While the US and alas other parts of the world (the Murdoch media in Australia has been full of it) are utterly distracted by the Sciavo case, major changes are afoot at the United Nations.
Kofi Annan has proposed the largest reforms to the organisation for over 60 years, and they are changes that, if accepted, will have significant ramifications for international relations, the global power balance, and how nations work (or don't) together on issues such as international crises, human rights, military intervention, and global security. UN members will have a chance to vote on these changes in September this year, but in the meantime, expect negotiations and politicking to escalate dramatically, with so much at stake.
Keep reading to find out more...
Broadly, Annan has accepted a high level report requested by the UN, aimed at looking at what the organisation needs to do to achieve its Millennium goals. Annan has accepted most of this report's recommendations. The report can be found here:
http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/#
Annan has called for the restructuring of the UN around it's three central tenets, under the auspices of three Councils: (a) international peace and security, (b) economic and social issues, and (c) human rights.
Two of these, of course already exist (the UN Security Council, the Economic and Social Council). The third, a Human Rights Council, has been suggested as a replacement for the increasingly discredited UN Human Rights Commission.
While on the face of it, the confirmation of the UN structure around three core councils may seem a relatively minor reform, the text of the report and Annan's speech - http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/sg-statement.html
-make it clear that what he is proposing is much more than a reaffirmation of structure with a minor change: no, what Annan's proposal for three councils does, as outlined, is put the status of human rights and the UN economic and social agenda on the same footing as the Security Council. Further, Annan has proposed measures to significantly strengthen the UN organisation to increase its transparency, accountability, and ultimately its relevancy.
In a nutshell, Annan is moving to give the UN some teeth.
The details of the proposed reforms are as follows.
The expansion of the Security Council - naturally much of the world press & other attention will be focussed on this major reform. As Annan himself noted "This important issue has been discussed for too long."
Annan has asked the General Assembly to accept either Model A or B put forward in the report above. Both of these models recommend an expansion of the number of Security Council members; either with six new permanent members joining the five already ensconced or with a level of semi-permanent members. The bottom line is that this is the first serious move in the UN's history to remove or at the very least mitigate the Security veto held by the USA, France, the UK and Russia, and to expand the Council to be far more representative of the international landscape as it is today.
If this major reform is accepted, it will also set a valuable precedent, for it will affirm that power on the global scale moves fluidly between states, and that international organisation must reflect this. In many ways this will do more to undermine the status and influence of current permanent Security Council members than the addition of further members itself. In short, it may well result in a much more multilateral and dynamic exercise of collective power to enforce global security. Or perhaps I'm just way too optimistic. Watch this space, and expect serious opposition to this reform from probably all current permanent Security Council members.
The abolition of the discredited Human Rights Commission, to be replaced with a Human Rights Council - this is a much-needed reform, as the current Commission has lost all credibility, given that member states with extremely poor human rights records domestically have been members of the Commission, and have repeatedly moved to protect themselves and similar nations from international condemnation.
Further, the elevation of a UN Human Rights body to Council status puts it, in theory at least, on the same footing as the security & economic & social platforms of the UN. There is some suggestion within the report that only member states with `clean' human rights records would be able to be apart of this new council, and could only be voted on by a two thirds majority. While frankly I can't think of a single state that doesn't violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights somehow, clearly this Council would see a significant raising of the bar. My hope is that it would see developed nations such as the USA and Australia (my country), who traditionally have been able to pretend to have spotless human rights records, finally tied to a chair with a spotlight in their face - figuratively speaking.
Codification of a set of conditions to guide military action between countries & by the UN - there is no doubt that the failure of the UN to act in the face of genocide in Rwanda, Kosovo, and now the Darfur crisis has seriously undermined the credibility and relevancy of the UN; and it has been a lack of clarity in terms of when the UN should be able to act without lengthy debate and hand-wringing, and the stranglehold of the Security Council, that has led to catastrophic and culpable UN inaction in the face of mass atrocities. Indeed, some would argue with merit, that this failure to act, and the failure of the UN to have an effective mechanism by which to act in a timely and appropriate fashion is the single most critical issue facing the UN.
