A Year at the Helm of the United Nations General Assembly

A Vision for our Century

Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781479885923
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

From September 2011 to September 2012,Ambassador Nasser Abdulaziz Al-Nasser of Qatar presided over the 66th sessionof the “world’s parliament” – the United Nations General Assembly. It was acritical moment in international affairs as the UN responded to a range ofglobal challenges, from the world financial crisis to the Arab Spring. In AYear at the Helm of the General Assembly, Al-Nasser presents a high-levellook inside the organization, assessing its strengths and weaknesses, itssuccesses and struggles. He recounts dramatic moments, such as replacing theLibyan delegation, and a tireless schedule of overseas travel, including jointvisits with the Secretary-General to Libya and Somalia. His work takes him frommajor international summits such as the Conference on Sustainable Developmentin Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Rio+20) to the European Parliament, which he was thefirst General Assembly President to address, to academic institutions fromOxford to Moscow to Morocco. Al-Nasserstructures the book as he did his 66th session, around four mainthemes or “pillars:” mediation, UN reform, natural disaster prevention andresponse, and sustainable development.He offers a wide range of recommendations to intergovernmentalinstitutions, to states, to the public sector, and to individuals. Al-Nasser was determined to leave behinda General Assembly that the people of the world could look up to and depend on.This volume is a testament to all that he accomplished in that regard, and aunique resource for those interested in knowing more about the world’s mostrepresentative body at a crucial moment in history.

1

A Vision for Universal Values

In 1945, the leaders of the world came together in San Francisco and signed the United Nations Charter. They did so in the belief that every nation can advance its own interests by building common ground with the interests of others and that the whole of our power is greater than the sum of its parts. The United Nations is an organization that illustrates that the yearning for peace is a universal search and that universal peace requires universal solutions.

The desire of humankind for universal values can be traced back to the oldest times of humanity, whether through religion or philosophy. These values were described by Plato as objective: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Ever since, philosophers—including classical Muslim philosophers such as Averroes, Avicenna, and Ibn Khaldoun, to name a few—have considered these values the basis for bridging our differences and bringing us together in one human community.

The most striking and brilliant expression of these ambitions may have found its achievement in the writing of Immanuel Kant. It is said that when President Woodrow Wilson was reflecting on the future of humanity after the disaster of World War One, one of his most relied on readings was Kant’s essay “Perpetual Peace.”¹ These readings infused the spirit of the treaty that gave birth to the League of Nations.

The UN Charter, born after the tragedy of World War Two, took up this challenge again, striving to bring us ever closer to the desire for those universal values. Signed on June 26, 1945, at the conclusion of the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, it outlines the goals of the organization—to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” “to reaffirm faith in the … dignity and worth of the human person [and] in the equal rights of men and women,” and “to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”² It is a hard road that we still pursue today, even after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.³

It is no secret that, in some parts of the world, the United Nations has suffered an image problem in recent years. Indeed, there has been a perception among some people that the UN is irrelevant in today’s global world. Ironic, is it not? The UN—the most global, interconnected organization in the world—irrelevant in today’s global, interconnected world?

This view has grown largely from within conservative camps in some Western countries and their media. Yet we must admit that the world has indeed changed since the UN’s establishment in 1945. At the time the UN was born, 750 million people—almost one-third of the world’s population—lived in colonized territories. More than half of the world was not represented at the UN. Self-determination was but a far-off dream.

Since that day, more than eighty former colonies have gained their independence. Hundreds of millions of people have realized their passionate yearning for freedom. This has changed the makeup of the United Nations as well. We have grown from 51 member states in 1945 to 193 in 2012.

Today, we face a world again in transition—a transition like none seen since the end of decolonization. Take the issue of race, for instance. It has moved from being framed as an apartheid question to how to build multiethnic, multicultural, pluralistic societies. Take another example—the climate issue. Those who spoke about it only twenty years ago were tentative in their assessments and predictions. Today, science tells us that climate change is one of the major challenges the international community must face.

