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	The UN keeps the ideal of human cooperation alive by Ronald Sanders / Alberto G. Romulo Caribbean Net News / Manila Times   September 27, 2005 (Caribbean Net )   For three days in September World leaders met in New York to mark the 60th anniversary of the United Nations and to produce what was called an ‘Outcome Document’.   The occasion was not a celebration. Indeed, reading the statements that were made formally in the General Assembly and the comments made to the media outside of the UN, the anniversary was marked by complaints, criticism, doubts and frustration.   Two countries – Venezuela and Cuba – objected to the final document. They accused the United States and its allies of seeking to “subjugate the organisation completely and turn it into an instrument of their world dictatorship”.   It was always going to be an impossibility to produce a document with which 189 nations with different and conflicting interests could agree entirely. The most that could have been expected was serious attention to a handful of the urgent problems that now confront mankind globally   On these issues, there was a mixed bag of success and failure. A major failure was tackling poverty in the developing world.   Jamaica’s Prime Minister, P J Patterson made the shocking point that developing nations make annual payments of $230 billion a year to developed countries. This is a great weight upon the shoulders of countries that are contending with worsening terms of trade, lower incomes in real terms, and higher costs to cope with natural disasters and security arrangements, as well as increased costs for vital imports.   In 2000, rich countries committed to earmark 0.7% of their GDP as official development assistance to poor countries. But, as the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, pointed out: “Five years later, we find that the international community is generous in setting goals, but parsimonious in pursuing them”.   Even that sacred cow, the much vaunted Millennium Development Goals (MDG), came in for some practical and realistic criticism. The Foreign Minister of Guyana, Rudy Insanally, told the UN that while the “realisation” of MDG provides the necessary foundation for development, “true economic and social progress cannot be achieved in the absence of a more comprehensive policy framework”. And, of course, there is no such framework - not even on the drawing board.   While debt write-off has been agreed by the G7 countries for seventeen of the most highly indebted countries in the world including Guyana, the reality is that real machinery with a time table to tackle global poverty through new and more assistance has still not been identified let alone implemented for the 2 billion people worldwide who remain destitute.   And, there are those countries whose people could slip into poverty if their problems remain neglected. Among them are the small states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).   The Prime Minister of St Kitts-Nevis, Dr Denzil Douglas, expressed concern about “the apparent neglect of the unsustainable debt” of countries like those in CARICOM that are classified by the IMF and World Bank as “middle income countries”. He was right to emphasize that even as CARICOM and other small states seek to develop new growth sectors, they are confronted by new rules and conditionalities that hobble their development.   On terrorism, the text of the document was vague and did not produce a definition. In a sense, the absence of an internationally accepted definition of terrorism leaves this pressing issue to individual governments with all the conflict and confusion that unilateral action brings into play in the global community.   Kofi Anan, the UN Secretary-General, expressed his deep regret that member states failed to address the threat of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament in the document. Apparently, an entire chapter on disarmament, which was originally to be included in the document, was left out in the end.   None of this is good news for a world deeply troubled by violent conflicts in many regions. Sixty years after the creation of the United nations with its pledge “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, the failure to agree on disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation is a woeful foreboding that conflicts will get worse not better.   But, the Summit produced real movement on the matter of intervention in states to stop massive human rights violations and genocide as, for example, in Rwanda in 1994 and more recently in Srebrenica, and Darfur.   Kofi Anan had adopted a Canadian initiative called ‘responsibility to protest’ which cut across the doctrine on non-intervention in the internal matters of a sovereign state unless the state posed a threat to its neighbours. World leaders have now agreed that the UN will have powers to intervene in countries whose governments fail to protect their people from massacres and which themselves violate the human rights of their people.   Much of the ‘Outcome Document’ displeased certain influential organisations in the United States, among them The Heritage Foundation which has severely criticised the mandates given to the UN and the money they will cost.   In a paper issued after the Summit, The Heritage Foundation said: “This focus on assuring more resources rather than ensuring that existing resources are better used is typical and should be a clear signal to Congress that the U.N. will not reform on its own”. The Foundation then called on the US government to “push reform” by withholding payments to the UN.   Of course, there are many who wish to close the UN, if it cannot be tamed into carrying out the will of the most powerful. This is why they frequently assert that the UN is an empty ‘talk shop’ that should be closed.   But abandoning the UN would not be in the interest of the people of the world, and certainly not in the interest of the people of Small States. This is why an agreed ‘Outcome Document’, however unambitious and lacking in machinery, was important for peace and security in the world, and for the UN as an institution.   