Annan has responded. As part of the reforms he has asked for a fundamental endorsement from all member states both for themselves as individual members, and for the United Nations, of the "Responsibility to Protect", as a basis for collective action against genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This is part of a more complex series of recommendations that pushes all member states to ratify the convention on nuclear terrorism, and the fissile material cut-off treaty. He also has recommended the establishment of a Peacebuilding Commission to assist nations move from war to peace, and a Democracy Fund, to aid nations to build and strengthen their democracy.
Read the detail in the report on this critical issue - there is more than I want to expend space on going into. Suffice to say that if Annan's reforms are embraced, we may never again have to suffer through the site of the horror of Rwanda, with the UN sitting on the sidelines, powerless or hopeless in its ability to respond. I find it hard to think of another notion that would give me more hope that we may move towards a less violent, more peaceful and safe world.
Importantly, because these conditions would apply to the action of member nations as well as identifying the appropriate conditions under which the UN should act, if adopted, this reform will see a codification of a set of conditions that must be met before a member state could take pre-emptive military action. Given the current status and future potential for greater international unrest as the result of the USA's aggressive adoption of a unilateral doctrine of pre-emption, expect strong rejection of this clause from the Bush administration, and some critical debate over this reform. Think North Korea, for eg.
Linked to the codification of the conditions to guide military action, Annan has called on member states to "complete, sign and implement the comprehensive convention on terrorism, based on a clear and agreed definition". In recognition of the constant bilateral and multilateral wranglings over the definition of terrorism, that leads to one state's freedom fighter being another's terrorist and so on, this is a clear call for the world to agree on the definition and appropriate individual member-state responsibilities and response to terrorism. My big question - what will happen to state-sponsored (eg Saudi Arabia), or outright state-enacted (eg Israel) terrorism? I will also watch with interest to see if the Bush administration grasps the obvious opportunity to enforce its myopic vision of terrorism on the rest of the world. Expect a great deal of acrimony over this, and pray it doesn't derail the rest of these significant reforms.
In the areas of Economic and Social reform for the UN, Annan has called for:
Increased aid spending by developed nations- Annan has asked for 0.7% of developed nation's GDP to be set aside as aid for the developing world -bear in mind that this is less that the 1% that many OECD and in particular the EU has endorsed (- Europeans Kossians correct me if I'm wrong). Nevertheless, looking at the US and Australian miserable contributions of less than 0.4% GDP, this would be a significant step forward.
In tandem, Annan has called on all developing nations to develop and adopt suitable national strategies that will achieve the millenium goals for poverty alleviation by 2015; specifically targetting the need for domestic structural reforms that strengthen governance capacity and capability, and tackle the ever-pervasive problem of corruption. The call for increased developed nation aid allocations has been specifically linked to these reforms, making it quite clear that Annan is not asking for un-tied handouts to the world's poorest nations, but a long-term international commitment to address some of the root causes of poverty.
Concomitant to this was a call for a renewed commitment from developed nations to level the playing field of world trade. Specifically, Annan has called for Doha round of trade talks to be finished no later than 2006, to immediately give duty-free and quota-free market access to all exports from the Least Developed Countries.
Annan has seized upoin the profound impacts o the boxing day tsunami to recommend the creation of a voluntary $1billion crisis fund for disaster relief, be it human or man-made.
Finally, Annan's report proposes a number of significant changes to the mechanisms of the UN General Assembly and Secretariat, aimed at making the way they do business more transparent, credible, relevant, effective and efficient.
There is no doubt that the major focus will go to the proposed changes to the Security Council; yet the thrust of these reforms is so much more. As a total package, these reforms are without doubt the most radical in the UN's history. Their fundamental promise, if embraced and implemented is a far more transparent, participatory, egalitarian United Nations that will be empowered to actually lead, not be led or sidelined.
The report is easy to read; major recommendations are shown in bold within the text (ironically I would not recommend the Exec Summary, I found it terrible!)
This is about the future of global cooperation people. As Americans, it has direct relevance for the many of you who justifiably worry that the Bush administration has thoroughly undermined the world standing of the US, and concomitantly the power of the US when it is run as an extreme rogue nation.
Call me an idealist fool, but I've long held on to the promise of a more participatory, democratic and effective United Nations. Annan's reforms, if passed, will be an enormous step to making that a reality.