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	Civil Society Groups launch website to spur discussion of 2005 UN World Summit. by UN News / AllAfrica Global Media   17 August 2005   Civil Society Groups launch website to spur discussion of 2005 UN World Summit. (UN News)   With some 170 heads of State and government expected in New York in less than a month for the United Nations 2005 World Summit, civil society groups working with the UN Department of Public Information (DPI) have launched a Website to voice their views on how to strengthen the world body as it confronts the challenges of extreme poverty and global security.   The Website, at www.undpingoconference.org, features an interactive discussion area, which went live Monday, to debate issues that will be addressed at the 58th Annual DPI/NGO (non-governmental organization) Conference, “Our Challenge: Voices for Peace, Partnerships and Renewal,” scheduled to take place at UN Headquarters in New York from 7-9 September.   That event kicks off one week ahead of the 2005 World Summit, which will run from 14-16 September and where world leaders gathered to mark the Organization’s 60th anniversary are expected to take advantage of what Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called a "once in a generation opportunity" to forge a global consensus on development, security, human rights and UN renewal.   While the NGO Conference will be closed to the general public, the Website will enable social activists from around the world to participate in the discussion of issues as set forth in Mr. Annan’s report “In Larger Freedom,” which urged world leaders to take decisive action during the Summit on a "bold but achievable" blueprint for making the UN more efficient at tackling global problems.   The website also aims to increase the number of NGO Conference participants from around the world, especially NGO activists, youth, the media and the general public.   During the Conference, online participants will also be able to pose questions which may be addressed to panel speakers to enable real-time, virtual participation. The online discussion area for comments, questions and answers will be available before, during and after the Conference.   The discussion forum will feature several thematic issues based on the Secretary-General’s report, including development issues, peace and security, human rights and rule of law, strengthening the UN and the role of civil society in the United Nations. Each topic will be launched by a series of questions by a moderator, who will check the discussions daily. Special online sessions with high-level UN officials or NGO representatives will be announced separately.   (The Website will host live a webcast of the panel discussions, which will feature Shirin Ebadi, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Winner; Ann Veneman, Executive Director, UNICEF; Juan Somavía, Director-General, International Labour Organisation; Anwarul Chowdhury, UN High Representative for Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States; Fatou Bensouda, Deputy Prosecutor, International Criminal Court; Gareth Evans, President and Chief Executive, International Crisis Group; Paul van Tongeren, Executive Director, European Centre for Conflict Prevention; and Bill Pace, Executive Director, World Federalist Movement).   August 16, 2005   Youth delegates call for Equality and Justice in the UN. (AllAfrica)   Delegates of the 16th World Youth and Students' Festival in Caracas, Venezuela, unanimously called for revolutionary reform of the United Nations (UN) in order to restore equality and justice in the international system.   During a debate on the need to reform the UN as proposed by Secretary General Kofi Annan, Venezuelan representative Carlos Wimmer said all nations of the world had a duty to create a United Nations where they could be represented equally.   Wimmer even suggested that a new organisation outside the UN should be created so that it could be more equitable.   He said UN reforms were necessary to bring about equality so that fundamental decisions are not taken just by a few nations. Wimmer suggested that the right to veto by Security Council permanent members should be abolished because the countries with that right were abusing it.   Canadian youth representative Julian Ikin Colect said it was clear from the way the US waged the wars in Iraq that it had overstepped the UN system. He said the kind of unilateralism being exhibited by the US suggested that the US believes that might is right. Colect said the US only goes to the UN when it wants to use it as its own power base and not otherwise.   Nigerian delegation leader Victor Akinjo said it was high time the UN reverted to its initial role of ensuring world peace, fighting poverty, hunger and disease as opposed to tolerating wars and other calamities.   Akinjo said the African continent had not forgotten how the UN watched without doing anything the massacre of nearly one million people in Rwanda in 1994. He said Africa had not forgotten how the UN ignored the problem of apartheid in South Africa, just as the continent had not forgotten about the crises in Liberia and Sierra Leone.   Akinjo said as a result of all this, it is clear that the UN must be reformed so that it reflects equity and justice and not just to serve the interests of a few nations. He said permanent seats on the Security Council must be open to all UN members and not just a few countries.   Cuban youth, Perla Payana Masso Soler, said the transformation of the UN would not come automatically unless the youth voiced their concerns and acted. Soler said there was need to defend the existence of the UN based on the basic principles on which it was originally set up. She said the UN should shoulder the responsibility of inequality and wars in the world.   Soler said with efficient and well-designed strategies, the UN could be reformed so that the voice of the people could be equally represented and heard in the international system. Visit the related web page
	The Failed States Index by Foreign Policy & The Fund for Peace Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.   August 2005   About 2 billion people live in countries that are in danger of collapse.   In the first annual Failed States Index, FOREIGN POLICY and the Fund for Peace rank the countries about to go over the brink.   America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones.” That was the conclusion of the 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy. For a country whose foreign policy in the 20th century was dominated by the struggles against powerful states such as Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union, the U.S. assessment is striking. Nor is the United States alone in diagnosing the problem. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned that “ignoring failed states creates problems that sometimes come back to bite us.” French President Jacques Chirac has spoken of “the threat that failed states carry for the world’s equilibrium.” World leaders once worried about who was amassing power; now they worry about the absence of it.   