A Message to the South

The United Nations is in a crisis. The institution is persistently criticised by the North. It is painted as ineffective, not corresponding to the requirements of the new age, in need of profound reform and in danger of becoming irrelevant. On the other hand the countries of the South cling to the organisation and its charter. They see it as their last hope of preserving multilateralism and democratic governance in the family of nations.

The crisis of the UN has not been brought about by the 11 September events or, by the war in Iraq and its follow up. The crisis is related to: the end of the Cold War and the difficulties that the international community has encountered in managing the post Cold War period; the drastic changes in the world system driven by changes in power relations and the emergence of one superpower; the shift in the dominant world view or paradigm.

In its essence the crisis of the UN today is a North-South crisis.

With the emergence of a single, unified North (West and East) it has become possible for realpolitik theoreticians and political figures in the major developed countries to challenge the importance and relevance of a multitude of "sovereign" states in the corridors and meeting halls of the world body.

It has also become easier to dismiss the notion of sovereign equality and advance in its stead the notion of economic and political power making some states "more equal" than others. This in turn, means downgrading the importance of the UN General Assembly and, shifting the centre of gravity to the more collegial and easier to manage entities, such as the Security Council and the executive boards of the Bretton Woods institutions.

The neo-liberal globalisation paradigm that has spread worldwide has also invaded the UN. It has progressively deprived the organisation of its development mission and, it has undermined its role of questioning and trying to improve what the developing countries have been considering as an unjust and inequitable world economic order.

In the new scenario, where efforts are supposed to be directed at bolstering and maintaining the existing order and, where the preferred approach is one of the "level playing field" (or everyone for himself), the power and action have shifted to the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO. These are the organisations where hard bargaining prevails and, where democratic values do not count for much in decision and policy-making. Their underlying objective is to support the status quo; they are not supposed to doubt it or even be critical of it. This applies in particular to their secretariats that are tightly controlled and steered by a handful of developed countries.

The turbulence and conflicts that have erupted in many parts of the world in the post-Cold War period have placed a series of new challenges on the UN agenda, presaging for the organisation a new activism in the domains of peace- keeping and conflict prevention.

While the Security Council was freed from the earlier veto-induced paralysis common during the Cold War era, it was soon discovered that reaching a consensus on how and where to act was not a simple matter. It should not be surprising then that those with power began increasingly to show impatience with the delays and difficulties in mounting effective action on their own terms through the UN.

If the UN agreement and support could not be marshaled, the inclination to act unilaterally became pronounced among those with sufficient power to do so. No doubt the September 11 events provided an added and strong impulse in this direction.

The newly perceived and defined threats did not know borders, and the responsibility could not be assigned to a given country or government. Thus, the notion of security and peace- keeping came to be expanded to include dealing with new threats that supposedly target the major countries of the North, their populations and their worldwide interests. With the strong international backlash against military and security actions undertaken unilaterally, it became important to adapt the UN to new requirements so as to be able to use it in order to provide a multilateral framework and legitimacy for such actions in the future.

The above trends have fundamental implications for the United Nations and may be summed up as follows: The basic tenet of the UN Charter of sovereign equality of its member states is in doubt. The organisation which has claimed to be the bulwark of democratisation in international relations will need to be adapted to, and its membership adjusted to, the underlying power realities and facts of life.

The UN's central role in the economic and social fields, assigned to it by the Charter, is to be foregone and its mandate in hard core areas of global macro-economic management, finance and monetary issues, and trade and trade-related matters be devolved on other "properly equipped" institutions that are de facto or de jure outside the framework of the UN system.

The organisation will assume increasingly the role of a fireman (both in the sense of providing rescue operations in case of natural or man-made disasters and, in dousing the fires of conflict) and a policeman, offering a centralised facility for global intervention, including military intervention, to deal with security threats.

It is this outlook that has largely inspired the North's drive for modernisation and reform in the Untied Nations.

It is at the core of the controversy between the North and the South.

