Читать книгу A World Transformed - Danilo Türk - Страница 13
ОглавлениеAn Organized International Community: The United Nations
It is said that if we wish to imagine the future, we first need to look at the past.
Therefore, it is useful to mention again that more than two centuries ago, in 1805, the then British Prime Minister William Pitt (The Younger) articulated an important vision. In his seminal memorandum “Deliverance and Security in Europe,” he reflected on the world to be reorganized after the Napoleonic Wars. He proposed an arrangement that would enable “a general and comprehensive system of Public Law in Europe, and provide, as far as possible, for repressing future attempts to disturb the general Tranquility.”1
This idea expressed in a politically powerful document in 1805 served as the point of departure for the creation of the Holy Alliance and all subsequent multilateral arrangements designed to serve the “general Tranquility” and to provide the basis of what was later coined “collective security”.
Looking back at that document, one is struck by two concepts which remain central even today. The first is “a general and comprehensive system of Public Law” and the second, the need to repress the attempt to disturb the general Tranquility “as far as possible”. These two concepts represented the central challenge of the League of Nations and later of the United Nations and continue to be the main challenge.
Modern international law developed by or with the assistance of the United Nations has become a solid framework for international cooperation but is still not ←19 | 20→a “comprehensive system of public law” today. Public law remains, strictly speaking, the domain of sovereign states. Norms and institutions of international law must be strengthened further and there is much work to be done.2
The practice of maintaining peace in the framework of the United Nations can be described as going “as far as possible”. However, what is possible is usually less than what is desirable or even necessary. The possible and the necessary seldom match and this gap gives rise to disappointments. The challenge is how to expand the scope of the possible.
The UN is not a world government, nor can it be one. Nevertheless, it is a vital ingredient of contemporary global governance, defined as the system of existing norms, values and institutions which were created to help address the problems of our world. This system of norms defines the space of governance, its scope and limitations.
The UN Organization is based on the principle of “sovereign equality” of its member states. This is a necessary principle, a sine qua non condition for the organization’s inclusiveness and universality. On the other hand, in an increasingly globalized world, sovereignty can be an obstacle in finding solutions to the growing number of “problems without passports” such as global warming, global pandemics, transnational organized crime and others. Coordination of the national interests of sovereign states in these matters has proven very difficult. In addition, the provisions of the UN Charter provide for the necessary institutional stability, but not for the desired adaptability of the UN structure. The challenge today is how to use UN institutions effectively.
The UN represents a valuable distillation of historically accumulated wisdom which can, when taken seriously, help in solving a variety of problems. Time and again, states and individuals have turned to the UN. Today no serious commentator advocates its abolition. To the contrary, the ongoing discussion on UN reform, which started in the early days of the organization, reaffirms the organization’s indispensability.
The discussion points towards a different problem: the problem of UN relevance. While the indispensability of the organization cannot be questioned, its relevance is continuously subject to doubt. And relevance is a matter of degree. Therefore, it is appropriate to focus a discussion like the one today on the relevance of the UN in the three key areas of its activities: security, development and human rights.
The UN is an organization of collective security and as such, indispensable. The aspiration formulated two centuries ago by William Pitt continues to be valid. Pitt’s careful wording regarding the task to provide peace “as far as possible” was wise and still resonates today. Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General ←20 | 21→of the United Nations, gave it a modern expression in his famous remark that the UN is not here to take the world to heaven but to prevent it from descending into hell.3
The UN has been instrumental in this preventative role. It has contributed its own share in the prevention of a World War III and in addressing a wide variety of threats to peace. This must never be ignored or underestimated.
Moreover, the UN has demonstrated its ability to innovate. Peacekeeping, a function not envisaged in the UN Charter, has become the “flagship activity of the UN”, to borrow a phrase used by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the eighth UN Secretary-General. UN peacekeepers have made a major contribution to the maintenance of international peace and security and have deservedly received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.4
Over time and especially in the past two decades, UN peacekeeping has grown in size, diversity and complexity. Since 1948, there have been 71 peacekeeping operations. In early 2019, there are more than 100,000 peacekeeping personnel deployed in 14 operations. Peacekeeping, as an instrument for maintaining peace and security has proven to be effective, both politically and financially. Deployment of peacekeepers costs considerably less than any other military deployment. The total expenditure of UN peacekeeping operations represents a mere one-half of one percent (0.5%) of global military spending.