Take the issue of democracy. Who would have thought, even five years ago, that the quest for democracy would become the central focus of the Arab people. Who could have imagined the strong calls for freedom, dignity, and justice of all those who today are celebrating what is widely called the “Arab Spring” and what I prefer to call the “Arab Awakening.” Indeed, just as the world experienced a major transition immediately after World War Two, we find ourselves today also going through a historic transition, with all the challenges and hopes it implies.

And so what is the UN’s role today? What can the UN offer in response to the challenges of our times, and how effective are we in that response? I submit that the United Nations’ role is more important than ever before. In today’s Internet-driven world, where we live side by side with those who are oceans apart, we must act in a way that respects and embraces our shared values and collective efforts.

The UN is the expression of our common journey and—let us be frank—our mutual dependence. It is a place where all the major problems of the world find their destination. It is a place where all the hopes of humanity converge for a better tomorrow.

Take the world economy. At the heart of our economic challenges are the issues of demand versus resources. How do we provide economic justice so that the world can live and progress in greater harmony? The gap between rich and poor is growing. Economic growth is weak, and the global economic system is fragile. And everything is compounded by increasingly depleted natural resources. Addressing poverty is of course key to achieving economic and social justice.

The UN provides the space for our concerted efforts to grow and to achieve justice. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), stemming from the 2005 World Summit attended by more than 170 heads of state and government, offer a blueprint for development.⁴ The MDGs offer a policy framework agreed to by all the world’s countries and leading development institutions.⁵

Eight goals have been set: from halving extreme poverty to ensuring environmental sustainability to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS.⁶ The target date for the MDGs is 2015. Since their launch in 2000, the MDGs have galvanized never-before-seen efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest populations. There is no doubt that important progress has been made toward most MDG targets.⁷

Consider another critical issue: the responsibility to protect, or “R2P” in UN speak. Following the tragedies in Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s, the international community began to debate how to react when citizens’ human rights are grossly violated. Did states have unconditional sovereignty over their affairs? Or had the international community the right to intervene in a country for humanitarian purposes?⁸

In the Millennium Report of 2000, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, recalling the failures of the Security Council to act in a decisive manner in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, put forward a challenge to member states: “If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica, to gross and systematic violation of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?”⁹

The expression “responsibility to protect” was first presented in the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, set up by the Canadian government in 2001 in response to the secretary-general’s question. The report proposed that when a state fails to protect its people—through lack of ability or lack of willingness—the responsibility shifts to the international community.¹⁰

In 2004, the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, set up by the secretary-general, endorsed the norm of a responsibility to protect, stating that there is a collective international responsibility, “exercisable by the Security Council authorizing military intervention as a last resort, in the event of genocide and other large-scale killing, ethnic cleansing and serious violations of humanitarian law which sovereign governments have proved powerless or unwilling to prevent.”¹¹ The panel proposed basic criteria that would legitimize the authorization of the use of force by the Council, including the seriousness of the threat, the fact that it must be a last resort, and the proportionality of the response. The secretary-general “strongly agreed” with this approach in his 2005 report “In Larger Freedom”; he suggested that a list of proposed criteria—including seriousness of the threat, proportionality, and chance of success—be applied for the authorization of the use of force.¹²

At the United Nations World Summit in 2005, all member states accepted the responsibility of each state to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.¹³ They also agreed that when any state fails to meet that responsibility, the international community is responsible for helping to protect people threatened with such crimes. Should peaceful means—including diplomatic, humanitarian, and others—be inadequate and national authorities “manifestly fail” to protect their populations, the international community should act collectively, on a case-by-case basis, through the Security Council and in accordance with the United Nations Charter.

The Security Council has applied that principle in practice, authorizing the deployment of peacekeeping troops to Darfur, the Sudan, in 2006. More recently, we have seen the critical role of R2P in Libya. We have seen the Security Council’s timely and resolute response in the face of an imminent threat of mass atrocities. And we have seen the UN’s central role as a moral authority—a moral authority against the gross and systematic violation of human rights.