Without the UN, Small States, such as those in the Caribbean, would have no forum at which they could voice their concerns to the global community about the economic conditions that trouble them, and present cogent arguments for change. Nor could they enjoy protection from adventurism of larger and more powerful states which might, otherwise, subjugate them in pursuit of their own objectives.   The world is already a dangerous place filled with States that resent the principles of international law and the constraining power of the United Nations. If the UN did not exist, many States in the world would ride rough shod over others, there would be a grab for resources such as oil on the basis of ‘the right of might’, and even within States the level of human and civil rights abuses, genocide and other acts of violence would be even more prevalent.   No one should doubt that such a situation always remains possible in the fragile international context in which the nations of the world exist today.   So, if the 60th anniversary session of the UN General Assembly and its ’Outcome Document’ have proven anything, it is that all the countries of the world, particularly small, weak ones like those in the Caribbean, need a stronger UN.   The UN is the forum in which mankind’s worst problems can be aired, and its best ambitions promoted. Regimes, like man, pass on, but the UN keeps the ideal of human cooperation alive. And, once that ideal remains alive, so does the opportunity for doing better for the world as a whole.   “The United Nations and the building of a better world”, by Dr. Alberto G. Romulo, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines. (Manila Times)   For sixty years, the United Nations has provided us the forum to draw up norms of conduct that takes on board all our concerns. From its inception with 50 member-countries in 1945, the membership has almost quadrupled to its present 191 states.   While the United Nations has, time and again, adopted some reforms, at no other time has the pressure for far-reaching change been starker than it is now. The changing needs of its increasing membership must be met.   The evolving global and regional security environment, ongoing conflicts in many countries that have multidimensional root causes and other flashpoints have to be addressed.   It is clear that in pursuing our shared interest to preserve our common humanity, the United Nations continues to serve as our indispensable tool. It is therefore also our shared interest to strengthen it. The Philippines proposes that we follow the principle that the form follows the substance in strengthening the key structures of the UN system.   Even before San Francisco, some key decisions had already been reached among the major powers, primarily on the power of the veto, or what was referred to then as the “unanimity rule.”   Our delegation, in concert with others, pressed for an increased role for the General Assembly and for limits on the use of the veto. We felt that this was the balance necessary to safeguard the effectiveness of the United Nations in maintaining international peace and security.   We also urged wider and more equitable representation in the Security Council—an aspiration which has yet to achieve realization, and thus an advocacy which my country carries to this day.   The outcome of the High-Level Plenary Meeting provides the substance upon which to strengthen the UN system. They should guide us well in our discussions on institutional reform.   Six decades after San Francisco, our common humanity remains at stake. We have today another opportunity to make our United Nations succeed.   Whether the issue is United Nations reform or freedom from want or fear, we must act now to ensure that the principles committed to by our leaders at this year’s Summit, be implemented effectively and efficiently.   Allow me therefore to present at this point some practical strategies that may assist us in ensuring that we achieve our goals. Our proposed strategies assume that multilateral frameworks and mechanisms will be the approach adopted to implement the High-level Plenary meeting commitments.   First, the agreed commitments should be broken down into tangible steps. Concrete benchmarks and pragmatic indicators of progress must be set. The interrelated nature of the commitments will admittedly not make this an easy task, but we need to take this forward step.   Second, with concrete international benchmarks, national strategies can be geared to achieving these. All concerned national actors in domestic procedures and actions should be involved. This is necessary to put into effect and implement multilateral commitments.   Ideally, national actors should be privy to developments in the negotiating process and have the opportunity to provide their own inputs to the national position to be taken. This is expected to ensure implementation and follow-up to the commitments made by our leaders.   In this way, necessary legislative and executive action to ratify or put the treaty into effect will be facilitated.   Domestic programs to implement the commitments made by the leaders can be supported in the national and local budgets, as appropriate and as resource capacity allows. Where capacity is lacking, international cooperation can be further resorted to.   Third, we must not lose sight of the need to increase congruence among national, regional and international plans of action. Keeping these in sight contributes to a faster rate of achieving the goals. National plans of action can be elevated to the regional level, whenever feasible. Regional cooperation and pooling of regional resources can scale up progress on the goals.   Fourth, we must rethink our existing modes of international cooperation. There will be value in assessing how we have been collaborating bilaterally, regionally and multilaterally. Let us assess the effectiveness of our current modes of cooperation.   As we assess, we open ourselves to explore new collaborative arrangements that can make better use of comparative advantages, expertise, experience and resources available from countries, international agencies as well as civil society. Let us challenge ourselves to discover new opportunities to address new threats.   In adopting practical measures and in discovering new opportunities and addressing new threats, we must be mindful of the old hopes and enduring dreams that led to the birth of our United Nations.