The rapid growth in peacekeeping since the early 1990s made managing large numbers of peacekeepers and their different mandates excruciatingly difficult. This led to a real crisis in the second half of that decade when serious problems had to be addressed. Unclear mandates, some of which were resulting from political divergences in the Security Council, the “mandate-giver”; ambiguities with respect to the use of force by the peacekeepers; inadequate numbers and operational capabilities of several peacekeeping operations and violations of human rights, including sexual abuses by the peacekeepers were some of the difficulties. All this led to a serious re-examination of peace operations and a series of new policy guidelines have been adopted on several occasions since 2000.
The situation has improved gradually since then and today peacekeepers are better prepared for a variety of tasks which include difficult mandates such as protecting humanitarian assistance and building a safe environment for economic recovery and political transitions. However, new challenges continue to arise. Increasingly, peacekeepers are deployed in situations where there is no peace to keep, where it is not easy to identify the parties to the conflict and where there is no viable political process.
The UN and its member states must keep up with the changing realities, both in the military and political sense. In the past few years, important innovations ←21 | 22→were introduced. Examples include the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and an international intervention brigade in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) within the UN Organization Stabilization Mission (MONUSCO). The intervention brigade was mandated to conduct targeted offensive operations with the aim of disarming and neutralizing armed groups. The important premise for the Congo intervention brigade was the understanding – and possibly a future principle of peacekeeping – that impartiality of peacekeeping does not mean neutrality in the face of atrocities and that maintaining consent with the parties to a conflict does not mean that spoilers can prevent UN missions from accomplishing their mandates.
These innovations are important not only for the success of future peacekeeping missions but also for effective “post-conflict peacebuilding”. Peacekeeping and peacebuilding are increasingly merged in a broad variety of specific, sensitive and time-consuming tasks. Over time, the UN has, along with other international organizations and donor states, developed considerable experience and expertise in this domain.
However, the practical performance still offers a mixed picture. One has to appreciate the depth of endemic problems in some post-conflict situations, the adverse effects of the regional actors in others and the perennial problems of organizing international assistance in all situations. This was the reason for the establishment of the Peacebuilding Commission which aimed to take UN action in post-conflict peacebuilding to new levels. More time is needed to achieve the desired levels of success and more specialized experience will have to be developed for effective assistance to war-torn countries in their effort to build normal economies of peace.
Although peacekeeping and post-conflict peacebuilding belong to standard UN activities in the peace and security field, they are not the only ones. There are situations in which the UN can help as convener of peace processes and facilitator of peace agreements. Sometimes, only the unique convening power of the UN can provide real help. The Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in December 2001 is a case in point. On other occasions, UN sponsored conferences such as the ones on the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the more recent one on Syria failed.
While each of these large peace projects have their own features, there is also a common demand for cooperation among the permanent members of the Security Council. The entire history of the UN has confirmed, time and again, that there is no substitute for the cooperation necessary among the permanent members of the Security Council, the collective bearers of special responsibilities for the maintenance of international peace and security. The more effective their cooperation, the better the chances for UN success. Cooperation between permanent members in ←22 | 23→ending the war between Iraq and Iran in the late 1980s is an example which should inspire future action.
Today, with the accumulation of crisis situations, and a growing sense of a gathering storm calls for a renewed effort. A global security compact among the permanent members of the UN Security Council would be necessary. Such a compact was due but did not materialize in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. However, the intervening years have brought additional experience and wisdom. In an increasingly multipolar world, cooperation among the main strategic actors may be more difficult to achieve but it is also more necessary than ever before. Five policemen working in partnership is significantly more effective than two or three, or one working alone. This idea of great powers working together “in concert” is by no means a new one but has its origins in the history of diplomacy in the nineteenth century and was essential to the creation of the United Nations in 1945. The option of its revival, perhaps in the form of a “global security compact for the twenty-first century” should therefore continue to be kept in mind, no matter how serious the obstacles to it are at any given point.
And there is yet another key element in the UN system for the maintenance of peace and security. Recent history has shown that the role of the Secretary-General and his good offices in matters of peace and security continue to be relevant. While the Secretary-General only seldom invokes his powers under Article 99 directly and formally, he can achieve much in informal communication with members of the Security Council, other UN members and above all, with the countries involved in crisis situations. The Secretary-General should be encouraged in this role and should try to exercise this unique potential frequently and courageously – and above all – at an early stage in emerging conflicts.
