Inside the United Nations

Multilateral Diplomacy Up Close

Gert Rosenthal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315301778
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Inside the United Nations illustrates some of the parameters surrounding consensus-building at the United Nations, seeking to provide new insights beyond what is already known. The author spent twelve years as P.R of Guatemala at the UN, offering him privileged observatories in all three of the main inter-governmental organs: the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, and the Security Council.

In this book Rosenthal focuses on six case studies that offer the breadth and scope of what the UN does, and illustrate some of the main elements of the dynamics of consensus-building, providing concrete examples of the ingredients that shape decision-making in a multilateral setting. The chapters:

• cover the origin, preparation, and outcome of two successful international conferences: the 2000 Millennium Summit and the 2002 International Conference on Financing for Development;
• look at the 2000 negotiation on the scale of assessments to finance the UN's budget in the General Assembly's fifth committee (2000-2001);
• focus on the relevance of the Economic and Social Council;
• consider the internal politics involved in vying for elected posts in intergovernmental bodies by focusing on the campaign to be elected to the Security Council between Guatemala and Venezuela in 2006;
• reflect on the peculiarities of decision-making in the Security Council.

Providing an insider's view on the UN and exploring different facets of multilateral diplomacy at the UN, this book will be of great use and interest to scholars of international relations as well as the diplomatic community.

1 The 2000 Millennium Declaration

A General Assembly Summit with far-reaching consequences

• The genesis

• The next stage

• The preparatory process

• The final phase

• The Millennium Summit

• The Coda

• Conclusion

The decision to hold some type of commemoration in the year 2000, announcing not only a new century but a new millennium, was taken on 17 December 1998, when the General Assembly adopted resolution 53/202, whereby member states decided to designate the 55th session of the General Assembly “The Millennium Assembly of the United Nations.” At that time, they decided to convene, as an integral part of the Millennium Assembly of the United Nations, a Millennium Summit on dates to be decided by the General Assembly at its resumed fifty-third session, under the presidency of Didier Opertti, the foreign minister of Uruguay. The only guideline offered by resolution 53/202 was that the event should be held during “a limited number of days.” All other aspects, such as dates, level of representation, format, thematic content, and potential outcome, had to be worked out by member states, presumably by consensus. Hence, the need for facilitators: the traditional way of getting the broad membership to agree on difficult issues. PGA Opertti asked the author and Michael Powles, the Permanent Representative of New Zealand, to take on that responsibility. This turned out to be a standard beginning for anything but a standard outcome of a gathering that was to have far-reaching consequences.

The genesis

As a first step, the co-facilitators invited a limited number of key delegates to informal consultations in the format of what was called a “coordination committee.” These consultations were held between 13 and 16 April 1999, and included the permanent representatives of Germany (representing the European Union (EU) at the time), Guyana (representing the Group of 77 and China (G77)), South Africa (representing the Non-aligned Movement (NAM)), Uganda (chairman of the African Group), Algeria, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, Egypt, France, India, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, Romania, the Russian Federation, the United States, and Sweden. This informal committee was a way of overcoming the resistance on the part of many member states to discuss important matters outside of the plenary or committees made up of universal membership. President Opertti was eager to nail down a date for the event, as well as its duration. Based on the consultations, the co-facilitators could report back to him on 21 April that most of the delegations participating in the coordination committee were close to agreement on the meaning of “a limited number of days” as a minimum of two and a maximum of four. On the timing, the majority preferred holding the event immediately before or during the general debate, although Germany (representing the EU), Japan, and China indicated a preference for the first week of December 1999, during the 54th session.

There had also been a rather loose discussion of other elements, such as thematic content, format, and outcome, but here there was a wider disparity of positions, with some delegates expressing doubts as to whether an outcome document should even be pursued. This seemed strange to the author, given the symbolic significance of the event, but there was always some resistance on the part of a limited number of delegations to preparing lengthy political declarations, given the time and effort that their preparation entailed.

In May 1999 the Secretary-General himself weighed in on some of these matters in a report which contains specific recommendations on the over-arching theme and sub-topics which he believed could facilitate the debate of the General Assembly.¹ This report followed the usual pattern of the secretariat exercising its responsibility of formulating proposals, which, in its judgment, were appropriate for the circumstances at hand, but which offered the member states some leeway in putting together a collective decision, usually based on consensus, but sometimes adopted through the alternative of putting the text to a vote.