	Arab Democrats are denied the Democracy they Crave by Rami G. Khouri The Daily Star   Beirut. 20 Sept, 2005   Arab Democrats are denied the Democracy they Crave, by Rami G. Khouri.   For too long, self-interested and often hollow-headed politicians in the Arab countries, Israel and the United States (slightly less so in Europe) have ignored the sentiments and aspirations of the Arab majority. They have focused instead on the violent excesses of a small minority of estranged radicals and criminal terrorists who have hijacked the global debate on the Middle East.   Ultimately, neither charismatic killer demagogues like Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, nor cosmic-grade cheerleaders for liberty''s apocalypse like U.S. President George W. Bush, will define the collective history of the people of the Middle East. Instead, the path to a stable, productive future for the region lies in understanding more carefully the sentiments of the middle class majorities that inevitably must define their own political cultures, ideologies and policies. Presumably, that is what democracy and majority rule are all about.   One of the truly historic recent developments in the Arab world in the past decade or so has been the ability to conduct public opinion polling in many countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and a few others, providing crucial insights into what our populations feel, fear and desire.   A new public opinion poll released this week in Jordan confirms two significant points that most of the mediocre leaders in this region and abroad have preferred to ignore: ordinary Arabs (mostly Muslims) are strongly committed to democratic values and principles, but they are also deeply concerned and fearful about how they are treated in their own countries.   The nationwide random sample poll of adults by the independent Jordan Center for Social Research, conducted at the end of July, showed huge majorities in favor of electing local officials, keeping and expanding the quota for women in Parliament, keeping the one-person, one-vote system, ensuring equal work opportunities for men and women, and using peaceful political participation and protest (rather than violence) as the way of changing the government. Jordanians identified the most important problems facing their country as the rising cost of living, unemployment, corruption, worsening economic conditions and poverty, along with the widening gap between rich and poor.   The most striking result of this poll was the nearly schizophrenic attitude of ordinary Jordanians to political values and to their real life conditions. While they aspire to democratic practices and have a very strong sense of justice, they also feel mistreated and subjugated in their own society. Only 39 percent of respondents said they would be treated fairly and justly in a court of law, 12 percent in a university entrance exam, 9 percent in a police investigation, 6 percent in a job allocation and 1 percent in a tax office.   This is yet another confirmation that Arabs and Muslims love freedom, democracy, equality and justice, but are angry because they do not feel they are enjoying these values in their own societies. This helps to explain the sense of resentment that often translates into political extremism, or people turning to their religion for comfort and hope. In the most extreme consequence, enter Osama bin Laden and angry young men become suicide bombers. More routinely, citizens turn to peaceful Islamist groups to express their anger and indignity; the poll found that the most popular political group in Jordan was the Islamic Action Front, for whom 37 percent of citizens would vote, against 27 percent for Jordanian nationalist parties.   There is more that also confirms the contradictory sentiments that define ordinary Arabs, in this case Jordanians; but I am certain, from my own travels and extensive research and readings, that this situation pertains throughout all the Arab states. Citizens emphatically trust some national institutions: 93 percent trust the police and army "fully or to a large degree"; 84 percent trust religious leaders; 76 percent trust the government; 56 percent trust municipalities; but only 36 percent trust political parties. The media comes in at 63 percent.   What to conclude? Good Arabs and Muslims with fine, egalitarian, law-abiding values have found themselves living in societies that do not reflect those values in practice. This is also what I heard when I phoned the director of the survey, sociologist Musa Shteiwi, for his own interpretation of the results. He was quite categorical: "The people of Jordan seem very committed to democratic ideals, both at the value and procedural levels, but they are also a troubled people who are very concerned about the degree of fairness in their society."   They are also not sure about whether the country is heading in the right direction politically and economically, he said, noting that 48 percent of respondents think things are moving in the right direction; while 44 percent think they are moving in the wrong direction. He senses that many Jordanians are alienated from their civil and government institutions, such as political parties and Parliament, and are not sure that these institutions are working for their best interests. He also detects a gap between elite and popular sentiments on key political issues, also suggesting alienation.   Any takers for the simple idea that Arabs and Muslims love freedom and justice, but hate being denied it in their own societies?
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