While some people have raised questions about whether NATO overstepped its mandate in Libya, this does not change the normative reach of the R2P concept or the UN’s responsibility to act. It was, and it remains, clear to all that there could not be silence in the face of such brutality.

I am offering these examples to illustrate what can be achieved when 193 nations agree to act and to show that, despite nations’ cultural, social, economic, historical, and political particularities, some truths are self-evident and universal. They apply everywhere. They are universal values, as described in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.¹⁴

The General Assembly

Underpinning our efforts at the United Nations is a shared, interfaith belief in the inherent goodness of every individual and our commitment to peace, forgiveness, and compassion. Consider for a moment:

In Christianity, it is said, “Do to others what you would like others to do to you.”

In Islam, we hear, “Wish for others what you wish for yourself.”

In Judaism, we learn, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.”

In Buddhism, it is declared, “Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.”

And in Hinduism, we hear, “Do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.”

At the heart of the United Nations are these very values, common to us all. Our organization is the ideal forum whereby we can start to make peace within ourselves, within our families, and between our communities and our nations.¹⁵ Because universality is not a given; 193 countries implies 193 governments, 193 national economies. And how many historical experiences! And how many national interests!¹⁶

Much of the UN’s work to build consensus takes place in the General Assembly. The UN Charter established the Assembly as the UN’s chief deliberative and policymaking body. Unlike any other international institution, the General Assembly is arguably the most universal, legitimate, representative body in the world: 193 member states; one country, one vote. Big and small countries, rich and poor—all count equally inside the General Assembly Hall.

The Assembly is tasked to consider the full spectrum of international issues covered by the UN Charter—from international peace and security to human rights to development. Decisions of the Assembly provide a global voice to major concerns of our time. The General Assembly also provides a place—the place, some might say—for the world to connect.

Every September, as the citizens of New York are all too aware, 193 heads of state and government and other senior officials, as well as thousands of delegates, meet at UN Headquarters. Despite appearances, the Assembly in this high-level week is much more than a talk shop. Global agendas are set. Paths forward are mapped. Commitments are made.

And it is quite thrilling, yet humbling, to be in the General Assembly Hall with hundreds of representatives from around the world. You hear it all—from English to Hiri Motu to Swahili. Such a gathering reminds you of just what the world has to offer and what the UN has to offer the world.

Let me give you another example of what we can accomplish when the community of nations comes together. In September 2011, for the first time ever, world leaders recognized that noncommunicable diseases (NCDs)—heart disease, cancer, chronic lung diseases, and diabetes—have reached epidemic proportions. We agreed to act. The international community committed itself to developing national capacities for addressing NCDs and to strengthening national NCDs policies and plans.

There is power in these collective commitments. They offer support to governments in developing policies. They also create space for sharing ideas and best practices, such as using low-cost, cost-effective interventions to build an effective national response to tobacco use. By creating a global agenda, ideas grow and governments and communities are more empowered to follow a path that works.¹⁷

Four Pillars

For six months—between my election as PGA in February and taking office in September—I worked to shape the agenda of the 66th session according to my own priorities and the concerns expressed to me by member states. I narrowed these down to four pillars that would guide our work; each is the focus of a later chapter of this book. Together, these ideas represent my vision for achieving stable and prosperous democracies; continued growth and development; and the protection and promotion of human rights for the citizens of the world.

We organized at least one high-level policy meeting on each pillar. In preparation, I selected two permanent representatives of countries actively involved in that issue to serve as cofacilitators and sent a letter to all member states encouraging them to exchange ideas with these ambassadors. The cofacilitators would negotiate with regional groups about their views and attempt to produce a consensus document. As PGA, I worked hard to achieve a positive atmosphere, but of course, we were more successful in some areas than in others; it is not always possible to reach compromise between member states with widely different agendas and points of view.

The first pillar is the peaceful settlement of disputes. History has shown that peaceful settlements of disputes, including those brokered through mediation efforts, provide the most cost-effective and long-lasting solutions. And in today’s world, the need to find peaceful resolution to disputes has become more relevant and urgent than ever. For this reason, I selected the theme “The Role of Mediation in the Settl...