The next stage

By the end of May 1999, PGA Opertti managed to convene two informal consultations of the plenary, and he at least got a decision on dates, reflected in resolution 53/239 adopted on 8 June 1999. This resolution indicated that the Summit would begin on Wednesday 6 September 2000. Two other decisions were taken. First, an initial approximation on format was agreed to, in that the Summit would be composed of plenary meetings and of four interactive round-table sessions. Second, the Summit would be co-chaired by the incoming PGA of the 55th session as well as the outgoing PGA of the 54th session, under whose watch most of the preparatory phase would take place. However, President Opertti was unable to get a consensus on the duration of the Summit, although the overwhelming majority of delegations accepted the proposition of a three-day event. The inability to reach a consensual decision is what led to a typical tactic of multilateral diplomacy: to postpone the decision while further consultations take place.

The discussion of other matters, such as a more detailed development of the format, the thematic content, the participation of non-state actors, and the nature and content of the outcome was left for the preparatory process to be launched during the 54th session of the General Assembly, under the Presidency of Theo-Ben Gurirab, the foreign minister of Namibia, who took over his duties on 14 September 1999.

The preparatory process

Theo-Ben Gurirab was an imposing figure.² In his past, he was an activist in the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO). Part of his political activities took him into a protracted exile (mostly in the United States). During that period he rose in the liberation movement’s ranks, and he eventually became the head of the SWAPO mission based in New York, mostly to engage with the United Nations. In the final stages of SWAPO’s initiatives, and back in his home country, he became one of the main drafters of Namibia’s Constitution as a member of the Constituent Assembly prior to independence. He became the first Minister of Foreign Affairs of the newly independent country in 1990.³ His personal attributes added to the luster of Namibia, which, it will be recalled, acquired its independence from South Africa while the latter still was ruled by apartheid. The United Nations played an important role in Namibia’s independence process,⁴ including the establishment of the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) under Marti Ahtisaari. In short, when Mr. Gurirab assumed the presidency, he already found a deep well of sympathy, for himself and for his country.

The two co-facilitators were summoned to Mr. Gurirab’s office shortly after his taking over the presidency of the 54th Session. They were asked to continue co-facilitating the preparatory process for the Millennium Summit, and invited to participate in a substantive meeting with his senior staff to discuss a preliminary work program. It was understood that the preparatory process would only get into high-gear after the regular business of the session was concluded, presumably by mid-December. Further, the Secretary-General had promised to have his own report with proposals for a Summit outcome by early March 2000, roughly six months before the holding of the event. This report was to be an essential input for the preparatory process, and therefore became an important marker in the work program’s calendar. In the meantime, some activities were carried out during the last quarter of 1999 under the new presidency, especially since member states seemed to be devoting as much if not more attention to the organizational aspects of the Summit than to its substantial outcome.

Among the issues being debated was the format, or how to organize the debate. Was this to be a celebratory event which would put the accent on what the United Nations had done in the past, or a practical event, which could offer a vision of the role of the United Nations for the future? There were different views on the matter. As to format, the extreme positions were, on the one hand, that plenary sessions were a waste of time, dedicated to ritualistic speeches, and that the UN should for once organize a real inter-active discussion on pressing issues that could shape the unrealized potential of the organization. On the other hand, arguments were put forth that heads of state could not be expected to make the long journey to New York if they weren’t offered a stage to speak, mostly for the sake of their domestic constituencies, and that purported inter-active discussions would anyway end up as a series of formal prepared statements.

As often happens during the consensus-building process, an intermediate solution was reached on this matter through a combination of plenary meetings and round tables; the only difficulty in finding common ground between opposing views was in the division of time between the two types of gathering.⁵ In addition, there was also the issue of themes for the inter-active round tables: should they all discuss the same topic, or should they be organized around different subjects? And what procedures would be implemented to distribute different countries to one of the four round tables? A further particularly contentious issue was how the Chairs of these round tables would be selected.

