looking at the countries’ economic outputs. The Human Development Report has also proposed that the UN be given a mandate to draw up a comprehensive blueprint for ensuring human security and protecting people from threats in their daily lives—threats which include poverty, unemployment, drugs, terrorism, environmental degradation, and social disintegration. The report has included a ten year ‘human development compact’ under which nations, rich and poor, pledged to ensure basic human development levels for all their people. A 20:20 plan has committed donor governments to earmark a minimum of 20% of their development assistance for basic social services. Likewise, recipient countries pledged to channel a minimum of 20% of their national budgets to the same cause. The United Nations has also succeeded in raising public awareness of pressing world issues by drawing attention to specific topics. In so doing, the UN has been able to set the international agenda and facilitate international consensus or commitment to action. One such example was the UN’s focus on African development, also known as the ‘Special Initiative on Africa.’ Africa has suffered serious setbacks in recent years, exacerbating its vulnerability to the cyclical nature of poverty. Therefore, in 1986, the UN convened the first session of the General Assembly to press for international support for a specific region of the world. One of the outcomes of this session was the adoption of the Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development (UNPAAERD) and the subsequent New Agenda for the Development of Africa (UN-NADAF) in the 1990s. Both of these programs sought to invigorate African development and intensify global support for its economic reforms and development endeavours. Average real growth rates of a minimum of 6% of GDP, and a number of human- oriented objectives were targeted. In an effort to maximize its support for African development efforts, the United Nations launched its ‘System-wide Special Initiative on Africa’ in February, 1996. The Special Initiative, expected to invest up to $25 billion in Africa’s human development, aims to give practical expression to the policy commitments made in the past (such as UNPAAERD and UN-NADAF). The initiative is meant to strengthen the capacity of Africans to take charge of the development process and promote the minimum conditions for civil tranquillity, good governance, and socio-economic progress which are necessary to give development a chance to succeed. The United Nations also seeks to promote international development via the proclamation of International Years. For example, 1996 was declared the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. The objective of this action was to create "a greater awareness of the fact that the eradication of poverty is... fundamental to reinforcing peace and achieving sustainable development" and to catalyze concrete actions resulting in a "distinct and significant contribution to the efforts to eradicate poverty."4 Again, the emphasis is placed on people-oriented, sustainable development as the cornerstone of all policies that seek to work towards the eradication of poverty. UN Activities The United Nations also initiates and facilitates a large number of activities which seek to promote international human development through a range of agencies and specialized programmes. The UNDP perhaps best represents the UN’s commitment to social and economic progress. As the chief coordinator of UN cooperation in development, the UNDP focuses on the elimination of poverty by creating employment, the advancement of the status of women, and environmental protection. The UNDP also provides a large number of grants for technical assistance. Its annual budget of $1.5 billion (most of which depends on volunteer contributions) stimulates approximately $9 billion a year in further investment from public and private sources. Two other important agencies involved in development are the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Program (WFP). UNICEF concentrates exclusively on disadvantaged children, particularly (since the 1950s) on children in developing countries. UNICEF’s budget is funded by voluntary contributions from government and private sources. It provides for permanent health services, education, malaria eradication, nutrition, pre-vocational training, family and child welfare, and emergency aid. For its contribution to children around the world, UNICEF was awarded the 1965 Nobel Peace Prize. The WFP was created to relieve emergency food needs and to implement the food portion of economic and social development projects conducted by the United Nations and the Food and Agriculture Organization. While the WFP is principally concerned with providing humanitarian assistance and disaster management, it also funds educational and health projects in the developing world. The United Nations also sponsors international conferences, many of which have occurred in the 1990s. Former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali claimed that through the cycle of world conferences, consensus has been shaped around certain essential development values. UN-sponsored conferences are intended to help promote practical ways of solving global problems, as well as revising and advancing the development agenda. They give the world community opportunities to take part in the shaping of international policy. Government representatives of both developing and industrialized nations, independent experts and eminent business-people, researchers and academics, in addition to representatives of international non-governmental organizations, all take part in these conferences. A number of recent UN-sponsored conferences and their respective key points are appended to this paper. Over the past fifty years, the UN has taken concrete steps to improve the situation of the poor around the world. It has also played an important role as a monitor and publicist, bringing the plight of the world’s poor to the global agenda. By monitoring, publicizing, and taking action to improve human development around the world, the UN has improved the lives of millions of people. 1 Currency is quoted in American dollars.
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