United Nations Reform

Eric Fawcett, Hanna Newcombe, Eric Fawcett, Hanna Newcombe

• Publisher: Science for Peace
• Year: 1996
• Print ISBN: 9780888669537
• eBook ISBN: 9781459718999
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Edward C. Luck, President Emeritus, Senior Policy Advisor, United Nations Association of the United States of America

This book is important reading for anyone interested in the future of the UN. It contains hundreds of reform ideas, most of them sound, all of them stimulating. The diversity of views and subjects reflects the breadth of the UN's global agenda and the exemplary contributions Canadians have made to the world body. Many of Canada's UN experts are represented here; their work will remind us to look for inspiration and perspective when the going gets tough at Turtle Bay!

Major-General (Ret'd) Lewis W. MacKenzie, First Commander; UN Forces, Sarajevo

The 50th Anniversary of the United Nations -- a wake or a cause for celebration? The euphoria following the signing of the UN Charter in San Francisco in 1945 soon fell victim to a 45-year Cold War. Now, when the oppressed and destitute of the world need it more than ever, the UN finds itself handcuffed by potentially terminal systemic deficiencies. Tinkering won't do - major reforms are required and the plethora of relevant ideas and recommendations set forth in this book provide leaders, policy makers and interested observers with much food for thought.

Joe Sills, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, United Nations

This valuable collection of essays covers a broad range of UN activities. In addition to careful analysis, it offers many suggestions for strengthening the UN as it enters its second half-century.

Brian Urquhart, Former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Scholar-in-Residence, International Affairs Program, Ford Foundation

This "festschrift" for the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations is really something to rejoice about -- a stimulating, readable and comprehensive set of comments on where the world organization is, how it got there and where it ought to be going. A breath of fresh air -- oxygen even -- for the UN on its 50th birthday.

Major-General Indarjit Rikhye, Founding President, international Peace Academy and former Military Advisor to UN Secretary-Generals Dag Hammarskjold and U Thant

The opportunity provided by the end of the Cold War to achieve the great objectives of the UN Charter must not be missed through failures in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. The contributors to this book, with their thoughtful papers and recommendations for reform, encourage belief in the possibility of reinvigoration of the UN, so that the hopes placed in the organization in 1945 might after all be fulfilled.

Benjamin Rivlin, Director, Ralph Bunche Institute on the UN

This book presents an honest and sober reply to the mindless critics of the United Nations who have made multilateralism the whipping boy of their own short-sightedness. Mindful of the UN's shortcomings, this excellent collection of essays, based on careful analysis, points out clearly nevertheless the direction the organized world must take and the indispensable role the United Nations must play in shaping a just and peaceful future for humanity.

PART I

UNITED NATIONS REFORM: PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

An Agenda for United Nations Reform

Geoffrey Grenville-Wood

Great problems usually come to the United Nations because governments have been unable to think of anything else to do about them. The United Nations is a last-ditch, last resort affair, and it is not surprising that the organization should often be blamed for failing to solve problems that have already been found to be insoluble by governments.

U Thant, 1978¹

Even as it stands the UN system is considerably more effective than the impression given by many stringent criticisms, especially those emanating from its most powerful members. It is, if anything astonishing that this group of public-service international institutions, staffed from and governed by nearly every country in the world, have achieved so much of enduring value in the last forty-nine years. It would, however, be surprising if, after such a period of time, they were not in need of radical overhaul, the more so as their mandates and critical responsibilities are rapidly increasing in volume and complexity.

Erskine Childers and Brian Urquhart, 1994²

These are two views expressed by knowledgeable people a quarter-century apart. U Thant, after retirement showing the fatigue and frustration to be expected from someone who had tried to run the United Nations during some of its most difficult times. Childers and Urquhart exhibiting the commitment and hope of those who have lived through the darkest hours and who now see potential and possibility. Who is right? This book about reforming the United Nations will not provide the full answer. It will at least contribute to the discussion.

In truth, U Thant’s opinion reflects a stark and uncomfortable reality, as accurate today as it was then. Member States, especially the powerful, do not accept that the UN is anything more than just a minor instrument of foreign policy. An attitude which could be characterized as: “if it serves our purpose to have the UN act, or if we can dump the problem in the UN’s lap, we will use the organization.” There is as yet no firm commitment to the UN as the prime instrument for such states to conduct their foreign relations.