Failed states have made a remarkable odyssey from the periphery to the very center of global politics. During the Cold War, state failure was seen through the prism of superpower conflict and was rarely addressed as a danger in its own right. In the 1990s, “failed states” fell largely into the province of humanitarians and human rights activists, although they did begin to consume the attention of the world’s sole superpower, which led interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. For so-called foreign-policy realists, however, these states and the problems they posed were a distraction from weightier issues of geopolitics.   Now, it seems, everybody cares. The dangerous exports of failed states—whether international terrorists, drug barons, or weapons arsenals—are the subject of endless discussion and concern. For all the newfound attention, however, there is still uncertainty about the definition and scope of the problem. How do you know a failed state when you see one? Of course, a government that has lost control of its territory or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of force has earned the label. But there can be more subtle attributes of failure. Some regimes, for example, lack the authority to make collective decisions or the capacity to deliver public services. In other countries, the populace may rely entirely on the black market, fail to pay taxes, or engage in large-scale civil disobedience. Outside intervention can be both a symptom of and a trigger for state collapse. A failed state may be subject to involuntary restrictions of its sovereignty, such as political or economic sanctions, the presence of foreign military forces on its soil, or other military constraints, such as a no-fly zone.   How many states are at serious risk of state failure? The World Bank has identified about 30 “low-income countries under stress,” whereas Britain’s Department for International Development has named 46 “fragile” states of concern. A report commissioned by the CIA has put the number of failing states at about 20.   To present a more precise picture of the scope and implications of the problem, the Fund for Peace, an independent research organization, and FOREIGN POLICY have conducted a global ranking of weak and failing states. Using 12 social, economic, political, and military indicators, we ranked 60 states in order of their vulnerability to violent internal conflict. (For each indicator, the Fund for Peace computed scores using software that analyzed data from tens of thousands of international and local media sources from the last half of 2004. For a complete discussion of the 12 indicators, please go to www.ForeignPolicy.com or www.fundforpeace.org.) The resulting index provides a profile of the new world disorder of the 21st century and demonstrates that the problem of weak and failing states is far more serious than generally thought. About 2 billion people live in insecure states, with varying degrees of vulnerability to widespread civil conflict.   The instability that the index diagnoses has many faces. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Somalia, state failure has been apparent for years, manifested by armed conflict, famine, disease outbreaks, and refugee flows. In other cases, however, instability is more elusive. Often, corrosive elements have not yet triggered open hostilities, and pressures may be bubbling just below the surface. Large stretches of lawless territory exist in many countries in the index, but that territory has not always been in open revolt against state institutions.   Conflict may be concentrated in local territories seeking autonomy or secession (as in the Philippines and Russia). In other countries, instability takes the form of episodic fighting, drug mafias, or warlords dominating large swaths of territory (as in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Somalia). State collapse sometimes happens suddenly, but often the demise of the state is a slow and steady deterioration of social and political institutions (Zimbabwe and Guinea are good examples). Some countries emerging from conflict may be on the mend but in danger of backsliding (Sierra Leone and Angola). The World Bank found that, within five years, half of all countries emerging from civil unrest fall back into conflict in a cycle of collapse (Haiti and Liberia).   The 10 most at-risk countries in the index have already shown clear signs of state failure. Ivory Coast, a country cut in half by civil war, is the most vulnerable to disintegration; it would probably collapse completely if U.N. peacekeeping forces pulled out. It is followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Chad, Yemen, Liberia, and Haiti. The index includes others whose instability is less widely acknowledged, including Bangladesh (17th), Guatemala (31st), Egypt (38th), Saudi Arabia (45th), and Russia (59th).   Weak states are most prevalent in Africa, but they also appear in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Experts have for years discussed an “arc of instability”—an expression that came into use in the 1970s to refer to a “Muslim Crescent” extending from Afghanistan to the “Stans” in the southern part of the former Soviet Union. Our study suggests that the concept is too narrow. The geography of weak states reveals a territorial expanse that extends from Moscow to Mexico City, far wider than an “arc” would suggest, and not limited to the Muslim world.   The index does not provide any easy answers for those looking to shore up countries on the brink. Elections are almost universally regarded as helpful in reducing conflict. However, if they are rigged, conducted during active fighting, or attract a low turnout, they can be ineffective or even harmful to stability. Electoral democracy appears to have had only a modest impact on the stability of states such as Iraq, Rwanda, Kenya, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Indonesia. Ukraine ranks as highly vulnerable in large part because of last year’s disputed election.   What are the clearest early warning signs of a failing state? Among the 12 indicators we use, two consistently rank near the top. Uneven development is high in almost all the states in the index, suggesting that inequality within states—and not merely poverty—increases instability. Criminalization or delegitimization of the state, which occurs when state institutions are regarded as corrupt, illegal, or ineffective, also figured prominently. Facing this condition, people often shift their allegiances to other leaders—opposition parties, warlords, ethnic nationalists, clergy, or rebel forces. Demographic factors, especially population pressures stemming from refugees, internally displaced populations, and environmental degradation, are also found in most at-risk countries, as are consistent human rights violations. Identifying the signs of state failure is easier than crafting solutions, but pinpointing where state collapse is likely is a necessary first step.   Copyright 2005, The Fund for Peace and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Visit the related web page
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