It preoccupies the developing countries. They are seriously concerned with the loss of policy space, not only in the multilateral arena but also domestically, in what they feel is their national sovereign domain. They see the UN -- which they knew and which they considered as a place of solace and support in their effort to matter and count for something on the world scene -- gradually fade away, and begin to assume a profile of yet another bastion from where the North will try to project its dominance, intellectually, politically, economically, militarily and culturally.

This North-South controversy is reflected foremost in the principal items of reform, namely: the reform of the Security Council, the reform of peace-keeping operations, and the reform of the UN role in social and economic development.

Other reform issues, including various administrative and management (or mismanagement) questions which often catch the attention of the media and the public, are subsidiary to these overarching policy concerns and, are used or manipulated in order to attain broader policy objectives. However, one should not underestimate their critical importance for the running, functioning and control of the organisation, including subtly and from within, a domain where some countries tend to excel. Nor should one ignore the populist appeal of these issues, which is often used skillfully to discredit and criticise the organisation.

The reform of the UN Security Council

Few aspects of UN reform have attracted as much political interest and academic attention as the projected reforms of the Security Council.

Since January 1994 Security Council reform has been discussed in the General Assembly without any result. In September 2000, leaders attending the Millennium Summit called for the "rapid reform and enlargement of the Security Council making it more representative, effective and legitimate in the eyes of everyone in the world".

The high-level panel appointed by the UN secretary-general to advise him on collective security has published its report. The panel presented two models of expansion of the Security Council. Both involve a distribution of seats between four major areas: Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and America.

While the expansion of the council's membership points in the right direction, the power of veto, which is considered as "anachronistic" in an increasingly democratic age, remains unchanged. For, as the commentators from the Great Powers argue, the veto is vital to the operation of the United Nations: "it keeps the big players in the game and there is no game without them". Furthermore, change in the veto would require the agreement of the five permanent members of the Security Council and, there is little chance of the five permanent members accepting a Security Council which would undermine their status and freedom of action.

The fixation on the veto, however, may divert attention from the important other underlying issues, namely those of representation and influence in the council.

Will the expansion of the council bring about greater influence and roles for those countries that remain on the outside or, will the council become an expanded forum of a handful of major countries all vying to advance their narrow interests and engaged in a global power game? In the process it is easy to trade away or ignore the interests and concerns of those that have to remain ante portas.

Such an expanded council will also have a greater claim to representativeness. it would thus contribute to the concentration of power and the marginalisation of the General Assembly, and indeed of the Economic and Social Council, given the fact that the new and expanded definition of collective security covers also economic and social questions, which would be opened up for use of veto by the five permanent members.

The "reformed" Security Council would thus be the place to watch. The challenge is to turn it into a more representative and democratic body to which the international community and the members of the United Nations, will have delegated the high responsibility to lead the action in attaining collective goals and pursuing the high objectives embodied in the UN Charter. The challenge is also to prevent it from converting itself into a directorate, where national interests vie for primacy or, where the fiat and will of the most powerful prevails in the end, using an array of increasingly sophisticated methods to line up the consensus needed to authorise "multilateral" action.

No doubt the risks are great. However, to be fully aware of these challenges is the first step on the long and difficult road of democratising the Security Council, taming the monopoly of power and making it into a truly representative and transparent mechanism of the United Nations that together with other major UN organs will become the centrepiece of democratic global governance.

The reform of peace-keeping

In the Cold War decades the United Nations created the concept of "peace-keeping operations". This concept is not mentioned in the Charter. After the Cold War, the Untied Nations peace-keepers (Blue Helmets) took on vast new duties. During my tenure as secretary-general, the UN started as many new operations as in the previous 45 years. At the end of 2004, there were more than 60,000 peace-keepers in 16 missions around the world. peace-keeping has become a "major industry" and its quality has also changed in important ways.

Indeed, today's operations are not peace- keeping in the traditional sense. The earlier missions involved United Nations forces which were lightly armed.