The UN Charter contains extensive provisions on international economic and social cooperation. Solving economic and social problems was recognized as an important element of peace and is included among the purposes of the UN. However, the institutional evolution and the long-term vision of economic cooperation and development have been far from coherent. The UN was not given the tools for real economic and financial decision-making; those belong to the IMF, World Bank and later GATT, today the WTO. On the other hand, the UN has, from its early days, established various funds “for improvement and growth in the underdeveloped areas”. Today, the total budget of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) – central among the variety of UN agencies, funds and programs – is about $5 billion. This is a significant amount, but not a decisive one, in the contemporary world of global development efforts.
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In addition to funding, the UN continues to play a critically important role in conceptualizing the idea of development. Let me recall some of the main features of this role.
In 1960s and 1970s, the General Assembly adopted two UN development strategies which emphasized the needs of the newly independent countries which became UN member states in the process of decolonization. The slogan “trade, not aid” featured prominently in that context. In the mid-1970s the idea of a “New International Economic Order” was proposed as an attempt to focus the development debate and practice on the needs of the global south and to change international economic relations in the direction of redistributing the benefits of growth. However, the effort of the developing world to put forward a workable agenda of international economic restructuring did not and could not succeed. Instead, the main economic powers strengthened the instruments of the global market model of development and many of the countries of the global south ended the 1980s with adjustment programs imposed by the IMF.
The hardships caused by austerity policies and structural adjustment of the 1980s led to a different, ethically-based rationale for development. The examples of this ethically-based approach include the concept of “adjustment with a human face” proposed by UNICEF, the right to development as a human right and UNDP’s work on human development reports.
However, the ethically-based critique alone could not suffice. The post-cold war period opened a new chapter in the efforts to conceptualize the idea of development in a globalizing world. The UN organized a series of global conferences on various aspects of development which defined the problems and a set of international cooperation goals as well as programs of action in such areas as environment, social development, the role of women, human settlements, population, and human rights. The importance of these conferences, which took place in the major part of 1990s, cannot be overemphasized. The end of the Cold War and the earlier demise of the New International Economic Order idea created a vacuum which could easily lead to the collapse of international development cooperation. UN conferences gave a new impetus and substance to international development, thus enabling a fresh start in the new millennium.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed a set of Millennium Development Goals in the year 2000, which were based on the extensive, serious and solid work completed during the development conferences of the preceding decade. In addition, they were, in the words of Nitin Desai, a former UN Under-Secretary-General on economic and social affairs, “crisp enough to cope with the attention deficit disorder on development issues in the media and in the higher reaches of government.” The MDGs were devoted to the reduction of extreme ←24 | 25→poverty, the improvement of basic health and education conditions, the improvement of maternal health and the reduction of child mortality, as well as ensuring environmental sustainability. The goals also called for a new development partnership without defining it fully.
The Millennium Development Goals led to the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development, achieved in 2002, and generated a variety of useful activities by governments, development agencies, the private sector, NGOs, academic institutions and, to a lesser extent, the media. It is important to understand the emergence of the Millennium Development Goals in their historical perspective and in their potential for the future. They were not an arbitrary proposal, but a distillation of several decades of development work and a realistic framework for both future national policy-making and international development cooperation.
The results achieved since the adoption of the MDGs confirm this assessment. This was also the assessment of the High-Level Panel for the Post-2015 Development Agenda, co-chaired by the presidents of Indonesia and Liberia, and the British Prime Minister at the time. The panel wrote that the last thirteen years since the proclamation of the MDGs “have seen the fastest reduction of extreme poverty in human history: there are half a billion fewer people living below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day.” Substantial improvement was reported in such areas as the reduction of child mortality levels and deaths due to malaria. Optimistic assessments were also made by several leading experts. This all contributed to the success of the negotiations for the subsequent fifteen-year period – 2015 to 2030. The UN laid out a system on seventeen Sustainable Development Goals and a set of other tasks forming what became known as “Agenda 2030.”
Agenda 2030 is the most comprehensive and ambitious vision for global development ever defined. It is to the credit of the United Nations that it was able, in 2015, to agree by consensus on this vision. In essence, Agenda 2030 advances three concepts: first, poverty eradication, second, sustainability and third, fairness.