Thus, we see the UN constantly begging Member States to pay their dues; living a hand-to-mouth existence, while lacking the minimum funds to carry out the mandates demanded of it. At the same time, the organisation is under a constant barrage of criticism from many of the leading Member States for its “bureaucratic mess,” its financial “chaos” and its “corruption and nepotism.” The other truth is that the UN’s total regular operational budget, including all the specialized agencies and excluding peacekeeping and the international financial institutions (who do not like to think of themselves a part of the UN system, anyway) is US $ 6.384 billion per year. As Childers and Urquhart point out, this is equivalent to the amount US citizens spend on cut flowers and potted plants in a year.³

The whole UN system employs a total of 51,484 persons, including all professional, support and general service staff. The UN Secretariat proper, based in New York, Geneva and Vienna, and including at the regional commissions, comprising a total of about 9,100 persons. This is fewer than the City of Winnipeg which employs around 9,900.⁴ Yes, perhaps these are not the best people in the world, although many are. Most of the employees of the UN are highly talented and dedicated. I would guess that the proportion of vastly superior to deadwood probably exceeds that of Winnipeg or any other city or government department in Canada.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, there is also a great deal of truth in the quotation from Childers and Urquhart. The United Nations, after fifty years, has performed near miracles in many fields including health; but it is in need of major reform. The past fifty years have taught us that we need a better and more effective UN. The world, if it is to survive another fifty years, must reorganize its system of international and global governance. Perhaps we could call this requirement our Global Agenda for Change. Within this overarching Agenda, there are several components, each more daunting and challenging than the last, all interconnected, related and interdependent.

Sustainable Development and Agenda 21

Some of the changes needed have been outlined in a number of powerful documents emanating from the United Nations itself. For example, the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) approved its Agenda 21, a vast list of actions required of states, international organizations and citizens. What is most significant about Agenda 21, apart from its scope and reach, are the demands full and proper implementation of its recommendations will make of the international system. There is no historical precedent for the kind of global supervision of individual, private and public sector and nation state activity called for. There is also no precedent for the changes in day to day activity needed immediately. Thus, changes in the international system and the implementation of a truly global system of governance for the planet will be required to give real meaning to the concept of a shared environment and ecology, while still ensuring a decent life for the inhabitants of the planet.

The United Nations provided the occasion, in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, for the governments of the Member States and for thousands of representatives of the peoples of those states, through Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), to meet and identify the environment and development problems facing the planet. As can be expected, that huge effort only served to start a complex process leading to: “measures which place environmental concerns at the centre of the development policies of all countries,” to quote Maurice Williams, the President of the Society for International Development.⁵ The international system itself needs to embark on the same path. The international financial institutions, the private lenders and international institutions need to change approaches and standards and governments must have some form of accountability for the undertakings made and received at UNCED and after.

UNCED took place more than two years ago. It is now clear that the impetus for real change in national and international institutions, called for by the scope of the issues identified there, is largely lost. The poor state of the world economy has had the effect of weakening the resolve of governments and of sapping the creative energy of the policy-makers. Furthermore, it is apparent that the weak compromise institution created at UNCED, the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) will never have the capacity or the power to be the overseer for the implementation of Agenda 21.

In May 1994, the InterAction Council, a group made up of former heads of state and government, in a report which was the result of meetings involving a wide range of experts as well as several members of the Council itself, said the following regarding the CSD: “The mandate of the CSD – covering virtually everything dealing with sustainable development – may turn out in practice to be a considerable bottleneck. Rather than speeding up, it may retard the adoption and implementation of meaningful measures.”⁶

The Council went on to say: “Consideration should also be given to whether there is really a need for CSD to report to other intergovernmental bodies, such as ECOSOC or the General Assembly, inducing a proliferation of meaningless debates. Would it not be sufficient for CSD to report directly to governments and to the Secretary-General, suggesting particular areas for attention or initiatives?”⁷