They were interposition forces between two states in order to maintain a ceasefire. They were there with the agreement of all concerned. They were an international presence, not a force expected to take drastic military action or to intervene in the conflict. They were not allowed to use force except in self-defence.

Today, the United Nations operations may take place where there is no peace to be kept, where conflict is internal to a country, including civil wars, where new forms of assertive action may be required -- Blue Helmets protect relief shipments, provide services for victims, respond to refugee needs, enforce embargoes, remove anti- personnel mines, and seek to confiscate arms. The United Nations operations involve a large number of civilians in different operations such as monitoring elections, public safety, information and communication, the restoration of infrastructure and in administrative services.

The 11 September events brought a demand for further change in the traditional concept of collective security elaborated in the United Nations Charter, and UN practice over the last fifty-five years, for the following reasons: the aggressor is not a state, the aggression is not a military attack, and is not a war according to international law, the battle front is not geographically defined and, unlike territorial wars, it is not clear when victory occurs and what victory means, the aggression is called "terrorism" but, there is no agreement on a definition of terrorism and furthermore, there is no definition of international terrorism, terrorism has successfully adapted to globalisation, while anti- terrorism measures still remain bound by national boundaries.

Is the Untied Nations ready to elaborate and adopt a new and expanded concept of security?

In its report, the high-level panel allows for the use of force in self-defence by member States, in the event of "imminent" or approximative threat to their national security. This is not in accordance with Article 51 which states that the right to self-defence can be exercised only "if an armed attack occurs". The proposed extension of this article would provide sufficient flexibility to permit a country to engage in a preventive attack or war for reasons of self-defence against perceived threats to its security, which appear to encompass political, social and economic trespassing of permitted boundaries. it is not hard to imagine a myriad of scenarios where force could be deployed or, a threat of its being applied, used by those in a position to do so.

The implications are momentous, for the United Nations, for the evolution of the international community, and indeed, for all the declared trouble-spots and trouble-makers, mostly in the South, which for reasons of exclusion and marginalisation today harbours the greatest degree of social and political instability and sources of real or potential trouble and/or threats.

The importance given in the report to the role of regional organisations in the peace and security domain, including beyond their "mandated area", de facto opens the door for worldwide action to NATO, the only regional organisation with the required military and logistical capacity, and the military arms of the countries of the North. Once again, this gives little comfort to developing countries, who not only would be exposed to the might of the Northern military machine but, could also begin to rely and depend increasingly on its services for resolving problems internal to their respective regions.

We in the South, especially those with a knowledge and sense of history and the recall of an earlier colonial epoch, have an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu and the suspicion that the fundamental thrust of the proposed reforms could easily take us back conceptually and politically to long gone geopolitical situations and practices.

Whether the UN should become a facilitating platform for this new security doctrine is an important issue that first and foremost should preoccupy us in the developing world. In the space of little more than half a century since the majority of us emerged from colonial status and became sovereign and independent, a new global enclosure seems to be rising around us.

The reform of the UN's role in social and economic development

It is we from the developing countries who have argued form the very beginning of the UN's existence that development and economic and social progress hold the key to peace.

It is thanks to our collective efforts that development was placed at the centre stage of the UN's work, as its main preoccupation.

At one point in time we had the illusion of making headway on a number of key issues and reforms of the international economic system. Many of these reforms were of a structural character. In addition, the well- off countries were supposed to help and facilitate our development efforts.

One of the main messages of rising neo-liberal globalisation and, of the conservative political thought that began to dominate domestic scenes in the key countries of the North, was that the early development work of the UN was mistaken and disoriented.

Developing countries ought to swim with the tide, help themselves and adjust to the dominant system, by integrating into the world economy on terms and conditions offered by the North.

For the North, the end of the Cold War also presented the opportunity to end the North-South development dialogue, to ditch a number of concepts and concessions which they had agreed earlier under the collective pressure of the South, and to return to normalcy.