The achievements in poverty reduction and the optimism of our time suggest that poverty eradication should be the key priority. The UN system will need to provide a credible analysis of poverty profiles in different parts of the world as well as mature policy guidance. The latter should include policy recommendations related to those with the greatest needs, whether they are ethnic minorities or other identity groups. A national policy intended to address poverty issues cannot be enough if it relies only on general statistical information. Disaggregated data usually help identify the groups most concerned and allow for a good diagnosis of the problem, and consequently, better policy-making.
The sustainability of development initiatives has been hitherto considered mainly in its environmental dimension. There are good reasons for that. Social ←25 | 26→sustainability has been less prominent, even if understood well. One of the criteria for the good governance is the existence of policies designed to promote growth and to ensure that economic growth translates into social improvement to the largest extent possible. The expectation of an automatic “trickle down” effect is most often an illusion. In recent years that illusion has started to wane, while current debates on growing income inequality within states places the question of social sustainability more centrally into the development debate. Moreover, the question of balancing the environmental, economic and social sustainability of development remains as critical as ever.
The third concept, fairness, should be understood in its general meaning. Development requires rules and rules need to be fair. Ideally, development brings with it an increasing sophistication of the rule of law and a steadily improving level of achievement of universal human rights standards. However, these requirements are as sensitive as they are necessary. Perfect is an enemy of good. It is important to set priorities related to the realization of human rights in a manner that takes into account the economic and social context in which these human rights are to be realized. In addition, fairness within states has a counterpart in the need for greater fairness among states as well.
Unlike economic and social cooperation, human rights are scarcely mentioned in the UN Charter. The proposal made in San Francisco to include an international bill of rights did not succeed. However, the void was filled soon after, by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the most important and most ambitious pronouncements ever made by the UN.
Let me remind you of the following provision in the Declaration, its Article 28:
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
This provision contains two key elements: first, the entitlement to a social and international order and, second, the aspiration of the full realization of rights, as opposed to mere recognition or formal enactment. Thus, the platform was set for significant development – first a standard setting, which dominated the first two decades of action, and later a gradual strengthening of the implementation of human rights – a more difficult and conflictual aspect of human rights work which dominates the agenda to date.
Let me conclude.
Observing the UN as a whole, as well as its evolution in more than seventy years of existence, shows that the organization is not only indispensable but also practically relevant to a wide variety of the international community’s ←26 | 27→needs. There are both possibilities and needs for improvement, with some of them obvious.
In terms of peace operations, the mere numbers of peacekeeping personnel and the fact that they remain under national disciplinary and criminal jurisdiction has made the task of preventing and suppressing the incidence of inappropriate behavior, including sexual abuse, difficult. It is encouraging that the Security Council has expressed its commitment to the principle of zero tolerance for this unacceptable behavior by peacekeepers. Now, the Council should develop methods to ensure that this principle is implemented.
With regards to the UN development system, much innovation is needed to take full advantage of the data revolution, to improve monitoring and develop capacities for sophisticated analysis and policy advice. This will require ever greater attention to UN activities in the field, as well as a more ambitious approach at the level of principal organs.
The human rights segment has to continue to improve its monitoring and implementation capacity, as well as think about the transformative potential of human rights. In fact, the language of Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be the guiding principle of human rights bodies and of the UN system as a whole.
The UN needs to strengthen its outreach to the general public to gain worldwide public opinion support. Communication with the general public is necessary to strengthen the natural alliance between the high aspirations of the UN, its practical work and the legitimate expectations of the public. In the twenty-first century, it is vital for the UN to go “as far as possible”. The visionary idea of William Pitt, expressed more than two centuries ago, needs broad public support to flourish in our era.
(Keynote Speech at the UN Forum, convened by the United Nations Association of the United Kingdom, London, 28 June 2014)
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Notes
1. 1 Douglas Hurd, Choose Your Weapons, The British Foreign Secretary, 200 Years of Argument, Success and Failure, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2010. p. 24.
2. 2 For the history of creation of the UN see Stephen C. Schlesinger, Act of Creation, the Founding of the United Nations, Westview 2003.
3. 3 For a more recent discussion of the practice of the UN Security Council, see Chinmaya R. Gharekan, The Horseshoe Table: An Inside View of the UN Security Council, Pearson –Longman, 2006.
4. 4 For a comprehensive overview see Sebastian von Einsiedel, David M. Malone and Bruno Stagno Ugarte, The UN Security Council in the 21st Century, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder-London, 2016.