In light of the lack of real authority around the CSD table, some of the ideas regarding institutional mechanisms, rejected at UNCED mainly because of the failure of governments to screw up the nerve to do something meaningful, have been resurrected. The InterAction Council said the following about the need for a stronger institution:

Given deficiencies resulting from its genesis, mandate, composition and operating modalities, doubts have arisen whether CSD will be able to become the desired, effective fora to discuss, coordinate and cope with the cluster of global issues of environmental degradation, poverty and overpopulation. The suggestion has been made that it would be desirable to have in this area a body as powerful and efficient as the Security Council is in its field. Such a body should be empowered to pass binding resolutions and to seek enforcement of decisions (although, to be sure, the Security Council itself is lacking this very power to impose policies on national governments).⁸

Another aspect of the Agenda 21 dilemma arises from the historic underpinnings of our system of international law. Common sense, we hope and sometimes even believe, will confirm that environmental concerns transcend national boundaries and therefore their solution must be addressed transnationally. Thus, it should be taken as a given that issues of national sovereignty should be made subservient to overriding environmental concerns. Not so – Professor Nicholas A. Robinson of the Centre for Environmental Legal Studies at Pace University School of Law and a noted international environmental legal scholar, in a paper delivered in advance of UNCED, set out the problem as follows:

Existing international law has not served to protect the environment: globally, this system has allowed the acute deterioration now experienced. There are reasons for this. Classic international law since Hugo Grotius focused on three key relations among nations:(l) that restitution be made when one state harms another; (2) that a state’s promises must be observed (pacta sunt servanda); and (3) that freedom of the seas be assured. Under the United Nations Charter, three further elements were embraced: (1) collective security; (2) the protection of human rights; and (3) the duty of international cooperation. While this framework has conferred enormous benefits on the community of nations, worldwide environmental trends highlight inadequacies. The system presupposes that nations can each take care of their own affairs, largely as independent ‘citizens’ or subjects under international law. Environmental problems, however, obliged nations to deal with matters over which each state has little to no control alone. No single state can be self-sufficient in its environmental well-being.

Mere treaties do not protect nature. International law rarely concerns itself, however, with the measures a state takes to observe a treaty until the breach harms another state, and by then the environment is injured too.⁹

At UNCED, the most heated debates took place around specific environmental or development issues. Delegates and NGOs alike were mesmerized by the potential of words. Words which marked either progress in the way the issue was described or which effectively protected the status quo. In fact, the real debate and the strong lobbying should have been on institutions and legal instruments. Subsequent events have shown that words on an Agenda have no meaning unless there are laws, in the form of treaties and agreements, and that there is in place an institution to oversee and enforce those laws.

There is therefore an urgent requirement to reopen the discussions about the Earth Charter, the international treaty that would protect the sustainability of the planet in a meaningful and substantive way. Dr Parvez Hassan, a distinguished jurist from Pakistan and a leading international lawyer, put forward the case at The Hague in August 1991:

We … believe that the time has come when the international community must acknowledge and accept environmental rights and obligations in the same manner as it has acknowledged and accepted the international protection of human rights. A few decades ago, it seemed revolutionary to assert that human rights could be protected at the international level. “Domestic Jurisdiction” and “sovereignty of states” were then pleaded as iron curtains that barred international efforts to promote and protect the human rights of individuals across state boundaries. But the collective voice of the international community which first manifested itself in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948 brought about, “overnight,” a virtual global acceptance of the internationalization of human rights. I believe that, today, we stand on the threshold of an equally promising era: an era where the international community should move to accept and acknowledge the basic and fundamental rights and states to be free from environmental degradation.¹⁰

Thus Agenda 21 should be more than the list of actions required. More fundamental change at the institutional level is needed if we are to have meaningful results. The 50th Anniversary should provide a renewed impetus to examine the institution and the law that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Part I United Nations Reform: Prologue
• Part II The United Nations System
• Part III Peace and Security
• Part IV Human Rights
• Part V Environment and Development
• Part VI International Law
• Part VII Recommendations
• Part VIII United Nations Reform: Epilogue
• Glossary of Acronyms
• Bibliography on United Nations Reform
• About the Contributors
• Other Books from Science for Peace