Thus, the "reform" drive form the North is an attempt: to shift the real and structural issues and hard core decision-making away from the "developmentalist" UN, to weaken the UN's capabilities and mandates which could be used to challenge the existing structures and relationships, to transform it gradually into what one might call a "second fiddle" institution, providing support to the main players and acting according to the script that they provide, offering technical assistance to developing countries so that they can integrate better and to make them feel that attention is being paid to them.

On the other hand, the developing countries resist and try to preserve as much as they can of the UN which they knew. In the process, they are being accused of blocking progress, of negativism and of lacking ideas and proposals for reform.

Their defensive efforts did slow things down but, could not stop the process of erosion under the pressure of a well-thought out and persistent strategy of the North. Indeed, the developed countries were not shy to use their financial clout in the organisation to achieve their ends. Furthermore, they applied bilateral pressures -- carrots as well as sticks -- to weaken the resolve of individual developing countries and, to induce cracks in their collective posture in the multilateral arena.

In fact, in its report, the high-level panel endorses the progressive weakening and erosion of the UN's role in the socio-economic domains that has taken place over the last two decades. The report puts forward the North-driven institutional agenda of entrusting socio-economic problems to the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, the institutions that enjoy a "comparative advantage", and to the G8. Negotiating and decision- making on hard economic issues would no longer take place in the UN, which would be oriented to becoming a forum for consultation and debate.

Much as in the case of Security Council reform and peace-keeping, one witnesses a de facto move in the direction preferred by the countries of the North. This direction, in turn, implies weaker chances for democratisation of global economic governance and indeed, for expressing dissent and promoting alternatives to the dominant structures and paradigm. Once more, it is the countries of the South that are the "losers".

The obstacles to the large-scale reform of the United Nations may reside above all in the split between the rich North and the poor South, the haves and the have-nots. The North may already have used its power to advance a number of important changes in the UN that fit within its own vision of the role for the organisation in the post-Cold War period and the age of neo- liberal globalisation. The South is on the defensive and resisting, but with limited success. Indeed, it is facing today a new and determined drive spearheaded by the only superpower, to reshape radically the international organisation. The two documents that have just appeared, the report of the panel on threats, challenges and change, and the report on strengthening the WTO, testify to this.

To sum up: On the one hand, the North, rich states, considers that the UN should serve as an extension of the foreign policy of the most powerful nations. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States is the only superpower, and therefore the United Nations is at a risk of becoming a mere extension of the policy of the unique superpower, and of its domestic and global interests and preoccupations.

On the other hand, the South, the developing countries, defends the basic premises of the UN Charter, stresses the need for the democratisation of the UN and the primacy of development on its agenda. Increasingly, they find support and allies in civil society in the North, and tacitly from the public opinion and policy- makers of some developed countries, uncomfortable vis-a-vis hegemony practiced by the leading power.

For the pessimists, there is little evidence that the United States will accept any reform which might decrease its power within the UN system, while pressing for reforms that maximise its own scope of action and importance and, its ability to dominate the proceedings and work of international organisations. They do not believe in the argument that the role of the United Nations is even more important now than it was in 1945, at the end of World War II.

For the optimists, reform leaders and activists should keep up the mobilisation and the struggle, with the end goal of building an international democracy. They believe it is possible to create the political will necessary to achieve global democratic governance within the UN system.

They dream about a possibility that a coalition of developing countries along with progressive nations might arise to counter the unilateralism of the United States. Furthermore, the optimists believe that the American democracy which gave birth to President Wilson, the father of the League of Nations, and President Roosevelt, the father of the United Nations, will be able to provide a leader with a transcending vision, with imagination, generosity and the will to crate a new United Nations Organisation able to respond to the needs of humanity, to foster a new dialogue between North and South and, to promote the democratisation of globalisation, before globalisation destroys the foundations of national and international democracy.

My message today is that we cannot just dream, or wait for someone else to bring our dream about. We must act now. It is the role of the South, its leaders, intellectuals and its people to mobilise a global coalition in defence of the UN Charter and of the Untied Nations.

After all, we represent more than 80 per cent of humanity, an important part of which lives in this great country. Your voice and our voice count -- they can blow down the walls!