Assembly to decide U.N. future role

September 4, 2000

The upcoming United Nations

Millennium Assembly, which many believe will draw more world leaders than any other U.N.-sponsored event in the past, has some critics on the edge of their seats waiting to see how the global organization will define its role for the 21st century and beyond.

The event, which will be held in New York Sept. 6-8, “will be a historic opportunity to agree on a process for fundamental review of the role of, and challenges facing the United Nations in the new century,” according to a U.N. statement published last week.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

The assembly comes on the heels of an April 3 report, authored by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which “identified challenges facing the international community” and included “an action plan for addressing them.”

The report, called

“We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations
in the Twenty-first Century,” contained many familiar themes, including cutting poverty, educational improvement, increased global security, environmental protection, and a plea “to make globalization work for people.”

However, critics say, the devil is in the details, and while the goals of Annan’s April report may sound good, how they will be accomplished may not be what millions of the world’s people envision.

Annan has called for some immediate steps to be taken by the world’s developed countries during the summit:

Rich countries should be prepared to “implement the expansion of the debt relief program for heavily indebted poor countries agreed last year without further delay, and to be prepared to cancel all official debts of the heavily indebted poor countries, in return for those countries making demonstrable commitments to poverty reduction.”
Wealthy nations should “grant more generous development assistance, particularly to those countries that are genuinely applying their resources to poverty reduction.”
They should “work with the pharmaceutical industry and other partners to develop an effective and affordable vaccine against HIV; and to make HIV-related drugs more widely accessible in developing countries.”
Annan, who is from Ghana, wants G-7 nations “to make special provision for the needs of Africa, and to fully support Africans in their struggle to overcome the continent’s problems. Specifically, experts and foundations are urged to tackle the problem of low agricultural productivity in Africa.”

Heads of state are similarly urged to:

“Strengthen respect for international law, and in particular the agreed provisions of treaties on the control of armaments and of international humanitarian and human rights law. Special facilities will be provided at the Millennium Summit for Heads of State or Government to add their signatures to any treaty or convention of which the secretary-general is the depository.”
“Strengthen the capacity of the United Nations to conduct peace operations. The secretary-general has established a high-level panel to review all aspects of peace operations and suggest ways forward; the panel’s report is expected to be completed in time for consideration by the Millennium Assembly.”
“To agree on measures to make economic sanctions adopted by the Security Council impact less harshly on innocent populations, and more effective in bringing pressure to bear on target regimes.”

Heads of state are also urged to accept more gun control, by curbing the “illegal traffic in small arms” by “creating greater transparency in arms transfers; supporting regional disarmament measures, such as the moratorium on the importing, exporting and manufacturing of light weapons in West Africa; and extending to other areas — especially post-conflict situations — the ‘weapons for goods’ programs that have worked well in Mozambique, Panama, El Salvador and Albania.”

The assembly will also be used as a forum to discuss ways to eliminate nuclear weapons, expand global environmental laws, and to adopt and help ratify the Kyoto Protocol treaty on sustainable development by 2002.

Annan is also seeking changes in the way the U.N. Security Council functions, by calling for reforms that “both enables it to carry out its responsibilities more effectively and gives it greater legitimacy in the eyes of all the world’s peoples.”

The secretary-general also wants the security council to ensure that the U.N. is given the resources to “carry out its mandates,” which, in the past, has meant increasing the amount of funding donated by member states.

One of the most controversial figures to attend the summit will be Cuba’s Fidel Castro, regarded as a respectable figure by many world leaders but less likely to generate as much enthusiasm from most U.S. leaders.

Though the Clinton administration has demonstrated a penchant for easing off on Castro, others — like New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani — are much less sanguine about the Cuban leader’s visit.

On Saturday, Giuliani called Castro a “murderer,” and admonished Americans not to fool themselves “into thinking that he’s some kind of benign dictator.”

“I’ll make the same point about Yasser Arafat, if you want,” Giuliani said, adding: “disagree with them strongly.”

Arafat is also slated to attend the summit.

New York City, Giuliani said, would deploy 6,000 officers for security and patrols, coordinating activities with the U.S. Secret Service and other federal law enforcement agencies.