Much of the time of the co-facilitators, and even of President Gurirab, was dedicated to listening to different positions and trying to find enough common ground so as to come out with a consensus. It was the PGA’s intention to reach such a consensus by February 2000; in fact, the agreement was only reached on 11 August, when the General Assembly adopted resolution 54/281, called “Organization of the Millennium Summit of the United Nations.” The gap in the two dates only illustrated that even in procedural matters it is difficult to garner consensus, and more often than not the “spoilers” or hold-outs elect the stratagem of going down to the wire rather than giving up on their favored positions.

During the first half of 2000, the organizational aspects were discussed simultaneously with the substantive matters, and each set of discussions impacted on the other. As already noted, when consultations were begun during the 53rd session, many delegations resisted the idea of a formal declaration coming out of the Summit, although the prevailing opinion was that such a solemn gathering would be meaningless without a tangible outcome document. But the content of such a document had to be accompanied by other decisions, such as whether it should take the form of a presidential summary, a resolution of the General Assembly, a political declaration of the heads of state, or a combination of these and other options.

The facilitators, for their part, had initiated at that time discreet consultations with the secretariat to sound out the Secretary-General’s own aspirations for the event. Besides very occasional meetings with the Secretary-General himself, more frequent conversations were held with the Deputy Secretary-General, Louise Frechette, who had been designated to oversee the process on the secretariat’s side.⁶ And a superior working relationship was developed with John Ruggie, who, in his capacity as Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Planning, and with the help of Andrew Mack, was heading the team drafting the Secretary-General’s promised report, which was meant to guide the discussions on the outcome of the summit.

The long-awaited report was finally issued on 27 March 2000, under the title “We the peoples: the role of the United Nations in the twenty-first century.”⁷ It was a lucid, ambitious, visionary, and very well-drafted document, which bore the substantive stamp of John Ruggie and the formal editing skills of Edward Mortimer, the director of communications of the Secretary-General’s executive office. It was, in fact, destined to become a landmark document of the secretariat, and it also became the basis of the very first draft declarations that the co-facilitators eventually produced.

The President of the General Assembly convened several informal consultations of the plenary, often with his personal participation, sometimes only with the presence of the two co-facilitators. General comments were received on the contents of the Secretary General’s report, and then more specific comments on the recommendations contained therein. These consultations were held in April and May 2000. Although reactions to the report were, in general, quite positive regarding its conceptual framework, as well as its structure, contents, and proposals, it also became clear in the course of these meetings that numerous delegations had their own ideas and agendas for a declaration. Many comments referred to what were perceived as serious omissions. Thus, there was always the latent danger that the very brief declaration that both the secretariat and the PGA were looking for—President Gurirab spoke frequently of a “brisk” text—would gradually be expanded to accommodate the initiatives of different delegations. In order to avoid this risk, the president announced to the plenary that he would present an initial draft declaration—he called it a “non-paper”—built on the Secretary-General’s Report and on the content of the numerous interventions of member states.

That “non-paper” was prepared during the first week of June, in two phases. During the first phase, a text was developed by the two co-facilitators, who then turned it over both to the PGA and the secretariat (in the person of John Ruggie). In the second phase, the comments, observations, and suggestions received from these two sources were brought into the text, which was then circulated among delegates in mid-June. With the benefit of hindsight, it is heartening to note that the final version of the Millennium Declaration is actually quite close to this initial “non-paper.” However, during the brief ensuing period between the consideration of the first and last draft, the text went through some significant mutations, as the PGA and co-facilitators tried to address differing concerns of delegations. These efforts were having, in balance, a deleterious effect on the evolving draft, which began to expand in length and was losing the “crispness” sought by the PGA. Further, the inner coherence of the original non-paper was gradually being compromised, as suggested modifications from the different delegations were brought into succeeding versions. Still, up to the end of July, a line-by-line revision of the text had been averted, precisely to maintain the coherence of the Declaration.

The final phase

The President’s next draft proposal (the natural extension of the previous “non-paper”), which presumably had addressed at least the general concerns raised during the consultations of previous weeks, was circulated on 10 August. It was the PGA’s intention to invite comments to the text, again without going into a paragraph-by-paragraph revision, and offered to come back to the plenary with a revised version which, he hoped, would be acceptable to all delegations. The co-facilitators had already been alerted a...